This transcript is for the video Bachelor of Sport and Exercise Science & Management
Lee: First, I’d like to introduce the panel for today, I’m Lee Wallace, the course director of sport and exercise for the undergraduate program I’ve got with us here, you can see in the screen there we’ve got Rob Bower, the deputy head of school teaching and learning.
Rob: Hello all.
Lee: We’ve got Katie Slattery, a lecturer within our program, also comes to us with a wealth of industry experience. And we’ve got one of our best students, Tijana who’s in our honours program now but did the undergrad sport and exercise science last year. She’s going to give us some bit of her take on the student experience here as well.
Lee: So you can ask questions throughout, but I will be presenting the easiest time to answer those questions in the Q&A section at the end of the session so you can see on your screen there, you’ll see that Q&A button, any questions that you might have just pop it into the chat and we’ll answer them some questions. You might get a written response back and others we might group together if there’s themes there. And between the panellists, the four of us will try and answer those questions as best that we can.
Lee: So why might you? You know what? That is what makes us so, so what is it? It’s a professional field. Most teaching, training or business, anything. Relax those things with sport and exercise. So it’s a quite a diverse field. There’s a lot of variety of things that you can do in there. If we look at our rankings, just to give ourselves a plug, I guess, beginning of this session, why not? We’re actually 29th in the world on the QS world rankings for subjects for twenty-twenty one. So it’s considering how many universities that’s quite high up. We’re doing very well. And we’ve got a five and a five excellence in research there as well. So that’s well above world standard there.So we’ve got both experience at a high level teaching and research.
Lee: Why study sport and exercise science? For a number of different reasons, and depending on which course you’re interested in, it might have to do with the sport and exercise science for that people that like that, a scientific approach that applied focus, it might have to do with health rehabilitation, anything within that sport in this context. Describing delivering exercise in any way, testing, all that type of stuff, might be getting to that sport and exercise science that then you’ve also got the better sport and exercise management, which is all things blending sport and business. So there’s a lot of diversity within that field there as well. People that interested in the business of sport and or even clients of the business, it’s clients or managing athletes and things like that. So a real broad range of different things that we can do that.
Lee: So when I pass over to Rob for a little bit, who is our deputy head of school teaching and learning, as I said before, to give us a little bit of a run through of the structure of the course of. Thanks, Rob.
Rob: Yeah thanks, Lee. So Lee’s given the broad overview of the two degrees there, I’m going to break that down into three parts and give you a little bit more detail about where they can lead. And Katie will expand on that a little bit later on. So the Standard Sport and Exercise science degree has two options in terms of majors. There is an exercise science major and the no specific major option. The exercise science major is accredited with ESSA. So, ESSA stands for Exercise in Sports Science Australia. They’re our governing body for sport and exercise courses. And that enables you to become an accredited exercise scientist, which simply means you can prescribe exercise to apparently healthy people in the community. Now, that degree also pathways into other options in the master’s level, such as the high performance sport, the Master of physiotherapy, which we know is a very popular pathway, or you can become an accredited exercise physiologist or a sports scientist with further study, the no specific major option. There are pathways into the Master of high performance sport, but it was designed to give you the option to go on Global Exchange, which is a semester overseas of study in lieu of being at UTS for one one of these sessions.
Rob: The second option that’s already come up now in red is the bachelor sport and exercise science with an exercise therapy major. Now, it’s the same sort of degree, but it’s actually a different UAC code. And you can see there that the ATAR for that degree is around ninety nine, whereas the item for the first one I spoke about was around 86. Now, this particular exercise therapy major, which stems from a different UAC code, is a guaranteed pathway into the Master of Physiotherapy. That’s why it’s very popular and that’s why the ATAR market is so high. So students can go straight into the master physiotherapy provided they maintain a credit average and conduct a successful internal interview. But the other accreditations with ESSA and the other pathways are also available to that degree.
Rob: The third option is the Bachelor of Sport and Exercise Management. Slightly lower ATAR it’s not accredited with ESSA, but it’s for those people who want to learn more about the business and manage the experience of sport and exercise. It certainly has a global exchange of option, and it also pathways into the Master of Physiotherapy with the correct electives, as well as the Master of High Performance sport. So three separate options there.
