Volunteer

Our professional mentoring programme matches students and recent graduates with professionals from local businesses to support their transition between education and the world of work. With a minimum commitment of just six meetings a year, this is an invaluable experience and your chance to give something back to the University.

From providing advice on writing a CV and tips for attending interviews, to encouragement around networking and suggestions on professional etiquette, there are plenty of ways you can support our students and graduates as a mentor, helping them to get the best start in their careers.

If this sounds like something you’d like to be a part of, or if you want to find out more information about the scheme, complete our short form. Initial training and ongoing mentor support will be provided.

We're always looking for alumni to return to Solent and talk about their careers. This is a great opportunity to use your expertise to influence and inspire the next generation of Solent graduates.

The event will be organised as a panel in which you and fellow alumni will take part. Each of you will be talking to a room of students about your career before answering questions from the audience. After the event, there will be an informal networking session, during which you’ll be able to continue conversations with our students and meet with our other alumni volunteers.

If this is something that you might be interested in, we would love to hear from you, and we will let you know when an opportunity arises.

Having alumni at an open day offers great support to the University - and you can provide an exclusive perspective, having studied at Solent yourself.

If you’re looking for a great opportunity to share your memories of Solent and explain how the University has helped you with your career, you can become an Open Day Ambassador.

You will act as an invaluable advocate of the University for prospective students at open days, meeting the students of tomorrow and telling them about Solent.

As a member of our alumni community, you are our greatest advocates and you can spread the word about your love for Solent wherever you are in the world.

If you loved your time at Solent and would like to encourage people to pursue higher education as well as inspiring prospective students to choose Solent, you can be a Student Recruitment Ambassador.

Together with our recruitment team, you will be speaking in your college/sixth form about your experience studying at Solent and how your time at the University has helped your career.

Our students, past and present, are what make Solent the thriving and creative community it is today. If you have something to say about your time here on campus, we’d love to hear it. Tell us how your studies have helped you progress your career or share a memory that has stuck with you since graduation.

To get started, please fill in our form. Your submission will be used to help inspire the next generation of students, giving them a better understanding of where a degree could take them in the future.

If you’d like to include images with your submission (and we’d love it if you did), please email them to alumni@solent.ac.uk. 

Solent alumni events and gatherings are happening a lot around the world as our alumni community is constantly growing. We are keen to help alumni stay in touch with each other, and would be very happy to hear from those who would like to help us organise an event in their area, or who organise reunions for contemporaries and classmates. We’ll be here to provide advice and support through the planning process.

Through helping host events for Solent, you will also have the opportunity to network with other alumni and staff from the University who are attending the event.

We are always looking for interesting venues for our alumni to reunite around the UK and internationally for events ranging from alumni gatherings, to formal dinners through to lectures.

Interesting venues can have a great impact on the experience and can help make the event memorable. Are you able to offer us the use of such a venue for a future event? If you think you can help us access a venue, through your company or other connections, please get in touch at alumni@solent.ac.uk

Hosting a work placement student has many benefits, bringing additional resources to your team and helping you to identify candidates for future full-time roles. Solent Futures can advertise placements, part-time vacancies and graduate positions to students, free of charge.

Employers are also encouraged to advertise opportunities to Solent students and graduates via the University’s recruitment site, Solent Futures Online. You may also be able to promote your organisation on campus, target students on specific courses and attend our career events.

An important way for our students to get real world experience before leaving the University is by completing a provided live business project. We are looking for live business projects for our students every year, so if you know of a gap in your industry, have a particular area that you need more research on, or anything else, our students would be grateful to work on that.