"You Said, We Did”: A Student-Led Industry Visit Model to Enhance Learning, Satisfaction, and Employability in Bioscience Education

Abstract

University-industry engagement is often conceptualised as institutionally driven, with students positioned as passive participants rather than active agents. This paper challenges that framing through a case study of a partnership between Sheffield Hallam University and Labcorp Drug Development, a global contract research organisation. The collaboration began when an undergraduate placement student brokered a meeting between Labcorp and postgraduate course leaders. This initial engagement led to securing funding for a field trip and subsequently developed into a sustained partnership. The relationship has since deepened to include industry-delivered guest lectures across three modules, and ongoing discussions of student placements, a combined theory-practice degree, joint undergraduate and postgraduate research projects, and a joint BMRC grant application. Drawing on students-as-partners theory (Bovill et al., 2011) and literature on postgraduate and international student engagement (Mercer-Mapstone et al., 2017), the study evaluates the field trip using a purpose-designed pre- and post-intervention Likert-scale survey instrument (n = 25) spanning pharmaceutical industry understanding, academic relevance, career and employability awareness, and student experience. Mean scores increased across all domains (overall mean from 3.98 to 4.27/5), with the largest gains in industry understanding (+0.44) and the highest absolute scores in belonging and satisfaction. Reflective post-visit data highlighted the value of connecting theory to practice and emphasised the importance of the student-led nature of the initiative. The findings suggest that when postgraduate and international students are involved early as partners rather than asked to participate in pre-defined activities in industry engagement, the resulting partnerships generate significant gains in disciplinary understanding, career confidence, and institutional belonging, and can grow intosustained curriculum and research collaborations. The case offers a model for cultivating student ownership as an institutional strategy, rather than treating it as a peripheral practice.