Rob: Now, students often choose to combine their degrees with international studies. So whether you’re doing the exercise science or exercise management degree, you can add two more years and include a Bachelor of International Studies. So will be five years full time and the fourth of those years would be overseas. So you get to learn another language, another culture, and you get to experience one full year in another country, which a lot of students really do enjoy. Or you could combine it with the Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation, which adds one more year. So four years in total, which gives you access to more innovative, creative and entrepreneurial outcomes.
Rob: Some of our students like to do both degrees, and it is possible with the right electives in structuring your course accordingly to complete both the Bachelor of Sport and Exercise Science and Sport and Exercise Management degrees in four years. Now, we can’t guarantee that. But most students who are keen to do that have done so successfully.
Rob: So what’s involved in our courses? Well, we take a blended learning approach, so it’s a mixture of online modules and face to face learning. A lot of the exercise science is done in laboratories. But both the exercise science and exercise management type content includes laboratories and tutorial work. We also pride ourselves on the practical experience. So there is an extensive internship and practical program built into the third year that prepares you to work with real clients and real people and real organizations. We encourage group work. We encourage independent study as needed. And obviously, university is a great time of your life. The campus life and extracurricular activities, the clubs and societies, we really encourage you to get involved with. Schools tough, once you get to university. If you stay on top of your work, you can really enjoy that period of your life, as well as learn skills in at uni and in industry.
Rob: So what’s the content in the degree? Well, the main content stems from structural anatomy and biomechanics, and these lead into physiology, strength and conditioning, learning how to prescribe exercise. Students enjoy the sports, psychology and nutrition components and the more advanced level exercise rehabilitation. We also have some sociology type subjects, assessment, prescription and delivery of exercise and for the management people, managing professional sport, sport marketing and sport media are major parts of the course.
Rob: Now we have a very new and sophisticated facility at Moore park. It’s only three years old. It’s an amazing 70 million dollar building that has been designed, purpose built for our course and we share that building with Rugby Australia as well. And we’re surrounded by incredible industry such as the Sydney Cricket Ground, the Sydney Swans. Occasionally we have some of the T20 clubs coming to our building and share some of our facilities with us. But within that building, we have exercise physiology labs, motor learning labs, biomechanics labs. It is a phenomenal facility which will enable you to have an opportunity to learn all about your sport and exercise management and sport and exercise science. And certainly in most welcome to come and have a look at the facility when when allowed.
Rob: So there’s a couple more images. The one on that left there, if you just go back, Lee, you can see that there is a rooftop running track. So part of our learning happens on the roof. City views in the background, but we’ve got a designated running track there that enables you to capture some of the data and learn in that beautiful environment on the roof.
Lee: I think that really some of these pictures don’t do it. Don’t do it justice. It really is a magnificent facility. You know, as you look through the indoor, you know, as an indoor basketball court, there is strength and conditioning gym, fantastic composition lab where you do Texas scans, really like one of the main strengths of this program really is the facilities and just perfect hub it is fantastic.
Rob: And we all love teaching their Lee. It’s a thrill for us to to work and teach and research there. t’s it’s something that we feel very privileged about. And, you know, I look forward to our students coming to class and sharing that with them. So I’m going to pass on to Katie now.
Katie: OK, thank you, Rob. So what you can see here is just a few examples of the professional placements that you can do through UTS, as Rob mentioned, we’re right in the hub of sport in Sydney. So you can see in the picture we’ve got students working with the rugby sevens team, with the Sydney Swans and also more recently, we’ve really invested, you know, work integrated learning team where they actually will coordinate placements for you. And these might be in professional sport. They may also be in a health setting. And as part of your third year where one of the keys of work integrated learning, is you going to bring together all the knowledge and the skills that you’ve learned in the first two years and practically apply them. And we have got a telehealth practice and also a project-based learning. So these are just more examples of some of our industry engagement. As you can see, a range of sports, not just in Australia internationally as well. And so plenty of opportunity for you to, I suppose, experience what working in sport is really like for people that that really do it.
