Rowan, Energy and Sustainability Intern (2025)

I am currently going into my second year of Mathematics at the University of Birmingham and have loved every second this internship, from working closely with the other interns to wider collaborations across the county. I have had the opportunity to develop and progress skills I was not previously confident in as well as improve my strengths.

I have always been interested in the environment growing up on a small family-owned agricultural farm which has recently transitioned to more of a conservation farm as well as animal additions of alpacas and sheep. This has grown my desire to help positively impact the environment and this internship I felt was a great way to actively make change and have an internal glimpse into all the great work happening behind the scenes at the council.

In the last 12 weeks I have worked on so many things, including analysing the councils climate scorecards which ranks councils on their sustainability and environmental impact. I then produced a set of actions that got adopted into the action plan from this feedback. It was great to see the progress of my work and know it mattered seeing it then being implemented into our group project as an example.

I also redesigned the teams Solar for Business marketing from the ground up with updated information and new case studies from businesses I reached out to. This was an entirely new area of work for me as a maths student and one I learnt a lot through. I was often a person to step aside more creative work in favour of analysis, however I feel I learnt the most from this process and have developed my transferable skills.

There are a multitude of other big tasks that I undertook involving a variety of different teams and expertise, these are just two examples of a wide swathe of work that my team and my position in the team undertook in the internship. There are so many projects and site visits you can get involved in to develop your understanding and your skills.

I have loved every day of this internship and would recommend it to everybody, you will end the 12 weeks wishing it was at least 12 weeks longer.