UTAS courses opening up doors

Or what about creating mobile phone apps or working as a criminal profiler, like the team on Criminal Minds?

At the University of Tasmania, you'll find these pathways are all on offer.

The university will open its doors from 10am to 3pm today at its Hobart, Launceston and Cradle Coast campuses.

The open day will include many exhibits, demonstrations and lecturers will be on hand to talk about courses.

A Bachelor of Arts is the most popular kind of degree at the university, with a Bachelor of Dementia Care coming in a close second.

Almost 1500 students are completing a Bachelor of Dementia Care, which is a new free online, nine-week course.

However, these are some other interesting careers that can come from studying at UTAS:

AT just 24, Dr James Peters has already experienced what it's like to work as a doctor in Tanzania, Sweden and Tasmania.

It was during Dr Peters' last two years of studying a five-year Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery, that he spent two six-week blocks working overseas, as part of the UTAS international program.

Dr Peters, who is now an intern at the Launceston General Hospital, said working in Tanzania and Sweden were eye opening experiences.

"What the university did was show us that there's much more out there than Tasmania and Australia, you can go abroad and work with different organisations," he said.

"I probably want to do basic physician training (in the future), which will be three years preceding this one and then I might look to go overseas and work in a community for a small period of time."

Dr Peters said he was interested in public health and social responsibility.

"It wouldn't be impossible to say I'll be working for an organisation that looks at health on a bigger picture rather than just locally," he said.

"But I still think I'd like to make a meaningful contribution to the local community when I'm older."

Dr Peters is also part way through completing a research program on the differences in infection control policies between Sweden and Australia.

He spent his last two years studying at the University of Tasmania's Launceston Clinical School, which is located in the Northern Area Health Service building, next to the Launceston General Hospital.

The school will open to the public for the first time today.

FURNITURE design is an industry with lots going for it, including learning the skills to make skateboards, boats, seats and more.

UTAS School of Architecture and Design furniture design program director Simon Ancher said the thing about the industry was it wasn't just about making furniture.

"Those who succeed see opportunity anywhere," he said.

He said people in the industry had to be creative and couldn't be afraid to put themselves out there.

"There will always be a job in the industry, but it's up to the individual," he said.

"You're not going to be given things to do, you've got to make it happen."

Mr Ancher said it was often good when people studying had no prior skills.

"We can say this is how you do it," he said.

At the open day, adults will be able to be involved in steam bending, laminating, CNC (computer numerical control) manufacturing, and see boat building techniques and model-making.

MASTERS student Mayra Barrera is trying to help others like her choose the right path when they go bush walking.

"I like to go hiking, but I'm not a professional hiker," Miss Barrera said.

"So I thought, how can we help people like me choose the right path so they don't get into trouble."

Through her Masters of Creative Media Technology, Miss Barrera decided to do that by creating a mobile app.

The application is still in its research stages, but works by informing people where wildlife, steep cliffs and fallen branches are on the Dove Lake walk at Cradle Mountain.

It will soon also have the capability for people to leave notes to aware others of potential hazards and it will be pitched to Tourism Tasmania in the near future.

The project is part of a number of apps Miss Barrera is working on, after already completing four android game apps.

The mobile application development unit is offered by UTAS' School of Computing and Information Systems, where students also learn skills in computer programming and can use the world-class facilities at the Human Interface Technology Laboratory Australia (HITLab AU).

EVER wondered how people know that someone's lying or how profilers work out criminal cases?

It can be to do with studying psychology.

UTAS psychology lecturer Dr Matt Palmer said there was more to a Bachelor of Psychology or Behavioural Science than becoming a clinical psychologist.

"We've got a subject here called psychology and law, where we cover things like police investigations, eye witness memory, jury decisions, sentencing and all sorts of things," Dr Palmer said.

"In that course in particular, you could do lots of things, you could go on and be a forensic psychologist, working for example with profiling offenders.

"We've had people go on and work as security expert, and if you combine psychology with computer studies, you could be a cyber security expert."

Other careers include working as a youth worker or in research and marketing.

As well as teaching psychology, Dr Palmer does a lot of research into things like eye witness memory.

"So if someone has witnessed a crime what kind of things can they remember, can they identify the people who committed the crime and how can police tell if the witness is right or wrong?" Dr Palmer said.

"With jury decisions, it's fascinating how they make decisions.

"Sometimes you might think it's a very open and shut case when they commit a crime, but a lot of people admit to crimes they didn't actually do."

As part of the open day, attendees will have the chance to participate in activities like the fun identification game "psychologist or psychopath" and Dr Palmer will give a midday talk in the Sir Raymond Ferrell Centre.

ZAC Pullen has started small, but his creations are going to get much bigger.

Pullen, 21, constructed his flying octocopter as part of extracurricular activities in the Australian Maritime College Autonomous Technologies Society.

The Hobart student is studying ocean engineering at AMC, but the AMCat society is something extra for fun.

Mr Pullen said he created the octocopter so a camera could be attached to it.

"I like a lot of sport, so we like to take it and film ourselves, but we're working on a bigger one," Mr Pullen said.

He said creating devices like this was a way to make use of the maths and science learnt during his four-year degree.

"My degree is pretty much perfect for what I want to do," Mr Pullen said.

"I'm interested in big offshore construction, like putting oil rigs together.

"But apart from that, I really enjoy building stuff that I can play with, like this."

Mr Pullen's octocopter, plus other students' work, will be on show at the AMC today.