Engineering with Placement Year

Engineering at Lancaster will challenge you to design and build things to solve real-world problems. The discipline is particularly interesting to anyone with a technical and creative mind and enjoys working as part of a team.

In modern engineering, it is almost impossible to define distinct boundaries between disciplines and as such we offer a general engineering entry point. Knowledge and experience spanning across several engineering disciplines will compliment later specialisms, improve career prospects, and is ideal for students who want to defer choosing a specialism. For example, it can be highly beneficial for an electronic and electrical engineer to understand thermal heat transfer, a chemical engineer to understand stress analysis, and a mechanical engineer to be able to programme a simple interface.

During this general first year, we will introduce you to many of the key features of engineering, equipping you with a well-rounded understanding and skill set in areas such as transport technology, chemical engineering, computing and digital electronics. In addition to these, you will gain an appreciation for the interdisciplinary nature of the subject.

Following the first year, where you will have developed a solid foundation of engineering knowledge and begun to explore a variety of different areas of the discipline, you will have the opportunity to consider and plan your academic progression. At this stage, you move onto any of our specialist programmes.

At the end of your second year within our specialist degree courses, you will undertake a year in industry, gaining valuable experience and enhancing your employability. We have extensive links built through our leadership in research and have students undergoing placements with multinational corporate companies through to smaller specialist SMEs. Once you have completed your placement, you will write an extended reflective piece about your time spent with the company.

The BEng course is accredited by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) on behalf of the Engineering Council for the purposes of fully meeting the academic requirement for registration as an Incorporated Engineer and partly meeting the academic requirement for registration as a Chartered Engineer. All our specialist programmes are accredited by at least one professional body including the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), and the Institution of Chemical Engineers (IChemE), and depend on which specialism you wish to pursue.

A combination of core and optional modules will allow you to focus your interest while gaining practical experience. This flexibility to choose enables you to develop specialist skills from one of the many fields of engineering, preparing you for a vast range of focused or interdisciplinary roles.