Entrepreneurship needs to be trained and developed!

Therefore the WU Entrepreneurship Center offers hands-on learning and training opportunities in its Skills Academy for fostering entrepreneurial thinking and acting. The actual range of topics covered in its workshops is changed and extended every semester.

The Changemaker Program offers students a great possibility for social commitment by teaching primary school kids basic entrepreneurial skills.

In 2010, WU, Caritas Vienna, and the REWE Group launched the “Lernen macht Schule” initiative. The goal of this program is to promote learning and social inclusion by stimulating contact and exchange between students and young people from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. Students who volunteer to participate in the initiative (in the Learning Buddy-, Music Buddy- or Sports Buddy programs) receive special training during several days of preparatory seminars. They also receive supervision and coaching during their work. WU issues written certificates to confirm students’ volunteer work, and the volunteering activities are also eligible for credit transfer towards a WU degree program in the form of a free elective (3 ECTS credits per semester).

Learning Buddy Program

In this program, WU students act as educational role models and work with children and teens from institutions run by Caritas Vienna (shelters for asylum seekers, shelters for mothers and children, support centers, etc.) and the Lernhaus tutoring center run by the Austrian Red Cross. Over the course of a semester – and sometimes even longer – the students meet with the children or teens on a weekly basis, help them with their schoolwork, and occasionally enjoy recreational activities together.

Music Buddy Program

As part of this program, students lead a choir of children, under competent musical supervision. The students and children meet every week to rehearse, and they participate in several performances over the course of the semester. This project allows the students and the children to develop key skills in a playful way (“learning with all the senses”).

Sports Buddy Program

As sports buddies, students support kids on a weekly bases in order to develop positive body concepts and movement experiences. The goal is to show the kids that exercising and healthy food can be fun and to let them experience positive relationships with role models.

The Sustainability Challenge provides a platform for master’s students and particularly dedicated bachelor’s students to implement their own sustainable start-up ideas. In the Service Learning Track, students can develop practical skills for solving specific business problems. The units are taught in the form of courses with continuous assessment of student performance (PI courses). In addition, the program also includes coaching sessions and project presentations.

The Sustainability Challenge is a cross-university initiative organized jointly by the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU), TU Wien, the University of Vienna, and WU Vienna. The program duration is two semesters, and students can start the program every winter semester.

The cooperative project seminars included in the Specialization in Entrepreneurship and Innovation are a perfect choice for WU students with strong initiative, creativity, entrepreneurial minds, and plenty of motivation who want to develop their potential further. The students have the opportunity to work on professional consulting projects that allow them to deepen and apply their theoretical skills and establish contacts to project partners from the business community. The students experience a diverse range of project environments, including the strategic and operational activities of organizations like start-ups, SMEs, major corporations, etc.

As part of this course (Course V of the Specialization in Diversity Management), students work on a real-life case study in cooperation with corporate partners. The partner companies present key diversity-related issues they are dealing with to the students, who then work on these questions and present their results during a final event at the end of the semester. During the classes, students receive targeted academic input to guide them in their work on the case study, and their group work is supervised on a continual basis.

The focus of this course (Course III of the Specialization in Public and Nonprofit Management) is to combine theoretical knowledge and practice-oriented questions and issues from the field of public and nonprofit management. The students analyze questions and issues presented by the project partner and, based on their findings, develop specific recommendations and scenarios. The primary goal of this approach is to coach and support the students in their team work, project management activities, and cooperation with project partners from the field of public and nonprofit management.

The Competence Center for Sustainability Transformation and Responsibility (STaR) gives students of the WU Master’s Program in Socio-Ecological Economics and Policy (SEEP) the opportunity to develop and implement their own service learning concepts. Course I provides the theoretical basis and allows the students to develop their service learning ideas. In Course II, students get to implement their concepts. These two courses allow students to gain service learning experience in a regional context. The goal of the courses is to explore the relationship between theoretical research and practical applications and the related issues and questions.