Be bold about your future: challenges to challenge you and challenges for change

Find your term 3 opportunities now! You could develop your: 

• Team working skills – you may be working with people you’ve never met before, against the clock.
• Leadership skills – empower yourself to think creatively and lead the change.
• Non-academic communication skills – you could be working with a charity, or community partner where academic language needs to be left at the door. 
• Confidence in negotiating and decision-making – your team will have to agree what you’re doing. 
• Networks and connections – you could be working with a diverse group of fellow students, community experts or SMEs. 

Open to all students, but spaces are limited. Find your challenge below then follow the link to register.

Hackathons and workshops for social impact 

Social Hackathon Day, 17 May

A day of hacking! 4 parallel Social Hackathons with our gorgeous East London grassroots organisations. Want to flex your skills and form a great team with fellow students to change the world? This is your event! Party to celebrate afterwards! 
17 May 
Check it out and sign up here.

Evaluation Training for Community Consultancy, Thursdays throughout May 

Hate homelessness? Cross about the climate crisis? You can be part of generating social solutions using your research and learning skills! Join this incredible opportunity from community engagement experts Evaluation Exchange - a collaboration of academics and community leaders. 6 super interactive online and in-person sessions to explore and understand, immerse yourself, and innovate and implement solutions to real-world questions. Includes a hands-on session at a local community centre. 

Thursdays @ 10.00-12.00 throughout May, finishing on 6 June. Read more and book your spot here.  

Lightning Hack, 6 June

Are you an ideas person? Got great critical thinking skills? Be part of this ideas crowdsourcing event for local Camden charities! Join our 2-hour fast-paced Lightning Hack where you’ll be thrust into a team made up of UCL students and a non-profit Challenger Charity. Together, you’ll innovate and ideate in the early stages of problem solving. Help your charity leap forward with their important work right in UCL’s neighbourhood. 

6 June, 12.00-14.00 
Read more and book your spot here.  

Consultancy Challenge, 10-14 June

Want to really immerse yourself in a real world problem and invest some time and brain power for societal benefit? The Consultancy Challenge is a week-long event where you’ll work in a team on a problem set by a local charity experiencing a global problems – like food poverty, mental health, access to education. The pinnacle of the day is a Dragon’s Den-esque presentation party to try and win your charity £100s!!  
10-14 June, all day. 

Check it out and sign up. 

Working in a Global World workshop series, 6 and 13 June 

Raising your Awareness is the first step in acquiring the Knowledge and Skills necessary for working successfully in a global world.

Attend two interactive workshops hosted by Catherine Casale from UCL Careers, to raise your cultural awareness, examine your careers know-how in a global context, and create an action plan to become more culturally fluent for career success.

*To give you a clearer idea of what 'interactive' means, there are lots of discussion opportunities in this session.  There is some paired and small group work.  People sharing their ideas and experiences co-creates a more rewarding experiencing.  But if you are shy or not confident speaking in larger groups, don't worry, there is no requirement to speak in front of the whole group.  Whoever wants to contribute to the whole group discussions can.  You might even surprise yourself and become one of those speakers!

About the speaker

Catherine herself has lived, worked and studied in four countries across three continents, bringing her own cross-disciplinary and cultural experience to inform her teaching.
 

Workshop 1 ‘What adjustments does it require?’: Haldane Room, Wilkins Building, Gower Street, 6^th June 2.30-4.30pm. Click here to book your spot.
Who: Open to all students

Workshop 2 ‘How to navigate a multidimensional world’: UCL Bloomsbury Campus, 13^th June 2.30-4.30 pm. Click here to book your spot.
Who: Please note that it is necessary to attend the first workshop to get the most out of the second workshop

Feedback from previous attendees:

“Engaging and helpful. I have been feeling lost and confused when it comes to pursuing a career, and I feel like this has put me back on track.” BSc Global Humanitarian Studies
“I found it wonderfully insightful and it was a great opportunity to think about all the different places and cultures we all stem from.”  UG, Natural Sciences
"Intercultural competence is really important in my view in such a diverse university environment as UCL." MSc
 

Build-a-lab: Help us tackle the world’s most urgent challenges, 6 June

When? Thursday 6 June 9am-5pm Location: UCL BaseKX

Climate crisis? Mental Health? Inequalities? These are big challenges that need great problem solvers to generate impactful solutions. We want to start an innovation revolution at UCL where students hack, make, pilot solutions to solve the Grand Challenges of this world, together, across disciplines and methodologies!

Join this interactive day-long workshop and become a student consultant for the day with the opportunity to have your ideas brought to life by designing an innovation model for future student entrepreneurship on the Grand Challenges.

Who's it for

This day-long workshop is open to UCL taught students (undergraduate and postgraduate taught) and postgraduate research students.

You don't need any prior knowledge, just enthusiasm and an interest in working with others to develop innovative solutions.

What to expect

The goal of this session is to become student consultants and collaborate as a team to develop a new model which can be used to engage future students in problem solving some of the world’s most urgent challenges.

You'll be given a brief at the start of the session and then an opportunity to question, explore and challenge our expert panel.

