Finalist

Female Entrepreneurial Leader of the Year Award

Gosia Mitka

Finalist of the Female Entrepreneurial Leader of the Year Award

University of St Andrews - United Kingdom

"'Guided by reflection. Fuelled by ambition' "


Engage on social media

https://www.instagram.com/enterpriseeducation/
(Official Instagram Account for ‘Enterprising St Andrews’)
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBzLMoacIDs
(Gosia Mitka - EEUK Pitch)
https://www.facebook.com/enterprisingStAndrews
(Official Facebook Page for ‘Enterprising St Andrews’)

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Summary

I am Gosia (Associate Dean Education, University of St Andrews, Scotland) and I am a passionate educator, leading the transformation of a 600 year old Institution into a sector leader in entrepreneurial education (EE). I role-model entrepreneurial teaching, and work strategically to embed entrepreneurial skills across our curricular and co-curricular activities.

I was recently awarded the Pioneer in Enterprise Education (2022) at the National Enterprise Educator Awards by Enterprise Educators UK, in recognition of my transformational leadership and work towards EE initiatives such as the pioneering Vertically Integrated Projects, and curricular innovations such as the the Enterprise Projects. You can find more details in my pitch, which available on YouTube.

This award also recognised my commitment to knowledge-exchange and collaboration with both national and international colleagues across the sector, which I consider to be at the heart of my practice and ethos. For example, I have worked with HEInnovate and Enterprise Educators in the UK, and drafted the University’s evidence for Skills Development Scotland Strategic Plan 2022-2025.

As an innovative and creative leader, I am a strong believer in giving our students the agency as co-creators of our curriculum and helping them shape their own educational experience. I have been working with them on co-designing a module in the ‘Postgraduate Certificate in Good Academic Practice’ programme. I also worked with a team of students to develop a new app that can be used across the University to help students reflect on their learning; a key entrepreneurial skill.

Key People


Cat Wilson
Director of Centre for Educational Enhancement and Development (CEED)
Centre for Educational Enhancement and Development (CEED) ,  University of St Andrews



Dr Shruti Narayanswamy
Entrepreneurial Education Developer (CEED)
Centre for Educational Enhancement and Development (CEED),  University of St Andrews



Professor Frank Lorenz Müller
Assistant Vice-Principal (Dean of Learning and Teaching) and Provost
Principal’s Office,  University of St Andrews



Professor Clare Peddie
Vice-Principal Education (Proctor)
Principal’s Office,  University of St Andrews



Dr Gayle Doherty, Kenneth Boyd, Dr Kirsty Ross and Hitanshi Badani
University of St Andrews Staff members (School of Neuroscience, School of Computer Science) and student intern
Creating Impact through Enterprise Education Team ,  University of St Andrews



Caroline McWilliams, Priyansha Agarwal, Catherine Mullner
Entrepreneurial Education Core Team
University of St Andrews



Harris Siderfin
St Andrews Student taking part in EE initiatives such as VIP, EMOY and CItEE
University of St Andrews



Professor Ian Smith
Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) Director
University of St Andrews


Acknowledgements

I would also like to acknowledge Scotland’s Future Series Fund and Geoff Morris, the Director of Eden Campus, who provided funding for the Creating Impact through Enterprise Education programme (https://citee.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/).

Images

Pioneer in Enterprise Education NEEA 2022 Award

Enterprise Education Banner Gosia

Creating Impact through Enterprise Education Event

PechaKucha and Enterprising Mind of the Year Award 2023

Enterprise Educators UK Conference - Interactive Session

Design Thinking for Everyone Workshop

VIP Conference - Gosia's HMO Caps in St Andrews Team

Entrepreneurial Education Academic Forum

EntreTime Train the trainer Certificate

Summer Teams Enterprise Programme - Award Ceremony with the Principal

IMPACT STORY

Impacting lifes

“The enterprising initiatives in St Andrews have helped reignite my love and passion for academia”, says Harris, 4th year student. “They have provided me with the opportunity to broaden my horizons by working on practical projects that I am passionate about. Through participating in a Vertically Integrated Project module, I have been able to witness my research being implemented into real-world settings.”

Harris was a student of the Visualising Peace Vertically Integrated Project, during which alongside his project team and Dr König [module coordinator], he “created educational resources that I hope to continue testing in real-world settings to determine their effectiveness in educating people about critical topics.”

