UNESCO Chair

UNESCO Chair in Entrepreneurship Education of  Josip Juraj Strossmayer University in Osijek located at the Faculty of Economics in Osijek operates since February 2008, when the agreement on its establishment was signed by Koichiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO and Gordana Kralik Ph.D., Rector of the Josip Juraj Strossmayer University in Osijek. Professor Slavica Singer, Ph.D. was appointed UNESCO Chair in Entrepreneurship Education.

The purpose of the Chair shall be to promote an integrated system of research, training, information and documentation in the field of entrepreneurial studies. It will serve as a means of facilitating collaboration between high-level, internationally recognized researchers and teaching staff of the University and other institutions in Croatia and Europe.

The overall aim of the Chair shall be to build human and social capital in Croatia and in neighboring countries, in order to strengthen the entrepreneurial capacity of individuals and institutions for innovativeness, change, competition and cooperation, aiming to close development gaps inside Croatia; and between Croatia and the EU.

It’s specific objectives will be:

  • To develop new faculty in entrepreneurship education, through a Ph.D. program focused on theoretical and practical issues of building an eterprising society
  • To develop the pedagogical skills of the faculty in entrepreneurship, based on
  • an experiental classroom approach, with the Distance Learning dimension of the program
  • To legitimize entrepreneurial studies in the portfolio of university based educational activities
  • To develop strong executive programs, based on on-going assesments of entrepreneurs’ needs, jontly with the local Center for Entrepreneurship in Osijek

UNESCO Chair in Entrepreneurship Education is supported by:

  • Croatian Commission for UNESCO
  • Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia
  • Ministry of Science, Education and Sports of the Republic of Croatia
  • Josip Juraj Strossmayer University in Osijek
  • Centre for Entrepreneurship Osijek
  • Business Incubator – BIOS Osijek
  • Technology Development Centre Osijek
  • CEPOR – SMEs and Entrepreneurship Policy Center Zagreb
  • University of Turku, Turku School of Economics, Finland
  • University of Wisconsin-Madison, School of Business, USA
  • Saint Louis University, John Cook School of Business, USA

Entrepreneurship Education Award

Professor Slavica Singer, Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Economics in Osijek, University of Osijek, is the winner of 2021 The European Entrepreneurship Education Award (https://www.lusem.lu.se/organisation/research-centres/sten-k-johnson-centre-entrepreneurship/sten-k-johnson-centre-entrepreneurship-outreach-activities/european-entrepreneurship-education-award/european-entrepreneurship-education-award-eeea-laureates).
The award is given by Sten K. Johnson Centre for Entrepreneurship with Lund University School of Economics and Management, Lund, Sweden, since 2012. The award is given annually to individuals or organisations that have contributed to the improvement of entrepreneurship education in academia in Europe. The purpose of the award is threefold: to highlight the importance of teaching in the area of entrepreneurship (in Europe), to stimulate and promote innovative teaching methods within the field and to diffuse the state of the art in entrepreneurial education among scientists, researchers, professors, policymakers, practitioners and all other stakeholders involved in entrepreneurship education at the university level.

Best practices of entrepreneurial education

The activities and achievement in establihing educational programs in entrepreneurship based on research carried out by the International Centre for Entrepreneurial Studies have been selected as one of the twenty examples of best practices in the EU in the area of entrepreneurial education in the report:

Supporting The Entrepreneurial Potential Of Higher Education, Final Report

Supporting The Entrepreneurial Potential Of Higher Education, Final Report – Appendix: Case Studies

Entrepreneurial Education
International visibility

Supporting The Entrepreneurial Potential Of Higher Education, Final Report – Appendix: Case Studies