Per Risberg Memorial Fund Scholarship awarded to Linda Bergqvist
The Per Risberg Memorial Fund Scholarship is awarded to someone who has made a significant contribution to strengthening collaboration and internationalization between Jönköping University (JU) and its stakeholders (industry and public organizations). The 2024 scholarship goes to Linda Bergqvist, External Relations Manager at the School of Engineering (JTH) at JU.
Since 2021, Linda Bergqvist has been External Relations Manager at JTH, but has been responsible for collaboration at JTH since 2016, where there has traditionally been a lot of collaboration with the surrounding community. Today, JTH has more than a thousand partner companies in education and research.
“I am both proud and happy. We have a strong collaboration with the stakeholders that is constantly evolving. For example, in recent years we have developed strategic partnerships with several companies and organizations in both education and research," says Linda Bergqvist.
The scholarship, which amounts to SEK 30,000, is awarded after consultation with JU and the Jönköping Chamber of Commerce. The award has been handed out four times previously, and Linda Bergqvist will receive the awarded on 4 May during JU’s Academic Ceremony.
Linda Bergqvist believes that JTH's focused work on collaboration gives results.
“Through the development of the collaborative work, JTH has also become internationally accredited by ACEEU External link, opens in new window. (the Accreditation Council for Entrepreneurial and Engaged Universities) in collaboration. Something that shows what we stand for - real collaboration,” concludes Linda.
Watch Linda Bergqvist comment on the award here.
Linda Bergqvist became External Relations Manager at JTH in 2021. She took advantage of the existing tradition of collaboration but added a more systematic approach and developed new working methods that clarified the mutual benefit for JTH and its partners. Systematic measuring and follow-up means that measurable goals can be set.
Linda has been a driving force within SPARK - JU's education and research environment within
knowledge-intensive product development - to establish strategic partnerships with selected companies. Collaboration has thus been elevated from an operational to a strategic level.
Within SPARK, Linda has created SPARK-EKG - a measurement tool for evaluating collaborative capacity during and at the end of a project.
At the ACEEU's accreditation of JTH, the grade "excellent" has been given for the leadership linked to collaboration, which is proof that the systematic work has produced good results.
Linda's efforts are made in the spirit of Per Risberg on the importance of collaboration and that a control system exists for this and is of great benefit to JTH and the collaborating companies in a growing number of projects.