Lee: Yeah, I think that Katie makes an excellent point there. You’ve got obviously the integration of all these fantastic collaborations that we work with, but we’ve also got that teaching staff intertwined through all their research into all these different areas, which is really strengthens both, you know, both your involvement in that sport and exercise to the area, but also the teaching coming down from you, from your lecturers as well, which, you know, in some ways have a lot to do with these clubs. So know, I think that’s an excellent advantage.
Katie: Well, and I suppose to go one step further, like most of those clubs that you can see on the screen in the last lot, they’ve got UTS alumni working for them now, as well.
Lee: That’s right. So opportunities that they’ve done something during their undergrad that’s gone on to, you know land them in some kind of job or something, down the line in a career that they really you know what, it was a dream job for them.
Katie: OK, so I suppose if you do decide to come to UTS we we pride ourselves on really supporting the students. So we’ve got a student centre which is there to help you with any questions that you got about your course. We also have higher education and language presentation support, which is called HELPS timetable planning, online learning, which is really opening doors and letting you do uni at your own pace. And we also have an excellent library with lots of, you know, databases, online resources and really helpful librarians.
Katie: And so what what do people, when they’re finished a degree, look like they look like Tjiana should excite a little bit more. But I think what what all these attributes are really showing is just that you don’t just have knowledge. You can apply your knowledge. You’ve got the skills to be adaptable. You understand the the basic mechanism so you can adapt to any situation, especially through our work integrated learning, your communication and your ability to just step straight into a straight into the real world would be there. You can critically think, your ethic, ethical and responsible, and I suppose always tie into having like strong leadership skills. Plus also like as UTS as a university, we we really do pride ourselves on indigenous cultural respect as well.
Katie: So what type of jobs can you get? I won’t read them all out, but in the sport industry, sports scientist, conference manager, you can continue on and be sort of a tertiary lecturer, sports coaching and leadership athlete development. So in the sports industry, you can go from high performance to grassroots level. In the health and fitness industry that’s where exercise, scientists, personal training, exercise, rehabilitation. There’s really a range of jobs to do with exercise that you can progress to in the future.
Katie: And then if we’ve got sport and exercise management careers, so within the sport industry, you’ve got event management, sports marketing working for NSOs. When I was working at En Swisse, we had a large number of UTS graduates that were sports consultants and sort of program managers. You got to play welfare and sports media, sports analytics. Then if you look to the health and fitness industry, that’s where you can be a fitness centre manager looking to occupational health and safety management, just to name a few things.
Lee: Wow. Thanks, Katie. I’ll take it from here and talk about what this can also pay for as part of postgraduate programs and articulating degrees. So first one is people interested in Masters of High Performance Sport and applied Exercise Physiology. These degrees came prepare you for for those. So a sport and exercise management degree with it, depending on which degree you’ve done and the electives that you choose to open up, different often options for you. So if you went into the sport and exercise management degree and you picked specific electives in third year, can prepare you for Masters of our High Performance pathway, now important to note with these pathways, that competitive pathway. So looking at it, none of it’s like guaranteed. But, you know, based on mock interviews, things like that experience, a lot of different factors come into play here, but it definitely to prepare you for those Postgraduate degrees.
Lee: Now another one here is that sport and exercise science to exercise therapy, major. Also preparing you for that high performance sport pathway and might also pay for a Masters of Applied Exercise Physiology. Now, we don’t actually offer the applied exercise physiology at UTS, but it can open up those gateways for you at other universities as well.
Lee: Finally, for sport and exercise science with the exercise therapy major, again, can lead you on to that. Among the High-Performance Sport athletes or elsewhere, and can also leave the door open for access to Masters of Applied Exercise Physiology.
