Draft President's News

Honorary Doctorate for Jim Gavin

Celebrating Graduation Week

Positive News For DCU Researchers

SFI Honour for Dr Eilish McLoughlin

New Alumni Centre Opens 

Your Invitation to the DCU Party

Leading the Way in Online Learning 

Comhghairdeas le Fáilte Ar Líne

8,000 Attend DCU Open Days

DCU Volunteers in Barretstown’s Winter Wonderland

Honorary Doctorate for Jim Gavin 

Dublin’s five-in-a-row winning senior football manager Jim Gavin will receive an honorary doctorate from DCU on Wednesday, December 11th. 

Not surprisingly, there has been great interest in this event, both from within the DCU community and from schools and GAA clubs around Dublin. Please register your attendance  here  before Wednesday 4 December.

Jim Gavin is a worthy recipient of the Doctor of Philosophy (Honoris Causa). He has set new standards of excellence in Gaelic Football and promotes important values such as teamwork and resilience. 

We are rightly proud of the DCU connection with Jim’s team. 17 DCU students and graduates were actively involved in the panel, which has trained at DCU Sports Grounds (St Claire's) for many years.

Celebrating Graduation Week

November’s graduation ceremonies were a great reminder of the transformative impact that DCU has on the lives of our students. 

Over four days, nearly 4,000 students received their qualifications, including 69 PhD’s, watched by around 8,000 proud family members and friends. The presence of a large body of DCU teaching staff at each of the ceremonies added greatly to the occasion and demonstrated your care and support for your students.  

Friday lunchtime ceremony was especially notable as we were joined by graduands and their families from Princess Nourah University (PNU) in Riyadh. We were also delighted to welcome Prof Ahmed Haider Alchadir, Vice Rector for Graduate Studies & Scientific Research and a number of PNU’s senior staff. 

Later that day, the Chancellor’s Medal was awarded to Sorcha Killian (BA, Global Business, Canada) in recognition of her exceptional academic achievement and engagement in student life. But there was cause for a double family celebration. Minutes later, her mother, Marie Hayden, received an MSc in Work and Organisational Psychology. 

Thank you to everyone who made this a very special event in the lives of our students. In particular, thanks must go to our Chancellor Dr Martin McAleese, Deputy President Prof Daire Keogh, Dean of Teaching & Learning, Prof Billy Kelly and Director of Registry, Phyl Mc Morrough. Thanks also to our Masters of Ceremonies: Dr Noel Murphy, Dr Bernadette Ni Aingleis, Dr Eamon Cunningham, Dr Brid Murphy, Pauline Willis, Dr Liam Hourihane, Colm Ó Ciardubháin, Martin Molony, Therese Danaher, Dr Susan Pike, Marie Conroy Johnson. 

Positive News For DCU Researchers

There were a number of notable Research Funding successes for DCU in the last month, with several more to be announced shortly.

Funding worth more than €493,000 will be allocated to DCU as part of a successful H2020 SC6 bid. Prof Gabriel Miro-Muntean (School of EE and Insight) is the DCU lead on 'TRACTION: Opera co-creation for a social transformation' that has been allocated more than €3.75m. The project will research the potential to build more cohesive societies through opera performances that are enhanced via emerging immersive technologies. The researchers will work with marginalised communities in Ireland, Spain and Portugal during the 2- year project. 

Congratulations to Prof Federico Fabbrini who has been awarded the Charlemagne Fellowship Award for Research in recognition of his work on the future of the EU. Prof. Fabbrini is a full professor of European Law at the School of Law and Government and the Director of the DCU Brexit Institute. 

The European Charlemagne Prize Fellowship is an endowed 1-year programme of the European Charlemagne Prize Academy, including individual research, the fulfilment of personal milestones, networking events, as well as the presentation of the research outcomes at a prospective European Summit and through a joint publication.

Congratulations are also due to Dr Simon Dunne, Assistant Professor of Psychology was announced as the recipient of the 2019 Stimulus Award from the Irish Cancer Society for his lung cancer intervention development study called Supportive Care fOR Everybody (SCORE).

The Stimulus Award which Dr Dunne has received will facilitate the development of an evidence-based supportive care intervention to increase the quality of life and reduce distress in lung cancer survivors and their families and caregivers.

SFI Honour for Dr Eilish McLoughlin

Congratulations to Associate Professor Dr Eilish McLoughlin on being honoured with a prestigious 2019 Science Foundation Ireland award. Dr McLoughlin received SFI Outstanding Contribution to STEM Communication award for “her incredible contribution to the popularisation of science and her sterling efforts in raising public awareness of the value of science to human progress.”