You’ll then develop a response to the brief and present your findings back to the panel.

What you'll learn

Participating in this session will help you learn how to:

• Create lasting change and start the pipeline of creative solutions to pass on to the next cohort.
• Build new consultancy skills and experience
• Develop your teamworking, problem solving and communication skills
• You will also have the opportunity to see the seeds of your idea grow as the Grand Challenges Innovation Lab evolves and takes shape over the following year. Expect to be invited to the launch event in 2025!

Book place

Consultancy training and skills for you and your career

The Impact of Storytelling – Free Interactive Workshop, 23 April 

Need to persuade investors to invest in your business?  Customers to buy your product? Or a company to hire you? Learn how to tell powerful stories with a free 2 hour workshop from a social entrepreneur with 15 years’ experience. By the end of the session you will have uncovered the secret to telling a brand story with a ‘heart over head’ approach that’s genuinely impactful. 

23 April , 3pm 
Find out more and sign up for this workshop 

Sci Comm Slam! 6 June 

Unlock the power of your scientific voice with this brand-new series of exciting workshops, webinars, and panel talks. We’ve pulled together some amazing professionals from the voluntary sector, the Royal Society, and Cambridge. Attend what you need - maybe you need to fill in a current gap in your skill set or perhaps this is your first time thinking about science communication so it’s all essential! Build your skills and take part in the Slam! event to put your new skills into action – with a chance to win £150!  

Events throughout May with the Slam! on 6 June.  
Read more and book your spot here.  

Build your business or social enterprise, 8 May - 26 June

Does a free 8-week programme to help you develop your business + a chance to win £3,000 sound too good to miss? 

Develop your business model and learn about the practicalities of setting up a new business or social enterprise through interactive workshops, activities and one-to-one mentoring. The programme will help you across multiple areas including: 

• identify and understand the market and industry you’ll operate in 

• identify your key assumptions and how to test and evaluate these 

• develop a viable strategy for reaching potential customers or users 

• improve your business pitching skills 
Running 8 May to 26 June 

Find out more here

Discover your entrepreneurial skills and mindset, 11 June  

Discover your entrepreneurial mindset and develop skills that will help you in your future career with this free 3 hour introductory workshop.  
 
Entrepreneurship is about more than just starting a business. An entrepreneurial mindset can help you succeed whether your future career lies in academia, working for a large-scale organisation or running your own business. In this workshop you’ll explore what entrepreneurship is, and why having an entrepreneurial mindset will help you in whatever career you choose. 
11 June 2pm 
Find out more and book.  

Enhance your employability: Free High Performance Computing Skills sessions

Develop programming skills and gain hands-on experience in High Performance Computing (HPC), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Cloud technologies with the Advanced Research Computing (ARC) Cluster Club.  

Sessions are open to any student, regardless of computing experience or discipline and are led by ARC professionals.  HPC Clusters are used in many industries to tackle challenges, from modelling climate change to understanding pharmaceutical drug-target interactions. What challenge could you tackle with your newly-developed skills?  

First Cluster Club session on 24th April, 2.30pm with more dates planned.  

Find out more and book here; ARC Cluster Club | Advanced Research Computing - UCL – University College London 

Information literacy for life: assignments, your final year project, employability, the workplace, and lifelong learning. 1-24 May

Information literacy (IL) skills you build at university for academic library research are fundamental to navigate and benefit from the digital environment beyond university. Developing these transferable skills are key to enhancing your employability, enabling you to perform effectively in the workplace, support your independent lifelong learning, and contribute to your graduate success.

By undertaking this blended learning challenge, you will develop essential information literacy skills to help you succeed in your assignments or final year project and understand how those skills translate to skills for employability, the workplace and life.

Access the challenge at the following link from 1 May 2024: Information literacy for life: assignments, your final year project, employability, the workplace, and lifelong learning

This challenge runs from Wednesday 1^st May to Friday 7^th June and includes self-paced online learning and optional live online or face to face training sessions on various dates throughout the period. It will take approximately 4.5 to 6.5 hours in total to complete, depending on the options you select.

Crafting Tomorrow's Experiences Today: UX Design Hackathon, 6 June

When: Thursday 6th June @ 10:30-16:30 Where: In Person (Location TBC)

Click here to apply.

Who is this for: Open to all Undergraduate and Postgraduate students at UCL

During this exciting event, you will have the chance to hear from a UX Design Expert and try your hand at intrapreneurship by pitching a product to support UCL Students!

During the day, you will be put into teams with your fellow UCL Student Intrapreneurs, where you will work to develop a digital product that will support UCL students deal with some of the challenges they face. You will also have the chance to hear from a UX Design Expert to better prepare you for the day ahead.

The day will be a taste of what life at work can look like, so be prepared for some interesting obstacles!

At the end of the day, you will have the opportunity to present and market your idea to a panel of judges.

Don't miss your chance to take part in this exciting event. Apply Now!

Deadline to apply is Sunday 19th May (23:59) *The closing date given is a guide only. We may need to close applications once a sufficient amount of applications have been received. It is therefore advisable that you submit your application as early as possible.