Students Putting Degree Knowledge into Practice with Osborne

Two students from the University of Roehampton’s Business School are directly benefitting from a construction project creating the University’s new multi-million pound hall of residence and library, after securing internship roles with Osborne.

Harry Grout, who is set to graduate with a BSc, later this month has just started a year-long paid role as a pre-construction intern after being recruited via the University’s Unitemps service. He is based at Osborne’s head office in Reigate and works on a team preparing presentations and pitches to potential customers.

“Being hired by Osborne has been a fantastic opportunity to be able to put all the theoretical marketing knowledge I learnt at Roehampton into practice in the real world,” he said. “Witnessing the impact my input within Osborne early on has been gratifying and learning new, and also improving current disciplines from my colleagues has been excellent. As a member of the proposals team it is giving me new skills and understandings, additional from my marketing degree, into how and what makes a winning bid for a contract.”

Tavan Hamarash is the first student from the University to take part in a rolling programme of on-site work placement training sessions.

Tavan, who is preparing to begin the final year of her Business degree in September, is based in the construction site’s offices. Being there gives her first-hand experience of the practicalities of providing business-related support services to large scale construction projects. She has worked on the production of a regular newsletter which Osborne circulates to students and nearby households explaining the project and is also responsible for document control.

Osborne has been on site at Roehampton since late last year and construction work for the new 390-room hall of residence began in March. They are preparing to start the second stage of its project with the University, the creation of a brand new purpose built library, this autumn.

Lawrence Wilson, Senior Site Manager for Osborne at the University of Roehampton, said: “It has been a pleasure to have Tavan join us for a short term work placement and we hope that we can offer similar work experience other University of Roehampton students whilst we are here in the campus building the new accommodation and library projects.”

The University has arranged 30 paid internships for its students during the past academic year, in roles as diverse as Sports and nutrition, publishing, events management, professional training computing, research, management consultancy and public relations. The partnership with Osborne during the three years which the company will work with the University is designed to give students practical experience of working in jobs relevant to their degrees within a large and respected business.