My name’s Ella Brown, I’m a final-year BA(Hons) Linguistics and English Language student and member of GROW Your Future, Lancaster University’s widening participation community. In June, I joined a number of students on a day around the LU campus to learn about the different career paths and roles that exist within higher education.

Our LU Connections trip started with a tour of the resident companies within LEC (Lancaster Environment Centre), where the business partnerships team introduced a number of enterprises that exist right here on campus. It was great to learn about the business’s success stories, the real-world impact they have, and how Lancaster University supports their progress, such as connecting our students and graduates with the businesses via internship programmes.

A key message of the day was the importance of being engaged and networking with people who share your values, which we put into practice at the Alumni lunch. It was amazing to see so many current staff members who attended Lancaster themselves as students and now work here, a real testament to the strong alumni community that exists both on and off campus. Their roles ranged from academia and teaching, careers coaching and widening participation, to roles in colleges, community and innovation programmes.

With every conversation, we learnt more about roles that exist within the non-student-facing teams and professional services, which showed the value of working for larger employers, such as education institutions. In particular, many of the staff praised the flexibility and ability to move and work across different teams, which helped them to find the right role for them.

As someone still working out their post-graduate options, the staff’s emphasis on their dynamic responsibilities and the supportive culture they work in was great to hear!

After Lunch, we joined sessions at HIC (Health Innovation Campus) about squiggly careers and the strength of being able to identify your own transferable skill set; and then made our way over to the Library, where we learnt about the range of roles that exist in education, learning support and archiving.

It was clear that development is right at the heart of the university, and as students, we only see a fraction of the hard work that goes on behind the scenes to make the academic delivery of programmes run smoothly.

As a first-generation university student who knew relatively little about the working culture and jobs that exist within further and higher education, I would recommend signing up for LU Connections as it has provided me clarity and has helped me to feel more confident with future applications to roles in this sector.

If you are interested in attending LU Connections 2026, please register your interest here - https://lancasteruni.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_eamKWxuXtcTzQc6

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