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Priorities:University de Montevideo Student Priorities

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Now the UM has 7 different faculties : - Law School - Faculty of Business Science  and Economics - Faculty of Engineering - Faculty of Communication - Faculty of Biomedical Sciences - Business School (IEEM) - Center of leaders, entrepreneurs and innovators Actually the UM offers 43 different major for undergraduate students and 22 majors for graduate students<span style="background-color: transparent; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and 8 degrees, through the colleges listed above, also it has been ranked the best university in Uruguay by the QS ranking.

The number of professors and faculty members fostering innovation and entrepreneurship has been growing in the last couple of years. This whole new spirit lead to the creation of Initium. This center has created different courses and workshops stimulating students and professors to ~~develop~~ develop new skills and attitudes with an innovation and entrepreneurship mindset. It is also a place for connection between ~~students~~students, alumni entrepreneurs, accelerators and other extracurricular entities.There are also other courses that stimulate innovation in their areas, such as Engineering Labs or Investment Projects for example.<~~div> </~~div>== '''STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP CULTURE AMONG UM STUDENTS (~~2018~~2019)'''''' ''' ==

=== Strategy One: UMornings: Empowering students ===

After researching and understanding students in our university we were not surprised to find out they feel demotivated and reluctant to get involved in most activities, including the ones that have to do with their education.

Since we understand a crucial part of the I&E culture is to feel empowered, we strongly believe that our first strategy should focus on tackling this issue.

Students need to be inspired in order to achieve great things, this is why we propose a free event where students and staff can be inspired by hearing someone's story. The power of storytelling can have a positive impact on students and provide the perfect environment for entrepreneurship to flourish. For this idea to happen we would need a room available at a given time for a previously selected speaker to join us. We strongly believe that offering food produced and manufactured by different small student ventures would be valuable for both, the event and them. While researching we discovered an abundance of this type of small businesses and we think that forging strategic alliances with them can not only boost their growth but also show students that being an entrepreneur is a highly supported career option by Universidad de Montevideo.

We expect that these motivational and inspirational talks improve the perception of I&E in our university. It would be ideal to do these twice a month.

'''Step #1: '''Talk to Romina Dominzaín to obtain the support from Initium and gather contact information to select speakers. Florencia would handle this task.

<span style="font-size:medium;"'''Step #2: '''Talk to the people in charge of arranging schedules and classrooms to ask for an available room in the selected date. It is crucial to make sure the room is cleared and eating and drinking is allowed. Mauricio would handle this task.

'''Strategy Two: Customizing Faculty Info'''

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<span style="font-size:medium;"While researching why students knew, overall,  little to none about I&E we found a deeper problem. Communication through out our University is not at its best. Students in our school do not know most of the what our University has to offer, including subjects, events and more. We realized that there is a huge amount of data that is not reaching the people that would appreciate it and make the most out of it.

We believe this is because students´s interests and needs are not taken into consideration when it comes to communicating new courses, events or student initiatives.

If this was taken care of, students would have a better chance to get to know people with similar interests and, not only generate new connections that could foster I&E through out campus, but also make the best out of their University experience.

We propose to merge information and technology to create a database with the students´s likes and passions. This will allow for automation in the area of communication leading to better targeting when sending info by email. In other words, if the correct people received the correct information we could create new and better opportunities.

'''Step #1: '''Talk to the IT Department to make possible this automatization. Emanuel would handle this task

<span style="font-size:medium;"'''Step #3: '''Teach the new system to the people in charge of spreading the information making sure they understand this will in no way replace their jobs, only make them easier. Édina would handle this task

=== Strategy Three: Let's Take Recycling Seriously ===

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Montevideo has a huge problem regarding waste. In 2017 a local newspaper published that the place where our city displays waste will exceed its capacity in no more than 5 years. Currently our University does not have an efficient recycling program and it’s not focusing on impacting our community and conscientizing its students and staff, that are as well citizens.

After LOOP, Semana de la Innovación, in which we brought to the University a social project called “Resuena”, everybody got aware of a problem no one had realized before. Aiming to spread a 360° message of sustainability, LOOP allied with that key partner to foster a never seen environmental awareness program on it’s participants and staff. As previously stated, Montevideo as a whole, is facing a deep problem related to the limited capacity of trash dumps.

