OU Internship: an autistic dream come true

Posted on 9 May 2025 • Jobs, internships and work experience

OU biological sciences graduate Jo Cutler, shares her enthusiasm for the internship she completed in the OU’s STEM Faculty, helping make the curriculum more inclusive and accessible as well as building her own digital and information literacy, problem solving and communication skills.

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“I was lucky to secure a stage one science student consultation internship with The Open University. For the first time in my life, autism was not a huge barrier, but an advantage. This was because the wonderful scientific researchers I worked for saw how helpful it would be in terms of improving accessibility for neurodiverse students.

Studying at The Open University seemed like the perfect option for me as an autistic person – I would be able to control my sensory environment and reduce the pressure to mask in unpredictable social environments. Having failed my AS levels (including biology), and left college at seventeen, my self-esteem was at rock-bottom. Fast-forward a few years and I achieved a first-class biological sciences degree with The Open University. This was not without its challenges, and when I saw the chance to help improve The Open University for a more diverse array of people, I leapt at it.

Not only has the job been autism-friendly but, I have developed many skills throughout my internship including thematic analysis, presenting my findings on Teams, extracting data from Power BI and formulating questions from a variety of sources. On a wider scale, I have learnt how student and staff consultations are designed and carried out in terms of the step-by-step data gathering, data processing and the linking together of all the themes across the research, forum comments and verbal and written online consultations. I have been able to propose my ideas of how the course structure might be changed and have learnt so much about the logistical challenges of how these changes might be carried out. Moreover, I have been able to talk to many other students about the challenges they have faced and ways we could improve this, which I feel privileged to have done.

Overall, if you are wondering whether an internship is for you, I would tell you to try it! Certainly, it is the best role I have ever been lucky enough to experience and has made my career path, and my skills, far clearer to me.”