The Section for Sport Science at the Department of Public Health has high ambitions when it comes to business collaboration. Its goal is to strengthen the relationship between business and industry and the sport science degree programme and to clarify students' career opportunities. Several initiatives have already been launched, and in the coming week a workshop will kick off another.

2018.01.25 | Sabina Bjerre Hansen

Staff and students at Health's sport science programmes are intensifying their focus on collaboration with business and industry. Photo: Colourbox.

In future, more graduates should be finding jobs in the private sector. These were the words from Pro-rector Berit Eika in 2016 at the launch of the university’s Career Ready project. This is a message that the sport science degree programme at Health has clearly heard.

"For us, thinking about business and industry in relation to the degree programme is nothing new. But we want to take things even further, so that we can both prepare our students for the labour market of the future and establish close relations with the companies and organisations that can potentially employ our candidates after they graduate," says Director of Studies Kristian Raun Thomsen.

The Section for Sport Science has also invited relevant companies, organisations and other partners inside its buildings on Dalgas Avenue in Aarhus for more than just the usual coffee meeting. The buildings now house sports associations, national sports federations and companies right next door to researchers, teaching staff and the students themselves.

Co-existing to spark interaction

The initiative has been named Campus Dalgas InnovationsLab and simply intends to combine stakeholders with students and researchers. The parties must be easily accessible for one another. The objective is to create synergies between specific tasks and the newest knowledge, cases, exchange of experience and networking.

"The idea is that the project should grow nice and easy so we can utilise it in the long-term as a kind of platform for our other business and industry initiatives. At the moment we have a company, a sports federation and two organisations in the building with us. We hope to establish a daily routine where it is completely natural for tenants and users of the building to interact in addition to the planned networking events," says Jesper Friis Mortensen, who is project manager and daily manager of the FIT core facility.

Jesper Friis Mortensen and his colleagues have just carried out an evaluation based on the initial experiences with InnovationsLab. This shows that the stakeholders who have moved in at the department have positive feedback for the project group. The collaboration in the building is slowly taking shape and the tenants make use of the students and PhD students, for example for sparring and scientific evidence for what they are working on. They have also learned about the graduates' competences and have employed a couple of them. 

Workshop with focus on career opportunities

Another initiative is a workshop to be held on 25 January 2018. The section has invited selected representatives from business and industry to meet with the sports science students.

"At the workshop, our students will be challenged to think innovatively in a case challenge, where they will work together with the companies on real tasks. They get the opportunity to network and gain experience. And they can get a sense of what a career in the private sector involves, while the companies get a new and fresh approach to a current and specific issue," says Jesper Friis Mortensen.

The participating companies are Ohmatex, FysioFriends and SUND. They cover a wide professional area, from the development of sensors in textiles over technology for the biomechanical field to consultancy services for the healthcare sector. The workshop will kick off with a presentation by Christian Birk who is one of the founders of Endomondo. He will share some of his experiences of entrepreneurship in the sports technology industry.

The sport science degree programme is also working on a course in Business-oriented sport science project. Similarly, they encourage students to write their Master's thesis in collaboration with a company or organisation.

"We have got off to a good start with our initiatives. They have whetted our appetite and generated more ideas. Having said that, our focus right now is on gathering some experience. But I can reveal that we are ambitious and one of the things we are working on is an extracurricular course in entrepreneurship. That is to say a course where the students can work with an entrepreneurial mindset in theory and practice," concludes Jesper Friis Mortensen.

Contact

Project Manager Jesper Friis Mortensen
Aarhus University, Department of Public Health – Section for Sport Science
Email: jfm@ph.au.dk