Winter 2011
Maynooth Alumni Magazine
Maynooth Alumni
Advisory Board
40 Years of Geography
Alumni in the News
Computer Science
Silver Jubilee
....................................................
Plus
Graduate Profiles, Events in the Spotlight,
Graduations and much more…
1 The Bridge
Wİnter ’11
Editor
Karen Kelly
Design
www.unthink.ie
Print
Spectrum Print Logistics
Paper
Offset
Welcome to
the Brİdge
01 Welcome
Greetings and Hello.
02 Introducing our
new President
Professor Philip Nolan joined
NUI Maynooth this year as
President. Read about his plans
and vision for the University.
04 Events in
the Spotlight
So many events in 2011 but here
are some of our favourites.
06 Alumni Ball 2011
The fourth annual Alumni
Ball was a ball!
08 Ireland’s Urban
Structure
Alumnus Edgar Morgenroth,
currently Associate Research
Professor at the ESRI, argues
the case for forging links
between Ireland’s parishes,
villages, towns and counties.
09 40 Years of
Geography at
Maynooth!
It all began in 1971…
10 Towards a
Second Republic
Will change do us good?
12 Princeton Review
NUI Maynooth becomes the
first and only university outside
of North America to feature
in the Princeton Review.
13 Alumni in
the News
Maynooth Alumni hit the
headlines in 2011.
14 Children of the
self-absorbed
Professor Brendan Gleeson argues
that cities are increasingly designing
children out of the equation.
16 Computer Science
Celebrates
Silver Jubilee
So many reasons to celebrate…
18 Dublinked
Dublin's Local Authorities and
NUI Maynooth invite businesses,
technologists and researchers
to join unique data network.
19 Where are our
Alumni now?
Graduate Profiles.
22 Graduations
Conferrings in 2011.
23 Maynooth
Alumni Advisory
Board (MAAB)
Alumni help strengthen the
Maynooth Alumni Association.
24 The Morpeth Roll
19th Century Social Network.
Welcome to this year’s edition of
the Maynooth Alumni Association
magazine, The Bridge. I hope you
will enjoy our 2011 publication which
features a wide variety of articles
on topics ranging from finance,
sociology, history and geography.
The ‘Where are they now’ section on
alumni includes profiles on alumni
from every decade since the 1960s.
Our new President, Professor Philip
Nolan, shares his thoughts on his vision
for the University and how alumni can
contribute to the University’s Strategic
Planning Process. One group who are
doing just that is the Maynooth Alumni
Advisory Board (MAAB). Established
in February, MAAB is a new initiative
for 2011 from the Alumni Office. Read
more about MAAB on page 23.
Over the next few months, the
Alumni Office will be launching a
new on-line community website
for Maynooth Alumni.
Alumni will soon be able to register
via this website and once registered,
be eligible to sign up for alumni
events, modify their contact details
on-line and receive regular emails
and communications from the Alumni
Office. Keep an eye out for that!
Thanks to all (alumni, staff and
academics) for their support and
commitment in producing this
year’s magazine which will be
available on the Alumni website,
http://alumni.nuim.ie.
If you need any copies for fellow
alumni, please contact me on
01 708 6492 or by email
at [email protected]
All the best,
Stay Connected
Maynooth Alumni Association
Your alumni association can help make
your investment in education go even
further. For more information, please visit
http://www.alumni.nuim.ie.
Karen Kelly, Alumni Office,
Riverstown Lodge, Maynooth, Co Kildare.
Tel: (01) 708 6492 or log on to
→http://alumni.nuim.ie/connected
Some of the Alumni benefits
from Maynooth
-Annual Alumni Magazine –
The Bridge
-Graduate discounts on the
University’s sports facilities –
Gym and Swimming Pool
-Graduate membership of the
University’s library
-Assistance in organizing reunions
and events
- Bank of Ireland affinity credit card
-Discounts on accommodation for
hotels locally
-Opportunity to establish Chapters
regionally and abroad
-Seasonal alumni events
Karen Kelly
Alumni Officer
→ http://alumni.nuim.ie/services
Maynooth Chapters
The best way to keep in touch!
A note from
the Presİdent
It gives me great pleasure to welcome
you to this year’s edition of The Bridge.
Since arriving on campus in August
this year I have experienced firsthand
the warm welcome and collegiality
that so many alumni reminisce about.
Maynooth is a very special place and
I look forward to working with you
and the wider University community
over the coming years to consolidate
NUI Maynooth’s distinctive and
special contribution to our national
system of higher education and
to further strengthen our national
and international reputation.
