Finalist

Engaged University of the Year Award

School of Engineering, Jönköping University

Finalist of the Engaged University of the Year Award

School of Engineering, Jönköping University - Sweden

"Collaboration that matters"


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Summary

“Engagement with the surrounding society is in our DNA.”
The School of Engineering (JTH) has a long tradition of collaboration with society and believes that education is connected to both theoretical research and industrial practice. This combination supports student attraction and satisfaction and increases future employability. JTH educates students with employable skills and offers lifelong learning courses for continuous development of existing personnel.
The educational palette ranges from short individual courses for professionals to shorter vocational programmes, from bachelors and masters of engineering to doctoral education, all of which are conducted in collaboration with industry.
The ‘Education Concept’ at JTH is unique in that all programmes also provide knowledge from topic areas other than technology, such as Leadership and Project Management, Industrial Management, Entrepreneurship and Marketing and Research Methods and Communication and Sustainability. Also, the internship course is mandatory and final theses are done in cooperation with industry in all programmes of JTH since 2013.
The research at JTH is based on industrial challenges in society within the area of knowledge intensive product realisation, co-creating new knowledge in research and education together with partners in industry. Engagement with society and industry is at the core of everything JTH does and is embedded in the culture. Hence all personnel have a collaborative mindset. External relationships increase opportunities for skills provision, continued professional development and for applied research.

Key People


Ph.D. Ingrid Wadskog
Dean
School of Engineering



Linda Bergqvist
External Relations Manager
Dean’s office ,  School of Engineering



Stefan Brolin
Project Manager
Dean’s office ,  School of Engineering



Associate Professor Jenny Bäckstrand
Director of Graduate Schools
Dean’s office ,  School of Engineering



Professor Salem Seifeddine
Associate Dean of Research
Dean’s office ,  School of Engineering



Ph.D. Patrik Cannmo
Associate Dean of Education
Dean’s office ,  School of Engineering


Acknowledgements

JTH External Relations Council

Images

Alumn Amanda Johansson

Alumn Johan Kindbom

JTH Building

JTH students

JTH students

JU at dawn

IMPACT STORY

Impacting lifes

Amanda Johansson, JTH-Alumna 2018, now Purchasing Manager, studied Logistics and Management. Living in the region she targeted a local, well-reputed company, Hordagruppen – a polymer specialist - for her internship position. During her internship, Amanda had the opportunity to secure logistics between Sweden and China for Hordagruppen and their customers in China during the start-up of a new plant. Already at this time, the CEO offered her a position. Amanda, seeing the advantage of connecting theory with practice to advance her studies took on the job in parallel with her studies. Towards the end of her studies, she did her thesis together with Hordagruppen. Shortly thereafter, she was into her full-time position. Reflecting on her own story, she praises the opportunities given by JTH with extensive industrial connections during studies, preparing students for work-life.

Johan Kindbom, JTH-Alumn 2022, from Construction Engineering: Civil Engineering walked directly from studies to his job as a Road Designer and Project Planner at Ciscon. Already during his internship at the company, he worked with real-life cases, designing part of a highway in midSweden. Keeping in contact with the company working part-time during studies he also did his thesis work on road-side motorcycle protection systems together with a classmate at Ciscon. Mattias Berggren, one of the owners of Ciscon and recruiter of Johan, says that this is not their first recruitment coming this way. It has become a strategy in their recruitment processes, finding wellprepared employees among JTH students.

LEARNINGS

Lessons learned


Creating new knowledge through co-production has been prioritized in research at JTH already from the start 1994. Since 2009, the amount of externally funded research projects in cooperation with industry will determine the level of internal research funds for the following year, which is a strong incentive for external engagement.
Furthermore, awareness and innovative solutions to complex societal challenges require deeper and broader academic and industrial inclusiveness, transparency and knowledge build-up and transfer. JTH promotes and fosters engagement by emphasizing the importance of identifying the mutual benefits and interdependency to realize research and education for the benefit of society. Therefore, staff is engaged internally and externally on various academic and industrial boards cultivating the culture of that, together, shaping the future. The societal impact created is evaluated and various incentives are developed to be able to fulfil JTH’s mission.
The work with external relations is carried out within each department at JTH and followed up in the
External Relations council with External Relations Coordinators representing each department with
20% of their time dedicated to external relations. The council is led by the External Relations Manager and constitutes an Associate Professor focusing on impact and utilizations of research and a Project Manager with special focus on life-long learning. The External Relations Manager is a member of the Management team at JTH and holds the overall responsibility for external relations and collaboration with industry.

FUTURE PLANS

What's coming?


Amid overseeing processes around Strategic Partners, and actual partner companies/organisations, JTH is launching a new partnership model based on prior learning. This model has several levels of partnerships and will enable for a more thorough and intermittent follow-up of activities. Keeping its unique feature – a no-fee partnership – with emphasis on finding win-win situations that drive industrial development in society through collaboration. Collaboration that matters.

Being on the path to showcase that JTH is excellent in collaboration, there is still more to be done. The accreditation as an “Engaged University” is an important acknowledgement for JTH which communicates to students, staff, and external stakeholders, that JTH is a collaborative university. JTH strives to find and visualise more of all those good examples of what is happening within and outside the university together with the industry. “Telling the story of who we are and why collaboration is at our core, is key to attracting the right students, staff and industrial partners,” says Linda Bergqvist, External Relations Manager.


KEY STATISTICS

715

Unique collaboration with companies in 2021

407

Students with internship or thesis work at companies in 2021

123

Companies with joint research applications with the school in 2021

100

Companies presented at our career fair, Karriärum in 2021

+75%

Increase in followers on LinkedIn in 2021

9

Strategic partners

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