General Information about Teaching
The School of Chemistry is one of the largest in the United Kingdom and an internationally recognised centre of excellence. Currently around 170 new undergraduate students are accepted each year and there are over 200 postgraduate and postdoctoral research workers. A large academic staff of 55, with over 60 technical and support staff, ensures that there is a very wide range of research interests and this in turn means that the subject is taught by enthusiastic experts. Research plays an important part in ensuring that we can offer our undergraduate students the best teaching and the last Research Assessment Exercise confirmed our status as one of the top research departments in the UK.
Undergraduate Courses
The School offers a range of undergraduate honours degree programmes to meet the needs of a wide variety of careers. The programmes involve excellent professional training in chemistry, together with opportunities to spend a year studying abroad or working in the chemical industry. A distinctive feature of our MSci undergraduate chemistry courses is that each includes a major final year research project, carried out as a member of the research group of a staff member. For many students, this is the highlight of their undergraduate studies, and some succeed in having their work published in internationally renowned Chemistry journals.
We are home to the country's only Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) that is devoted to Chemistry. The CETL Bristol ChemLabS (Bristol Chemical Laboratory Sciences) project has developed an innovative web-based, online Dynamic Laboratory Manual with inbuilt pre-laboratory and in-laboratory e-assessment that has completely transformed the student experience of learning practical chemistry at Bristol. Our undergraduate students are able to enjoy the best possible experience of practical Chemistry, working in professional standard laboratories equipped to research-grade standards. ChemLabS has also created a major national resource for the teaching and learning of the experimental sciences.
Graduate PhD and MSc Courses
We also have a flourishing Graduate School and welcome applications from the UK and overseas for our MSc and PhD programmes. The School's research covers a broad range of topics and this means that you will almost certainly be able to find an area of specialisation to suit your interests. In late 2008, we secured new EPSRC funding for two national PhD Doctoral Training Centres, one in Chemical Synthesis (£7.4M) and the other in Functional Nanomaterials (a £6.4M programme joint with the Department of Physics). PhD students associated with the DTC in Functional Nanomaterials will be housed in a purpose-built £10M centre for Nanoscience and Quantum Information.
For a list of current PhD vacancies, please see here.