Education
Tell your students about Talent X
In November, students at the Faculty of Science once again have the opportunity to participate in Talent X. Vice Dean Poul Nielsen encourages everyone to share this message with the faculty's students.
Talent X is a project-oriented course of 10-20 ECTS that matches Master's degree students from SDU with small and medium-sized businesses. The expectation is for at least 20 students to participate in the spring of 2023 – a large proportion of them from the Faculty of Science.
The overall goal is that by 2022-2023 at least 100 students from the Humanities, Business and Social Sciences and Science faculties will have been matched in this large project, financed by the Danish Agency for Labour Market and Recruitment, in which the consultancy Lead the Talent, several unemployment insurance funds and Odense Municipality are also involved.
Vice Dean Poul Nielsen is excited about the project, and he tells us why here:
– Students’ contact with companies during their studies is critical for their future job prospects. Talent X provides students with a unique opportunity to bring their academic competencies into play in an interdisciplinary business project alongside students from other subjects. This is an extremely exciting innovation for us.
On their website, Talent X writes the following to students:
– Apply your theoretical knowledge into practice through an internship. Get relevant work experience and discover what you are good at, and what you would like to work with in the future. We find local companies with great employment potential, so you can kickstart your career now.
Student Counsellor Camilla Gundlach is also enthusiastic about Talent X:
– Through Talent X, students get to apply their skills and competencies in a context very similar to the world they will encounter after their studies and when they have to start in their first job. It gives them a lot of good experience they can draw on in the future.
In Talent X, the students are also defined more on the basis of who they are as people and what they can offer in relation to the specific case, than on the basis of the education they are undertaking.
– In the project, the business owner looks exclusively at who has the best proposed solutions and who will work well together in a group. In fact, the company will not know their educational background at all. This means that the students are met with less stereotypical perceptions of what they can contribute with, which I think is hugely positive, says Camilla Gundlach in conclusion.
Therefore, Poul Nielsen encourages all lecturers at the Faculty of Science to help spread the word about Talent X to their students.
– This autumn, two students from the Faculty of Science are participating in Talent X, but it has long been the plan for more students to participate in the spring. There is more flexibility in the second semester on most of our Master’s degree programmes. The deadline is this November, so make sure to contact your students if you know anyone who might want to be part of this project.