During the January 07-15, 2010 a group of graduate students from University of Illinois, USA visited the Faculty of Economics in Osijek at J.J. Strossmayer University of Osijek. Collaboration between Osijek University and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), began in January of 2008, when the first group of US students visited our university. Collaboration between these two universities has resulted in the establishment of student association – Entrepreneurs Without Borders (EWoB), which operates at both universities. Association’s objective is to promote entrepreneurial behavior and activity among students. In addition to their regular class obligations, American and Croatian students also worked together on solving some of the real-life problems of seven small companies from Osijek, which included Publicus, Plastos, Palčić, Galena, Rukotvorine, Tufna Club & Hostel, and PZ Pčelari Slavonije i Baranje.

On Thursday (December 17, 2009), Zorislav Kalazić, student of the 9th class of Graduate Program in Entrepreneurship successfully defended his Masters’ thesis  entitled “Positioning a Food Product through Market Segmentation and Prioritization of Market Segments”. The thesis was defended before the committee of professors consisting of chairman Mirna Leko Šimić, Ph.D., Jasna Horvat, Ph.D., and Goran Marijanović, Ph.D. (committee members).
Congratulations!

Annual meeting of professors who teach Michael Porter’s course “Microeconomics of Competitiveness”, which we teach under name “Competitiveness”, was held on December 14-15, 2009 at Harvard Business School. At the meeting led by Michael Porter, Ph.D., experiences related to the execution of the course, creation of local cases as basis for the course, possibility of bringing guest lecturers from countries in which the course is executed, and research projects related to clusters were discussed. Slavica Singer, Ph.D. participated at the meeting as the representative of our team (Sanja Pfeifer, Ph.D., Sunčica Oberman Peterka, Ph.D., Mirela Alpeza, Ph.D.) that teaches the Competitiveness course at our program. It is a great pleasure that we are one of the “veterans” in the group of 50 universities throughout the world at which this course is executed, and that we have received support for founding of a Center for Competitiveness within our program. Students interested in participation in projects in the field of competitiveness from current and previous classes, can contact Slavica Singer, Ph.D.

On Saturday, November 14, 2009, seventh graduation ceremony of new Masters of Science of the Graduate Program in Entrepreneurship was held at the Faculty of Economics in Osijek. The following students were promoted at the graduation: Dinko Babić, Silvia Beaković, Lea Fadljević, Igor Fazekaš, Martina Harc, Damir Kolarić, Silvija Kumrić-Ivankov, Marijana Lacković, Ljubica Matek, Antonio Sobol, Mirta Šulmajster Šodić and Viktor Vanek. Guest at the graduation was Stefan Milenkovich, world-renowned violinist and professor at University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, USA. After a short speech, Stefan Milenkovich congratulated new Masters of Science and played two compositions by Johann Sebastian Bach.

On October 23, 2009, public presentation of two-year work at the TEMPUS project International Centre for Entrepreneurial Studies was held at the Faculty of Economics in Osijek. The following news were presented to the public:
-Launching of the inter-university and interdisciplinary doctoral study ENTREPRENEURHIP AND INNOVATIVENESS, which is jointly implemented by the Josip Juraj Strossmayer University in Osijek, Turku School of Economics, Finland, Universitaet Klagenfurt, Austria, Univerza v Mariboru, Slovenia and Durham University, UK,
-Launching of the Virtual Learning Platform, which will primarily support the work of the doctoral program, but also all the other entrepreneurial studies (from specialist to undergraduate) – developed in collaboration with Microsoft, who is a partner in the project,
-Founding of the International Centre for Entrepreneurial Studies. Representatives of all the partners involved in the project were present at the presentation.