Celebrations are underway this year for the tenth anniversary of the Natural Sciences degree programme.

Natural Sciences began life in the School of Chemistry and then moved to the School of Mathematical Sciences in 2015.

Today, it is a cross-faculty flagship undergraduate programme which involves teaching from eight schools and four faculties at Nottingham.

There were 29 students in the first cohort and the programme currently recruits 45-50 students per year, with aims to grow the programme to around 100 students per year.

Highlights from the past 10 years include visiting the Natural History Museum to celebrate the opening of the Cocoon with the first cohort, seeing 340 students graduate with degrees in Natural Sciences and head off into the world to start their careers and watching Natural Sciences students present their multidisciplinary project work at the National Natural Sciences Conference alongside students from institutions around the UK.

Natural Sciences aims to secure a permanent space on campus for the course within the next couple of years. Having a shared interest in encouraging work across the boundaries of academic subjects the programme has a good relationship with the Liberal Arts programme and will be holding a joint conference for students to showcase interdisciplinary research in 2020/21.

The programme also has strong relationships with other Institutions which offer Natural Sciences in the UK and will be a founding member of the Society for Natural Sciences which will be officially launched at an event in London in Spring 2020. This is a professional society for Natural Sciences which will accredit programmes and will work towards common goals of enhancing interdisciplinary education, promoting the values and benefits of Natural Sciences and cross-disciplinary approaches to schools, prospective students and employers and providing opportunities for networking among members including an annual National Conference for students.

Three separate events were planned to celebrate the tenth anniversary:

• a student-organised ball for staff, students and alumni to celebrate the 10^th cohort
• a celebratory lunch for the first cohort of Natural Sciences students which will be followed by a ‘speed dating’ networking event with current students
• a London-based Alumni Event which will feature a speaker from each graduating year and will be open to alumni, current students and prospective students.

The first of these event – the student ball – took place on Saturday 15 June 2019 and was attended by 150 people.

The next event will be a celebratory lunch for the first cohort on Saturday 19 October 2019 to mark 10 years since they started. This will be followed with a speed networking event with current students where they can find out more about what they have been doing since they finished.

Finally, the Alumni event will round off the celebrations on Sunday 17 November at the Crick Institute in London. The Director of Natural Sciences will speak at the event, and guests will consist of alumni, current students and prospective students.

To find out more about the Natural Sciences degree programme, visit https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/naturalsciences/.