UCLan Outdoors Division

Our students are provided with many opportunities to gain valuable work experience. Jedd Brierley enjoyed a productive summer, attending the 10th Cycling and Society Annual Symposium at Tyn Dwr Outdoor Centre and progressing his Dissertation. Jedd believes the experience will be invaluable to his studies: "My summer work experience provided excellent opportunities for researching into my Dissertation subject of female participation in mountain-biking. "Having a whole new batch of trainee instructors to query over how they perceived the mountain-bike community and industry was particularly useful. This allowed me to pick up on underlying themes and attitudes towards mountain-biking from both the female and male perspective. "This in turn, along with the literature I had studied allowed me to construct a survey for a net-nogrophy. I was also lucky enough to be invited to the 10th annual Cycling and Society Symposium. I put together my initial findings, broken down i...

Outdoor Leadership student Pete Haggan recently attended the 10th Annual Cycling and Society Symposium at Tyn Dwr Outdoor Centre . The event offered a variety of practical and theoretical presentations on all aspects of cycling; delivered by academics, policy makers and advocates, all with a shared interest in cycling and cycling culture. Pete believes the Symposium has vastly improved his future career prospects: "This event offered a unique opportunity to present a poster illustrating the research I've carried out over Summer 2013 into motivations for riding venue choice among mountain bikers, with PhD students, town planners and academics. "I've shared my own ideas and intentions for the direction of the research with likeminded people seeking to understand life history through cycling behaviour, cyclotourism and the rise of middle aged man in lycra. "What did I learn? Well, despite my trepidation at being surrounded by academic cyclists I realised t...

Emily Bridger has completed a one-year internship with Himalayan Outward Bound in India (OBI) as part of her Outdoor Leadership degree. OBI is a non-profit, independent educational organisation with approximately 40 schools world-wide, educating 200,000 participants per year. Himalayan Outward Bound adventure programmes aim to foster the personal growth and social skills of participants by using challenging expeditions in the outdoors. Outward Bound runs on the belief that character development is just as important as academic achievement. Participants put in challenging adventure situations gain confidence, redefine their perceptions and demonstrate compassion. Emily has kindly provided UCLan Outdoors with a presentation poster and photoset  detailing her time in India.