Lee: Elsewhere now, a big one that a lot of people are always interested in is in the physiotherapy articulation. Again, it depends on what degree you’ve done and the electives that you’ve done within it. So if you did a Bachelor of Sport and Exercise Management with select electives, so giving those selected, that means that we’ve got a range of electives. You would have to pick specific electives, give you a competitive chance that this application process, again, during this pathway, the admission is not guaranteed, but based on, again, grade, experience, number of slots at that given time. A number of factors really come into play here, but yes, it is possible to prepare you for that pathway.
Lee: When you look at the Bachelor of Sport and Exercise Science with the exercise science major, again, the pathway to the Master of Physiotherapy, that is, again, a competitive application admission not guaranteed, but do not your portfolio interviews, grades experience, it can leave you with a great chance of getting into that.
Lee: Now, a little bit different is our Bachelor of Sport and Exercise Science with exercise therapy, major. So this is the UTS Master of Physiotherapy, guaranteed pathway subject to grades, credit average and successful interview, which happens in the second year. Now, this is the most competitive. So you’ll notice from Robbs, break down the predecease ideas and stuff. This would have the highest within that program out there that you see on the screen. And this competitiveness in the amount of spots there are available. So there’s less spots available in this particular degree. But if you do get into that degree, then you’ve got that guaranteed pathway subject to those credit average and successful interview in the second year. So if you’re not sure, this is is a lot of different ways to get to different places. So I know that was just a whole lot. You thinking which one’s me? So really, just depending on what you’re interested in, look at the you know, read the different guides, say get real understanding of exactly what you need to do anything possible, but just go through what the actual rules are for each one, what you need to do, electives you need to pick to get to where you want to be.
Lee: Now, when we look at the alumni success, we always love telling our success stories. So we’ve had some really great alumni. These next couple of slides I’m going to show you is this. We’ve just picked a handful of our previous students. These are all people that came through our sport and exercise science or management program. You can see Katie there on the screen tracking endurance coach for psych program for New South Wales Institute of Sport. So she came to us, did her undergraduate and PhD at UTS. And went away for a while, got that industry experience. She’s nodding on the screen there. Then worked with interest in elite cycling teams and then came back. And now she’s combining that industry experience with her job also as a lecturer. We’ve got Rob Spurrs up there, he is one of the great success stories. He was the physical performance management television coach, the Sydney Swans for almost 10 years. I think it’s some like he’s really been up there for a long time. You’ve got other things like operations managers that swans even have TV personalities you know Amy Wilkins come through the program. We’ve got. I’m not getting going to name more. It’s actually it’s exciting when I start reading. I get excited I’m think geez we’ve done all this. So if you actually go through and have a look at some of these jobs, you’re thinking man they really are top jobs in the sport and exercise field, high performance director for the Cleveland Cavaliers NBA, depending on what sport you’re interested in, really just opens up all kinds of opportunities. I mean, look here at Johan Bilsborough, Boston Celtics director of sports science, at Boston Celtics and New England Patriots. That is one of the biggest success stories there. Those jobs are just fantastic. So, look, we just we’ve just I’ve just I guess I’ve just named a few there, but if you’ve got a chance to go through and read some of those success stories, that we’re very proud of them. And and, you know, they regularly still work with us throughout the program. And and it’s it’s a great way of learning. You know, they’re out there in the world down, bringing back what they’ve done often to us as well. So that’s fantastic.
Lee: So how do I apply? Depending on where you’re coming from, what you’re doing, recent school leavers you apply through UAC with your Atar and also looking, you know, there’s opportunities to qualify for additional UTS points schemes. So definitely look at those point schemes, get up to five points automatically apply based on your performance in select 12 subjects. So Atar plus potential for bonus points. The non-recent school leavers is the competitive entry where you’re looking at previous academic experience, coupled with any tertiary education that you might have and or any other experience that you might have had in the industry. So it’s a different form of entry, but getting all the same access, you were looking at all those different things in the entry.
Lee: So where do you apply it to apply through UAC? You can see it on on the on the screen, the UAC.edu.au and remember those applications close to the end of September. So just be sure you watch that deadline. You don’t want to be late. Also, look up if there’s an opportunity for early entry and things like that for all those real fine details really go into that. You can look at that early entry. See whether you are eligible for one of those subjects or early entry into into those courses as well.
