ENGINEERS ENTREPRENEURS: ENHANCING SKILLS OF STEM STUDENTS

This paper supports the postulate that entrepreneurship education is crucial for sustainable development, seeking to highlight the criticality of entrepreneurial skills development and their role in boosting employability among STEM students from selected universities in the Balkan region. The study is based on a two-week STEM (self)employment bootcamp, developed and piloted with 53 students from five Western Balkans’ universities, in the framework of the project Reconnecting universities and enterprises to unleash regional innovation and entrepreneurial activity – KnowHub, co-financed by the European Union Erasmus+ programme. The impact of the bootcamp concept on the entrepreneurial competences, ambitions and mindset was measured using a customised evaluation tool based on the HEInnovate’s EPIC tool. The concept effectively promoted socially relevant competences, including sustainability values and assessment of the social and ecological impacts of ideas, as well as teamwork, communication, diversity and internationalisation. Participating students showed important progress, higher confidence and motivation for inventing new solutions based on their quality and unique ideas, which offers plenty of opportunities for concept adaptation with the aim of making and supporting generations of engineers entrepreneurs – engipreneurs.