Dr Patrick Prendergast, provost of Trinity College Dublin (left); Curtis Wong, principal researcher in eScience at Microsoft Research (centre); and Iseult Ward, student entrepreneur and co-founder of FoodCloud. Photo by Maxwell Photography
Trinity College Dublin has unveiled plans to build a new School of Business co-located with an Innovation and Entrepreneurship Hub on the technology side of the campus along Pearse Street, Dublin.
The new School of Business will offer a range of business-related programmes at undergraduate, post-graduate and executive education levels as part of a new approach to entrepreneurship and innovation training for the whole university. Alongside this, the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Hub will provide space for prototyping and company incubation projects, as well as academic and administrative offices.
Work will begin on the new build next summer and is expected to be complete by 2017. Overall, the development will span about 13,000 sq metres, with six storeys above ground and three below. Included in the build will be a 600-seat auditorium, restaurant spaces for up to 200 people, a public space to meet and engage, smart classrooms with the latest digital technology, and a rooftop conference room.
The project is said to cost €70m and a large part of that has been raised from philanthropic sources, with plans to raise more funds privately and publicly. Fee-paying business programmes will also contribute, as well as the sale of off-campus office space and the leasing of retail units and student apartments.
The next generation of job creators
These plans were revealed by Trinity provost Dr Patrick Prendergast at the first Trinity Global Graduate Forum (TGGF) today. More than 100 of the university’s alumni from 16 countries are in attendance for the two-day event this weekend.
“We want the message to go out to students in Ireland and globally that Trinity is a university that educates and motivates students to create jobs, as well as to get them,” said Prendergast.
“Working together, higher-education institutions and Government can create the environment that draws the research and enterprise communities into partnerships, promoting innovation, entrepreneurship, and new business creation,” he added.
“This can be the physical home of Ireland’s new generation of job creators,” said Seán Melly, chair of the Business School Advisory Board, managing director of Powerscourt Capital Partners and also a Trinity graduate attending TGGF.
