Bachelor of Engineering (Hons) in Mechanical Engineering (STEM)

at Birmingham City University - City Centre Campus United Kingdom

Study our Automotive Engineering MEng degree course and join one of the select UK Universities to take part in Formula Student events at Silverstone.

Now is a fascinating time to study automotive engineering as you’ll have the chance to be at the forefront of developments within the industry. You’ll get to work in advanced automotive workshops and laboratories equipped with industry-standard equipment, as well as take advantage of more traditional office-based facilities.

You’ll gain practical experience so that you are equipped to apply engineering science to real life situations. Plus, you’ll also have the opportunity to join our BCU Formula Student racing team.

What's covered in this course?

You’ll develop as an engineer able to make a significant contribution to this industry as it goes through an important period of transition in the UK and globally.

Our engineering courses focus on project-based activities, giving you lots of opportunity to work in teams on projects from design to implementation. This will give you practical experience of applying engineering science to real-world problems, working in multidisciplinary teams to develop your interpersonal skills, and prepare you for a key aspect of modern engineering practice.

You will develop key technical skills, enhance your creative thinking and learn from industry experts. As well as gaining knowledge and application skills in stress analysis, powertrain systems, suspension, body engineering, design and management.

You’ll be learning in a stimulating environment with lots of opportunity to collaborate with your colleagues, enhance your creativity and develop the attributes you need to stand out from the crowd.

Our automotive engineering degree is structured so that its themes have a direct relevance to the industry’s current and expected future needs, and upon graduating you will have the intellectual, technical and personal qualities necessary to successfully implement new technologies.

Throughout your course you will benefit from our strong industry links with companies such as the Morgan Motor Company, Westfield Sportscars, Siemens, and GKN.

You will also have the opportunity to join our BCU Formula Student racing team, which designs and builds a single-seater racing car each year to race in July at the IMechE-sponsored event at Silverstone.

Interested in security sector jobs in Birmingham? Our BA Criminology and Security Studies course covers a range of topics, from war and conflict to counter-terrorism.

Our degree will equip you with a wide range of knowledge about both national and international politics and intelligence. It will also show how politics can impact both security and insecurity in Birmingham and the United Kingdom.

What's covered in this course?

In your second and third years, this wide knowledge base will be built upon as you specialise in your learning. Your knowledge of the core ideas in Criminology will be re-enforced throughout these two years, and you will learn more about topics such as the role of MI5 and MI6, extremism, terrorism and counter-terrorism, the Middle East and conflict in the modern world, and International Relations.

Together these two years will provide you with a well-rounded knowledge of the political and historical issues which are leading to continued conflict and instability in the world today. This is an exciting and dynamic course whose modules directly reflect what is happening around the world and which is at the cutting edge of current scholarship.

Whatever your interests, our Musicology course gives you the unique opportunity to pursue your own research project within a lively and exciting Conservatoire environment.

Our flexible course enables you to mould a programme of study to your own needs and aspirations, and may be approached as preparation for a research degree in music.

It is important that a musicologist also develops complementary skills and/or knowledge outside their specialism which will help equip them for a future career: professional musicologists typically find themselves, amongst other things, teaching, managing and administering; some even maintain parallel careers as professional performers or composers.

Therefore, we provide you with a choice of Professional Development Options (shared across our postgraduate programmes) alongside your musicological work to give you the opportunity to develop and/or expand your interests across a range of complementary areas.

The Conservatoire team—which comprises a large number of research-active staff—has a vast array of expertise, allowing us to supervise a wide range of projects, and we are particularly keen to attract those interested in pursuing Masters-level research in our specialist areas.

Professional Placement option

The Professional Placement version of the course is optional and is offered as an alternative to the standard version of the course.

This will allow you to complete a credit-bearing, 20-week Professional Placement as an integral part of your Master’s Degree. The purpose of the Professional Placement is to improve your employability skills which will, through the placement experience, allow you to evidence your professional skills, attitudes and behaviours at the point of entry to the postgraduate job market. Furthermore, by completing the Professional Placement, you will be able to develop and enhance your understanding of the professional work environment, relevant to your chosen field of study, and reflect critically on your own professional skills development within the workplace.

The MSc Advanced Computer Science program intends to develop your competence in using tools and techniques for producing computer systems solutions, from a sound mathematical and scientific base while appreciating the professional responsibilities and quality needed by industry.

What's covered in this course?

