Kate
Rose

What stands out about Nottingham Trent University?

The staff at NTU make the lessons interesting and interactive and with their industry experience, they can relate their teaching to the industries we are in as apprentices.

The Brackenhurst campus where my course is based has a lot of facilities, including the microbiology and food technology labs which are great for getting hands-on experience whilst at university. They contain many pieces of equipment too which helps us to experience and learn lots of different techniques.

How do you believe this apprenticeship will affect both your current job role and future career?

Gaining this degree through the apprenticeship will open more future career options as the degree covers a broad range of topics in the food industry, including those that are visible to me in my role in the workplace.

This apprenticeship has positively affected my current job role by allowing me to use my knowledge of other areas of the food industry to ask questions to project leads and bring a holistic view to the projects I am involved in.

What do you think of the facilities available at NTU? This includes online resources.

Being an apprentice away from the NTU campus most of the time, I interact with the online resources a lot more than other facilities. NTU has access to a large range of online databases for researching and writing assignments which is great when the library is harder to access when not on-site. The library team facilities include guidance on how to write assignments and referencing amongst others are very useful.

It's easy to set up a meeting with a member of one of the library team to talk through what you need support with. The NTU NOW facilities are a great way of keeping all university-related content for your modules in one place and this is helpful to keep organised and know where to find the required pieces of information.

NTU also has good on campus facilities when on block release (extended periods of leave to continue studying), including good sized teaching classrooms and good micro-labs and food technology labs for practical work.

What is your favourite thing about your apprenticeship?

My favourite thing about my apprenticeship is that the modules we have cover a broad range of topics within the food industry, including: food raw materials, consumer nutrition and health and food technology and microbiology.

Within my professional role I only experience one particular area, but when I am at university I learn about lots of other areas which increases my knowledge about the wider food industry which I can use in my future career.