What is ViCEPHEC and why should you go?

The Variety in Chemistry Education/Physics Higher Education Conference (ViCEPHEC) is a national conference happening in August and you may not have heard of it. This blog is for you! While the conference has a very strong community, it has had real difficulty reaching beyond that community. Everyone loses out when great people don’t attend a great conference because they simply aren’t aware of it.

ViCEPHEC25 is in Liverpool this year in late August. I am the publicity officer, and in this blog I want to make the case for attending if you’ve never come before. I’m really open to questions if you want to discuss anything - get in touch.

A flyer for ViCEPHEC25, with a link to the conference website at https://vicephec2025.weebly.com

You should go for the Subject(s)

The Variety in Chemistry Education and Physics Higher Education Conference merged a few years ago into a combined conference. Supported by both the RSC and IOP, ViCEPHEC is the UK’s leading conference for teaching these subjects in Higher Education. We are trying to welcome people from allied disciplines, too, and hope that educators from Biochemistry and Materials Science would also find this a valuable event.

If your day-to-day is teaching the Physical Sciences, you will find a rich discussion at ViCEPHEC. What new practicals are you developing? How do you deal with lab resits? How are you sequencing the maths lectures? How are you thinking about coding in the curriculum? Do students seem different to you since the pandemic? How are you talking about ‘sustainability’ with the accreditation panel? Specific, “nitty-gritty” questions like this are being hurled around in the talks and the coffee breaks. It’s not about general education principles, it’s about teaching specific subjects.

You should go for the People

My central observation of this conference has always been how incredibly supportive it is. People make a tremendous effort to understand where you’re coming from, and there is space to express excitement about what you’re doing as well as explore parallel or alternative ideas for teaching. It was a genuine shock for me to attend ViCEPHEC after a PhD involving hyper-critical research conferences.

Central to this atmosphere is how most ViCEPHEC attendees aren’t just scientists, they are also educators. The conversations you have here are not the same as the ones you have in staff meetings: people draw on scholarly literature, explicit educational principles, and a deep reflection on navigating the structures of modern Higher Education. They ‘get it’.

You should go for the Community

Being among so many educators is a rare feeling: teaching staff are typically a minority in Departments, and to be in a room with so many of them is extremely unusual. You don’t have to fight to communicate how important it is to consider EDI, for example. I have always found it extraordinarily refreshing to be among people who share some of my central values so obviously.

It’s also one of the spaces where difficult sector-wide education questions get asked more openly. In recent years, I’ve talked with people about academic workloads, demonstrator-to-student ratios in labs, sick leave, PGR recruitment, RSC accreditation (it’s so unpopular!), recent Departmental closures, and my career. These aren’t usually formal sessions: they are conversations over coffee or dinner. These conversations take a little while to open up (perhaps even a couple of years for the touchier ones), but they have become the most valuable part of the conference for me.

Of course, any conference depends on the tiny interactions between imperfect humans. You’ll get on with some attendees better than others, you’ll see people sometimes phrase things clumsily when they are exploring new ideas, you’ll sometimes feel a bit washed out after a full day of talks or travel, and ultimately a lot of the conference’s value will rest on your own determination to interact with people. But people at ViCEPHEC are generally trying to make the conference a positive space; anyone saying “this is my first time at ViCEPHEC” would normally be welcomed into any conversation.

Things you might not know: satellite conferences

The first couple of years I went, I simply did not understand that most people turned up the day before. Most of these people attended satellite meetings for the Higher Education Groups of the RSC and IOP, but many didn’t. It’s relaxed time with nothing scheduled, and people commonly order a takeaway together or get a drink after a day of travelling. You may not be able to come a day early, but you’ll be welcome if you can make it.

Practical Note: the HEG groups typically circulate a registration form for the satellite meetings which helps gauge catering. It would be helpful if you signed up formally if you intend to come to the satellite meetings. These groups are often very lively - if you aren’t a member yet, it might be a good chance to sign up.

Conclusion: you should goto ViCEPHEC!

Come to ViCEPHEC! The conference website has some of the details about attendance fees (pretty modest) and accommodation in the fantastic city of Liverpool, as well as abstract submission details if you’d like to present your work.

The RSC and IOP Higher Education Groups sometimes offer bursaries, as they recognise that professional development funding can sometimes be hard to arrange on some contracts for teaching staff, but it’s also worth asking your line manager directly whether they can contribute (my personal advice is to prepare a fallback ask: “ok, I get you can’t do the whole thing but could you just cover my train fare and accommodation?”).

But it’s also unfortunately true that an August conference can clash with family holiday plans. Different times have been tried in the past; this one seems to be the most accessible. 

This year we’re making a big effort to grow the community, writing to Departments who haven’t sent many people recently and reaching out to allied disciplines such as Materials and Biosciences. You won’t be the only new person at ViCEPHEC, and if you know anyone else who might find it useful then you’d be welcome to bring it to their attention.

Consider joining us in Liverpool! And more than that, please seriously consider sharing your work. We are trying to make a bigger space for case studies of teaching design and delivery, as well as making the SciComm and Outreach more prominent in our call for abstracts. For first-time attendees, the poster session might be a particularly welcoming place to start conversations about your specific interests.

A flyer for ViCEPHEC25, with a link to the conference website at https://vicephec2025.weebly.com