The course is designed to cover a number of advanced computing topics in computer science, namely, ontological engineering, service-oriented design, database design, data engineering, and mobile-application development. In addition, you will receive a solid grounding in research methods and project management before undertaking an individual project that provides an opportunity to demonstrate technical and general employability skills in preparation for career progression. More specifically, the individual project simulates typical graduate workplace tasks that require in-depth knowledge and skills in a specific area of computer science. This will include consideration of wider issues and the ability to manage activities and resources, as well as generate, implement and report on solutions to meet task objectives.

Throughout your masters in computer science, you’ll be supported by our expert teaching staff, all of whom have a wide range of research and industrial experience in areas such as intelligent systems, mobile computing, Semantic Web, machine learning and software engineering, which they use to enhance the curriculum.

Professional Placement option

The Professional Placement option will allow you to complete a credit-bearing, 20-week Professional Placement as an integral part of your Master’s Degree. The purpose of the Professional Placement is to improve your employability skills which will, through the placement experience, allow you to evidence your professional skills, attitudes and behaviors at the point of entry to the postgraduate job market.  Furthermore, by completing the Professional Placement, you will be able to develop and enhance your understanding of the professional work environment, relevant to your chosen field of study, and reflect critically on your own professional skills development within the workplace.

Want to study both psychology and sociology at University? Our BSc (Hons) Psychology with Sociology degree combines both subjects and allows you to take a year-long industry placement.

Our innovative course will give you a deep understanding of how the core and specialized areas in psychology and sociology contribute to our understanding of contemporary issues. You will apply scientific reasoning and evaluate patterns of behaviour, gaining key transferable skills in communication, teamwork and problem-solving.

Sociology helps us make sense of the societies in which we live and our place within them. Our Psychology with Sociology course brings together two closely interrelated areas, allowing you to gain significant knowledge and insight.

What's covered in this course?

Over your three years of study, your Psychology modules will help you gain an understanding of a person’s mind, behavior and actions, while the Sociology side will equip you with the knowledge of group interactions and society as a whole. Practical in nature, our course will enable you to apply both Psychology and Sociology to human behaviour and society.

Our focus on contemporary and innovative learning practices will help you gain key employability skills, such as communication, teamwork and problem-solving, as well as key skills in two innovative, intriguing disciplines.

Want to start a career in criminal investigation? Our Criminology, Policing and Investigation University course has close ties to the West Midlands Police Force.

Our degree offers an in-depth study of policing and criminal investigation, helping you develop your understanding of criminological thought, as well as historical, political and practical applications. This course offers a varied yet focused choice of subjects through which you will be able to develop your interests within the specialised field of criminology.

What's covered in this course?

Within this course, students will explore the who, what, where, why and when of criminology. That is the understanding of who and why people commit crime, where crime takes place, and the motivations for different crime types.

This is done through a range of exciting and engaging modules which are taught by expert lecturers who are well published in the field. In this course we explore the concept of policing and how different countries have chosen to manage crime. We use a variety of trips, guest speakers and specialist workshops to give students a wide range of understanding of policing.

Specialist facilities include the interviewing suite, which allows students to simulate police interviewing environments for both suspects and witnesses, with access to tape recording and video playback analysis.

You will benefit from well-established links with a variety of external bodies, including police forces, charities, pressure groups, criminal justice agencies, criminal rehabilitation probation service and prisons.

Looking for a business studies course in Birmingham? Our BA (Hons) Business degree offers the opportunity to take a year-long professional placement in industry.

The course upholds the values of the principles for responsible management education (PRME) defined by the United Nation. It aims to educate future business leaders for a sustainable future.

On the course, you will be able to develop a wide range of cognitive and intellectual skills, together with competencies specific to business and enterprise. The course will provide you with the opportunity to develop specialist business expertise, while helping you learn key transferable skills, all of which will help you stand out when it comes to securing employment.

You will be working with academics with specialist knowledge and industry practitioners while studying with us. Our supportive and empowering learning environment will further facilitate your learning journey by providing additional support through personal tutors, through learning mentors and study buddies.

A law degree is an important first step into a career in law, as well as an important foundation on the route to many other careers, and Birmingham City University is a long-established provider of legal education to the Birmingham legal community and beyond.

This course has been developed to enable anyone wishing to qualify as a solicitor or barrister to undertake this first, important academic stage of their career. To achieve this, the course has been designed to align with the subjects that you will need to study further in order to successfully undertake the Solicitors Qualifying Examination (SQE), while also meeting the requirements of the Bar Standards Board for an undergraduate law degree.

