Prof. Irene Sheridan

Biography: Professor Irene Sheridan is Head of the MTU Extended Campus and leader of the Enterprise Engagement and Experiential Learning Research Group. Her background is in Electronic Engineering and she has worked for almost a decade in electronics design and manufacturing roles. Irene has been the project leader on two significant projects funded by the Higher Education Authority in Ireland. With a combined budget of ‚Ǩ13m, the Education in Employment and Roadmap for Employment-Academic Partnership projects (2007-2014) involved up to fifteen higher education institutions and focused on the development of education pathways for those in the workplace and guidelines for good practice in developing partnerships across the enterprise/education divide.

As Head of the MTU Extended Campus, Irene is responsible for stimulating and supporting all forms of interaction with public, private and not-for-profit organisations large and small, and has developed customer relationship and case management systems to assist in the codification and mapping of engagement. She has acted as Expert for the EACEA in a number of initiatives over the years, as European Expert with the EURASHE-led ProCSEE project and as the Irish partner for the State of University-Business Cooperation (UBC) in Europe Project.

Irene and the Extended Campus team have been partners in a number of EU-funded projects – mainly situated in the interface between enterprise and academia.
Irene is a Council Member of the ACEEU (Accreditation Council for Engaged and Entrepreneurial Universities) and a Board Member of the Quality and Qualifications Authority Ireland (QQI).

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Irene_Sheridan/research

Research Interests: Higher Education – Enterprise Engagement, Work-integrated learning, Recognition of prior learning