Within the Faculty of Engineering of the "Lucian Blaga" University of Sibiu there is a study program Mechatronics, at Bachelor level.

The study program is organized in the regular-study form, with teaching lines in Romanian and English, as well as a pilot implementation of a dual-study form, which includes nine weeks of additional practical activities, carried out by students at partner industrial companies.

At the Romanian level, there is still no legislative basis for higher education in the dual version, so the dual option for the Mechatronics study programme was launched as a pilot version, within an Erasmus KA2 project.

The Erasmus project mentioned above used the experience of two universities in Germany and Austria, respectively, in organizing dual higher education, by launching such pilot study programmes in Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia.

Although the project only aimed at launching the dual version in a single year of study, the success it enjoyed in Romania, within the Mechatronics study program, led to the permanence of the dual option. In the academic year 2021-2022, the first graduates of engineers who have opted for the dual option will enter the labor market.

This paper presents the main problems that the university faced in implementing the dual version of the Mechatronics study program, and how they were solved, with the support of industry partners. The dual option of the study program required finding innovative solutions, starting with the procedure for selecting candidates and ending with the procedure for developing diploma projects for graduates.

Keywords: Mechatronics, dual study, pilot implementation.