Digital Marketing Internship: Seeing the school from a staff member’s POV
By: Clara, BSc Geography student and Digital Marketing Intern
Hi there! My name is Clara, and I am the Digital Marketing Intern in the School of GeoSciences this summer. I have just finished the third year of my BSc in Geography, and my interests within GeoSciences include glaciology, GIS, and remote sensing, alongside all things climate-crisis related. I’m really excited to be working with the marketing team in GeoSciences this summer!
I think one of the most interesting experiences over the first few weeks of my internship has been having the opportunity to see the school as a staff member, and not just as a student. When you’re an undergraduate student, you only ever see the part of the university that is the lecturers, your classmates, and the student association. Maybe you meet the counselling service or the university GP, but apart from that, you’re actually rather isolated from what is going on below the surface-level teaching. Because of this, it’s easy to forget what a huge organisation the university is. Over the first three weeks of my internship, I have had the opportunity to get insights into what happens behind the curtain at the School of GeoSciences, and it has been very fun.
In my experience, during term-time, I’ve only ever gone to the same buildings: Drummond Street, the Main Library, and perhaps an exciting lecture theatre in a new part of the campus if I’m lucky. I join in on lectures with the same people, meet the same academics, and go to events held by the same societies. For me, this meant that as I started my internship, working with digital marketing for GeoSciences, I hadn’t fully comprehended the extensive amount of work that goes on within the university, but outside of the students and the academics.
My laptop and excitingly large screen in the marketing office at Grant Institute
I know. If you think about it, the concept that there are more things than lectures and research going on at the university is an obvious fact. Because of course, there are other people working here, taking care of everything else that makes the university function. The admissions, open days, the creation and management of SeatEd, MyEd, and all the other sites that end with -ED. Still, knowing that there are people working with those projects, is one thing. But seeing, speaking to, and getting to be part of, those people, is another thing completely, and an opportunity rarely presented to students.
Three weeks into my internship working with the marketing and communications team in GeoSciences I find that this to me entirely new part of the university, this way of viewing my place of education from a completely different angle, has not only been fun and exciting but also very educational and insightful.
So far, my digital marketing internship has included everything from coming up with TikTok ideas to creating LinkedIn posts about recent research, from helping out with Enhanced Visit days to sitting in on meetings about marketing. I have discovered the university’s branding scheme and the extensive planning that is needed just to send out emails to offer holders.
Since the start of June, my role when walking around campus has changed. Instead of coming in as a student, I am now going to campus as a member of staff as well. It has been both fun and educational to be allowed to step out of my student role, where everything is provided to me, and instead become part of the people at the university that are providing for others, and I am looking forward to spending this summer getting more involved with the work that goes on in the place where all the learning and research that I find the most interesting, is happening.
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