Intro to the Professional Futures Graduate Academy

The Academy, new for 2025, is an exciting extracurricular opportunity, exclusively on offer to Science and Engineering students, that will help you to stand out from the crowd beyond your course.

In a sea of graduates, standing out from the crowd is crucial to ensuring your future success.

Students now need to stand out from the crowd more than ever in an increasingly competitive market for internships, placements, graduate jobs, self-employment or further study. Developing yourself beyond your course with experiences and skills that are in demand by both education and industry makes you a more desirable candidate to future employers and collaborators.

The Academy provides you with a choice of personalised pathways through these experiences and skills, celebrating your achievements and elevating your potential in preparation for your future beyond your course.

Completing all the activities along your chosen pathway will result in an invite to the highly exclusive showcase and graduation ceremony. Because of this, we would recommend that you keep free the final cross-pathway project, showcase and graduation ceremony week commencing 18th May 2026 by adding it to your diary now. Here, your exceptional achievements will be celebrated and rewarded with a personalised certificate and transcript, increasing your chances of securing whatever future you want.

Please note that whilst the Academy is open to all Science and Engineering students, it is most appropriate for second years and above.

Also note that joining the Academy is a commitment to around 50 hours of directed extracurricular activity above and beyond your course, as well as the cross-pathway project week highlighted above.

Intro to the Future Essentials Skill Set

This set of activities will provide you with the essential skills to make the most of your time here and all the enrichment opportunities on offer to you as part of the Academy and beyond.

Completing all the activities will also unlock your access to one of the three personalised pathways that you may choose to graduate from – Future Influencer, Future Innovator or Future Leader, that will make you stand out from the crowd, celebrating your achievements and elevating your potential in preparation for your future beyond your course.

Skill Development

Completing this set of activities will develop your skills by:

• Supporting your mental health and wellbeing, as well as that of others, to enhance your own resilience, empathetic communication and teamworking
• Reflecting on your own strengths to build your personal brand, growing your professional profile and network
• Embracing the ethical use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to optimise your own effectiveness, digital fluency and efficient prompt engineering
• Exploring potential pathways in preparation for your future beyond your course

Get Started

To get started, complete all the Essential Activities.

If you have any queries throughout the skill set, please contact Science and Engineering Faculty Student Enrichment via sefse@mmu.ac.uk for support.