Research Collaboration: Diponegoro University in the SMART Project and Erasmus +
In order to improve and develop an entrepreneurial spirit in the campus environment, Diponegoro University collaborates with the SMART Project and ERASMUS +. The SMART Project is a university business engagement project in Indonesia to support employability and transition into the graduate labor market. Prof. Ambariyanto, M.Sc stated in his explanation that this project is one of the research activities funded by Erasmus + to strengthen the Capacity Building at High Education Institutions (HEI).
In this project, the program has undertaken Entrepreneurship and is closely related to the 1st and 4th goals of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and is very suitable if carried out in Indonesia from the program options offered by Erasmus +.
This collaboration involves 10 public and private universities both from within the country and abroad. In detail, 7 (seven) domestic universities include Diponegoro University (Undip), Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology (ITS), Udayana University (Unud), Mataram University (Unram), Sam Ratulangi University (Unsrat), Kalimantan Institute of Technology ( ITK), as well as Raja Ali Haji Maritime University (UMRAH) and there are three European universities consisting of Alma Mater Studiorum Università in Bologna (UNIBO), Italy, Agora Institute for Knowledge Management (AGORA) in Alicante, Spain and the University of Turku ( UTU) in Turku, Finland.
The SMART Project is motivated by the impact of a solid business-university relationship on broad socio-economic growth in the current European Strategy 2020. While in European countries, business-university cooperation has increased in the last few decades. Therefore, it shows evidence that a critical need for good models and practices is needed for the creation of strategies and instruments in this domain.
In addition, this project also aims to build and operate a sustainable structure for Business Engagement Centers (BECs) with a one-stop approach to support students, researchers, and companies. It is expected that all project activities can run smoothly for the next three years. Hence, what is written in the proposal can be done all to the maximum and get a positive report card from Erasmus +.
By taking the topic of Entrepreneurship for this project, it is expected that it can stimulate higher education in Indonesia to be more advanced by opening up ideas about entrepreneurship. On the other hand, this collaborative project was built as a real action for Undip in implementing the SDGs.
With the completion of this project in the future, this matter can create business links between universities in developing the economy and avoiding an overlap of businesses in Indonesia. This could be the thing that makes an independent business starting from a university, in addition to reducing poverty and improving the quality of education, especially in the development of start-ups, concluded the first representative from Indonesia who became the coordinator in the Erasmus + project program.
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