Lee: That’s the I mean, that’s very fast run through, probably doesn’t do it all justice. But rather than getting into the nitty gritty, we’re going to open the floor to some questions. And so you’ve got an opportunity here to write any questions into that Q&A box. And we’ll be scrolling through, doing our best to answer them. Might just we haven’t done one thing just while we’re waiting on some of these questions to get through. I just ask Tjiana as our student representative, what did you like best about the subject, your time in your art degree?
Tjiana: Definitely the building. Being able to come to uni every day in that amazing building was a absolute bonus. And the fact that it was separate to the rest of the city campus, I found created a bit more of a homey experience. I think all the academics and staff were absolutely so welcoming. Right from the beginning. And I felt at home as soon as I walked in the doors. And another thing that was a huge positive was the hands on experience that the students were provided from day dot. I remember my first anatomy lesson ever. I was thrown right into a room with a whole bunch of different models. And, yeah, just really set the scene, I guess, for a very interactive and practical degree.
Lee: All right, that’s. So I’m just going to have to take through some of these. You can see the questions starting to pile up here. So I’ll just take a couple at random here. You mentioned international placements of a top to you mentioned international placements. Are there any overseas universities that you have a relationship with, someone who studies have you Rob?
Rob: Yes, there is a department at UTS that looks after all this. I do have some specific relationships with certain universities. I’m not going to list them on the top off the top of my head, but that is a good if that’s relevant and significant to you. It’s a good question to ask. The International Studies Group. But our students have been to parts of Europe, parts of USA, parts of Asia, that they are the main sorts of places. And someone’s also asked along the same lines about the international studies, are there pathways if you aren’t able to get the 96 Atar. With all these things, if you don’t get the data, you want to get into some sort of university degree and do well. And if you have one year of successful study, you can often reapply through UAC and they’ll rework your atar in accordance with your results and that may help you get into a course like this. So we would suggest you get into the three year degree to start with and try and get really good results in your first year and then reassess after that.
Lee: All right. Well, while I’ve got you there, Rob, this one here was mentioned before about studying both sport and exercise management, as well as sport and exercise science. How do students pursue this?
Rob: Yes. So essentially we have got information on our website to show students how to strategically work through their degree so that they can complete both those degrees in four years. But it does require you to reapply for the second degree through you UAC. Now, if you complete the first degree successfully, you will get into the second degree. If you complete the first degree with with several fails throughout the course will have very poor results then you may not get into the second degree. But essentially getting through the first degree and then applying through UAC, you’re virtually certain of getting into the second degree and and then the remaining subjects, you have to do a minimum of eight subjects to complete that second degree. So if you Google and search our website, you’ll see how much detail we’ve put into helping students do that.
Rob: I’ll answer the one about professional placements to do with volleyball as well.
Lee: Rob’s volleyballer, the by the way, everyone.
Rob: I used to be.
Rob: Yeah. So sport and exercise management students will do the internship and you can choose whatever you want. You can use your own contacts or you can use our contacts to sport and exercise science. You have to meet the requirements of the ESSA guidelines. So if there are apparently healthy people involved in volleyball, which I’m sure there are, you could certainly work with volleyball athletes and then you could do the remainder of your placement with a volleyball association. That would be fine. I’m not sure if we have any in our list, but students can organize their own, so there’s no problem there.
Rob: I might answer while I see another one in my domain, can you switch from the exercise science major to the exercise therapy major, if you don’t get the required data, that is actually quite difficult because the item for exercise therapy is very high. So you would need to be outstanding in the exercise science degree with the exercise science major to have a chance of achieving that. It’s much harder to do it, to do it that way. But obviously getting an ATAR of 99 is also difficult, but it just reflects how competitive and how highly desired that particular pathway is.
Lee: Well, might get here’s one might get Katie, to answer as being one of the leading researchers? What is the honours program and what types of research can you do?
