The formal Go Higher programme runs from early September to mid-May with our ‘graduation’ and celebration of success in July.  Most of our students progress on to undergraduate degrees after Go Higher and these start in late September. However, this does not mean that our students leave learning behind for the summer – very far from it…

Each year during July and August we run Go Higher Stage Four: this comprises a range of optional activities organised in partnership with various academic departments within the University’s Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Go Higher Stage Four sessions are not credit bearing, they do not count towards the Go Higher Diploma and students choose which (if any) they wish to attend.  However, Stage Four is an enjoyable way for students to challenge themselves academically and maintain their learning momentum over the summer. These sessions and activities also allow Go Higher students to get to know the ‘feel’ of various academic departments before they join as undergraduates.

This summer 2015 Go Higher students attended Stage Four sessions covering everything from Viking Slavery in Ireland and Prophetic Dreams in Medieval English Literature, to investigations into Britain and the ‘Global War’ against Trafficking and a sociological look at Where is the harm? Crime, Place and Risk.

Go Highers also had the opportunity to attend the annual, week-long Ancient Worlds Summer School run by the School of Archaeology, Classics and Egyptology. This Summer School offered an exciting introduction into Ancient Egyptian culture and how to read hieroglyphs.

One of the more personal projects within Stage Four was the chance to create an academic poster and enter it into the Go Higher Summer Poster Competition.  Students based their posters on a topic they had covered over the Go Higher programme, created it from the research they had done for one of their assignments – or created them to focus on another aspect of the programme.

A selection of the posters created by the class of 2014-15 are listed below; they represent a window onto the range of topics, disciplines  and challenges that Go Higher students meet during the year. More importantly, they are a testament the academic creativity and achievement of our wonderful students.

The poster below, by Alex Carabine, is based on a topic covered in the Go Higher History module.

Kathleen McAdam‘s poster below is inspired by Psychology and Business topics.

 Our third poster by Candy Gordon-Fordyce is based on the Philosophy module option.

The poster below by Mark Weightman is on another topic in Philosophy – artificial intelligence and consciousness.

The last poster below, by Kevin Maloney, takes it theme as Go Higher itself…