Work Packages

This WP aims to assess the internal systems at the Palestinian universities, the capacity building needs of university staff before entering into a change process that would contribute to creating an enabling culture and environment to promote, manage and monitor progress towards an entrepreneurial university. In addition, the WP seeks potential area of cooperation between academia and enterprises in STEM. It will also estimate the demand and needs of the academia, private sector and public authorities in PC toward understanding, planning, implementing new courses in entrepreneurship and STEM. Finally, it will be very important to understand who are the financial providers that will support the startups coming out of our project

Tasks

• D1.1 Needs assessment for internal entrepreneurial system inside the HE

• D1.2 Needs assessment for capacity building needs

• D1.3 Need assessment for emerging trends in STEM

• D1.4 Mapping financial providers for STEM start-ups

The WP will be focusing on development of the skills of faculty members to be able to support entrepreneurship education and enhance student engagement in entrepreneurial activities which is essential for the development of an entrepreneurial university. The WP will also focus on raising awareness of the faculty members on key emerging trends in STEM in order to encourage leadership and capacity development in such fields. This work package focuses on awareness component. This includes courses developed for the existing programmes and providing seminars and workshops that stimulate entrepreneurial awareness and encourage entrepreneurship attitudes. This work packages includes creation of access to finance tool-kit to support startups idetifing financial providers, their requirements and how to apply. Finally, to present the startups in demo day events and invite investors and other stakeholders

Tasks

• D2.1 Create an entrepreneurship strategy inside HE

• D2.2 Staff capacity development in entrepreneurship

• D2.3 Develop 4 courses and 4 tutorials in latest trends in STEM

• D2.4 Entrepreneurship oriented course design

• D2.5 Develop access to finance tool-kit

• D2.6 Demo day to present students’ projects to investors

The aim of this WP is to developing meaningful relationships with members of the private sector as it is essential for universities aiming to improve their entrepreneurship outcomes. Such linkages serve as a pathway for increasing the exposure of students to existing gaps and challenges facing industry where entrepreneurial projects could potentially be developed to meet such needs. An internship programme will be developed and supplemented by weekly follow-up from faculty members. It will also include structured delivery of training to help students develop research skills with the objective of identify the potential for entrepreneurial opportunities. We aim as well to come up with recommendations for a national policy on entrepreneurship education at higher education level.

Tasks

• D3.1 Develop 4 tutorials in emerging trends in STEM

• D3.2 Industry mentoring programme

• D3.3 Setup and manage internship programme

• D3.4 Workshop to recommend a national policy on entrepreneurship education and training

• D3.5 Technical assistance to increase access to finance for students’ start-ups

This work package will ensure the adherence of all project aspects and outputs to the quality assurance (QA) mechanisms. A Quality plan document that defines the QA procedures for the project will be produced and agreed upon early in the phase of the project. The QA procedures will ensure that all deliverables comply with the contract. The Plan will define in details the requirements, protocol, best practices for the main processes, including performance of WPs, tasks, preparation and review of deliverable, organisation of meetings and workshops, and dissemination activities, of face-2-face, website, brochures, posters, presentations and social media. The plan will set templates for different types of projects outputs, and usage guidelines for project documents, and reports.
The WP leader will be responsible for the management of the quality plan, and the quality control of the deliverables before submission to the EC, by implementing an internal review process within the consortium with review responsivities assigned to selected reviewers from this work package participating partners.
In addition to that an external evaluator who is expert in the filed of entrepreneurship and innovation will review all the project outcomes and deliverables and generate an evaluation report that provide an objective view of the results of the project and the process through which they were achieved and inform the Final Report to the EC. Professor Giorgio Giacinto is an Associate Professor of Computer Engineering. Since 1995 he joined the research group on Pattern Recognition and Applications of the Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Cagliari, Italy (http://pralab.diee.unica.it), in which he leads the Computer Security unit. From Nov. 2000 he is a permanent faculty member at the University of Cagliari, Italy.
Prof. Giacinto teaches courses on Databases, Operating Systems, and Computer Security in the B.Sc. and M.Sc. courses in Electronic, Computer and Telecommunications Engineering. He is the deputy head of the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering of the University of Cagliari since 2013. He also served as deputy head of the Dept. from 2006 to 2012.
Prof. Giacinto is the coordinator for the International Student mobility programs for the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture of the University of Cagliari. He is also the Erasmus+ coordinator for the B.Sc. course in Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering, and for the M.Sc. course in Electronic Engineering.
Prof. Giacinto is the coordinator of the Erasmus+ CBHE project FORC (2016-2019), and he has been involved either as the coordinator, or as a member of the technical management board, in many R&D projects at the local, national and European level, involving universities, research canters, small, medium and large companies. These projects allowed developing a large number of innovative applications of machine learning approaches in the image analysis and classification domain first, and, more recently, in the computer security domain. This expertise allowed him to be selected as a reviewer for a number of research and industrial project at the local, national and international level. Moreover, in 2015, he co-founded the spin-off company Pluribus One (http://www.pluribus-one.it), that is bringing to the market the most valuable products of the activity carried out by the research group.
Prof. Giacinto is author of more than 130 scientific papers whose details can be found on his Google Scholar page.

