MSc - Environmental Monitoring, Research and Management

Loughborough is an amazingly supportive environment, filled with phenomenal world leading academics who actually care about your career prospects.

Since graduating from my undergraduate degree, I’d become interested in environmental issues, particularly in conservation and restoration. I’d been volunteering with environmental charities such as the Wildlife Trust and found myself more and more engaged in this area, so wanted to understand whether I could get into a career in it. The range of areas covered on the programme really appealed to me both in terms of my interest and in their ability to enhance my employability. It covers practical skills, such as those needed for river management, alongside software skills in areas such as GIS and geospatial modelling. This has given me a broad understanding of the environmental sector and the range of opportunities within it.

I graduated from my undergraduate degree in BA English in 2016. After graduating, I worked in marketing for a few years and then wanted a change so moved into a role as a Restaurant Manager while I looked into career change opportunities. Having had a break between my studies, I had commitments that meant I needed to work whilst studying, so I chose to study part-time across two years. I was able to find work in the marketing department at the University that fitted in with my studies. I’ve found the skills gained from taking time out to work to be really useful in my studies, such as presenting, interpreting data and report-writing. I’ve also found there are plenty of transferable skills from my undergraduate study, even though it’s in a different area to my MSc.

I wanted to stay local to the midlands and Loughborough’s overall league table rankings and reputation for the subject made it my top choice of the universities I considered. When I looked into the course content, Loughborough offered an interesting programme that combined scientific and practical skills.

The geography foyer is a great place to work as you can meet with course mates to work on things together if needed. There are usually staff passing by to support and have a chat with you too.