Sponsorship project wins ADU Innovation Awards

The name of the game was “Make a Difference” and, whoever scored most points with the judges not just for good ideas, but thoroughly presented projects, won the top prizes.

This was Abu Dhabi University’s (ADU) third Chancellor’s Innovation Awards for the 2012 Innovation Networks and the winners were announced on Sunday. Designed to enhance the creative spirit of the university’s students and staff by recognising and honouring the most innovative ideas, the awards bring together mixed teams of both university employees and students, who have to come up with a detailed project ready to be implemented.

“While the focus of this year’s awards was ‘Make a Difference’, there were five project themes for the 2012 Innovation Networks,” explained Rima Shaban of ADU, part of the evaluation committee for the awards.

These were Enhance Quality of Customer Services, Student Recruitment, Increasing Funding and/or External Support for Academic or Non-academic Activities at ADU, Innovative Strategies (for improving communication and increasing student retention and personal growth) and Community Engagement.

For the first time this year, ADU stakeholders were also allowed to participate.

“We had 12 applications — nine internal, from the university, and two external,” said Shaban.

There were two sets of awards, for internal participants, with three cash prizes for top three teams of Dh20,000, Dh15,000 and Dh10,000, and one award for an ADU stakeholder participant of Dh20,000.

And the top winners were Sarah Al Hashmi, Sulagna Sanyal, Stephen D’Cunha and Owais Amir for “Diversified Student Recruitment Plan”.

Their project was a diversified programme to increase community support for the students of ADU through sponsorship, in addition to school outreach through competitions and other activities, mainly targeting businessmen of different nationalities to sponsor students. As a return on their investment, ADU will include them as business partner and include their company’s logo in related events.

The second place was won by “CGOC”, a project of an online smart interactive game that provides students with entertaining and quick-in online career guidance. The game would be built in cooperation with architectural and interior design students, with the help of the College of Arts and Sciences faculty on psychological issues, which the main questions will be built on. Based on the students’ answers to the questions, different paths will be provided that lead the student to ideal jobs and the programmes that ADU offers and which match their skills.

The third place went to “Passport to success”, a project about developing students’ capacity in both community engagement and professional skills with an accredited certificate. Every year, each ADU student would have to do four university activities and four community activities, and for each such activity they will get a stamp in their ADU passport, a compulsory requirement for their graduation.

The external prizes was given to Al Futtaim Technologies, which came up with a new technology to enhance the services of the call centre at ADU and, as a result, to improve all customer services related to this centre.

One of these projects will be chosen by ADU in the coming weeks to be implemented.

silvia@khaleejtimes.com