With the goal in mind to generate change, Resuena put 10 recycle bin stations with their corresponding banners along the building to classify the trash in three simple categories:

*Organic waste

*Recyclable stuff

*Mixed trash

Even though 3 categories is not quite enough to make a correct classification of the trash, it’s a great beginning for a country with a poor, but slowly increasing culture of recycling. Nevertheless, it was utterly surprising how people, participants and authorities reacted positively to this initiative.

We think that environmental awareness is a vital matter and, as agents of change, it’s part of our duty to lead by example and get our peers into those small habits that create a better world for all of us every day. Thus, knowing that this action is likely to be well accepted by all students and it’s potential to open a wide new range of innovative ideas, our proposal is to make a win-win alliance with Resuena in the short run.

'''#Step1: '''Arrange a meeting with Antonio Carvalho, the leader of Resuena and manager of a local high school. Florencia would handle this task.

<span style="font-size:medium;"'''#Step4: '''Elaborate a complete budget with the cost of implementation of both, recycling stations and teaching banners. Also, start our compost with help of Lombriz urbana. Édina would handle this task.

<span style="font-size:medium;"'''#Step5: '''Present a campaign and workshop to instruct interested students, staff and authorities. Making people feel into this change will definitely make it last. Mauricio and Emanuel would handle this task.

=== Strategy Four: Transform The Canteen Into a Collaborative Space ===

Universidad de Montevideo faces an intrinsic problem when it comes to space. Our findings revealed that there is not enough space in general. Classrooms are crowded, open public spaces are not enough, the canteen is small and not practical and, most importantly, there is no space to work on projects. Moreover, we got to know the real possibilities regarding budget. Reality is, our University does not have the funding to involve itself in a bigger project. More research into the causes of the problem made us realize what we could tackle effectively was the way spaces were being used. We then decided that, in order to foster the I&E culture, we could reorganize and rethink already existent places.

We believe that collaboration between both, random people and peers, does have a deep impact in people’s sense of community. According to our findings, many people don’t use their schoolspaces to study or interact because, due to several reasons, they don’t find on it what they need.

These are some of the insights we found as well as some of the ideas we came up with during our design thinking process:

*Foster shared places like the Ping Pong and mini-soccer areas.

*To have long tables at the canteen and the patio to make students seat together and promote interaction.

*The need for a space of Co-work (considering the evident lack of space we are facing).

*People want more multidisciplinary interaction through taking subjects of other areas of knowledge.

*The canteen stays behind the high level of service in every school.

After a long and challenging process of understanding not obvious relationships between people’s insights (interest of knowing new people and working with them) and the possibilities of a short of space institution, we ended up in a simple but different solution.

Why does UM canteens have small four-people tables instead of bigger furniture?

Integrating both, people's interests and the way we would like our canteen display be like, we redesigned the space to be more collaborative and teamwork-friendly through acquisitions of longer tables.

Redesigned in this way, it is a new opportunity to create a space for people to spend their free time as well as work in big teams or even interact with random students seated close to them. We think that, with a little investment, and no bigger space requirements, this is a simple but perfect solution to foster a sense of unity amongst students. And so, sooner than later, will generate an I&E-friendly place and a collaborative mindset, both powered by a change on the display and a few other details.

'''#Step1:''' Re-emphasize with users. Have a deeper understanding of the space needs along the day. Florencia would handle this task.

<span style="font-size:medium;"'''#Step2: '''Understand the space capacities prototyping as much displays as possible until we find out the right one (drawing with chalk in the floor is a great and cheap option). Rodrigo would handle this task.

<span style="font-size:medium;"'''#Step4: '''Find a temporary place to storage the old furniture until we can sell it. Unless the university wants to keep it or do anything else. Nicolás would handle this task.

'''STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP CULTURE AMONG UM STUDENTS (2018)'''

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=== Strategy One: Recycle a room into a Makerspace called i-room ===

=== Launching Video  ===

~~<~~[https://www.youtube.com/~~span>~~watch?v=ViDgaLkmmG4&nbsp https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViDgaLkmmG4&nbsp];

== STRATEGIES TO IMPROVE INNOVATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP CULTURE AMONG UM STUDENTS (2017) ==

Nicolás Fynn

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