26 June 2002
BRING WORLDWIDE BEST PRACTICE BACK TO NORTHERN IRELAND - HANNA
Employment and Learning Minister, Mrs Carmel Hanna, today urged 155 local undergraduates, going on a one-year sabbatical to US universities and colleges, to use their experience to become the business leaders of tomorrow.
The students, all participants on the Department for Employment and Learning’s Business Education Initiative, a unique developmental programme, will take up places at one of over 100 colleges and universities in the US in August.
The Minister was addressing the students in Belfast today at the start of a two-day briefing event prior to their departure. She said: "Your selection on this Programme is the beginning of what many past participants regarded as a major life-changing experience.
"My Department places considerable importance on the valuable opportunity the Business Education Initiative offers as a means of developing business awareness, management and leadership skills in the next generation of Northern Ireland’s business leaders.
"The rationale for our intervention in management and leadership training centres on the constancy of both economic and social change. Increasing globalisation, technological development and innovation drives this certainty of change. To meet these challenges, business here needs to be able to adapt quickly to a fast moving and highly competitive global economy.
"The opportunity being offered by over 100 BEI colleges in the US has created a unique, developmental opportunity for these students. Such opportunities are rare and deserve to be grasped with a determination to maximise the undoubted value that such experience offers through conducting business across international boundaries, and gaining an informed international and cultural understanding."
Mrs Hanna said that the BEI programme follows this rationale by endeavouring to start students on the journey to becoming true leaders of the future.
She added: "It also offers an opportunity to examine attitudes and then put the best of what you have learned into practice.
"My portfolio as Minister for Employment and Learning brings with it the dual responsibility of ensuring that Northern Ireland’s young people receive quality opportunities in further and higher education here, while at the same time retaining a clear focus on how that learning experience links in with the changing needs of industry in Northern Ireland. The fusion of these two crucially important themes holds the key to a vibrant and successful economy here.
"The development of our people, at all levels, is an important consideration within the Executive’s Programme for Government covering the period 2002-2005," she said.
Students on the Programme represent a wide range of subject disciplines and for many, BEI is their first exposure to the study of business and management subjects. The skills and experience they develop in the US help to broaden their own career goals, with many progressing into business and management related positions following the completion of their studies.
Representatives from Northern Ireland’s higher education institutions also attended today’s event.
Paying tribute to the US stakeholders, Mrs Hanna said she greatly welcomed the cross-community dimension to the Programme. "The benefits that the students will gain from this experience are incalcuable in terms of widening their horizons and cross-fertilisation of cultural diversity," she concluded.
NOTES TO EDITORS:
The programme is managed by the Department for Employment and Learning, in partnership with representatives of three church groups in the US – Presbyterian, Methodist and Roman Catholic. Tuition fees of £1.3 million are waived each year.
The Department meets BEI participants’ expenses for their studies in the US. Students must be in their pre-final year of study at a time of application. HND and Degree students are eligible to apply.
Media enquiries should be directed to Press Office, Department for Employment and Learning, on Tel: (028) 9025 7793/7492.
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