Tasks

• D4.1 Definition of a quality framework for the project

• D4.2 Implementing project quality assurance control process

• D4.3 Generation of project quality reports

This WP will exploit the the outcomes of the work developed in WP1-WP4 to implement the Fostering Entrepreneurship in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (FESTEM) project, at partner country universities, the industrial partner (LI) and the higher council for innovation and excellence. The work involves taking a systematic approach to implement courses, tutorails and case studies and to evaluate the developed material and pedagogical approaches and assess their outcomes. This also involves taking the necessary due processes and obtaining necessary approvals from academic partners in order to offer the project developed material in their institutions.

The nature of the project involves a wide spectrum of people from ministries, universities and the industry, which makes dissemination a natural effect. Hence, all possible target groups and stakeholders of the project (ex. students, staff, employers of students, academic administration staff and ministries of higher education, ministry of econmics) will be reached via the comprehensive dissemination techniques implemented in FESTEM project. Results of the project and its activities will be disseminated to the target groups.

The dissemination plan will be created at the beginning of the project and will define what dissemination is and describe what exactly needs to be disseminated, the target audience, the dissemination channels and the dissemination materials that are going to be used in the project. The strategy will look at the also look at existing dissemination channels available such as membership publications of different organizations, newsletters, websites, meetings, workshops and conferences.

Main actions aiming to disseminate the the Project, will be focused on the:

• Development of a social media plan to use social and professional networks to make stakeholders and target groups aware of the project and its results, aiming to get them actively involved in the project.

• Development of a project website with web 2.0 technologies to disseminate all project activities and news and to serve as the nexus of the social media campaign.

• Production of dissemination material; leaflets, posters, etc. in all forms to reach the potential student and managers of local companies to participate in the learning activity.

Tasks

• D5.1 Disseminate and exploit strategy and plan

• D5.2 Developed project website from the first months of the project and disseminate the project results

D5.3 Organize a workshop to disucss entrepreneurship strategy inside HE. Participants form academia and the industry, including staff, students, professionals and stakeholders will

• attend this workshop.

• D5.4 To organise a workshop to discuss evaluation outcomes and derive plans to approve and/or adapt courses to address identified issues.

• D5.5 To implement the FESTEM proejct and offer the new developed material (courses, tutorails and case studies) to students, stakeholders, professionals in industry and entrepreneurs

• D5.6 EU Professors visit to Partner Countries Universities to give talks and participate in workshops in innovations

• D5.7 To organise a training workshop by European Staff to reaise the awareness seminars about start-ups in STEM and particpaite in Demo day to present students’ projects to investors

• D5.8 To organise students visits to EU partner universities for projects inernships in starups companies and EU partners

• D5.9 Concluding conference at (PPU) PS

A principled management of the FESTEM project is a key contributing factor for its overall success. Two management committees will be formed, project steering committee and WP leads committee. A project management steering committee will be formed at the start of the project and it consists of the the coordinator (Grant-holder), the project manager and WP leads (or coordinators) and representative from each partner. Its main responsibility is to ensure well coordination of the project, well planned running of the project, adherence to EU and QA rules, financial management, project outputs and mitigating risks as they arise. The WP leads committee consists of the coordinator (Grant-holder), the project manager and WP leads. Its main responsibility is manage day-to-day affairs of the project, to ensure well managed and planned acitivities, timely allocation of activities to the appropriate staff, and mitigating risks in delays.

The kick-off meeting will be the starting point for all participates to bring about a common understanding of the project aims and objectives well defined with clear time-scales and responsibilities. WP leads will be responsible for managing activities of their individual work packages and reporting progress in regularly WP leads committee meetings. The financial administration of the project will be largely the responsibility of the Project coordianor at USIEGEN. The project coordianor, in consultation with the steering committee and EU project officer where necessary, will ensure the implementation of the Erasmus+ rules within the financial procedures of the university. Where necessary, the grand-holder and project will provide information and/or guidance to administrators at partner universities.

The work package will also include the participation of project representatives in Erasmus+ EU meetings and preparation of the project management reports.

Tasks

• D6.1 Organisation of the kick-off meeting

• D6.2 Formation of the project management committees

• D6.3 Set up an online document collaboration environment

• D6.4 Project Financial administration