Integrating Talent Development into Innovation Ecosystems in Higher Education

Ref. No. 586227-EPP-1-2017-1-BG-EPP

Talent Co-Creation Lab (TCCL) at Agriculture and Forestry University

"The Lab is co-funded by the Erasmus+ Program of the European Union"

With support from the EU grant, AFU has established and equiped a Talent Co-creation Lab for encouraging encourage collaborations with external stakeholders – trainings or innovation projects. This Lab is a shared space where University faculty and students can work together with external organizations. It is well equipped with computers and multimedia. Its work is coordinating by university staff. Students can participate in these projects and trainings together with faculty.

What to expect from the Talent Co-creation Lab in the near future?

The Lab will issue a Call for Collaborations with external organizations. External stakeholders and students will be encouraged to apply for:

  • Live innovation projects - companies, NGOs or public organizations can present a real-world business or social problem for a research team of students and faculty to solve
  • Trainings designed and delivered jointly by external organizations and the University

Students' Volunteering Centre:

The Student Community Service and Volunteering Center was established in the same space with the Talent Co-creation Lab and it is for collaborating with non-profit and community organizations in order to create opportunities for student volunteering. It will also help students describe and assess the skills they gain during volunteering. The idea will be to make volunteering more attractive to students by linking it more clearly to employability skills. Interested external organizations are encouraged to contact the Center with opportunities for volunteering.

Online Platform:

The Talent Co-creation Lab and the Student Community Service and Volunteering Center are maintaining an online platform for cooperation between the University and interested external organizations. This platform is providing information and give access to new proposals and initiatives for collaboration, and it allows all registered participants to jointly develop new ideas for cooperation and work on projects. We invite all participants to provide in the evaluation form their contact details in order to receive invitation for registration on the platform. Registration and participation are free of charge. The platform is open to all interested companies, NGOs, public organizations, community organizations and entrepreneurs.

Major activities at the Talent Co-Creation Lab:

  • Promoting collaboration and interaction of faculty and students with external organizations, focused at innovation
  • Entrepreneurial trainings targeted at students and entrepreneurs / external organizations’ employees
  • Developing as innovation hub specially for agriculture and forest business § Increasing linkage with external stakeholders
  • Supporting students’ community service and volunteering activities
  • Support faculty members/departments for teaching entrepreneurial courses
  • Provide an evaluation platform for internship and other allied activities of the university
  • Serving as a bridge for the functional integration of different farms, directorates and faculties working to support internship, innovation and outreach activities
  • Provide a platform for curriculum development and feedback.

Activities conducted at the Lab:

  • AFU has designed a course (Agricultural Entrepreneurship Management) to be implemented at the Department of Agricultural Economics and Agribusiness Management.
  • Developed a course on Research Methodology targeted to undergraduate students of agriculture stream. This course must be taken by the students before sending to internship. This course is near to approval from faculty board and academic council of the university.
  • Carried out 3 students training at the lab
  • Developed 3 collaborative projects on design of projects in the active involvement of selected entrepreneurs and students

Name of MOU

Date of MOU

Purpose of MOU

Relation to MOU

Institute of Rubber and Jatropa Research -Nepal

June 5 2020

To facilitate rubber research and promotional activities

This MoU has a target to establish the research and development linkage of AFU with the Institute of Rubber and Jatropha Research in Nepal. It is particularly for building collaborative research and development proposals to establish a rubber farm where students can serve as interns and professors can carry out the research related to this commodity. We had applied a proposal to Province 1 government but rejected it in that year due to transfer of budget of the province for covid pandemic management. So, it has the potential of increasing students' employability through internship once we achieve the target and research capacity building of students and teachers.

Ministry of Land Management Agriculture and Cooperatives, Karnali province

January 6 2020

To facilitate research and capacity building of students and teaching faculties

Agriculture and Forestry University has signed Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Ministry of Land Management, Agriculture and Co-operatives (MoLMAC) of Karnali province and Lumbini province specially for supporting students research activities. These are annually supporting about 20 students research slots in different areas of agriculture, livestock and forestry (Non-timber forest products). Besides this, as the MOU of university with these organizations is broad, they can also support students in internship and training. For example, Karnali province is planning to include a budget to train 16 students of AFU on poultry hatchery management in the next fiscal year. All the research support they provided was implemented from DOREX. We will also implement any training activities from their support at Talent Co-creation Lab established at AFU premises. In this way, the MOUs are related to the theme of the INNOTAL project and AFU was inspired to establish linkage for training purposes as wee from INNOTAL.

Ministry of Land Management, Agriculture and Cooperatives, Lumbini Province

February 27 2020