GMIT has been awarded funding of €2.68m under the HEA’s Springboard+2020 and €2.02m under Pillar 1 of the Human Capital Initiative (HCI) to deliver 25 upskilling programmes from November this year (2020) including three new Springboard courses and six new HCI Pillar 1 courses. Details of the 2020 initiatives were announced yesterday (Wed 17 June 2020) by the Minister for Education and Skills Joe McHugh TD, Minister of State for Higher Education Mary Mitchell O’Connor and Minister of State for Training Skills, Innovation, Research and Development John Halligan.
573 places in total will be available on GMIT’s 25 Springboard/ICT Skills courses with seven of these courses fully online. 308 places will be available on the six new HCI programmes with one of these programmes fully online.
The three newly approved Springboard courses are the Certificate in Industrial Automation, Certificate in Digital Mapping, and Certificate in Building Digital Healthcare Communities (see below list). All of these GMIT courses are applied for through www.springboardcourses.ie
Welcoming the announcement, GMIT President Dr Orla Flynn says: “Clearly we are delighted with the outcome of this call and we welcome the Ministers’ announcement. I want to signal how important these awards will be – especially at this point in time – for participants, for industry, and for the wider region. I also want to acknowledge the hard work of colleagues across the institute who delivered this result for GMIT; their ongoing partnerships with our many external stakeholders gives a strong indicator of future success.”
Dr Ian O’Connor, GMIT HCI Co-ordinator, says: “I am delighted with the HCI results. These new programmes, devised in collaboration with industry partners, and supported by our Regional Skills Forum, will provide graduates with opportunities to upskill in areas such as ICT, Digital Construction, Data Analytics, Biopharmaceutical Science and, Sustainability. GMIT will also partner with the Irish MedTech Association for a new Level 8 programme in Regulatory Affairs for the medical device sector. I would like to pay tribute to my academic colleagues and their industry partners for developing these programmes”.
GMIT’s six HCI graduate conversion courses, detailed below, will be delivered in a blended format (mix of online and on campus), except for the Higher Diploma in Business Analytics which is delivered fully online:
Nationally, 17,000 new places will be made available to people seeking to upskill or reskill in areas of AI, ICT, smart factory technology, sustainable energy, medical device technology, and cybersecurity; 13,000 in 2020 and the remainder over the next two years. An additional 2,129 places have been made available in response to Covid-19.
