Enhance your workplace skills at Kent

Wendy Raeside
Tania Hopper Programme Director - Centre for Professional Practice
Tania Hopper Programme Director - Centre for Professional Practice by University of Kent

The University offers postgraduate study that enhances professional skills, while fitting in with commitments outside the workplace.

The postgraduate programme in Professional Practice is available to staff at Kent and other organisations in the south east. The programmes are taught and delivered part-time at the Medway campus by the Centre for Professional Practice (CPP).

About the programme

Centre Administration Manager Mita Mondal believes that the CPP programme, launched five years ago, is a reflection of the University’s commitment to flexible and continuous learning.

Mita Mondal: ‘Our postgraduate programme has been designed to give employees across our region the chance to broaden their workplace expertise, while gaining a recognisable qualification for career progression.’

Mita Mondal

Mita Mondal

Participants can choose to follow specific accredited pathways – such as learning and teaching, dentistry or health. Some pathways also enable you to select modules of personal and professional interest across the University.

All CPP programmes are flexible and designed to fit around working people. Teaching takes place part-time at weekends over three years and qualifications are available at Certificate, Diploma and Master’s level.

The programme is open to anyone who’s working and there is the possibility of transferring credit for earlier education and experience.

A substantial contribution to course fees – £2,500 for the 2015/16 academic year for the MSc – may also be available to Kent staff from Learning & Development and their own departments and schools.

Mita Mondal: ‘The CPP programme is a unique way of accrediting workplace learning for either personal interest or a particular career goal. We offer our students a real chance to make the programme what they want it to be.’

Staff experience

Among Kent Staff who have benefited from this study option are Lorna Parrett, Corporate Events Manager, in the Development Office. Lorna graduated with an MSc in Professional Practice at Rochester Cathedral in July 2015.

Lorna Parrett graduating at Rochester Cathedral

Lorna Parrett: ‘My cohort included secondary school teachers and I also mixed with other cohorts that included a paramedic, fireman, doctor and administrators. The CPP team was very supportive and used to dealing with students holding down family commitments and a full-time job.

‘I found the whole experience taxing at times, but the sense of achievement was phenomenal. It’s given me confidence in my professional ability and to think far ‘outside the box’. For me, it was perfect and I would recommend it to others.’

Lorna ‘s final dissertation was on the difference that graduation ceremonies make to students’ continued relationship with the University and her department is already making use of her research findings.

 

CPP Staff and students at the graduation ceremony on 7 July 2015

CPP Staff and students at the graduation ceremony on 7 July 2015

 

 

 

Study in 2015/16

Applications are now being invited to apply for the MSc in Professional Practice Programme, starting in October 2015.