Katie: So, yeah, the honours program is an additional year after you finish your undergrad, and really the research you can do is anything to do with sport and exercise science. So, for example, one of my honours students, he is he’s had an embedded role at En Swisse with the swimming program, and his research project is having a look at and really closely analysing what swimming training they do. t’s sort of like using heart rate monitoring. Other subjects. Well, Tjiana herself, she’s doing honours. Do you want to tell everyone what you’re doing?
Tjiana: Sure. So my research is looking at high intensity multimodal training, which encompasses things like cross fit, functional training, HIIT, boot camp and group circuits. And I’m looking at the long-term effects of that on health and fitness outcomes, as well as how people are responding in terms of like their psychology and subjective response to exercise.
Lee: And doing a fantastic job as well, what have you got about four months left. The hardest four months.
Tjiana: 10 weeks.
Lee: Well, what’s is it October…
Tjiana: 10 weeks,
Lee: 10 weeks, woah better get a move on.
Katie: But I suppose essentially with with the honours, it’s all about linking up with a supervisor that’s got expertise in the area and you can work with them towards the research that interests you the most.
Lee: Yeah, I think this first one, this question we had, what is this difference of sport exercise science and sport and exercise management versus the Bachelor of Sport and Exercise? Sorry. Let me start again. Bachelor of Sport and Exercise Management versus the Bachelor of Management in sports business. I might have a crack at answering that. It’s really, I guess, the amount of business, if you did The Bachelor of Management, sports business, the amount of business is higher in that degree. What our Bachelor of Exercise Sports Management offers is more of a mix between the actual sport science and the management. So you’re picking up a lot of those sports science subjects. So the knowledge that you have about actual sports science and then you’re adding the management flavour to it. So the major difference would be I just want asset management, a mix of sort of the human body outworks a lot with the business and management side of things compared to the management sports business, which is a lot more of the management and not so much of the actual human body and the components of lifestyle in that. I think that would be the best way to describe it, Rob.
Rob: Yes, that’s a good. That’s correct. Yes. So we we want our sport and exercise management students to understand the human body in general terms so that if they’re managing a facility or exercise, they have an understanding of both the business processes and what the client is experiencing and that’s probably the main difference. The next question’s probably good one for you to answer, Lee, and it’s would this be the course to do if you had an interest in exercise physiology?
Lee: I mean, absolutely. If you had a really interesting exercise physiology, it’d be the you’d be looking at the sport and exercise science would be the better fit there. There’s a lot of subjects within that degree that target specifically around excess physiology. We’ve got, you know, start off with the physiological basis of human movements of type subjects, looking at the cells and structures within the body. We’ve got some basic anatomy in there, maybe functional anatomy. Then you start actual exercise physiology as a subject, moving right up to applied exercise physiology. And in these types of subjects, you’ve got people running on treadmills, you’re taking heart rate, you’re taking lactates, you’re looking at the temperature, you know, and then you can also we also do experiments in labs where you’re putting people on to different conditions. So you have labs or you might be wanting to heat suits. You know, we’ve got we’ve got one of the environments that we have as an environment room within the doing where we crank the heat up on people say you sweat dripping out of you and see what happens to you under different conditions. So really, if you’re into exercise physiology. The there are so many questions within the in the within the degree that you would find quite exciting thinking all about the body in different toxic environments.
Rob: I might take the next couple of questions quickly lead because they are starting to fall out. So there is a question about employment after graduation and what percentage. So we like to see around 60 percent get employed. That varies from year to year. But some of our students also use the year after they finish just to explore the world and have some time to themselves, and then their employment opportunities will come later.
Rob: How many students are typically typically in these courses? So we would take approximately two hundred and fifty in sport and exercise science, let’s say 100 in sport exercise management, and perhaps 40 odd in the exercise therapy major.
Rob: What how much control do students have over where their placement is? Quite a bit in in the internship. Almost 100 per cent for the exercise science in ESSA accredited pathways. You have to meet the requirements of ESSA. So you could still have that control yourself. We’re happy for you to organize that where you can fit in with our programs. And in fact, we’ve been doing telehealth in recent times because of the Covid scenario and to maintain the accreditation.
