A day in the life of a Chemical Engineering student at Birmingham

Now that I have been a Chemical Engineering student at Birmingham for 3 years, I am best placed to provide an all-encompassing day in the life. The beauty of the course is that across the 3 years, every period is genuinely different, with different focuses and activities providing the necessary variety and range required for a fulfilling university experience and for development as a chemical engineer and as an individual. I will group this day in the life across the 3 years that I have personally experienced.

Years 1 and 2

These are the most intense years in terms of in-person contact with your lecturers, with most of the days being lectures and lab sessions.

The morning lectures occur between 9am and 12pm. You will typically have lectures on core topics; be sure not to miss them. My favourites were Modelling Concepts and Tools (MCT) with Dr Allesio Alexiadis, Process Integration and Unit Operations (PIU) with Professor Bushra Al-Duri or the entertaining Labs and Data Analysis (LDA) sessions with Professor Kit Windows-Yule.

I still remember my first ever lecture at 9am on a Monday morning in September, like it was yesterday, Introduction to Transport Phenomena (ITP) with Dr Phil Robbins, where he gave us our first insights into fluid flow and concepts such as Bernoulli’s law. The foundations gained in these years aid you throughout our whole degree.

There’s usually an hour break between morning and afternoon sessions. Most students use this time for lunch, coffee, or revising in the library.

The afternoon sessions often occur between 1pm and 5pm. The afternoon sessions are typically a mix of tutorials and a continuation of lectures on different modules from the morning sessions, ensuring a good variety and mix of information is taken in. The tutorial sessions are typically on one of the modules where the lecturers and PhD students come together to explain problem statements given, aiding the understanding of the course. The tutorial sheets typically contain a mixture of qualitative and quantitative questions, for which example solutions and explanations are given by the session leads. The sessions are less structured than the lectures, and they allow more 1-to-1 interaction with the lecturers to gain insights into topics you may not have previously understood.

After lectures, most students head home to recuperate after a long day, play a sport, frequent the library in busy periods to catch up on their work, prepare for a night out or grab a meal - or like I love to do, sit around and chat with my amazing course mates.

On Fridays, the days are different with lab sessions across the day. There’s often a singular morning or afternoon session on an interesting topic across the chemical engineering topic. Some labs that particularly stuck with me were the Heat Exchanger labs, the Distillation or Mixing labs. There’s also an industrial visit in Year 2 that was amazing, allowing you the opportunity to experience real-life industries of your choice. Last year, I got to visit EMR Metal Recycling, and it was an amazing experience.  

Year 3

The year is focused on the Design Project and other modules taken, with the majority of the time spent on group and independent working. In semester 1, two compulsory modules with 4 optional modules are taken in semester 2, giving you the opportunity to explore your passions in Chemical Engineering.

Year 3 Semester 1

Two compulsory modules are undertaken, Advanced Reactors and Thermodynamics (ART) and Multiphase Systems (MS), alongside the group elements of the Design Project. A typical day will consist of a lecture or tutorial session on one of the compulsory modules, and then, before or after a meeting with your design project group, either by yourselves or alongside the project supervisors. A lot of the time will be spent on independent work to deliver your element of the group work.

Year 3 Semester 2

In this semester, you’re given the opportunity to choose 4 optional modules, across a range of different topics such as energy, sustainability, formulation, healthcare and many more that cover the breadth of industries that chemical engineering can be applied to. This will be done alongside completing the more individual elements of the Design Project. The design project meetings are consistent across the two semesters, which would be undertaken alongside the interesting optional modules in semester 2. My favourite optional module is probably Introduction to Healthcare Technologies (IHT) with Dr Anita Ghag or Energy Economics (EE) with Professor Jonathan Radcliffe.

Across the entire degree, there is a range of sessions that differ from a typical day, such as the Personal Academic Tutoring (PAT) sessions aimed at providing us support from our designated tutors, workshops on various skills, extracurricular activities like Frank Morton Sports Day, and industry visits. By understanding how each year brings its own rhythm and opportunities, I hope this article has informed you about what a typical day in the life of a chemical engineering student at Birmingham looks like across the three years I have experienced so far.