Accreditation awarded by Royal Society of Biology for BSc Honours degree programmes for further 5 years

These programmes are Biochemistry, Biological Chemistry and Drug Discovery, Biological Sciences (including with specialisms), Molecular Biology, Molecular Genetics, Microbiology, Biomedical Sciences, Neuroscience, Pharmacology, and Physiological Sciences. Re-accreditation follows an independent and rigorous review by the Society.

To gain accreditation, degree programmes must “… contain a solid academic foundation in biological knowledge and key skills, and prepare graduates to address the needs of employers. The accreditation criteria require evidence that graduates from accredited programmes meet defined sets of learning outcomes, including subject knowledge, technical ability and transferable skills.”

The application process and virtual visit by the assessment panel were led by Professor Jenny Woof, Arlene Stewart and the D’Arcy Thompson Unit team. Jenny commented “By meeting the stringent requirements set out by the Royal Society of Biology we can be confident that our programmes offer the very best start for graduates in their future careers. Students benefit from the strong research focus of our programmes and emerge with the key skills and attributes that employers are looking for.”

The assessment panel highlighted the following specific points of good practice:

• Research led curriculum
• The variety of final year projects, including the grant proposal and the approach to allocation 
• All students who wish to do a laboratory project may do so 
• Integrated core curriculum focusing on practical skills at an early stage 
• The level 9 (our year 3) mini-project laboratory work 
• The statistics curriculum and teaching 

This accreditation follows our previous award in 2016. In addition, all our integrated masters (MSci) programmes were awarded advanced accreditation from the Society for 5 years from January 2019.