€50,000 engineering scholarship to UL announced

IN conjunction with naming Ennis as its European headquarters, Microsemi has announced the inaugural €50,000 Microsemi Scholarship in Engineering at the University of Limerick.
Registered pupils from five Ennis secondary schools – St Flannan’s College; Rice College; Ennis Community College; Gael Coláiste an Chláir and Coláiste Muire will be eligible to apply for the scholarship programme.
It will be based on merit, as well as exam results and the four-year scholarship is worth €12,000 to the four successful applicants.
Another €2,000 prize will be presented to a student in his or her final year, based on results and engineering project work as part of another competition, which is sponsored by the company. 
In addition, the company has funded a high-profile science and aerospace engineering programme in St Flannan’s school in Ennis.
“As part of our commitment to Ireland, we are proud to sponsor an engineering scholarship at the University of Limerick and a programme at St Flannan’s to cultivate interest in science and innovation,” said CEO James Peterson.
Professor J Paul McCutcheon, vice-president, academic and registrar at UL said the university is delighted to enter into a partnership with industries such as Microsemi.
“One of our emphasis in our courses is employability and producing the type of graduates that business professionals and the economy requires.
“When we entered into a partnership with Microsemi, we listened very seriously to what they said and what we must produce and we are delighted to have them on board as a university partner.
“It is great to see engineering being supported. In the past few years, a lot of school leavers don’t seem to want to get into engineering, science or technology, which is where the future of the country lies,” he said.
He pointed out the support industry provided for engineering would in turn filter down to pupils and encourage them to take up their courses at third level.
Vice-president of Microsemi Ireland, Richard Finn recalled some of their current workforce are UL graduates and the company wants to fine-tune the course for the scholarship to meet their own specific needs in terms of the graduates they would hope to recruit in the future.
He noted they have also taken on some pupils from St Flannan’s for summer work.
“We’re just fine-tuning what UL is doing. I went there myself a while ago and most of the people that actually work here went there. We’re just fine-tuning, we’re just telling them what we need in three to five years’ time, so we can start producing graduates that are more relevant to our market.
“It’s going to be merit-based. There will be an interview for the top three or four. I don’t know the exact mechanism yet but it’ll be based on merit primarily. And it’ll be targeted at UL only, so it’s a partnership with UL. We’ve listed specific courses we’re going after – it’s all of the engineering and technology courses.
“They’re committing to four years and we’re offering them co-operative education for one term – we’re committing to six months’ employment during the course,” he said.
Microsemi vice-president, Ralph Brandi worked in tandem with UL for the development of the courses.
It proved to be a hectic day for senior Microsemi executives, who travelled from the United States for the first board meeting in Ennis for 10 years and a series of other meetings.
Company executives met with UL representatives, including the dean of engineering Professor Kieran Hodnett, Professor McCutcheon and Dr John Nelson, head of electronics and engineering in UL.
Key players in the industry who made the trip included Matt Massingill, Paul Falino, Denis Leibel and Tom Anderson, as well as Mr Peterson.