School of Chemistry students learn from team at Reckitt Benckiser Students from the School of Chemistry had a fantastic opportunity recently to enhance their employability skills and gain insights from staff from multi-national company Reckitt Benckiser. The workshop is part of the ‘Chemistry Concept to Consumer’ series of careers workshops run by Deborah Fowlis and Dr Phil Bailey. The first in a series of three intensive workshops gave students the opportunity to work with global brand Reckitt Benckiser, who make household market leading brands including Lemsip, Scholl, Air Wick, Calgon, Clearasil, Cillit Bang, Durex, Lysol, Mycil and Vanish to name but a few. Rebecca Fisher and Corrie Scott from Reckitt Benckiser spent the afternoon running a series of intensive interactive group workshops with School of Chemistry students who attended from 1st-4th year at undergraduate level as well as postgraduate students. It was a pleasure to welcome back Corrie Scott, a School of Chemistry alumna (MChem Medicinal and Biological Chemistry 2019), and all the more impressively during her studies she also won a Commonwealth Games bronze medal in the 50 metres breaststroke at Glasgow 2014.’ She has made a great start on her career with Reckitt Benckiser and is one year in to their 3-year Graduate Training Programme. Dr Phil Bailey Senior Lecturer and Former Director of Teaching Rebecca Fisher has been through the Reckitt Benckiser Future Leaders Graduate Programme and Corrie Scott has recently joined the RB graduate future leaders programme. It was great being back in Edinburgh and I loved having the opportunity to work with School of Chemistry students because having recently graduated myself I know how hard the degree is! The students had great creative ideas and were passionate in their views and great to work with. Corrie Scott These employer-led workshops are a fantastic way for students from the School of Chemistry to gain an insight into the range of careers available to them in the chemical industry, beyond R&D. Through this experiential learning, they also develop their team working, problem solving and communication skills (and try out some new ones) to come up with novel solutions to authentic workplace scenarios. Dr Deborah Fowlis School of Chemistry Careers Consultant The workshop was a great opportunity for Chemistry students to work closely with a global company and to learn first-hand what it is like to work for a large multinational. They gained valuable experience and insights in to the sort of exposure they could have as a new graduate employee and how many options are open to them to pursue their career in the direction they want. The Chemistry Concept to Consumer workshop was well facilitated and we got a glimpse of a typical day at RB. The hands-on activities were great, allowing us to experience the nature of work involved, which extends beyond the use of Chemistry knowledge and skills. I can also apply some of the things that I learned to my PGT grand challenge exercise. Suljesh Sharma PGT student studying Medicinal and Biological Chemistry This article was published on 2024-05-30
