17 February, 2019

A CIT-led consortium, which includes IT Tralee and UCC, was awarded HEA funding for Student Entrepreneurship activities for the next 3 years under the HEA Innovation and Transformation Call. The award was 1 of 22 projects funded nationally. Congratulations and thanks to CIT’s Innovation & Enterprise Office, which led the successful bid.

The funding will allow for:

• Dedicated resource to drive Regional Student Entrepreneurship - based in CIT
• The roll-out of CIT’s Student Enterprise Internship Programme to UCC and IT Tralee
• A further 2 Student Enterprise Interns for CIT (1 to be based in the Faculty of Engineering and Science and one to be based in the Faculty of Business and Humanities)
• Seed funding for 90 student entrepreneurs to participate on Student Inc. over the next three summers across the three Higher Education Institutions (10 per Institute p.a. @ €4,000 per student entrepreneur)
• Mentoring and training for the 90 students.

CIT’s Student Inc. (Ireland’s first student accelerator programme), which has been running since 2011, is a culmination of effort from many areas across the Institute. The promotion of innovation and enterprise to our students makes a huge impact so much so that 6% of our 2016 graduates indicated that they were self-employed.

More information on Student Inc. is available here.

Through the Hincks Centre, academic lead partner on the Student Inc. programme, students who successfully complete the summer programme are awarded 5 ECTS credits at Level 7.