Jordan Times
Wednesday, March 24, 2004
IT incubators to be constructed at Yarmouk University Centre of Excellence
AMMAN (JT) — Yarmouk University on Tuesday signed two agreements with IT companies in the Kingdom to build information and telecommunications incubators at the academic institution's Centre of Excellence.The first agreement was signed with ESKADENIA Software Solutions, a software design, development and deployment company in the field of ICT. The university also signed an agreement with Integrated Technology Group (ITG), a company that provides IT solutions in software development, multimedia and design, as well as process automation.
According to Fayez Khasawneh, the president of the Irbid-based university, the incubators — which will add to five existing labs at the premises of the university — are part of efforts to enhance academia integration into the ICT sector to better serve its needs as well as contribute to the national shift towards a stronger knowledge-based economy.
“We have a very ambitious target to turn out world-class IT graduates that can compete for jobs locally, regionally and internationally,” Khasawneh told The Jordan Times.
According to a statement by ESKADENIA, yesterday's agreement is in co-ordination with int@j, the Information Technology Association — Jordan, the national IT umbrella, and its efforts aimed at establishing a Centre of Excellence at the University of Yarmouk in cooperation with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded AMIR Programme.
The Yarmouk Centre of Excellence will provide the enabling environment and services to individual entrepreneurs and small businesses, and will cooperate with the industry to develop software products in a variety of applications including medical and pharmaceutical applications, engineering sciences, system designs, business strategies and solutions, and complex systems modelling and simulation.
The two companies will establish IT business incubators that are designed to “fine-tune” the skills of IT students in a bid to bridge the gap between their academic studies and the requirements of the job market.
The centre will offer students the opportunity to work on projects that could potentially provide challenging learning experiences and meet market needs.
Founded in 1984 as Jordan's “first telecommunications collage,” the university's Hijjawi Faculty for Engineering and Technology, whose students will benefit from the new incubators, now fosters 1,600 electric engineers, according to Labib Khadra, the college dean.