Enterprise Academy supports the Glanua Water Sustainability Enterprise Challenge for Mechanical Engineers
Sustainability is a key challenge that affects all industries and sectors. Our future engineers are in a unique position to help address such sustainability issues. These engineering students can really benefit from early, authentic exposure to such challenges. The School of Mechanical Engineering, supported by the Enterprise Academy, facilitated the scond annual sustainability Enterprise Challenge sponsored by the international water engineering company, Glanua on the Bolton Street campus on the 1st March 2024.
Glanua Water Sustainability Challenge
Student teams from across different stages of the mechanical engineering programmes worked on an Water Sustainability Enterprise Challenge by Glanua focussed on developing innovative strategies to remove carbon from the design, build and operational stages of a water treatment plant.
Engaging with such enterprise challenges equip learners with recognized transversal skills like complex problem-solving, critical thinking, innovation, creativity, communication, teamwork, leadership, inclusion and resilience. Over a full day the teams followed a Human Centred Design approach to map the user experience, conduct research to identify specific problems to address, identified appropriate solutions through ideation and prioritisation sessions before pitching their ideas to a group of judges from Glanua, Uisce Eireann and TU Dublin.
Very positive feedback was received from our sponsor Glanua:
“Water Infrastructure is a vital sector in Ireland and globally and presents both challenges and opportunities for young engineers. The Glanua Water Sustainability Challenge, in collaboration with TU Dublin, provides a unique platform for students to learn the importance of the water industry and empower them to find sustainable and innovative solutions to the challenges facing our industry. We’d like to congratulate all the participants on the day. It was a very rewarding to see the students apply their skills and knowledge to real life industry issues.”
And student participants had favourable experiences:
“It was interesting to learn about the industry and work with people from other course to pitch ideas… Also winning was nice.”
“Having a lot of freedom with our ideas and approaches to the problem was really great.”
“Mixing with individuals with different expertise in different fields was a new positive experience, which challenged and improved our communication skills, as well as our teamwork and problem-solving abilities”.
Benefits of Enterprise Challenges
Engaging with such enterprise challenges equips learners with recognized transversal skills like complex problem-solving, critical thinking, innovation, creativity, communication, teamwork, leadership, inclusion and resilience. This event was instigated and co-ordinated by Thomas Treacy and it was supported by the Enterprise Academy.
If you're interested in learning more about organising an Enterprise Challenge for your programme, please reach out to Kevin Delaney from the Enterprise Academy.
Find out more about Enterprise Challenges at TU Dublin here.
About the Enterprise Academy at TU Dublin
The Enterprise Academy is funded by the Higher Education Authority's HCI Pillar 3, a government programme designed to meet priority skills needs, by increasing collaboration between higher education and enterprise with a focus on innovations in teaching and learning.