“To further develop this research, I entered my project into the Scotland's Big Challenges Competition [part of Creating Impact through Enterprise Education – a programme Gosia co-created], “which offered mentoring and advisory groups to help develop student initiatives. This opportunity was invaluable, as it provided me with legitimacy for my project and exposed me to new ways of thinking.”

Harris learned how to pitch his project through PechaKucha training run by the Entrepreneurial Education Team and submitted his idea for the Enterprising Mind of the Year Award, which Harris has won.

“I am incredibly grateful to everyone involved in enterprise education for expanding my education at St Andrews and equipping me with critical life skills along the way. These opportunities have changed my academic direction and I believe they will have a positive impact on the direction my life takes in the future.”

LEARNINGS

Lessons learned

In my opinion a good leader is successful at integrating the head, heart and hand or in other words keeping an open mind (curiosity), an open heart (empathy), and having an open hand (courage and generosity). To achieve that I believe that it is essential to practice self-awareness and reflection. Reflection is a tool that can help us grow and learn from failure and this is the main reason why I promote it as part of assessment in entrepreneurial education, both in the curriculum and outside.

I aim to role model the four graduate attributes we have in the University of St Andrews relating to Entrepreneurial mind-set: creativity, opportunity recognition, research and problem-solving, and confidence and adaptability. Attempting to embed a new way of learning, teaching and thinking into an ancient institution is challenging, and failure is part of the process. To me, failure is feedback. It creates space for reflection. Upon reflection every challenge can be turned into an opportunity and a source of advice for your future self or others.

Leaders can’t achieve anything alone. To have meaningful impact we need to be willing to let go of wanting things to be our way – we need to embrace diversity of views, perspectives, ways of thinking, ways of being and ways of practicing. Idea generation thrives on diversity. It is the role of a leader to identify and support individuals, connect and inspire them and create structures or remove barriers for collaboration toward achieving something bigger than themselves.

FUTURE PLANS

What's coming?

My long-term ambition is for St Andrews to be a thriving community of entrepreneurial researchers, innovators, and educators so that together as a community we can solve complex societal, economic, and environmental problems - creating a meaningful impact locally as well as globally.

Building on the successful ‘Enterprise is for Everyone’ workshop I co-designed, I am using design thinking to improve university-wide processes, such as module evaluation questionnaires, and a design thinking course for curricular designers. This will help make entrepreneurial education part of the bedrock of the University.

To infuse the curriculum with an entrepreneurial mindset I am connecting colleagues from different Schools towards designing interdisciplinary modules developing competencies for sustainable development. This empowers students and gives them agency to be the change they want to see in the world.

I am collecting and analysing data on the extent to which modules help our students develop an entrepreneurial mindset. Such data will allow for a longitudinal evaluation and monitoring of the curriculum, so I can identify gaps, inform students’ module decisions and generate recommendations for colleagues who wish to engage with entrepreneurial education further.

I work on developing entrepreneurial partnerships between St Andrews and international universities and external partners. Such collaborations will leverage synergies in entrepreneurial education and connect staff and students with elements of the entrepreneurial ecosystem that St Andrews is currently developing. Building bridges between academia, industry, and policymakers will further strengthen our ability to extend the gift of research, education and innovation beyond Scotland.

KEY STATISTICS

$310 000

Donations for Entrepreneurial Education

£3500

Funding from Scotland’s Future Series Principal’s Fund and the Director of the Eden Campus for Creating Impact through Enterprise Education programme

250 students

Vertically Integrated Projects

91 projects

Summer Teams Enterprise Projects

459 students

Summer Teams Enterprise Projects

3000+ hours

Skills-development workshops

9000+

Individual reflective logs from students

30 speakers

PechaKucha

10

Design Thinking for Everyone course participants

8

Student projects addressing Scotland’s challenges in the pioneering Creating Impact through Enterprise Education programme

20

Graduate Attributes embedded in the curriculum

5

New Senior Enterprise Project modules

8 projects

Awarded funding in the Entrepreneurial Education Funding Competition

£24,000

Awarded to staff in the Entrepreneurial Education Funding Competition

Triple E Awards

The Triple E Awards are a global recognition of efforts toward the quest for entrepreneurship and engagement in higher education. It is the first award to focus specifically on different dimensions of the universities' third mission. Implemented regionally, the Triple E Awards aim to foster change in universities and to emphasize their role in their communities and ecosystems.

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