Pauric McGowan, BA. MBA. Ph.D.

Professor McGowan is Professor of Entrepreneurship and Business Development at the Ulster University Business School. He is active in research, with over 60 research publications and research case studies and in the supervision and examination of Ph.D. research projects. He is on the editorial board of several national and international academic journals. He is a member of the Ulster University Business School’s Research Institute and a Distinguished Business Fellow of the Ulster University in recognition of his work at the interface between the business practitioner community and the University. Professor McGowan is also a Fellow of the Marketing Institute of Ireland, a Fellow of the Higher Education Association and a Fellow of the Institute for Small Business and Entrepreneurship, (ISBE). He is a past-President of the Institute of Small Business and Entrepreneurship, (ISBE), the UK’s leading and longest established learned society of Educators and Researchers in Entrepreneurship and Small Business Practice, with a widening European constituency.

Pauric has been involved in education and executive training and mentoring for over 30 years. Between 2002 and 2010 he was the Director of Northern Ireland Centre for Entrepreneurship, (NICENT), responsible for leading the challenge to embed entrepreneurial learning and practice across University faculties, including Science, Engineering and Technology’ within Ulster University and Queens University. He secured a budget of £2million and managed a staff of 10 across the partner institutions with a commission to build awareness of and to increase the level of engagement in entrepreneurship of both students and staff within the target faculties. In a second phase of the Centre’s activities, he secured a further £1million in funding to expand the agenda into remaining faculties within the partner institutions, including Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. In 2006 NICENT was cited by Universities UK in their document “Higher level learning: Universities and employers working together”, as an exemplar for the promotion of an entrepreneurship culture within higher education. In September 2007, Pauric spent six months, between February and August 2008 on sabbatical, as a Visiting Scholar at the Arthur Blank Centre for Entrepreneurship, Babson College, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, and as a Visiting Professor at NIKOS, the Centre for Entrepreneurship at the University of Twente, in the Netherlands. He is a Visiting Professor at Newcastle Business School and Hubai University, Wuhan, China.