LIFT Ireland and NUI Galway have announced the first partnership in Ireland’s third-level sector aimed at improving leadership skills amongst students and staff.
LIFT Ireland is an initiative to raise the level of leadership nationwide, working with organisations and individuals in a variety of settings to develop key leadership attributes. Current partners include ESB, Munster Rugby, Bank of Ireland, RSA Insurance, Vodafone, Dublin Airport, and over 100 secondary schools nationwide.
LIFT’s partnership with NUI Galway is the organisation’s first formal partnership with a third-level institution. It will see more than 200 staff and students trained as LIFT facilitators by April. These facilitators will then go on to deliver the LIFT leadership programme to a further 1,500 staff and students at NUI Galway throughout 2021. As part of a pilot run in late 2020, LIFT has already trained 70 NUI Galway students and staff as facilitators.
The LIFT Model
LIFT’s leadership programme is delivered through regular roundtable sessions, led by a volunteer facilitator. Each session focuses on one of eight key leadership values, such as honesty, competence, accountability, empathy, respect and positive attitude. The programme supports participants to develop these leadership attributes on an ongoing basis.
Commenting on the partnership with NUI Galway, Joanne Hession, founder and CEO of LIFT Ireland, said: “We work with students and staff across all levels of education, including in schools and further education settings. By working with education institutions, LIFT is aiming to instil strong leadership values in people from a young age, in the hope that they will take these values and practices with them as they move through life and through their careers.
“We are delighted to be partnering with NUI Galway, a pioneer in its sector and the first of what we hope will be many third-level institutions to roll out LIFT across campus.”
Also welcoming the partnership, the President of NUI Galway, Professor Ciarán Ó hOgartaigh, said: “We are delighted to be the first university to be part of the LIFT programme in Ireland. Many organisations have already benefitted from the programme and, as a learning organisation, I’m particularly pleased that we’re the first university to be involved.
“Leading Ireland’s future together is particularly important for NUI Galway and the LIFT programme does it in a way which is very much in tune with our values as a university.”
To view a video of NUI Galway students speaking about their participation in the LIFT pilot partnership in late 2020, go to: liftireland.ie/nuig-first-thrid-level-lift-partner/”t-thrid-level-lift-partner/.
Minister Harris was speaking at a new Regional Engagement Advisory Group, attended by Presidents of IT Carlow and WIT and business leaders for the area.
Minister Harris said:
“It is a significant priority for Government, myself as Minister and my department that the South East attains technological university status this year.
“This region is the only one without any university presence and that is a situation that is not good for the region and which must and will be rectified.
“The benefits of a TU are significant –the ability to attract Foreign Direct Investment, to retain and create skills and employment in the region and to give students the highest quality education across all qualification levels, from apprenticeship to doctoral degrees, whilst residing in their own locality.
“I want the TU that emerges in the South East to be a magnet for investment, a driver of regional access and development of all types and a catalyst for innovation and change.”
Mr. Tom Boland, a former Chief Executive of the Higher Education Authority (HEA), is the independent Programme Executive Director for the TUSEI consortium comprising the Carlow and Waterford Institutes of Technology. Minister Harris has met Mr Boland regularly about the project.
Minister Harris added:
“This region has suffered greatly in successive global economic and financial crises and is crying out for an anchor within the higher education and enterprise landscape that can deliver real change and prosperity; I firmly believe this is what the new TU will do.
“I want also to emphasise that this is a TU for everyone in the region not just for Waterford or for Carlow but also for Wexford, Kilkenny, Wicklow, Laois and Kildare.
“I want the people of the South East not to have to cast covetous glances at Dublin or Cork or Galway but to be proud that they have a university every bit as good if not better than the excellent provision in those cities and others.”
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