Abstract:

Research and actions on entrepreneurial Engineering Education stand as one of the priorities of the Department of Mechanical Engineering of the University of Aveiro, Portugal.

A coherent number of initiatives were designed and implemented towards this goal, in a way that can be distributed into four main streams. The first one focuses on research and development on the topic of entrepreneurial education, with its integration into specific engineering courses in Bachelor, Master and PhD study cycles. Secondly, the training of academic and professional staff in developing their personal entrepreneurial competencies, at the same time stimulating learners to acquire them as well. A third stream, interrelated to the previous ones, provides the proper time and space for research, development, and action towards participation in European projects focusing on innovation through capacity building, promoting more entrepreneurial Higher Education Institutions. Such an example is the call from the European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT HEI Initiative), where the University of Aveiro has coordinated a project in the first cohort (“Transformation, Acceleration, Networking, Development, Entrepreneurial education and Mentoring+”, TANDEM+), being now coordinating, in the third cohort, the project named “DeepTech in Higher Education Institutions and Ecosystems through Entrepreneurial Education+” (SFF.DeepT+). The fourth and last stream links the other three to Regional and International Ecosystems, emphasizing the relevance of an entrepreneurial community and the effective collaborations among different stakeholders to promote an entrepreneurial mindset, with true, measurable, impact.

Rooted on the essence of the EIT HEI Initiative calls, TANDEM+ and SFF.DeepT+ helped establish the Start for Future Open Alliance, an initiative that intends to support Higher Education Institutions with expertise and access to the EIT ecosystem, promoting the development of contextualized action plans to unlatch the potential of organisations, for innovation and entrepreneurship. The typology of the calls has allowed the Department of Mechanical Engineering, and others from the University of Aveiro, to achieve their objectives concerning entrepreneurial Engineering Education and its promotion across different degrees in the Department, between Departments within the University, and among other stakeholders in the organizational structure of the Institution. As a consequence, a profound collaboration between distinct actors in this entrepreneurial ecosystem has emerged. The core activities of the projects were also able to embed the expertise of the industry sector, as well as from the EIT and the University Incubator, in a truly international environment that reinforces its effectiveness in developing and improving the entrepreneurial competencies of its people.

Keywords:

Entrepreneurial mindset, Entrepreneurial education, Engineering Education, Capacity-building in Higher Education.