The UIT program at Cape Breton University reached a milestone Monday when its dozen students were to present their best ideas to the members of the One Nova Scotia Coalition.

UIT is a new technology and entrepreneurship program championed by Gavin Uhma, the CBU graduate who went on to co-found GoInstant, one of Nova Scotia’s most successful startups. The program offers free tuition to 12 students, divided evenly between men and women.

While two or three students are focusing on developing real companies, most are being encouraged to come up with ideas in various forms of technology and investigate whether they could be developed into businesses.

“The idea of the program is that throughout the course of the year they’ll be exposed to different forms of technology,” said Uhma in an interview.

He said that once the students are exposed to a form of technology, they’re encouraged to come up with their own ideas on how it could be the basis for a startup. Uhma said that as the program wraps up in the summer, organizers hope more students will develop businesses they can pursue. But, for now, it’s interesting to see the ideas they are coming up with.

On Monday, the members of the One Nova Scotia Coalition, which was established by the provincial government to help implement the recommendations of the Ivany commission, were to meet in Sydney. To highlight the city’s burgeoning tech community, the students were to pitch some of their ideas to coalition members.

Organizers said the session would be a hallmark for the program because it was the first opportunity for students to showcase the work they’d done since September.

After GoInstant sold out to Salesforce.com in the summer of 2012, Uhma began to talk about working with his alma mater to set up an entrepreneurship program that would use online courses. People in the tech community began to talk about “the University of Gavin” being established.

Uhma has become the senior mentor in the program, and he reviews all the students’ weekly presentations. But the startup community in Sydney has gotten behind the program, providing mentorship and other resources.

The program is one of several around the region in which the goal is not just to educate students but also to produce successful businesses. Other examples includethe Starting Lean initiative at Dalhousie University, the MTEI program at Saint Mary’s and the TME program at the University of New Brunswick.

Uhma is working with Cape Breton University on plans to continue UIT next year and even enlarge the enrolment. And he said he hopes that again half the students will be female, as there is a broad movement to encourage more women to enter technological businesses and entrepreneurship.

 “For me, it’s just about looking at some of the opportunities I had growing up and making sure that some of the other people growing up in Cape Breton have those same opportunities.”