MUNISS = Interuniversity Student Competition

Faculty of Economics and Administration of Masaryk University in cooperation with the Brno University of Technology and Mendel University in Brno has prepared a project whose goal is to combine higher education with practice, deepen the cooperation among universities, the Statutory City of Brno and Regional Chamber of Commerce of Southern Moravia and also deepen the cooperation among faculties of these universities and increase knowledge sharing among their students. This project was running from 2012 to 2014. Smaller version will be run in academic year 2015/2016.

Introduction

The aim of this EU project was to embrace, in cooperation among the Statutory City of Brno,RCC SM and MU, Mendel University and BUT, the potential of gifted students for the creation of practical studies that will focus on the development of the city of Brno or on the areas that are taken care of by the RegionalChamber of Commerce of Southern Moravia, and thus will be used for the needs of the city or private sector.

The content of the project is a practically oriented education for students at all three universities. The aim of teaching is creating the studies related to the topics and issues addressed by the Brno City Municipality(or RCC SM), especially in connection with the work of the City Strategy Office on business concepts and concepts of economic development of the city. Thus, the output of the project ought to be the studies that will be useful for the development of the city where the universities are located.

Teaching ought to be realised as a teamwork. There should be thirty teams created in total. Each team will be composed of eight to nine members so that there will be representatives of at least half of the faculties of a given university (some teams will be interuniversitary). This creates multidisciplinary built teams which will enable a wider and better elaboration on assigned topics. A trio of teams will always compile their work on an identical topic. As a result, there will be ten topics drawn up in several variants. The choice of topics will be published on the web of the Statutory City of Brno and the Chamber of Commerce.

Teaching will be freely available for full-time students (on both undergraduate and graduate levels).Successively, team leaders and subsequently other members of teams will be selected out of the enrolled students. The selection will be based on questionnaires, covering letters and other methods (eg. by the form of full-fledged assessment centers for the leaders). The aim of the multilevel selection is to ensure that the teams will be made up well.

All the classes will be held in the form of a competitionin order to both increase the attractiveness from the students’ perspective and, especially, for the quality objectives of the created studies. Hence, the entire project is named ‘Interuniversity Student Competition’ (abbreviation in czech language is MUNISS). At the end, the work of all competing teams will be assessed by an expert committee. Members beloging to the best rated teams will receive a formal award and possibly creatives cholarships. At the end of semester, after submission and evaluation of the projects, a workshop will take place together with the award ceremony.

Spring semester is complemented by other activities. Some teams will take part in courses on developing team skills, others will go abroad (to the sister cities of Brno) in order to get inspired by local procedures related to dealing with treated topics. An interesting summer school will be held at the end for a certain number of participants.

Benefits


Students

  • learning teamwork

  • interfacing the knowledge from different faculties and enabling confrontation among them

  • opportunities for gaining experience via practically oriented work done during lessons

  • possibility of curriculum vitae references related to the acquired formal award for members of the best teams

  • possibility of granting a scholarship for creative activity for some of the best projects

MasarykUniversity, Brno University of Technology and Mendel University in Brno

  • providing a space for creative activities of students and use of their potential

  • practically oriented form of classes

  • practical cooperation with the public sector (in the city where the universities are located) and in its favour

Statutory City of Brno

  • making use of the potential and students’ creativity in favour of the city (complying with motto of ‘Brno as a student city’)

  • obtaining a variety of projects compiled within a given field and useable for the needs of the city

  • cooperation with the largest universities in the city in form of practical and creative work

Regional Chamber of Commerce of Southern Moravia

  • making use of students’potential and creativity in favour of the private sector issues in the South MoravianRegion

  • obtaining a variety of projects compiled within a given field and useable for the needs of the cooperating entities

  • cooperation with the largest universities in the region

Read the links in the ‘General Information’ section on the left pages’ menu for further information.