Rob: And in terms of contact, hours for both degrees will be the same pretty much. There’s typically four subjects a session. A session typically goes for 12 weeks plus exams. And you would typically do four subjects each session. And each subject of actual online and face to face content would be about three hours. So it’s 12 to 13 hours of actual formal learning. But for every hour of formal learning, we recommend an additional two hours of your own learning and practice. So you can do the math on that.
Lee: So theres an interesting what it says has practical work, has been affected with Covid, oh man we’ve had a range of we’ve had to adjust in all kinds of different ways. And and depending on what stage of Covid are we talking about, everything we’ve done is, you know, with the health of everyone. So and following the health advice. So we’ve had situations where we’ve had to move some classes online, at different stages with being able to do practical based things, but with social distancing and and mask requirements in place. So depending on everything we do is always under the health advice to make sure everyone’s safe.
Rob: Katie, would you like to answer this question about what if I’m not entirely sure what I want to do in health and fitness? What advice would you give to figure this out?
Katie: I suppose if you if you like health and fitness, this is a course that would help you in a career that health and fitness. But understanding also that there’s other pathways and courses that you could do. So I think it’s really hard to to give you something specific other than to say that I mean, I started when I was an undergrad student, I actually did the sport and exercise management. And and I didn’t know really what I wanted to do, but I knew that I really loved exercise and sport. And so I’m like, I’m pretty sure that doing this degree is going to give me a qualification. And it’s an area that I that I really enjoy. So I can’t go to wrong.
Rob: Thanks, Katie. There’s a question about part time study. Yes, you can. You can get into your degree and you can spread it out over four, five or six years if you want. There is a limit of 10 years. Not that anyone goes that far.
Rob: And the next question for sport and exercise management, are you able to pursue careers where you are technical directors of clubs or manage the programs, the sporting organizations? Absolutely. A university degree is a higher form of education than what you could achieve through coaching type awards. However, we always encourage students to specialize as appropriate and in terms of what their interests are and to follow through the pathways that each particular club requires. If there are such things to to meet their requirements as well. But you would certainly be prepared for that.
Lee: I’ll look at the course and pathways that some of the alumni I mentioned, I mean, really those alumni got into those places in all kinds of different way, in all kinds, different ways, in in the two specific cases we’ve got here? Johan came into our post graduate program, and Tom Kempton was a sport and exercise science that went through on his program, ended up doing an exercise physiology and now working with the eh
Katie: Carlton.
Lee: Carlton yeah. So, yeah, we’re really diverse backgrounds, to be honest. Are all of those different pathways. They all came. Everyone had a different approach starting off in different places and ending up in different places. Get anywhere if you really want to. That’s why we’ve answered the question about choosing your placement.
Rob: Some a few people have asked that. So what do the assessments look like in these degrease? Well, assessments vary from exams of which there are less and less to practical assessments. Katie, do you want to maybe describe a couple of the practical assessments in your area? Because they they’re the interesting ones and practical showed.
Katie: Yeah for sure, so in exercise prescription two of the major assessment pieces, one is a practical skills test, where you, as the name suggests, we assess how you take skin folds, how you run testing, how you deliver strength and conditioning coaching. And then the other major assessment piece is the training project, where your partner into groups of two and you get to develop an evidence informed training program for for your client. So you get the experience of really understanding what the literature says and practically applying it, but in a really safe setting because it’s just on one of your classmates. So there are two key things that we look for in exercise description, and I’m pretty sure many of you are. I think you’ll have prac skill tests with most of your subjects from second year onwards.
Rob: A question, someone is asked about whether students can use the facilities for recreation? Yes, we have an indoor gym like a sports hall that can definitely be used for recreation when it comes to the strength and conditioning room, which is an amazing room, not for recreation, but you can for learning purposes. So essentially in a coaching sense, where you and your other students or peers goes in there or one one is exercising, the other one is observing or instructing or giving feedback. You can do that after you have completed or at some stage during your first year of study. We allow that.
Lee: And those facilities are used heavily in class to say, like, you know, one of the main advantages of this degree is the use of the facilities within all our classes. So we’re regularly in the gym, the sports hall, using all the facilities to help with our learning.
