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10 Jan 2005 12:07:28
The University of Luton has had a fantastic end to a great year - it has won more than three quarters of a million pounds of funding for four projects that will help a wide range of students.
The University of Luton won the highest number of bids, along with Salford, Birmingham and Bristol universities, and the second highest amount of cash in total which included the largest project cash-wise, out of 58 projects.
The funding, from the Higher Education European Social Fund (HEESF), will establish a centre for women entrepreneurs at the University, it will help mature learners to study for a university certificate, assist unemployed graduates to find jobs, and help women progress their careers.
University of Luton’s Vice Chancellor, Professor Les Ebdon, said: “This is absolutely brilliant news. It was a great Christmas present and will give us a great start to 2005. The overall results show that as a University we have again performed extremely well nationally.”
The largest amount was £267,000, which will be used to establish a Centre for Female Entrepreneurship. Sue Bathmaker, Head of Business and Management Development at Luton Business School led this bid. She said: “We’re delighted, it’s really good news.
“It will be a one-stop shop, an advice centre for women who want to set up their own enterprises,” explained Sue.
“Under this umbrella we will also develop enterprise programmes for women with the Chartered Management Institute, as well as developing an online MBA focusing on the needs of women and enterprise development.
“This is a course that is based on the University’s online MBA for developing business, another project funded by the European Social Fund. We are transforming the learning materials to suit women.
“This work complements what we are already doing in entrepreneurship through the knowledge hub at our Putteridge Bury campus. We will also be able to set up a research facility there and will be appointing a new researcher and project manager.”
Another £129,000 has been won for a project, led by Andrew Callard, Projects Director, Faculty of Creative Arts, Technologies and Sciences, to assist graduates in continuing their studies.
The funding will provide 18 studentships over the next two years for social science graduates who have been unemployed for six months or more, to do Masters degrees - MSc Psychological Approaches to Health and Management.
This will enable the students to pursue careers in health or HR management areas in commercial organisations, and help to reduce the impact of work-related stress and mental health issues for employees.
The funding allows their fees to be waived and a living allowance to be paid. This project uses the same Learn & Earn Award model as used in extremely successful Postgraduate Learn and Earn Award (PLEA) scheme in Computing from which 32 unemployed graduates benefited.
Another £146,000 was won for the ‘Flying High: Taking the Next Step’ project, which was led by Cathy Havill, Associate Director in Business Development. This is aimed at providing personal and small group career development and confidence building activities for women.
Cathy said: “We have run similar women’s projects before but this is more focused on 'tool-kits', to help women manage career progression, as well as personal mentoring and tutoring.”
Another bid, 'Passport to Academic Life', was led by Rita Mascia, Project Manager in the University’s Business Development Directorate.
This allows the work of the recent English for Excellence project to be continued with mature learners, thanks to a £225,000 funding grant. The two-year project, to deliver web-based training in English for academic purposes to UK students from ethnic minority backgrounds studying at the University, has just finished.
“The project succeeded in helping students read better, take better notes, reference properly and help them with assignments,” said Rita.
“The bigger aim of the project was to test the model so that it could be adapted by other educational institutions and be useful in retaining students.”
The training programme was developed from the University’s web-based award-winning Atlas programme. “Winning this funding will help us continue the good work of the project in another area of widening participation,” added Rita.
Latest news» 2005» Jan» More than £750K worth of funding to help students at Luton
