Mutah and Al-Mazar Al-Janoubi.. Educational environments embracing innovation and shaping leadership

The Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Mutah University continues its role in providing a nurturing environment for creative ideas and entrepreneurial projects through training programs, workshops, and initiatives targeting students and entrepreneurs, contributing to the development of their capabilities and turning their ideas into applicable projects.

Director of the Center, Waleed Al-Rawashdeh, says that the center is working on building an integrated system for entrepreneurship and innovation that begins with discovering ideas and talents among students, passing through developing them and providing training and guidance, up to helping project owners study market needs and build sustainable business models.

He explains that the center views entrepreneurship as a continuous culture and practice, rather than an activity associated only with competitions and events, with the aim of giving students the opportunity to think differently, discover innovative solutions to challenges, and transform academic knowledge into projects of economic and societal value.

Al-Rawashdeh points out that the "Mutah Entrepreneurship Award" represents one of the center's prominent initiatives, as it allowed students to present their ideas and projects before specialized committees and contributed to highlighting entrepreneurial models in various technological, industrial, and societal fields.

The center pays special attention to practical training through specialized workshops and programs in project development, market study, and product improvement, in addition to programs dealing with specifications and standards for small industries, including home food industries, helping project owners raise the quality of their products and their ability to compete.

Al-Rawashdeh emphasizes the importance of partnerships with public and private sector institutions to provide training and networking opportunities, benefit from specialized expertise, and introduce project owners to supporting entities and available opportunities, noting that the center is working to develop its programs in line with shifts in the labor market, with a focus on digital innovation and tech entrepreneurship.

Students participating in the center's programs expressed the importance of these programs in moving them from theoretical thinking to practical application, stressing that workshops, competitions, and training helped them discover their capabilities and develop their ideas more clearly.

They explained that the programs introduced them to the stages of building an entrepreneurial project, starting from identifying the problem and target audience, studying the market, to developing a concept for the business model and mechanisms for product or service development, pointing out that interacting with trainers and experts and presenting ideas before specialists helped them review their ideas and boost their confidence in their ability to turn them into practical projects.

Al-Rawashdeh believes that investing in students and their ideas represents one of the most important axes of the center's work, in light of the energies and capabilities possessed by university students that can be employed in innovating new solutions, stressing that the center's role is to provide the appropriate environment for these energies to grow and develop.

Dr. Itimad Jameel Al-Jaafrah, Director of Administrative and Financial Affairs at the Directorate, says that innovation has become a strategic orientation touching the core of the educational process, contributing to preparing a generation that possesses the tools of the future and is capable of turning knowledge into practice, ideas into projects, and challenges into opportunities.

She points out that the directorate is working to create educational environments that embrace creativity, empower students and teachers with digital and technological skills, and promote critical thinking, problem-solving, and teamwork, in line with modern education requirements and shifts in technology and artificial intelligence.

The "Arduino and Robot Club" stands out as a model in the directorate's experience, having been established in 2018 before expanding to include 11 clubs in the district's schools, becoming practical spaces where science meets application and knowledge meets innovation through training students and teachers and developing their skills in programming, robotics, and technology.

The directorate's teams participated in the Karak Innovation and Robotics Championship in 2023, and the South Innovation and Robotics Championship in 2025, culminating in the Kingdom Innovation and Robotics Championship this year in Petra, where this presence was crowned with honor in front of the Treasury, in a picture reflecting a journey of training and investment in student energies.

The directorate has also strengthened its partnerships with national institutions supporting youth and innovation, foremost among them the Crown Prince Foundation / Karak Office, through implementing training courses for students and teachers to widen the circle of digital knowledge and provide qualitative opportunities to discover student capabilities and refine their talents.

Al-Jaafrah points out that the directorate's vision for entrepreneurship and creativity goes beyond robotics and technology to include various initiatives, including the kingdom-level "Innovation and Line Tracking Initiative", aimed at developing creative thinking and enhancing students' ability to innovate and create solutions.

She also points to the "Digital Skills Initiative" for elementary students from first to sixth grades, considering it an early investment in building the student's digital personality and entrenching the skills of conscious and effective interaction with technology.

As part of responding to educational challenges, the directorate is working to implement initiatives within educational networks to address the cognitive gap in mathematics, alongside organizing specialized courses and workshops in artificial intelligence, opening new horizons for teachers and students to employ modern techniques in education, knowledge production, and problem-solving.

The experiences of Mutah University and Al-Mazar Al-Janoubi Education show that building an entrepreneurship culture starts with providing the environment that gives ideas the opportunity to appear and grow, giving students space to experiment, learn, and develop, and linking education to the needs of society and the labor market.