Over the summer months, ten student entrepreneurs working on nine projects moved into the Rubicon Centre to begin Cork Institute of Technology's Student Inc. which is a summer programme that supports student entrepreneurs at CIT.  Students are from a multitude of undergraduate courses in CIT including Culinary Arts, Software Development,Sustainable Energy Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Multimedia and Recreation and Leisure Management. The programme is led by student enterprise Interns Miriam Adair and Stephen Downey; who play an important role in 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 the ten talented student entrepreneurs; but from the relationships that are built with a number of experienced resident entrepreneurs in the Rubicon Centre and the exposure to over sixty companies. There were also four guests from Vietnam this year who won the oppourtunity to work in the same office as the Student Inc participants to develop their business ideas. The training and workshops available to the Irish participants was also made available to the Vietnamese visitors to ensure their greatest potential was reached.

Student Inc., has been accredited academically so upon completion each participant will receive five academic credits at level 8 for the work they complete throughout the summer with their final evaluation in the form of a presentation on August 31st 2017. Dr. Breda Kenny Head of Hincks Centre for Entrepreneurship Excellence provides this academic support to the students on completion.
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