Your membership in 2017: a snapshot

By now you will have received your membership renewal notification and may have already renewed your membership for 2017 but we wanted to take this time to remind you to renew to continue to be a part of your professional body. 

Your membership provides you with…

Professional recognition

Your membership category is a way to formally recognise your commitment, knowledge and experience as a chemical scientist. There are various professional categories available, and you may find one of these more appropriate for your career stage and achievements.

If you think you should be in a different category, the upgrading process is simple: you just need your personal details and evidence of your accredited degree.

Toby Underwood, accreditation manager here at the Royal Society of Chemistry shares his experience of gaining CChem and the value that professional accreditation through chartered status and registers has to offer you: 

"To the wider world, the status of all charters is a well-known measure of professionalism, whether that’s in the sciences or another subject. This means if people see my CChem status from outside chemistry they know straightaway that my professional body and peers have recognised my achievements. The registers RSci and RSciTech are still relatively new awards. However, with the reforms in vocational education I have no doubt that, given time, they will be recognised within the community. RSci also gives a great pathway to start the journey towards chartered status.

"As a member of staff at the Royal Society of Chemistry I speak to other members who hold CChem status and it was a requirement for my role that I had CChem, so it was very beneficial. 

"Through holding the status myself I can speak from experience of the process and really empathise with people who are going through the same process I did a few years ago. Holding chartered status means I have to stay relevant to my current role which has changed from laboratory to office based since my award. My current CPD objectives allow me plan ahead and learn new skills within the chemical sciences. I currently collaborate with other professional bodies and policy makers within education and industry. Chartered status allows me to speak from authority and recognise the needs of the chemical science community from various sectors.”

If you’re interested in gaining professional recognition through our chartered status or registers awards or just finding out more about what is involved then get in touch by emailing us at accreditation@rsc.org. 

Support through your career

Our monthly ChemCareers webinars focus on different aspects of career progression. If you are interested in identifying areas to develop further, or would like some tips on improving those areas in the context of your everyday work, visit our YouTube channel to see the different topics we’ve done so far Or if you have a suggestion of a webinar that you’d like us to run then please do get in touch by emailing us at careers@rsc.org.

Our dedicated team of careers specialists are on hand to offer one-to-one advice and information that you require for managing your career. Through the careers consultations and CV checks they offer they can help you with recognising your strengths and finding opportunities to widen your skills base.

If you’re thinking about changing careers or are generally interested in finding out the different salaries of professionally qualified chemical scientists in the UK why not take a look at our Pay and Reward report from our 2015 survey. We’ll be running our next survey later this year so please do let us know how you use the report and what you find useful.

"Networking is becoming even more important these days and being actively involved in a Local Section or Interest Group is a great way to do so. The groups support members by running activities and events but can also signpost to any services the RSC offers. There is a wide range of how members can get involved in these groups - from attending events, to help running an activity or joining a committee.

"From attending various events and meetings I get to know who I am working with and deepen my relationship with our members even if they are not (yet) on one of our member group committees. Also, it is impressive to see what our members do for the RSC and chemistry in general."

To celebrate our 175th anniversary, we’ve been asking all of you – our members and supporters around the world – to dedicate 175 minutes to chemistry and share stories of all the ways that you get involved with your community and volunteer your time. If you have anything that you want to tell us about then get in touch by emailing us at memberservices@rsc.org.

How to renew your membership

If you haven’t renewed your membership yet and would like to, please get in touch with our membership team by emailing them at membership@rsc.org or calling them on 01223 432141.

For details of all the membership benefits available to you, go to rsc.li/join, select the career stage appropriate for you and you'll find the full list of membership benefits.