Congratulations Class of 2018!

UCL’s School of Management honoured its students on the evening of the 3rd, and hundreds of undergraduates from programmes across the Faculty celebrated on the Wednesday afternoon. As well as festivities and an official ceremony on London’s famous South Bank, students enjoyed Departmental celebrations, including Electronic & Electrical Engineering’s Graduation Breakfast on campus, and Mechanical Engineering’s annual Graduands’ Brunch.

Attendees at the Wednesday ceremony also had fun with various selfie props, including UCL Engineering’s ‘E’ logo, and all graduates claimed a small gift of an ‘E’ pin, courtesy of the Faculty. The UCL Engineering Careers Team were also present at the Faculty stand to remind graduates that they are able to access all of UCL Careers’ services for up to two years after graduation. This includes practice interviews, one-to-one discussions with a careers consultant, plus access to Careers events to develop skills and meet employers. Graduates are encouraged to visit www.ucl.ac.uk/careers to find out more. Information regarding UCL’s Alumni network was also given out on the day, with graduates again encouraged to sign up to the UCL Alumni database and the UCL Alumni Online Community, to continue receiving general UCL, Faculty and Departmental news/event invitations, plus engage in networking opportunities.

Professor Nigel Titchener-Hooker, Dean of UCL Engineering, commented that the Royal Festival Hall Graduation was a “fitting culmination to our students’ hard work, and a celebration of their individual and collective achievements. Whether over three or four years, our inspiring students have not only learned the ‘how’ and the ‘what’ of their chosen discipline, but also, I hope, the ‘why.’ It was especially exciting to see our first MEng Biomedical Engineering cohort graduate. Similarly, most MEng/MSci graduates from the Class of 2018 are part of the first full IEP cohort – the first batch of students to have followed every element of UCL Engineering’s award-winning and internationally recognised teaching framework, the Integrated Engineering Programme. Given their experience of problem-based learning, creativity, engineering design and interdisicplinarity, all underpinned by a strong sense of teamwork, we are excited by the potential these students have. Indeed, as a Faculty we are hugely proud of all our graduating students’ achievements, and we hope that every student is too. We look forward to their continued success as cherished alumni of UCL!”

Students on certain undergraduate programmes from eight different UCL Engineering Departments, including the UCL School of Management, and the Department of Computer Science, have elements of the Integrated Engineering Programme – such as Scenario weeks, the Engineering Challenges module, and the IEP Minor pathways – embedded into their chosen discipline. The fact that the Class of 2018 is the first MEng/MSci cohort to have studied IEP elements from their first year onwards is another milestone for the teaching framework, which won the Higher Education Academy’s Collaborative Award for Teaching Excellence in 2017, and was this year cited as an ’emerging leader in engineering education’ in MIT’s The global state of the art in engineering education report. The IEP Team are very grateful for the feedback and support received from this MEng cohort, which has enabled the IEP to stay dynamic, and responsive to student needs. The cohort’s future success is eagerly awaited.

UCL Graduation 2018 also saw the first MEng Biochemical Engineering with a Year in Industry cohort graduate. This programme works differently to other year in industry routes, with students ‘learning on the job’, rather than adding an extra year to a traditional three or four year degree programme. Below, MEng Biochemical Engineering graduate Hamza talks about his Year in Industry experience at GlaxoSmithKline.

Everyone at UCL Engineering wishes the very best to the Class of 2018. We hope you go out there and change the world!