*<div><span style="font-size:small;"><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><big>Psychology department</big></span></span></div>
<div>'''<span style="font-size:medium;"><span style= "font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><big><span id="docs-internal-guid-40ef68fe-7fff-81af-3506-62f9f516a9c1"><span style="background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Promoting student innovation entrepreneurship</span></span></big></span></span>'''</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size: 17ptsmall; "><span style="font-family: Arialarial,helvetica,sans-serif; "><big><span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"</span></span></big>Promoting student innovation entrepreneurship</span></span> ==<p br/></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:small;"><big><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-40ef68fe-7fff-81af-3506-62f9f516a9c1"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">'''''Universidad Católica del Uruguay''''' believes that innovation and entrepreneurship are of huge importance and, therefore, has various different ways to promote its students to engage in this area. Not only are there courses that indirectly provoke students to feel intrigued and widen their knowledge in this area, but UCU also provides courses, clubs and workshops that facilitate this learning process. Some faculties offer a wider variety of these activities than others but all students, no matter their major, have the possibility to innovate and become an entrepreneur if they desire so. Particularly, </span>''</span><br/></span></big></span ></div><div style="text-decoration-linealign: underlinejustify; "><span style="font-size: 11ptsmall; "><big><span style="font-family: Arialarial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Particularly, </span>'''<span style="text-decoration-line: underline; color: rgb(17, 85, 204); background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; text-decoration-skip-ink: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">ÍthaKa</span>'''<span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: Arial; background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(Innovation and Entrepreneurship centre), OPITI and Students Affairs are responsible for promoting, mentoring and supporting the students with their ideas and projects. For instance, ÍthaKa centre organized the three-day-long engagement called “Innovatón” in Punta Del Este, where attendees learned the well-known Design Thinking process.</span></span></pspan></big></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-size:small;"><big><span style="font-family:arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span><span style="background-color: transparent; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"></span>Moreover, UCU has taken part in organizing LOOP an “innovation week” in both 2018 and 2019. LOOP is a week long bootcamp focused on teaching design thinking by tackling down social challenges, targeted to university students and anyone with an interest in innovation and problem solving. </span></span></big></span></div><div><br/></div><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div></div>
== Encouraging faculty innovation and entrepreneurship: ==
<p style="text-align: justify;">When a student has an idea and wants to pursue it, it is extremely important to have the university support and guidance. </p><p style="text-align: justify;">This is the reason why IthaKa, our I&E center was created. Before this, our university had two different establishments for entrepreneurship: Nexo, offering a pre-incubator service, and CII ( the Center for Innovation and Engineering of the Faculty of Engineering and Technologies). Recently, they associated and formed a new center called Ithaka, which principal aim is to incubate students´ ideas and materialize them. The main mission of this center is to bring our university community closer to the entrepreneurial ecosystem, promote innovation and creativity for the development of ventures that contribute to the development of a more prosperous, fair and humane society.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">In fact, Ithaka has already created entrepreneurs and innovators. For instance, Marcelo Ciaspessoni, a Business Management student of UCU, together with íthaka's help and support founded a successful enterprise called ViajerosUy; this is a tourist agency especialized in adventure activities in Uruguay. </p><div></div>