The award was made at the annual SFI Science Summit in Athlone attended by over 300 leading members of Ireland’s research community.

Dr McLoughlin is Director of the Research Centre for the Advancement of STEM Teaching and learning (CASTeL) at DCU. She has led several large-scale national initiatives to widen participation in STEM including Physics Busking, Science on Stage, Improving Gender Balance (all 3 have been funded by SFI) and the STEM Teacher Internship.

New Alumni Centre Opens 

It was a milestone month for our Alumni Relations Office, at home and abroad. Last week (November 26th) saw the official opening of the new Alumni Centre on ‘The Street’ in the Henry Grattan building. The centre sends a positive message to our almost 85,000 Alumni that ‘the door is always open’. Our thanks to international canoeist Jenny Egan and Alumni Council Chair Marian Corcoran for doing the honours by cutting the ribbon at the opening event. 

Earlier in the month, we were proud to host DCU’s first Tech Talk in Silicon Valley last month, featuring DCU alumna, Lorraine Twohill, Chief Marketing Officer at Google. In a ‘fireside chat’ interview, Lorraine recalled the passion of DCU lecturers as a strong memory from her student days, where she graduated with a BA in International Marketing and Languages (1992). In particular, Lorraine mentioned the influence of current Business School lecturer, Dr Michael Gannon.

The event, the first in a series, was also an opportunity to present Lorraine with an Outstanding Alumni Achievement Award for her work in the areas of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. She was one of five recipients of this year’s award, but was unable to attend the ceremony in person, earlier this year. 

Your Invitation to the DCU Party

Our annual seasonal celebration for staff takes place on the DCU St Patrick’s Campus this year. It promises to be an appropriately festive event, with mulled wine, mince pies and music from our Campus Choir.  

The celebrations take place in Java City, DCU St Patrick's Campus on Tuesday 17th December at 3.30pm. Christmas jumpers optional!

If you plan to join the festivities click here.

Do you want to mention Carol Service, other Christmas events/concerts??

 

Leading the Way in Online Learning 

DCU continues to demonstrate its leadership in the development of online learning opportunities. We recently announced an agreement with global online learning services enterprise InStride, becoming their first European partner. 

InStride enables employees of multinational companies to access educational opportunities and earn degrees from prestigious universities worldwide. The partnership reflects the shift towards online study and the University’s commitment to lifelong learning. 

DCU’s excellence in this space was underlined by the success of the recent World Conference for Online Learning 2019, hosted by DCU at the National Convention Centre. The conference attracted around 800 delegates from 80 countries around the world. Some 30 University Presidents, Vice-Chancellors and Rectors attended. Congratulations are due to Prof Mark Brown and the team at the National Institute for Digital Learning for making this a successful event.

Congratulations to the #Openteach project team on Teaching online is different: Critical perspectives from the literature, a report  launched at the Conference and praised by Minister for Higher Education Mary Mitchel O’Connor for its contribution to research about online teaching.

Comhghairdeas le Fáilte Ar Líne

Our Irish language and cultural online degree programme, Fáilte Ar Líne, recently won the Irish Language Award at the 2019 National Lottery Good Causes Awards. The award recognises the initiatives that advance the Irish language.

 EMBED VIDEO

The project is a collaboration between FIONTAR & Scoil na Gaeilge and the National Institute for Digital Learning.  

The initiative has proven to be hugely successful. More than 45,000 students from 140 countries have registered for Fáilte ar Líne courses.



8,000 Attend DCU Open Days

Congratulations and thank you to everyone involved in making last month’s Open Days such a big success. We estimate that 8,000 people visited our Glasnevin and St Patrick’s Campuses over the two days. 

Activities included 164 subject presentations across our 5 faculties, and 33 general presentations covering everything from student life at DCU, to sports opportunities, to our University of Sanctuary initiative. 50 teachers attended a guidance counsellor seminar that featured a presentation from each Faculty, and a briefing on DCU Graduate Employability. 

Our new Open Day app proved to be very successful and it is hoped this will allow us to go paper free for future Open Days. 

DCU Volunteers Help to Make Barretstown a Winter Wonderland

Well done to the many DCU staff and students who volunteered for the recent Barretstown Winter Wonderland event. Despite the poor weather, this annual fundraiser was a great success and the volunteers had a fun and rewarding day. 

This was the first significant volunteering opportunity as part of DCU’s new partnership with Barretstown. Members of the DCU community made a great contribution to the day, helping out with a variety of Christmas market stalls and children's activities, including Santa's Grotto. 

We are the first University in Ireland to embark on a charity partnership such as this, which addresses our strategic goal ‘to engage with our communities’.