Turku University of Applied Sciences heads for technology and well-being
Turku University of Applied Sciences embarks on building a technological innovation university of the future to support the development possibilities of technology business in Southwest Finland.
In addition, TUAS starts to produce novel services and competence to develop the well-being of the residents in the region. Altogether, the purpose of TUAS is to produce competence and success for Southwest Finland.
These promises are included in TUAS' new strategy titled Excellence in Action, which has been formulated together with our students, staff and the working life in the region.
“All our operations focus on aiming at the best possible practical competence to increase the vitality and competence of the region”, says Rector and President Vesa Taatila.
“We are building a technical innovation university of the future with a strong focus on practical competence. In addition, we want to build learning continuums between different university degrees. We aim at network-like operations; the network would enable studying more in-depth technical competence”, Taatila continues.
The spearheads of the technical innovation university of the future are a multitechnological marine cluster, circular economy, sales and digitalisation. Another important focus area in TUAS’ future is developing the extensive well-being of the residents. Its competence spearheads include health promotion, art as a part of a good life, increasing inclusion, renewing social and health care services and well-being tourism. “We are building new, user-oriented well-being solutions to make the quality of life the best in the region", Vesa Taatila emphasises.
Tutorial groups to be increased
In addition to working on the two, extensive content areas, the strategy work included dialogue on how TUAS should operate in the future. Two themes became central in this, too: an innopeda®-based learning continuum and an inspiring community.
“In the innopeda® based learning continuum, we combine learning and applied research, development and innovation activities with the development needs of the working life in our region. In practice, the students’ studies will be implemented in cooperation with working life with a so-called innovation pedagogy oriented approach. Hence we will significantly increase the amount of tutorial group instruction and cooperative internet pedagogy instead of traditional lecture-based information exchange”, Taatila states.
In addition to degree education, our learning continuum includes development targeted at working life and services for life-long learning. The Salo campus will have a special role as a test platform for the learning methods.
“Our result-orientation is based on working as an inspiring community – our students and staff form a multidisciplinary community of 10 000 experts, which works in several national and international networks”, Taatila says.
Top photo: The new strategy picture of Turku University of Applied Sciences was implemented by advertising agency Zeeland Family Oy. The picture was inspired by the works submitted to the strategy competition by TUAS students.