We are always delighted to hear
from past students – as graduates of
Maynooth you are the cornerstone
of our reputation. I invite all of you to
stay in touch and stay connected with
your alma mater and I look forward to
meeting you at one of the many alumni
events over the next twelve months.
Warmest regards
Professor Philip Nolan,
President, NUI Maynooth
As time goes by it may not be as easy as
it once was to meet up with classmates
from your university days at Maynooth.
Setting up a Chapter is a great way for
graduates to keep in touch with each
other and the University. A Chapter
joins people together and is open to all
graduates on an equal basis. The Alumni
Office will assist you whenever possible
in recruiting members and organising
events. The most common aims of
University Chapters include:
- Maintaining contact with Maynooth
- Advocates for your Alma mater
- Facilitate social gatherings
- Networking opportunities
- Assist in fundraising initiatives
- Build Alumni commitment
The Bridge is a magazine published by NUI Maynooth.
Contributions in the form of articles, graduate profiles
and photographs are welcome. We would be delighted
to receive your comments and ideas for future editions
– please email [email protected]
The opinions and views in this publication are those
of the contributors and are not necessarily shared by
NUI Maynooth. While every care has been taken to
ensure accuracy in the compilation of the magazine, NUI
Maynooth cannot accept responsibility for any errors
or omissions or effects arising thereof. However any
errors or omissions should be brought to the attention
of the alumni office.
Maynooth Alumni Association Stay Connected, Keep Connected
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‘Maynooth is on a trajectory to be Ireland’s best university.
I would hope in ten years time that alumni can say that’s
something we contributed to and of which we’re proud’.
‘We need to unashamedly tell the country and the
world that we have extraordinary good educational
programmes and a wonderful experience for students
and that Maynooth should be the university of
choice for people for their degrees’ he stressed.
Introducing
Professor
Philip Nolan
Professor Philip Nolan was appointed President of NUI Maynooth on
15th August 2011. A Dublin man and the first generation of his family
to go to university, Professor Nolan was previously Registrar and
Deputy President of UCD until his Maynooth appointment. Speaking
to The Bridge, he outlined his vision for the University over the years
ahead and how alumni will be a key contributor to these plans.
‘Maynooth is a wonderful university with a particular
history that in one form or another, has served
the country well for over two hundred years. It
has particular strengths in the humanities, social
sciences and science and engineering so my first
objective is to build on that history and strength
and ensure that NUI Maynooth is and continues to
be a leading Irish University and really establishes
itself on the international stage’. With these
opening words from the conversation with Karen
Kelly, Alumni Officer, Professor Nolan proceeded
to discuss the four pillars that will be instrumental
in delivering his strategy during his Presidency.
Maynooth Alumni Association Stay Connected, Keep Connected
The first of Professor Nolan’s pillars is in the realm
of education, teaching and learning. ‘Perhaps the
trait that Maynooth is most famous for is the quality
of our education and what we do for our students.
All of our alumni report very fond memories of their
time at Maynooth, of the individual teachers that
inspired them and of the learning atmosphere and
learning environment. They would assert that from
the perspective of a student, Maynooth is Ireland’s
best university. We need to make this known, to
confidently assert it to the rest of the world’. Professor
Nolan commented that in particular, one of the
characteristics of a Maynooth education is that it
is an education for life, that it provides students
with the learning and the skills that are necessary
for work certainly but for life and citizenship also.
Acknowledging the role played by John Hughes, former
President of NUI Maynooth in the area of research,
Professor Nolan sees a strong research infrastructure
as being the second pillar in his strategy. ‘John worked
very hard to build a strong research base. Over the
next ten years, we will be working to consolidate our
research infrastructure and research base and to
establish Maynooth internationally as a centre for
research. We are strong in the humanities including
the very innovative area of digital humanities and
many alumni know that. Maynooth is certainly strong
in the social sciences and what is special here is the
way we think about society in spatial and geographical
as well as sociological and economic terms’. Speaking
about computing and electronics and information
and communications technology, the President
believes entities such as the Hamilton, Callan and
Innovation Value Institutes are showing that in that
those advanced areas of technology, Maynooth is
right at the cutting edge. ‘We have something very
particular and special to offer in this area of research
and we see ourselves as being partners nationally
and internationally in these areas of strength’.
