CASE STUDY: COMPETENCES IN THE LAST COURSE IN TECHNICAL CHEMICAL ENGINEERING AND SOME COMPANIES DEMAND

Polytechnic School from University of Girona has been historically strongly involved in the national and international industrial network. In fact, this Polytechnic School was founded in the late 70s by professors from Polytechnic University of Catalonia and recognized professionals from industry. In this sense, Polytechnic School is supported by an Industrial Patronage that offers stays to those students interested in getting introduced into a work environment. Moreover, in some cases these students have the opportunity of having an internal professional career in the framework of the company in question.

Due to the curriculum of the students, they are supposed to do first the stays in companies before their Final Degree Project. In this sense, students have two options: either to develop their Project in the framework of the industry or coming back to the Polytechnic School and develop it in the frame of a research group. The present work attempts to bring to the light the mainstreaming that can exist between industries and technic schools.

A qualitative comparison between the competences at the end of the course and the competences in company’s requirements can bring to the teachers the differences between studies and work goals. Also help them to redefine some contents of the studies oriented to increase the retaltion between studies and company’s need. This work is based in a student stay in a company.

In this sense, from the pedagogical point of view, the student was able to apply most of the knowledge acquired during the last four years in the University, from unit operations to mass and energy balances, passing through physic-chemistry of cellulosic products. In addition, both supervisors from University and from the company are constantly in contact. At the end of their stay, students must deliver a report of their stay to their supervisor in the University, as well as their supervisor in the company. Also, this study analyzes a questionnaire before and after the experience and the student can see which are the competences that need to improve. So in this sense, the student took profit of her experience in a company to manage their competences.

As final conclusion, in the frame of the strong relationship between the Industrial Patronage and the Polytechnic School from University of Girona, the student had the opportunity of being involved in the industry, which provided her some additional knowledge and industrial culture. Moreover, since the student enjoyed the topic of her stay, she finally decided to develop her own project related to innovations in papermaking sector.