Futures. Your Life. Your Career

Marjon Futures are there to make sure that your university experience is just the beginning of a life of opportunity. They offer enriching career, travel, volunteer, enterprise and professional development opportunities, helping you to be the best you can be.

Volunteering

Volunteering offers a vast range of opportunities for you to develop new skills to help you get into the right job and you can make new friends and have some fun at the same time.  Find out more below.

Student volunteering builds employability skills such as leadership, problem-solving, teamwork, initiative and self-awareness and virtually every paid job can be mirrored by a volunteering opportunity. Volunteering can give direction and focus to your career. It also has priceless benefits of adding value to assignments, boosting your academic skills together with the real-life ones that employers really rate, which look great on you CV. Volunteering will show potential employers that you are keen and committed and that you are worth employing!

Here at Marjon we want to help you build up a portfolio of experiences before you leave, to make you ‘work ready’. It is so important that you have something other than a degree to support a job application. Make sure by the time you complete your degree, you have practical experience on your CV that makes you stand out in a crowd.

Keep up to date with current volunteering opportunities through the Marjon Student Volunteering Facebook page.

Please use these helpful hints and tips below as a reference to get you started:

  • It is best to think about the type of voluntary work you would like to undertake. You will find that volunteering it is the perfect way for you to road test possible career opportunities that could lead you to your perfect job. You could get involved with a project that specifically links to your degree or you try something completely different. Volunteering gives you the perfect opportunity to find out what makes you tick.
  • Make an appointment to meet with the Marjon Employability Co-ordinator to discuss your volunteering interests.Don’t be put off with regards to the organisations geographical location and many organisation will pay for your travel expenses.
  • If it’s the right opportunity, go for it!

Placement Learning & Work Experience

Following recognised good practice many programmes are designed to include formally recognised and integrated periods of placement learning. Placement learning provides students with the opportunity to engage with private, public and voluntary sector organisations to put their academic skills into practice and reflect on their experiences. Assessed coursework is then produced as a result of student experiences and reflections.

Students are also encouraged to set up, and engage with, periods of work experience. Work experience is invaluable and affords the opportunity for students to research a sector or job role that they may be interested in pursuing when they graduate or just get to grips with being an employee. Whether the work experience is specific to the sector students are looking to gain employment in, or is more general, the value of gaining transferable employability skills can not be underestimated.

Whilst many students will be placed, or working, with local organisations placement learning and work experience also provide students with the opportunities to engage with regional, national and sometimes international organisations which helps students to broaden their horizons and exposes them to countless opportunities to use the skills, knowledge, experience and attributes they have developed through their studies and extra-curricular experiences.

With an increasingly competitive job market and research showing that employers and recruiters are increasingly placing more emphasis on the value of work-based experiences the importance of engaging in placement learning and work experience should not be under estimated.

Study Abroad

The Overseas Exchange Programme enables students from Marjon to spend one semester in the USA at one of our partner institutions overseas at Bloomsburg University or Lock Haven University, Pennsylvania USA.

Modules are available across most disciplines and are part of the regular undergraduate curriculum, enabling exchange students to study and experience University in the USA.

‌A semester abroad is undoubtedly one of the best opportunities that is available to you during your studies. The benefits of being able to study and travel abroad will broaden your horizons and enhance the opportunities available to you when seeking future employment.

There are some financial expectations to studying in the USA as part of the visa requirements and paying for accommodation once you are there, but you will only pay one lot of tuition fees to Marjon, but not the partnered University.

This opportunity is currently only available to students in their 1st or 2nd year of study and unfortunately not to our BEd students due to your course teaching practice requirements. To find out more please contact Faye on fhatherley@marjon.ac.uk or further details can be found via the website Overseas exchange. Please ‘like’ our Marjon Study Abroad and Exchange Facebook page for regular updates.

Camp America

Here at Marjon we work in partnership with Camp America to develop cultural exchange programmes which gives all students the chance to attend a traditional American summer camp. Our links to Camp America enable students to have supported bursaries to help fund new and returning students the opportunity work in the USA. Currently we have 15 bursary places available up for grabs.

Since 1969, Camp America has cornered this market, giving thousands of students the chance to experience a full summer of fun and excitement, developing skills in leadership, communication, teamwork and initiative – great for the CV! Having a great time is all part of the job, and you’ll get to spend your summer with like-minded people from all over the world.

For more information about how you can apply for a bursary in September*, please email Faye on fhatherley@marjon.ac.uk for further information.

*Applications open in September and close in December. Bursaries are awarded through an application, group interview and a 1:1 interview process.

Futures online resources

The Futures team utilise the Abintegro portal to offer a wide range of interactive tools, e-learning content and the latest job opportunities. Please familiarise yourself with the Service Terms & Conditions of Use on your first visit (available via the Futures tile on the dashboard).

Follow this link or type in this address to your web browser: http://elearning.marjon.ac.uk/eres/futures/

Click on the Futures button on the LS homepage or scan the QR code below.

When prompted enter your Marjon username and password. If you encounter any problems or have a question please email: futures@marjon.ac.uk