one: Shared Success

one: SHARED SUCCESS

INDUSTRY PARTNERSHIPS PUT SUSTAINABILITY AT THE HEART OF BUSINESS EDUCATION

As a forward-thinking Business School that aspires to put sustainability at the heart of enterprise, it is incumbent on us to work with partners who share our ambition to positively shape the world in which we live.

UCC President Professor John

O’Halloran with AIB CEO and alumnus Dr Colin Hunt announcing the AIB Chair in Sustainable Business

Explore more

online: Watch the 2021 College of Business & Law Prizegiving ceremony bit.ly/3a8XS3v Our objective is to inspire and enable students to become responsible leaders in business and society, who will innovate to maximise the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profit.

That’s why CUBS faculty don’t just teach students about sustainability, they challenge learners to think about the bigger picture, long-term and ethical foundations, and how important stakeholders, beyond the shareholder, are.

To help create pathways that allow us to achieve our objective, during the last 12 months we have worked with like-minded industry partners to establish a web of partnerships and scholarships that will help students to maximise their potential.

In CUBS, we have a strong tradition of prizes and sponsorship, and we are grateful to our many industry partners. This year saw major new initiatives established with KPMG, AIB, Ornua, The Carbery Group and ALDI, as well as our continuing partnerships with Bank of Ireland, FDC Group and others.

In recent months, we announced a new chapter in our long-standing partnership with KPMG. This will see KPMG provide a €600,000 bursary to be distributed in CUBS over the next 5 years for a range of student engagement activities, including scholarships, work experience, and events.

The partnership reinforces KPMG’s commitment to business education in Ireland and will support the continued growth of the Accounting and Finance department in the Business School.

KPMG, which employs over 3,500 people in offices in Dublin, Cork, Galway and Belfast has a long tradition of hosting CUBS students for internship opportunities, and sources a significant number of graduates from UCC each year.

Reflecting on the announcement, KPMG’s Managing Partner, Seamus Hand, said, “helping people maximise their potential and investing in education and training is a core principle at KPMG. This five-year sponsorship with Cork University Business School reinforces our commitment to continuous learning and recognises the vital role of our third-level institutions in Irish education and business”.

The AIB Chair of Sustainable Business, funded to the tune of €1.25 million over five years, has been created to meet the demand for graduates to hold a broad knowledge and understanding of sustainable business practices.

The funding will also support The AIB Sustainable Business Scholars Programme, which will be established for early career researchers who excel in their field.

AIB’s donation demonstrates the impact of corporate philanthropy in enabling CUBS to advance its sustainability goals, while enhancing the student experience and improving graduate employability prospects.

Speaking at the time of the announcement, Colin Hunt, AIB Chief Executive Officer, echoed the ambitions of the Business School, saying that “AIB has put sustainability at the heart of our strategy. We are aligned with UCC’s vision to educate and guide business leaders who can balance environmental, social and governance goals with the ambition of delivering sustainable profits”.

Colin Hunt’s sentiment was repeated by Ornua’s Head of Sustainability, Yvonne Cooney, when it was announced that Ireland’s largest exporter of dairy products would fund a postgraduate scholarship for the MSc Co-operatives, Agri-Food and Sustainable Development.

“We’re delighted to partner with Cork University Business School to help support those pursuing this programme which gives participants a deep understanding of cooperatives, sustainable development and agri-food systems”.

The co-operative model employed by Ornua, and the values the company upholds, chimes with MSc Co-operatives, Agri-Food and Sustainable Development, which fully integrates co-operative approaches into the study of sustainable development and agri-food.

The Business School’s ambition to work with organisations who want to create a future in which collaborative economies help to generate sustainable rural communities was also evident following the announcement that the Carbery Group would also support a postgraduate scholarship.

Announced in June, The Carbery Group Scholarship will be awarded to one MSc in Co-operatives, Agri-Food and Sustainable Development student annually for the next five years, and will also include a valuable work placement with the international dairy, flavours and nutritional ingredients company.

Commenting on the launch of the scholarship, Jason Hawkins, Carbery CEO said: “The co-operative ethos is fundamental to the Carbery identity and how we operate. We work in partnership with our farmer shareholders, and the communities in which we are based, to make sure we are contributing in a positive way to the economy, socially, and within the community”.

The Business School’s commitment to nurturing the next generation of entrepreneurs was recognised by Supermarket giant, ALDI, who donated €50,000 to UCC to support the ALDI Food Entrepreneurship Challenge.

The donation, which will be made over five years, will assist fourth-year students of the BSc in Food Marketing and Entrepreneurship to platform new ideas and materialise learned knowledge as they showcase their final year projects to a panel of experts, including a representative from ALDI. 

KPMG Partners

Barrie O’Connell

and Celine Fox with

Professors John

O’Halloran, UCC President and Ursula Kilkelly, Head, College of Business and Law at the announcement of KPMP’s Investment in CUBS Future Leadrs

one: SHARED SUCCESS

COLLABORATION KEY TO EQUALITY, DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION IN BIS

Above:

Joe Feller, Bank of Ireland Professor of Business Information Systems

Right:

BIS celebrated their Athena SWAN Bronze award L-R

Dr Stephen McCarthy, Dr Ciara Heavin, Professor Joe Feller & Dr Wendy Rowan. The support provided by Bank of Ireland through the BOI Professorship in Business Information Systems, enabled the Department of BIS at Cork University Business School to place equality and the student experience at the heart of its response to the pandemic, ensuring that no student would be disadvantaged during lockdown.

With this support, we were able to rapidly build a cloud-based computer lab that replicated our world class on-campus facilities so that students had access to key software resources, and to put in place targeted strategies to ensure that every student had access to a laptop if required.

Our response to the pandemic reflects our ambition to build an environment and a culture in which students and staff are provided with equal opportunities so that they are empowered to grow, develop, and progress in their studies and careers.

This is also reflected in our activities seeking to bring greater gender parity to our faculty and student cohorts so that we can create a learning and working environment that better reflects the composition and character of our society. Our efforts were recognised through the conferring of an Athena Swan Bronze Award in 2019 and have continued since then.

Today, approximately 30% of our students are female, and we are committed to increasing that percentage so that we can achieve full gender balance among our student cohorts.

This commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion reflects the department’s broader goal to encourage students to assess the moral and ethical implications of technological innovation as they progress through our programmes and take on roles as tomorrow’s leaders. 