Published on: Tuesday, 26 January 2016

CIT’s Blackrock Castle Observatory (BCO) received a grant of €200,000 from Science Foundation Ireland in the recent round of their Discover awards. The announcement was made by the Minister for Research, Innovation and Skills, Damien English, TD at a meeting of the successful applicants in Farmleigh House on Thursday 21st January, 2016. A total of 42 projects were awarded grants totalling €2.8m.
 
Science Foundation Ireland’s Discover funding is awarded competitively following rigorous international review where the STEM education and public engagement projects are required to address how they plan to enable greater STEM understanding and debate or support STEM education formally or informally.
 
CIT-BCO’s programme is titled “Driving STEM Learning and Awareness using Space as the Theme”. This includes public events, workshops for primary and post-primary schools, and continuous professional development training for teachers to enable them to use “space” in the classroom to support curricular objectives in an inspirational setting. The funding also supports a new national STEM week, SPACE WEEK, which will run in parallel with World Space Week in October 2016. CIT-BCO will coordinate this new STEM week and we are particularly delighted to have the opportunity to enhance the national visibility and impact of CIT-BCO, whilst at the same time providing a platform on which the relevance and importance of “space” can be brought to not only the general public, but also industry and education. Further information on SPACE WEEK and how to get involved will be released in the coming weeks.
 
The full announcement is available here

Interim Director of Communications, Niamh Lyons and  Minister for Research, Innovation and Skills, Damien English, TD
Image Credit: Shane O'Neill