Minister for Education and Skills Ruairí Quinn T.D. this week recognised the role of IT Sligo in revolutionising education in Ireland.
During the ACE (Accelerating Campus Entrepreneurship) conference at Farmleigh House on Monday, he met IT Sligo academics who are involved in enterprise promotion studies, and Paul Murphy, inaugural winner of the Institute’s Entrepreneurial Student Scholarship.
Paul, who is a student on the Creative Design and Innovation degree programme, has devised and designed an online aid system for people who have dyslexia.
Over the past six years IT Sligo has worked with seven other Higher Education Institutes as part of the ACE Consortium to introduce enterprise and entrepreneurship education in non-business courses.
“We all know that business students learn valuable financial and management skills but it is also vital that those studying other disciplines such as engineering, creative industries and social sciences learn essential business skills,” says Roisin McGlone, a lecturer in the School of Business and Social Sciences.
“By learning to think in an entrepreneurial way, graduates are better prepared for the world of employment or self-employment.”
The ACE Conference was the venue for the launch of the Campus Entrepreneurship Enterprise Network (CEEN) which will provide a network for educators to share resources and support the introduction of enterprise education in non-business disciplines across their campus.
In addition to driving the entrepreneurship agenda in third level education, CEEN will work with primary and secondary educators to integrate entrepreneurship and enterprise education into Irish education.
Roisin McGlone said: “Irish education must be innovative. It needs to adapt to meet the changing needs of graduates. It is not enough to teach technical skills. Entrepreneurship is a mind-set. It is a suite of skills. It is an ability to assess problems and find solutions.
“By teaching entrepreneurship, we give our children the toolkit they need to design their own future. This is the era of the ‘Entrepreneurial Graduate’ in Irish Education and IT Sligo is proud to lead this way in this major educational change.”
Paul Murphy, who is on the Creative Design and Innovation degree programme, is from Claremorris, Co Mayo. The Entrepreneurial Student Scholarship is jointly funded by IT Sligo, Foroige’s Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) and ACE.
Pictured: Minister for Education Ruairi Quinn with IT Sligo representatives, from left, Cathy O’Kelly, lecturer in Business, Dr John Pender, Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences, Paul Murphy, Student Entrepreneurship Scholar, Dr Perry Share, Head of Department Social Sciences, and Roisin Mc Glone, Lecturer in Social Sciences.