What's covered in this course?

The study of law is both academic and practical, and therefore both of these are important elements in the LLB (Hons) degree at BCU. Theory and academic study are important on an LLB, but so too is the application of that knowledge, and so our LLB (Hons) degree offers plenty of opportunity for you to develop the practical lawyering skills, as well as the transferable skills enhancing your employability, that graduates will need when entering the workplace.

The different pathways on the LLB course will allow you to make decisions regarding the direction in which you want to take your studies, with named degrees in Law with American Legal Studies, Law with Business Law, and Law with Criminal Justice, as well as a broad range of optional modules ranging from more theoretical topics through to those aimed at the practical application of the law in real-world situations.

You will also have the opportunity to put those skills to practical use, both in the local community and beyond. Whether that is through our programme of placement opportunities with local providers such as Citizen’s Advice and various legal advice charities, through opportunities in the local legal community, or via BCU’s own Law Clinic, established to serve the local community from our City Centre campus, there are plenty of options available to you.

You can also apply your legal knowledge further afield, through our US internship programme which has been placing students with attorneys throughout the US for over 20 years. A professional placement year is also available, between years 2 and 3 of the degree, offering further opportunity for you to put your knowledge and skills to practical use, and thereby enhancing your CV further.

By focussing on the development of a range of transferable skills, the course employs numerous innovative assessment methods, going beyond the typical forms of written academic assessment.

You are also encouraged to engage in extra-curricular activities to support your learning, with student societies such as the highly successful Mooting Society. Furthermore, you will have the ability to engage with the wider Birmingham legal community through our connections with the Birmingham Law Society, the largest regional law society in the UK.

The MSc User Experience Design course will provide you with in-depth theoretical knowledge and hands-on practical experience in designing, developing, and evaluating digital products across a range of platforms and state-of-the-art technologies. The course places a strong emphasis on the development of professional technical skills that are in high industry demand and will position you well for careers around the field of user experience (UX).

What's covered in this course?

The course has been designed to support graduates from a wide range of disciplines (including those with technical and non-technical backgrounds) who wish to specialise in the area of user experience (UX) and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI). The key topics taught on the course include interaction design (techniques for user-centered design), front-end development (using industry-standard development environments), visual design (creating interfaces with strong aesthetics), accessibility (methods for supporting inclusive design), and usability testing (collecting and analyzing data via user evaluations). You will also have the opportunity to consider and create user experiences for technologies such as virtual and augmented reality, eye gaze tracking, speech interfaces, mid-air gesturing, haptic systems, and brain-computer interfaces.

The course philosophy is focused around industry and research-led activities, supported with assignments that are closely aligned to the development of essential knowledge and technical skills used in practice. You will therefore have the opportunity to work closely with academics, researchers, and industry partners on real-world project briefs thus supporting you in developing a strong portfolio of work (which is essential for gaining employment in this field). The course will also provide opportunities to collaborate with academics based in the School of Computing and Digital Technology’s Mixed Reality and Human-Computer Interaction research group to work on cutting-edge research projects.

Graduates from the User Experience Design course will be well placed for industry roles that are in high demand including front-end developers, user experience designers/developers, information architects, usability consultants and UX researchers, web designers/developers, and interaction designers.

Transform your career with our postgraduate qualification in acting. Designed to advance your practical and professional progress, our MA Acting course provides intense training from staff with rich industry experience.

Previous graduates of this course have gone on to succeed as established performers, including roles at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and the Royal Shakespeare Company.

What's covered in this course?

You will be taught to maintain a high standard of skill and knowledge and how to transform into an independently-minded performer and practitioner. We will enhance your ability to reflect and analyse, through a range of concepts and ideas. You will enhance your technical skills through practice-based study, learning and developing flexibility to confront issues that you may experience within your profession.

Your classes will mainly be practical studio-based sessions, focusing on the practical application of acting, voice, movement and singing. You will also have time assigned for self-directed study, where you will further develop your work from practical classes. For some modules you will have timetabled rehearsal time, where you will work in groups to produce material.

Your studies will help to influence and shape your career. Previous graduates have been commended by industry for their innovative, challenging project work. Danielle Pinnock‘s final project, a 40 minute piece entitled BODY/COURAGE, won her the Best Actress award at the Strawberry Theatre Festival, and has since been performed internationally.