- This Chair was the first to be created at the University of Huelva (UHU), in 2003
- Scientific education is one of the Foundation’s most important activities
The rector of the University of Huelva, María Antonia Peña, together with the vice-rector for Innovation and Employability, Isabel Rodríguez; the director of the Fundación Cepsa Chair, Inés Garbayo, and the head of the Fundación Cepsa in Huelva, Teresa Millán, presented the Fundación Cepsa Chair’s 2018 activity report. The Chair was created by the two institutions in 2003 as the Cepsa Chair, with the aim of forming a more effective channel for their existing collaborative activities.
The report is structured around three main areas: improving students’ employability and training them in competences; promoting research in subjects of interest to Cepsa as an energy company; and a third area which is support for university extension activities and those of interest to the university community.
Inés Garbayo, the director of the Fundación Cepsa Chair at University of Huelva, noted that, with regard to the first area, the promotion of students’ employability and training in competences, “the flagship program is ‘Student 10 C’”, which has been running for 10 years and seeks to provide training in the competences most in demand by companies in the present day. In the past academic year, this program was focused on workshops in leadership, team management and personal growth. Ms Garbayo highlighted one of the innovations in 2018, the participation of a talent recruitment specialist from Cepsa, who explained all the company’s recruitment processes and the employment opportunities it offered.
With regard to the promotion of research in subjects of interest to Cepsa, another of the Chair’s key areas, the Foundation subsidized investigations related to the identification of possible spills and the use of bioremediation. Another highlight of this area was the creation of the University of Huelva’s first industrial PhD program in 2018, after many years of close cooperation between Cepsa and the university. The formula for taking this PhD is already established in other universities. It consists of writing a thesis supervised by a UHU academic and a supervisor from the company with a PhD. The program seeks to resolve a technical problem of interest to both entities, by granting an ‘Industrial Doctorate’ qualification.
In the third area, a wide variety of activities has been sponsored. These include the ‘MotoStudent’ project, a university-level international motorcycle competition, the Corporate Social Responsibility Workshops and support for congresses and conferences.
The rector of the University of Huelva, María Antonia Peña, thanked Cepsa for its support for the launch of this Chair, known as the Fundación Cepsa Chair since 2017. This support has been “long-lasting and intense, as it is one of our oldest chairs. For us, this Chair is a permanent knowledge transfer exercise, so we put our weight behind it from the outset. It is an instrument that enables our researchers to work in support of our productive network and, at the same time, an instrument for improving our students’ training, rewarding their excellence and personal values and for contributing to the multiple extension and scientific activities under the auspices of our University”.
Teresa Millán, head of the Fundación Cepsa in Huelva, declared that “our aim is to continue supporting scientific education as one of the Foundation’s key areas of activity, through the Chair. We shall thus continue to foster the employability of students, research and to support activities of interest to the university community.