The TD School has pioneered many innovative ways for UTS to engage with industry, with a vision to create a porous ‘third space’ environment where industry and university boundaries merge – and where relationships and opportunities evolve.
Taking a unique approach to partnerships, the TD School invites organisations to join our innovation ecosystem and collaborate with our students and academics. The TD School Industry Partnerships team leads this work by forging connections and building networks to embrace the plethora of opportunities for mutual learning and benefit between our partners and students, or as we like to call them our TD thinkers.
Across the TD School, 95% of the teaching and learning includes industry, community and government partners. We source industry, community and government partners for a variety of engagement opportunities. Ranging from guesting on an in-class panel to providing a real-world challenge for a semester-long project; from hosting a TD student for an internship to partnering on a research project, we seek partners interested in supporting learning and innovation, who are open to fresh ideas and keen to work with the next generation of great minds.
Amanda: This is a unique partner experience because these students have undergone an accelerated double degree. We have 25 different disciplines. They're innovating between the fields and they're working with open, complex, dynamic and network problems.
Alex: The best partner projects are ones where there's a very clearly defined problem space and the partner can give a very clear account of the challenges they're facing in their industry and it's a real world challenge.
Amartej: The best part of this subject was the relationship you get to form with your client and the resources they have available to you, the environment that they provide for you. You can work in their spaces, which is great.
Nick: What the students have done has actually opened up our eyes a little bit to what what might be possible.
Nathan: I was really surprised with some of the concepts that came out of the project itself.
Charlie: The best part of the experience for the project for me was probably watching the students throughout it and their enthusiasm.
James: Incredibly bright bunch.
Charlie: Yeah.
James: It's pushed us a bit.
Charlie: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Anandini: It let us make real impact and offer what we had from our core disciplines in in a space that really fostered in a real collaboration.
Martin: The imagination that they brought to our problems or our solutions, it was really, really refreshing. They work in autonomy, they work as a group. They're very much looking for insights. They're engaging. They want to ask questions. They question you and your responses. And that is really quite refreshing because from a professional perspective as well, it's good to be challenged.
Belinda: It's been more than what we could have expected and I think a lot of the professional relationships that we've had with the students and the friendships that we've developed will continue on. So it's definitely more than a five out of five.
Nathan: I'd recommend for people that are considering either maintaining their relationship with UTS and the BCII or thinking about joining it. Absolutely, it's a value. Importantly though, it's to recognize some of the intangible value that's going to come from that process because these students are going to bring a really different perspective.
Amanda: I would strongly recommend it because these are our future leaders. They have had award winning education and they will hold a mirror up to your organization, which our partners find surprising, delighting, adding a lot of value.
How it works
We invite organisations to participate across a broad range of teaching and learning engagements. To get to know you and your organisation, the Industry Partnerships team begins with a conversation to learn about the complex challenges your organisation is facing. Garnering an understanding of your short and long-term goals and organisational priorities helps us match you to a suitable opportunity.
We focus on creating and delivering positive partner experiences, collaborative design for mutual value and exemplary relationship management. Since 2017, the Industry Partnerships team has overseen more than 840 internships and projects, with industry, community and government partners.