European Network Strengthens Entrepreneurship Education

Universities from Barcelona to Lisbon, from Eindhoven to Torino are the partners of KIT in CLUSTER. Roundabout 30 representatives from the European network met at KIT at the End of October.

What has to be done to impart Entrepreneurship Knowledge to prospective engineers? That is a crucial point of the project „Entrepreneurship Education Ecosystems in Engineering and Technology“. Various CLUSTER universities take part in it, the EU supports it with money from the Erasmus+ program. In Karlsruhe, scientists presented good examples for Entrepreneurship education, among them Prof. Orestis Terzidis from KIT. Dr. Gautam Basu from Aalto University in Finland talked about entrepreneurial skills in working life, Dr. Andreas Bihlmaier from robodev GmbH reflected on University Entrepreneurship programs from the point of view of a Startup founder. Katrina Nordström from Aalto University explained ways of raising awareness of entrepreneurship in the STEM curricula, e.g. by distributing videos on good examples.

Prof. Thomas Hirth, Vice President for Innovation and International Affairs, welcomed the participants of the meeting, which included several workshops. In one of them, the Erasmus coordinators from the member universities discussed possibilities of closer cooperation, for example with regard to enhancing staff mobility within CLUSTER.

Digitization is another topic being on the minds of the CLUSTER universities. Prof. Gerd Gidion, Scientific Director at the center for Technology-enhanced Learning at KIT, presented projects and plans at KIT aiming at a data system integrating research, education, innovation, and human resources management, at common spaces for research and education, e.g. online classes dealing with laboratory work, and at cooperation with an open scientific community, e.g. with blended learning scenarios.

Luís Miguel Silveira from Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon presented impressions from the 9th workshop of the Sino-European Engineering Education Platform (SEEEP), which had taken place in China at the end of September. He also explained the Cofund proposal to the EU by several CLUSTER members describing a Sino-European doctoral program.

The next regular CLUSTER meeting will take place on April 10th-12th, 2019, at Lisbon. In 2020, CLUSTER will celebrate its 30th birthday with a symposium at TU Darmstadt (TUD). Prof. Hans Jürgen Prömel from TUD is the current CLUSTER president.