Building Collaborative Partnerships…

Recognising the value of universities engaging with issues affecting the wider community and working with organisations outside education, the Strategic Insight Programme (SIP) was launched to help university staff develop and build relationships with external partner organisations.

SIP is a pioneering, fully-funded project to develop these collaborative partnerships by funding short term placements of university staff into external organisations, to develop the skills and ‘real world’ experience of university staff and to:

Gain strategic insights into each other’s organisations
Stimulate innovation to develop ideas together
Provide a fresh perspective
Build strategic partnerships for future collaboration
Examine how collaborative partnering with universities can really be beneficial

SIP is a collaborative project fully funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales (HEFCW) until July 2010. Placements require no financial input from partner organisations, making it a low risk way of developing new links.

The four HE Institutions participating are:

Latest News

Third Sector Links for CSM

Monday, 18 January 2010 00:00

David Lloyd, Work-Based Learning Co-ordinator for UWIC's Cardiff School of Management (CSM), joined Perthyn as a Trustee in September 2008. Perthyn provide residential care for mentally and physically disabled adults in Wales and more recently Shropshire and the East Midlands and look after 140 clients with a staff of in excess of 500. As a Trustee David has lead the Finance Scrutiny Committee and has acted as Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees and has been able to bring his considerable previous business and management experience to help support and guide this important charity. More recently David has been appointed Chair of the Board of Trustees. The opportunity to help Perthyn has provided David with a valuable insight into a 3rdsector organisation and Perthyn have supported CSM's work-placement programme by hosting three placement students.

Smart Clothing & Wearable Technology at Newport

Monday, 18 January 2010 00:00

Jane McCann from the Smart Clothes and Wearable Technology (SCWT) group at Newport School of Art, Media and Design is working with The Textile Institute to develop accredited training materials for students and industry practitioners, as smart textiles merge with embedded wearable technology.

Jane explains, "This type of training aims to break down the boundaries in devising a new cross-disciplinary, design-led teaching and learning materials that merge science and technology and attract both male and female learners."

Further development of training will involve input from industry experts, potential employers and sector skills councils to provide the way forward for a new generation of SCWT products.