Abstract:

Nowadays, fostering entrepreneurial competences among university students have become a common trend in most of the higher education institutions. Indeed, over the last 20 years, universities have transformed themselves into entrepreneurial universities. They have incorporated a third mission to their core functions ─ namely research and education ─ and increasingly developed instruments such as technology transfer offices, incubators, and entrepreneurship courses to facilitate entrepreneurship within universities. As a result, the entrepreneurial culture in universities is growing, with professors from different disciplines getting involved in informal educational initiatives to help promote sustainable, ethical, and entrepreneurial attitudes and competences among their students. In this study, we examine the results of an educational initiative developed in the context of the University of Huelva (Spain) by professors from chemical engineering and business departments among students of the School of Engineers. Its main objective was to enhance the ethical, social, and sustainable awareness and competences of engineering students from different master programmes (Master in Industrial Engineering and Master in Chemical Engineering). The pedagogical model consisted of guest lectures by academics, social entrepreneurs, directors of sustainable projects from industry and a fictional co-creation project on sustainable entrepreneurship between students from the two disciplines involved. Around 30 students and 10 instructors participated in the educational initiative; the majority of them agreed that this pedagogical model is a motivational instrument for learning, which can help students to enhance sustainable, social and ethical awareness and competences to undertake future entrepreneurial projects.

Keywords:

Sustainable entrepreneurial competences, entrepreneurship education, engineer students.