At a recent ceremony, President Anders Bjarklev and Marianne Thellersen, Senior Vice President—Innovation and Entrepreneurship, awarded diplomas to students having made an extra effort in one of DTU's sustainable student-run projects—the so-called 'Blue Dot' projects.
"Blue Dot projects are projects addressing real problems for the benefit of society. You have successfully developed interdisciplinary solutions in teams with external stakeholders, and you have done a great job," said President Anders Bjarklev in a speech on Monday, 22 September, where he had a hard time hiding how proud he was of the students who were shortly to receive a diploma for their extraordinary effort in a Blue Dot project.
Of the 150 students who have participated in a Blue Dot project during the year, 63 have particularly distinguished themselves by taking on management responsibility, prepared a major thesis on the project or, in other ways, put in extra hours. They are the ones receiving additional proof of their commitment.
"We give them diplomas, so they have something special to add to their CV. These students take responsibility for diffuse and complex problem-solving processes, and this is what we reward them for," says Marianne Thellersen.
Extraordinary efforts
In her speech, Marianne Thellersen also pointed out how extraordinary efforts translate into extraordinary results, and that the performance of Blue Dot students reflects on themselves, the University and society at large when they solve challenges for all of us.
Over the past year, the approximately 150 DTU students have participated in Blue Dot projects—some land-based, others out in space. They have built an eco-car doing 600 km to the litre, constructed a satellite to track the behaviour of migratory birds, brewed eco-friendly beer in DTU's sustainable brewery, made robots and built a house of sustainable materials, which generates more energy than it uses, and—not least—broken world records, won European championships and received much positive coverage for their creative use of their engineering knowledge.
The Blue Dot projects are extracurricular activities earning the students ECTS points for solving real-life engineering challenges across semesters, study programmes and individual curricula. The name symbolizes that you are viewing Earth from space in these projects.
The award ceremony takes place once a year. The brand new innovation workshop, DTU Skylab, was the venue for this year's festivities.
DTU Blue Dot is the story about the transition to a sustainable society. It is the place where the students work as engineers. The students work across semesters, curricula and study programmes with an engineering project that goes beyond the individual curriculum, the individual semester, but which is for the benefit of society.
Common characteristics of the projects:
• They exceed the normal scope of project work by putting learning into a new context and by involving real-life and relevant engineering projects.
• It must be possible to use the result in practice and, for example, present it at an engineering competition or the like.
• The projects involve close contact with the business sector or other relevant external as well as internal stakeholders.
• They are academically very demanding and requires a commitment out of the ordinary in relation to the theoretical and practical challenges of the project. In their structure (and organization), they always reflect how an engineer actually works in practice.
• They are interdisciplinary and requires intensive teamwork between the various engineering domains with a view to finding the best solution to specific engineering problems or challenges.
• They have open problems that require creative solutions, which the students have to work out and describe, plan and implement as well as complete (parts of).
• They result in sustainable solutions.