ICA-Edu Special Interest Group (SIG) for Sustainable Entrepreneurship Education in the Life Sciences
The Special Interest Group (SIG) was establised by the ICA Board as a group within the ICA Network for Innovation in Life Science Higher Education (ICA-Edu). The SIG addresses the expectation for the new generation of bioeconomy graduates (agri-food, bio-based economy and Life Science) to show creativity, resilience, sustainability orientation, pro-activeness and risk taking in a world that is characterised by uncertainty - they should have developed these entrepreneurial competences from following the curricular of their degree program.
Entrepreneurship education is a field in which innovative approaches to teaching and learning - like student challenges, innovation spaces, incubators and extra-curricular activities - go hand-in-hand with discussions on graduate profiles and professional identities.
Sustainable entrepreneurship can be seen as entrepreneurial activity aiming at solving problems related to sustainability. Sustainable change agents do this by discovering, creating, and exploiting opportunities that contribute to the SDGs by generating social, environmental and economic value for others in society. Life Sciences students can be seen as future change agents, following many different career paths after graduation. Hence, developing sustainable entrepreneurial skills, mind-sets and competencies are considered as fundamental for higher education graduates from Life Science Universities to successfully engage with the global challenges of the 21st Century and contribute to the achievement of the SDGs.
The Target Membership of the SIG
Building on the work done in the INTRINSIC project complteted 2021, this SIG is aimed primarily at teachers, coaches, and researchers involved in, or interested in, sustainable entrepreneurship education. Through this SIG we aim to enable mutual learning on the subject, share best practices and set the stage for the years to come. By organising colloquia, webinars, round tables and white papers, this SIG provides a platform on which interaction and learning can take place.
See previous Colloquia Outcomes & the INTRINSIC Project Outcomes
ICA SIG Educator Workshop: Implemneting challnge-based learning in sustainable eduaction allowing for the dvelopment of (sustainable) entrepreneurial competneces held online on 26 April 2023
1st ICA-Edu SIG Colloquiun Putting Assessment of Sustainable Entrepreneurship Education in the Spotlight was held on 19 May 2022
5th ICA-Edu Colloquium Action to keep the entrepreneurial genie out of the bottle! Engaging students with sustainable entrepreneurial education in your curriculum was held online because of Covid-19 virus during the mornings of 26 to 28 May 2021. See the programme and presentations. See the Summary
4th ICA-Edu Colloquium: Let the entrepreneurial genie out of the bottle! how will we stimulate the nascent entrepreneurial skills of our students? was held on 15 and 16 May 2019 in Leuven, Belgium. See the Programme and Presentations. See the summary
Leadership Group of the ICA-Edu SIG
The SIG is a section within the ICA Network for Innovation in Life Sciences Higher Education (ICA-Edu). The Chair of the SIG is a member of the ICA-Edu Executive Committee.
Chair: Andreas Zitek, University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Vienna (BOKU), AT
Yiorgos Gadanakis, University of Reading, UK
Guido Orzes, Free University Bozen-Bolsano, IT
Jarkko Pyysiäinen, University of Helsinki, FI,
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