Welcome, new students!

We are at that exciting time of year again, where we welcome our new students to embark on their wonderful journey of Chemistry at Cardiff University.

It has been a busy summer here at the School - we have been working hard to adapt to our new blended-learning approach, reassessing our movements onsite and revisiting our timetabling. But thankfully it has been a great success.

Engaging lectures have been prepared for delivery online, and new ways of inspiring the next generation through our teaching have been devised and designed.

As well as having a team within the University dedicated to creating exciting, new approaches to teaching and learning, we are looking forward to working alongside our students to continually enhance our approach. Our aim is to develop novel innovations in teaching methods as the year progresses, to ensure we maintain our high standards.

As we all know, chemistry is a practical subject, and so ensuring that students can safely spend time on campus has been at the top of our priority list. For this reason, we have managed to adapt our laboratories, assessing their safe occupancy levels, so that students can confidently enjoy developing their practical skills in a safe environment.

Beyond our laboratories, we believe it is vitally important that all modules have an element of face-to-face teaching. We find that this is where students grab that opportunity to explore the subject matter, challenge, ask questions and spark their curiosity further.

By re-designing our small group tutorial classes, we’ve can continue to host these all-important sessions, and they will be taking place this year in venues consistent with social distancing.

Overall, it has been a challenging year for everyone, but hard work and innovation has prevailed and all of us here at the School of Chemistry have pulled together to ensure that practical chemistry can still take place.

Now all that’s left is the excitement of welcoming our new and returning students, and we hope you are looking forward to restarting your chemistry journey!