Empreendedorismo no curso de engenharia química da UFSCar: análises e propostas

Abstract

The present study brings an analysis about the new “Diretrizes Curriculares Nacionais” (DCNs) designed in 2019 to the undergraduate engineering programs, to be implemented until 2022. The focus is on the entrepreneurship topic and how it can be initiated in the Chemical Engineering curriculum program at UFSCar. Aiming this DCN’s theme, a research has been conducted with students trying to understand their actual comprehension and expectations related to learning and teaching entrepreneurship in an engineering school. The research showed that the entrepreneurship learning related topics are still few widespread through the institutions. Simultaneously, a comparative analysis has been done with different engineering curriculum programs, which already encourage and effectively apply entrepreneurship related activities. As the new rules bring significant changes to the universities, this study tried to consider only those who have implemented something and achieved results as feedback to the student growth and professor adaptation, focusing to include entrepreneurship related activities at the Chemical Engineering UFSCar that fit what is requested by the DCNs. The highlight observed was the interaction between the universities and the business, which reflected in a strong entrepreneurship development from the students and professors. Finally, a project has been done with Chemical Engineering Department volunteer groups of students applying the Design Thinking active methodology which consists of an interactive and collaborative problem solving methodology focusing on the stakeholders feeling and issues, in this case the students themselves. For five weeks the groups have been guided through online meetings to develop four of the five steps covered by the methodology which are: Empathy, Problem Definition, Brainstorming, Prototyping (the fifth step would be the Testing) aiming to finish the project with entrepreneurship activities prototypes to support the curriculum program reformulation. These prototypes discussed topics related to: softs kills development initiatives, a higher support to the department entities and group projects elaboration in the specific subjetcs.