Students' Support towards Entrepreneurial Spirit Development

The main coordinator of the project was Tomas Bata University in Zlín which is a dynamically developing university providing a wide range of study opportunities. The people interested in studying can choose from various degree programmes that the university offers at six faculties: Faculty of Technology, Faculty of Management and Economics, Faculty of Multimedia Communications, Faculty of Applied Informatics, Faculty of Humanities, Faculty of Logistics and Crisis Management. The university is the centre of top science and research on national as well as global scale.
Tomas Bata University in Zlín follows a long-term tradition of the Faculty of Technology which has been in Zlín since 1969 and has prepared hundreds of university-educated specialists. It is named after a legendary founder of shoe industry in Zlín and a well-known entrepreneur worldwide, Tomáš Baťa (1876-1932). Therefore, it strives to go on with this tradition at present and form a business university that would educate new entrepreneurs.

The Catholic University “Santa Teresa de Jesús” of Avila is a private, non-profit organization of the Catholic Church of Spain. Universidad Católica Santa Teresa de Jesús de Ávila opened on the 24th of August in 1996 by decree of the bishop of Avila, with the support of the main social and business forces of the city of Avila. The Universidad Católica Santa Teresa de Jesús de Ávila is open to fruitful dialogue between university institutions, higher research institutes and other organizations and institutions of culture and science, with whom it intends to establish cooperative relationships with the aim of promoting knowledge and extending science and the culture in the public and private concert of institutions. It is a young but at the same time modern university, which knows how to adapt perfectly to changes and new educational trends. Since its inception has been committed to providing a learning and teaching experience that includes an international dimension. The Erasmus + program is a fundamental part of achieving this goal. Universidad Católica Santa Teresa de Jesús de Ávila has a series of well established mobility programs Erasmus + that we have given continuity.

The University of Szczecin is a public institution that was established by the Polish Parliament Act of July 1984 as a result of the merger of the Faculty of Transport Engineering and Economics of the Szczecin University of Technology and the Pedagogical University. It started its activity in the 1985/86 academic year, dynamically developing the post-war academic tradition and playing an important culture-forming role in the city and the region. It is currently the largest university in Western Pomerania, employing approximately 1,100 academic teachers and over 800 administrative staff, meeting all statutory requirements and consisting of 7 didactic faculties and 18 research institutes (in which 3 are in broadly sense belongs to economy and management). The scientific and infrastructural development of the university was constantly accompanied by an increase in the number of students, currently around 12,000, for whom the teaching offer is constantly being improved and new fields of study are being prepared (currently around 70 fields of study, full-time and part-time). Students participate in the work of 160 research clubs and publish their journals. There are, among others, academic theater, choir, Student Culture Zone, Academic Sports Association, NZS, AIESEC and ELSA. The many advantages of studying in the US include the possibility of using the collections of the Main Library and its 8 branches. There are over one million three hundred and fifty thousand compact, continuous and special publications. An element of the constantly developed cooperation with foreign countries is active (since 1998) participation in the Erasmus program, in which the US partners are nearly 196 universities from 24 countries, including non-European ones. Thanks to the implementation of an increasing number of projects in recent years, including those with a social dimension, the scientific and infrastructure base is being improved, which enables cooperation with the economic environment and other research units in the country and abroad. The University of Szczecin has a long tradition of entrepreneurship education. There are 2 forms of education: daily courses and single courses. The main course is “Entrepreneurship and investment” – the practical course where next to academic staff the practitioners from business have lectures for students. The single courses are subjects covered entrepreneurship theory and practice offered for all students at Faculty of Economics, Finance and Management, as well as in other non-economics fields. The courses of entrepreneurship are also offered for students and graduates in form of post-diploma courses/subjects, in the projects and other activates. Many members of research staff carried out the research on entrepreneurship as a basic research and the application research too.

We are a progressive, client-oriented agency. Our mission is to create and implement the Zlín Region Regional Innovation Strategy and promote the quality of life in the Zlín Region with the accent on education, entrepreneurship, and professional growth. Through our own or shared programmes as well as national and European projects we offer developmental activities in the following areas:

• creativity and entrepreneurial spirit of pupils and students;
• acceleration of business plans (we run a business incubator);
• services for small and medium-sized enterprises, particularly in the domains of the Zlín Region specialization;
• support for research and development of companies that have effective cooperation with research institutions;
• services for increasing the effectiveness of human resources management, including career counselling and professional development;
• support for expansion of endogenous companies in the Zlín Region.