Parallel18, UPR-Río Piedras create educational alliance
Lucy Crespo and Luis Ferrao sign the collaborative agreement.
Parallel18 and the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras recently agreed on a collaborative partnership to offer students training and practical experience in developing marketing innovations generated on the island.
Through this agreement an internship program will be developed for students interested in the areas of technology, innovation and entrepreneurship to support local and global companies that have received a seed funding through Parallel18 to grow their businesses.
Interns may be undergraduate and graduate students from any discipline, alliance representatives said.
The partnership also seeks to promote and facilitate the collaboration of Parallel18 entrepreneurs to offer professional and academic conferences, mentoring sessions and participation in entrepreneurship events offered by the UPR.
The venture will also include exchanging information on relevant content for entrepreneurship that can be used by business students to build skills as well as teachers for curriculum support.
“The purpose of this agreement is to provide our students practical training in the process of commercialization of innovations, to continue to contribute to Puerto Rico’s economic development,” said Luis A. Ferrao-Delgado, interim rector of the UPR Río Piedras campus, who also stressed that this agreement formalizes the work already being done by Business Administration teachers and students for about a year.
This alliance represents a concrete opportunity for Puerto Rican students to be exposed to business and technological knowledge directly from the source: entrepreneurs who are developing innovative businesses with global mindset,” said Lucy Crespo, CEO of the Puerto Rico Science, Technology and Research Trust which sponsors Parallel18.
“We hope this exchange of experiences will serve as motivation for our young people to create companies with the vision to impact the world,” she said.
Meanwhile, Sebastián Vidal, executive director of Parallel18, said that part his entity’s goal is to promote interaction between companies and students, so they are inspired to create their projects and develop them with a global vision, as well as to acquire relevant work experience for a globalized labor market.
“It is exciting to partner with the UPR, as we have already had their students in our internship programs and business workshops, and we look forward to multiplying the results for participants,” Vidal said.