Rob: There’s a question about exercise science, major, getting into physiotherapy, I’ll answer this from the perspective of both exercise science major and people in the sports management degree, because they both pathway in a physio. It is competitive, our students, because they are familiar with UTS and they get a good training through our degree. They do have a reasonable chance, but there are a lot of applicants. So we might get 10 to 15 students through from those degrees into physiotherapy from each year. For the exercise therapy major, the first couple of times everyone got in, I think last year a couple missed out because of their interview. But otherwise, the odds are very, very strong once you got into that exercise therapy, major.
Rob: The AEP question Lee, would you like to answer that?
Lee: AEP with ah pursuing a career in AEP, you need to fill the requirements, so a lot of that is done through the course, but then in order to get your AEP, there’s additional studies and things that you need to add on. So this is a great starting place they all require. This is a starting place. And then if education is an add on in that clip, the setting to be awarded with your AEP. So, yeah, great start. Get to three quarters of the way there and then tacking on a little bits afterwards to see the rest of the way.
Rob: You can’t do a master’s in AEP unless you’ve done an undergraduate and completed the AES. That’s the pathway part, which we which we’ve set up.
Rob: Is that hard for mature age students to obtain a placement? No. Mature age students probably find it easier to obtain a placement because they’ve got more experience and industry experience. So we welcome them. We’ve had people in their sixties do our course and do it successfully, and people who are medical practitioners come and do our course as well, because they want to learn about exercise as health.
Lee: Some of the best students are often the mature age students. They’ve gone away, and this time they’ve really honed in on what they want to do and they come back in the hard to beat if they are in your in your in year?
Rob: Do you need to have a PhD to get better jobs working with professional athletes and clubs? Katie, what do you think?
Katie: Well, I just I saw that question and I had to look at our alumni, and most of them do have a PhD. And most of them started the day but haven’t finished. That includes Rob Spurrs. So, look, it’s not it’s not a requirement, but it is a great foot in the door. And if you can do an industry embedded PhD, you get not only the benefit of understanding research and, I suppose, problem solve and understand data and whether or not the exercise or whatever intervention you’re doing is having a real impact or not. But in saying that there are plenty of people working in sport without a PhD.
Lee: I think we we always have the we always have the the dilemma. We get students and they begin doing a PhD and then might be embedded in like a sporting environment or with the team and then the team thinks geez I want to employ this person they are so good. And then they’re caught in the middle. Do I keep working, finish the PhD off and try and juggle them both. And usually they get it, just takes a little bit longer because they’re working and studying at the same time. But in those instances, they end up with their dream job. So it’s a couple of a lot of success stories come from that way.
Rob: There’s a nice specific question here about whether you need to do the international studies degree to be able to get jobs in major sporting competitions such as the Olympics and the World Cup. You certainly don’t have to, but it would that would be the sort of space where it would definitely help, particularly if you’ve picked up another language through that for the degree. But there would be it’s not a compulsory thing. No, it just would be a helpful thing. And another person has asked about the ESSA qualification related to the sport and exercise science degree. It is the it’s considered an AES is so accredited exercise scientist, you have to do additional work to get the sports scientist accreditation with ESSA beyond your Bachelor of Sport and Exercise Science degree.
Lee: Well, I think we are done here today. We’re going to have to conclude this session now. But I’d like to thank all the panellists, Rob Tjiana, Katie, for being with us today for your insights, I’m sure will help those prospective students out there to make a decision. Just on your screen you can see other sessions and open days available at UTS. There’s one on one live of chats where you can talk to sport and access on students with time and dates there and the 2pm info session. For those interested in international studies and two o’clock for those interested in the Bachelor of Cretaive Intelligence and Innovation.
Lee: So that concludes this session, but thanks to everyone and we look forward to seeing you in the future, even though we can actually see you now, but we look forward to seeing you in the future if you choose your sport and exercise science as your preference. thanks, everyone, for coming today.
Rob: See you later. All. All the best with the rest of school. And we look forward to seeing you at UTS. Take care.