OVER the summer months, 11 student entrepreneurs have been working on ten different projects as part of the Cork Institute of Technology Student Inc, Summer Programme, at the Rubicon Centre.
The students are from a multitude of undergraduate courses in CIT including Culinary Arts, Mechanical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Multimedia, MA Early Years Education and Bar Management feature.
The programme is led by student enterprise interns Michelle Dorgan and Stephen Downey and they play an important role to guiding these student entrepreneurs to develop and excel.

Each budding entrepreneur receives €4,000 to fund their business (expenses, equipment and a wage to offset a summer job) as well as a fully serviced office at CIT’s and Ireland’s premier incubation centre, the Rubicon Centre.
A major selling point of the programme is the peer to peer learning, not only between each student entrepreneur, but also the relationships that are built with a number of experienced resident entrepreneurs in the Rubicon Centre and the exposure to nearly 60 companies.

The programme offers the participants training and workshops in various aspects of business start up. They are also receiving mentoring sessions on a one to one basis with industry specific mentors.
Student Inc. has been accredited academically so upon completion each participant will receive five academic credits at level 8 for the work they complete, with their final evaluation in the form of a presentation on September 2.
This summer, three Vietnamese student entrepreneurs will be visiting from the University of DaNang — Lê Th Dim, Trn Phng Tho and Nguyn Hoài (-D)c. They are spending a month in the Rubicon Centre with the 11 Student Inc. participants, taking part in the programme workshops, training and mentoring sessions.

They were chosen to come to Ireland as their teams won an innovation/entrepreneurship competition in Vietnam. They run a similar student entrepreneur competition to CIT’s yearly LEO Prize for Innovation Competition.
Over the last few months, George Bulman from the Rubicon Centre, Wesley Connolly Tong from CIT’s International Office, Orla Flynn, VP for External Affairs and Mervyn O’Mahony from CIT spent time in Vietnam educating the students on entrepreneurship and judging their business ideas in final competition. The prize for the winners was a trip to Ireland’s premier incubator, the Rubicon Centre, to work on their business ideas.

Student Inc. was funded by CIT, the Local Enterprise Office, Enterprise Ireland and CAMMS (Centre for Advanced Manufacturing and Management Systems) with the office space and staff expertise sponsored by the Rubicon Centre. Training and additional supports are provided by staff of the institute. Mentors were supplied by John McSweeney of the Small Business Advice Programme and by the Rubicon Centre.