Desenvolvimento de processos para gestão estratégica de projeto de extensão universitária: o caso do projeto "1000 Futuros Cientistas"

Abstract

Extension activities have the important role of bringing the university closer to the local context and of presenting itself as an instrument for the popularization of scientific knowledge and dissemination of works that the university develops. The present study focused on extension projects with an interface with basic education, from the perspective of the concepts of Organizational Innovation and Project Management. The initial motivation came from the idea of creating a management and execution model for the “1000 Future Scientists Project” (1000FC) that could be a reference for similar implementations in other institutions. This project was officially born in 2018, being a pioneer extension project of the Department of Chemistry whose main objectives were: to take basic education students to carry out a chemical experiment in the laboratories, to provide the experience in an academic environment, to facilitate contact directly with researchers and new technologies developed at the unit and impact 1000 basic education students, awakening in them the desire to be a scientist. Currently, the 1000FC program has already achieved one of its goals, carrying out activities with approximately 3500 students from schools in Minas Gerais. This dissertation was started in 2019, the year in which the project already had several activities aimed at basic education, and its objective was to develop a set of processes that assist in the management and execution of extension projects focused on social innovation. In order to reach our objective, we carried out a vast survey of theoretical references, in this part of the work it was necessary to understand aspects about University Extension, Organizational Innovation and how to propose and use tools that help in Project Management. We chose the Case Study as a methodology, in which the object of study was the 1000FC, and we also resorted to the Action Research methodology for the construction and elaboration of a proposal to manage the program's activities. Among the results, we highlight the mapping of twenty-two projects in Brazil, similar to 1000FC, and which present comparative data on different aspects of management; the historical survey and official record of all extension activities associated with the 1000FC Project, which led to its expansion into an extension program; the standardization of the methodology for developing practices and the elaboration of process maps to make it feasible for other participants and other institutions to carry out activities. It is possible that the results of this work serve as a reference to be replicated in other projects. To validate this hypothesis, future studies of application of the processes developed in other institutions would be necessary.