Fostering Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Students Dr Marie Vaganay, Mr Bob Cameron School of Built Environment Results Introduction Changes within the Environmental Health profession demand practitioners to maintain the entrepreneurial effort in generating the vision, creativity and innovative thinking remains a constant challenge. This is particularly important in the current economic climate. Changing employment patterns and changing organisational expectations have impacted on the demand for new skill-sets. Employees are expected to be more flexible and adaptable, with a broader range of skills and be better able to manage The students have reported that the module helped developing the following attributes their own career and development.  Employability: They developed personal attributes that made them more likely to The module provides the opportunity for students to be creative, innovative and gain employment and be successful in their chosen career and gave them a sense of entrepreneurial within a defined structure but with the latitude and freedom to identify real employment and seize opportunities and enhance their learning experience. The desired outcome  Professionalism: The modules help them being professional in their approach to is the enhancement of their innovation and entrepreneurship skills that contribute to employers, clients, and each other especially in relation to deadlines and time keeping Ulster’s aspirational graduate qualities.  Entrepreneurship and Creativity: Some showed initiative, creativity and willingness to undertake new projects, analysing and solving problems, new ventures and others learnt from the more entrepreneurial students Collaborative working: Group work is the challenging element of the module with different cultures and expectations but overall students said it developed their ability to interact effectively within a group, showing respect to others and to display leadership skills Students also rated the innovation conference 4/5 for overall satisfaction and qualitative feedback is summarised in Table 1. Method Environmental Health Students working collaboratively in mixed-cohorts (typically 2 to Variety of topics/ new ideas Overall interesting event Improved communication and presentation skills Valued feedback from panel Improved innovative and entrepreneurial skills Group work Learn for next year/ learned from peers Fun Event facilitated meeting new people and new contacts Help gained confidence Educational 35 14 12 10 7 7 6 6 5 3 3 3 students from each year) groups, and in partnership with external professionals or charities, design and deliver various projects with an innovative and entrepreneurial approach. The teams are responsible for setting their own aims and objectives as well as identifying their chosen initiative and potential clients. The initiative could typically, Conclusions but not exclusively, be an identified opportunity to develop a product, service or event The module fosters students ‘ creativity, innovation and entrepreneuriship. It also builds which will contribute to the promotion of environmental health, add to the body of on effective collaborative work, conflict resolution, communicating to a variety of knowledge in environmental health or any of its’ allied disciplines, or promote good audiences. Students demonstrated that they have developed valuable employability health or healthy living. Clients might be identified from within the business, public, or skills, interacted with clients, other professionals and peers. The outcome are the voluntary sectors. It would be expected that groups should exercise significant enhancement of their innovation and entrepreneurship skills that contribute to graduate innovation and entrepreneurial aptitude to identify and deliver their chosen initiative. qualities. The Innovation Conference This conference is an opportunity for students to showcase their initiatives to an audience of environmental health practitioners, partners involved in the projects and potential employers. This also enables the students to disseminate their learning among their peers and learn from each other, and to develop their presentation and communication skills in a conference style environment. www.ulster.ac.uk