Course summary

A Combined Honours degree at Chester gives you the opportunity to study two subjects. You will spend a fairly even amount of time studying each subject area, with possible opportunities to declare a major – minor towards the end of your studies. Counselling Skills Enhance your ability to communicate and gain highly developed embedded counselling skills to help others in a wide range of people-related employment contexts. This course will give you the opportunity to develop practical counselling skills which can be used in a range of professional settings. You will evaluate the theories underpinning the skills and the contexts in which they are used, and enhance your self-awareness and capacity for ethical, empathic and reflective practice. You will develop valuable communication skills, knowledge and experience transferrable to a range of workplace and helping situations, as well as your multicultural competence and understanding. You will explore a wide variety of workplace contexts where counselling skills are used, carry out research and develop a critical understanding of different therapeutic approaches. Chester has a long-established national reputation for the provision of counselling education. We are linked to a cutting-edge research community and the course is delivered by practitioners and researchers who draw on their own professional and academic expertise. The teaching is largely experiential with a strong practical component, and this is enhanced by guest lecturers who bring in knowledge and skills from the wider professional and academic community. Sociology Sociology is the ‘science of society,’ and involves studying how processes of social change affect peoples’ everyday lives. Through studying Sociology at Chester, you will be given the skills and support you need in order to develop a ‘sociological imagination’ of your own. You will be introduced to cutting-edge research and theoretical perspectives that will help you to challenge dominant understandings of social problems, issues and debates. Sociology graduates pursue diverse career paths including in the public sector and civil service, politics and government, social work, charity and advocacy work, PR, advertising, market research, journalism, academia and teaching. Our team has a wide range of backgrounds and experience. Modules are written in line with staff’s research interests, and include areas such as inequality and the welfare state, race and racism, gender identity and the body, globalisation, sustainability, protest and social change. How is ‘globalisation’ reshaping the world we live in? What are the major social divisions and conflicts affecting society today? How does the mass media influence our perception of these conflicts and divisions? These are just some of the questions you’ll look at.