Beneficiaries of the Innovation and Creativity internship grant under the CFIT III project presented their proposals before a committee of staff and students on Monday 30th September 2024 in the Boardroom, old Building at the College of Engineering, Design, Art and Technology (CEDAT). The event aimed to provide students with a platform to showcase their research projects while receiving constructive feedback. The purpose was to ensure that their work not only addressed real-world challenges but also strengthened the relationship between academia and industry.
The beneficiary students were competitively selected following calls that were sent out to students in the Departments of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Electrical & Computer Engineering, and Mechanical Engineering doing their industrial placement internship to apply for funding in three categories namely Professional Development (UGX 300,000), Community Impact (UGX 500,000) and Innovation and Creativity (UGX 750,000).
In her opening remarks, Assoc. Prof. Dorothy Okello, Dean of the School of Engineering and Principal Investigator of the UNESCO-China Funds-in-Trust (CFIT III) project, highlighted the importance of the grants in bridging the gap between classroom learning and practical industry experience. She emphasized that these grants were meant to push students beyond their usual industrial training by encouraging them to identify problems and propose innovative solutions.
One of the categories that received significant attention was Community Impact, where students were encouraged to extend the knowledge they gained during their industrial training to benefit surrounding communities. As Prof. Okello explained, “Here you are doing your industrial training, you’ve learned some things, but you want to extend your learning to a different community. This category required students to come up with their own ideas on how to translate the benefits of their training to positively impact communities.”
The projects that the students are undertaking and their experiences at their places of industrial training are expected to help them identify real or existing problems and this will help them tease out their fourth year project with the intentions of identifying or finding solutions. The students were also encouraged to work together as teams and get multidisciplinary in the way they approach issues.
The Innovation and Creativity category, which was the focal point of the event, challenged students to identify practical problems during their industrial placements and to craft fourth-year research projects that offered innovative solutions. The faculty members present stressed the importance of industrial training as a platform for discovering final-year project ideas, stating, “When you do your industrial training, it’s a very good place to identify fourth-year projects. You’re part of discussions where companies are addressing challenges, and from there, you can identify a problem to solve.”
The School of Engineering under the stewardship of the Dean, Assoc. Prof. Dorothy Okello is implementing the CFIT III project through which intervention, the unit is expected to produce better trained, skilled, knowledgeable and highly employable engineering graduates that fit into the needs of the industry. The overall objective is to strengthen industry – academia partnerships in support of graduates with training that is better aligned to the labor market and industry needs thereby increasing the employability and engagement of CEDAT engineering graduates.