Each of the students will be entitled to funding support of up to £6,000 to help pay for equipment and other resources and they will also receive advice and mentoring. The students will be selected from across UU’s five faculties.

The student business initiative is part of the innovative SPEED (Student Placement for Entrepreneurs in Education) project which is supported under the Government’s Higher Education Innovation Fund.

In total the SPEED project is worth £5m and brings together 12 Higher Education institutions from throughout the UK as well as numerous business and enterprise partners.

Dr Patrick Ibbotson and Dr Elaine Ramsey from UU’s School of Business, Retail and Financial Services spearheaded the University’s bid to become part of the SPEED project and have been given a total of £180,000 to fund the student business drive.

“Creating and fostering an enterprise culture and the subsequent development of this entrepreneurial  talent are core objectives for the University of Ulster. We are delighted to be involved with such a bold and exciting project and we look forward to making a positive contribution to the SPEED consortium over the next two years.”

The Faculty of Business and Management at Ulster has already gained a strong reputation for its innovative research and teaching into entrepreneurship and SME development. NICENT (Northern Ireland Centre for Entrepreneurship) has done much to create an enterprise culture and instill the creativity and innovation skills needed to start a new business venture. The SPEED project takes this one step further and gives those entrepreneurial students the perfect low-risk opportunity to start, operate and grow their own business within the supportive and encouraging environment of the University.

Dr. Patrick Ibbotson says: "Through such initiatives as the 25k competition and the innovation generation scheme (PinG) it’s clear that students at UU are not short on ideas. But it's been very frustrating not to be able to offer practical financial support to turn these great ideas into real businesses.  So in reality SPEED is the last piece in the jigsaw for us”.

Over the next two years, all registered students at the University will be able to apply for SPEED funding for their enterprise placements.

The University welcomes applications now from teams of up to three people, with the first cohort starting their projects in June 2007.

Any University of Ulster student who would like to learn more about SPEED and obtain an application form should:

Visit the SPEED project website http://www.busmgt.ulster.ac.uk/business/speed/index.html 

Contact Dr. Patrick Ibbotson (pg.ibbotson@ulster.ac.uk) or,

Talk to their Faculty’s academic enterprise coordinator:

Arts: Kate Bond (ke.bond@ulster.ac.uk)

Business and Management: John Thompson (je.thompson@ulster.ac.uk)

Engineering: Jonathan Wallace (jg.wallace@ulster.ac.uk)

Life & Health Sciences: Peter Mitchell (pc.mitchell@ulster.ac.uk)

Social Sciences: Mike Smyth (mf.smyth@ulster.ac.uk)