22nd November 2007

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The Northern Ireland Centre for Entrepreneurship (NICENT) has been awarded almost £1m by Invest Northern Ireland, to raise the level of awareness of innovation and entrepreneurship among students and staff at the province’s two universities and to encourage a greater level of engagement with entrepreneurship in practice.

Consistent with Invest Northern Ireland’s Accelerating Entrepreneurship agenda, the funding will be used to extend NICENT’s portfolio of programmes within the area of humanities, social sciences and business and management.

The Centre has already extensively embedded innovation and entrepreneurship learning, within science, engineering and technology programmes at the partner institutes under its first phase.

NICENT was established in 2000 and is currently a partnership between the University of Ulster and Queen’s University, Belfast.

NICENT Director, Professor Pauric McGowan said: “The partner institutions both seek to encourage a greater engagement with innovation and entrepreneurship and NICENT is a key part of both institutions’ strategies to promote that agenda.

Professor Norman Black, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Academic Development and Student Services at the University of Ulster and Chairman of the Management Board of NICENT, added: “The economic potential of Northern Ireland depends, among other things, on the development of bright, enterprising graduates who have the competencies and courage to behave innovatively.”

As a consequence of the efforts of the Centre, over the past seven years, innovation and entrepreneurship have been embedded in almost 230 courses across the two universities and over 15,000 students have undertaken a programme of entrepreneurship learning. The Centre was recognised in 2006 by Universities UK as an exemplar in building at the interface between academia and business.

Paul Brush, Head of the Entrepreneurship Development Team at Invest Northern Ireland said: “Creating entrepreneurial awareness in Northern Ireland is a challenge. We need to change the culture to one of greater self-reliance, one that is creative and innovative. The education sector has a central role to play in this endeavour.”

The Northern Ireland Centre for Entrepreneurship launched its latest performance report during Enterprise week.  Professor Ken Brown, Acting Vice-Chancellor of Queen’s University, Belfast, and Vice-Chair of the NICENT Management Board, acknowledged the work of the Centre in helping students to develop and enhance their skills as those leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs recognised as so necessary to drive the new knowledge economy.   

For further information on NICENT or to access their annual report see: http://nicent.ulster.ac.uk/

For further information, please contact:

Press Office Department of Communication and Development
Telephone: 028 9036 6178
Email: pressoffice@ulster.ac.uk