Hi I'm Stephen Kent, I'm both a Teaching Fellow and a Research Fellow at the
Railway Centre at the University. I'm mostly involved with the programme that's
called Railway Systems Engineering and Integration. The programme is unique, partly
because of the how well established it is, it's been running for I think 23 years
now, but the core thing about it is the sheer breadth of topics that you cover.
We cover everything from the technology, to the operations, to the
management, to the ergonomics, it's the full range of aspects that you need to know about
it in order to take a useful place in the industry. The programme is aimed both
at those who are just starting out in their career and the railways, but it's
also for those who are more experienced rail professionals who want to broaden
their their their knowledge and understanding of the railway its systems
and how it works. The course is largely lecture based and it's taught over eight
one week long modules, very intensive modules, now you can study those modules
pretty much in any order. So for full-time students they're here for a
year and they'll complete all of the taught part of the course and all of the
rest of the elements of the course in that one year. But critically for
part-time students you can study the course over maybe two or three years for
the taught element and you then need to allow a bit more time for your
dissertation thereafter. So very varying patterns of attendance for students
according to to what they need we're very flexible in that regard. As I say
it's mainly lecture based but we also do other things like tutorials, site visits,
we run workshops, and we also have what's called a study tour, where you'll go
around various railway organisations in different countries and see how things
work behind the scenes, and actually get a real feel for how the railways really
work. So that as an excellent addition to the course. In terms of assessment,
we actually do a remarkable amount of assessment on this course, you'll be
doing a good number of assingments for each and every module. There are
class tests at the end of the week just so as you can keep tabs on how you're
getting on and we can understand how you're getting on.
Inevitably of course there are exams around Easter time for the course. You've
then got your dissertation, your dissertation can be quite a significant
piece of work and we always advise students to choose something that
intrigues you and interests you about the rail industry. We of course support
students through that but that's quite a significant piece of further work that is of
course assessed at the end of the day. The aim is for those new to railway industry,
the aim is to really kickstart your career to give you the breadth of
knowledge that you'll need to be a bit more confident and perhaps contributes a
bit more in your place of work. For those who are more experienced and we have a
lot of experienced railway engineers on the programme, again it's about broadening
your understanding and that might be in preparation for taking on a more senior
role within your organisation. It can also be about gaining chartership
status, which of course is increasingly important for engineers both in the rail
industry and other related disciplines. We find a lot of students choose this
particular course because of its reputation, as I said it's been running
for 23 years, a lot of our graduates have gone on to really quite senior positions
in the rail industry both in UK and abroad. That tends to get us a steady
stream of students from managers who may be recommending to younger members of
staff that they really ought to come on this course. A lot of our students
are sponsored by industry, so primarily it's the the reputation of the course
and the reputation that has in industry. The chance is if you at the start of
your career we're helping you get a job, or if you're maybe had a few years
in the industry helping you progress up and through the industry structure.
For me the best thing about teaching on the course is really the interaction
with the students, I mean I thoroughly enjoy doing the lecturing side but
there's also quite a lot of more one-to-one interaction with students
when you're doing tutorials. Particularly when we're doing the team
exercises which is something that the students undertake during the evenings
of the module week.