Professor Nolan’s third pillar concerns
internationalisation. ‘The experience that alumni are
proud of, their recollections of their educational and
happy times at NUI Maynooth can only attract more
and more people from outside Ireland to want to come
and study here and that brings great benefits to the
institution’. Commenting that such an experience will
only make for a more interesting and intercultural
environment, he is also of the belief that there are
real benefits to be had for the region. ‘The employers
located in this region want to employ very good
graduates but they also want to employ graduates
from diverse backgrounds, with diverse ways of
thinking. Having an internationalized university is
not only good in itself but it also has a very positive
impact on the attractiveness of the region as a
place for employers to set up’. The demographic of
Maynooth Alumni, by virtue of this international focus
will, he believes, become much more international.
He plans to re-establish connections with our
international alumni community so as alumni can
support the University in a variety of ways.
Finally, the fourth pillar of the University strategy
over the next ten years will be engagement – seeking
partnership with enterprise, the community and the
State, Professor Nolan will explore all avenues for
opportunities for learning and scholarship. ’We have
to be active in these areas and not take a passive role.
Active engagement on the part of the University is
a critical part of our strategy over the next decade’.
Alumni, he believes, will have a role to play in this. ‘Just
as many of our alumni will have traveled nationally
and settled internationally, many of our alumni
remain local and involved in the local community,
in local enterprise and administration, so again I
would like to see an engagement between us and
them, in partnership to do new things in the region’.
As a result of the global and broad social reach of
Maynooth Alumni, Professor Nolan appreciates
how influential and supportive alumni can be to a
university. Speaking about the Maynooth Alumni
Advisory Board which was formed earlier this year,
he is clear about the need for alumni to contribute
to the strategic vision for the University. ’The most
important thing that alumni do is to prevent the
University from being too inward looking. Alumni
can say look, there’s a world here that your students
graduate in and your research gets applied into; you
need to think about us when you’re making your plans
and when you’re running your institution. Alumni are
appropriately proud of the institution they’ve come
from. They want to see it prosper – the support of our
alumni will be critical to the delivery of the strategy’.
Professor Nolan’s ten year journey with NUI Maynooth
began this year. His vision for the University is
based on inclusion. ‘The only way that everybody
believes in it is if everybody has contributed to it.
Maynooth is on a trajectory to be Ireland’s best
university in terms of the teaching it offers and
for some focused areas of research where we can
claim to be the best in the country and establishing
because of that, a very clear position on the
international stage. I would hope in ten years time
that alumni can say that’s something we contributed
to and of which we’re proud’. Watch this space!
WWW.ALUMNI.NUIM.IE
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EVENTS
IN THE
SPOTLIGHT
Saro-Wiwa private
prison letters donated
to University
NUI Maynooth has received a unique gift
with the donation of private correspondence
from renowned Nigerian writer and social
activist Ken Saro-Wiwa written while
he awaited execution in Port Harcourt
detention centre from 1993–1995. The
letters were donated by Irish missionary
nun, Sister Majella McCarron, who had
supported Saro-Wiwa and the Ogoni people
in their struggle to protect their homeland
for many years. The donation was made
on the 16th anniversary of his execution,
which took place on 10th November 1995.
Nobel Peace Prize nominee Saro-Wiwa
handwrote 30 letters to Sister Majella while
he was on death row. The letters, which
were smuggled out of the Port Harcourt
detention centre in bread baskets between
October 1993 and September 1995, detail
the harsh realities of life as a political
prisoner and the hardships and deprivations
he suffered. The letters also speak of the
increasing political turmoil in Nigeria and
of Saro-Wiwa’s hopes for a peaceful future
in that country and in Northern Ireland.
INTEL CEO marks 5th
anniversary of IVI
Organisations no longer have to ‘shoot in
the dark’ with regard to their IT investments
as the IT-CMF framework from the
Innovation Value Institute (IVI), founded by
Intel and NUI Maynooth, has established
itself as ‘an invaluable evaluation and
strategic tool for companies and entities
throughout the world across all industries
and sectors’, Intel CTO Justin Rattner
said as IVI marked its 5th anniversary.
Mr Rattner said the development of the ITCMF was a priority for Intel and was a unique
contribution to securing the future role of
IT in the workplace. In the past five years
IVI has achieved a number of significant
milestones including moving from start-up
to an international organisation with over 75
members across the US, Canada, Australia,
New Zealand, Europe, UK and Ireland, training
more than 500 CIOs and leading IT executives
from over 20 countries and developing
specialised IVI research into specific
industry issues, including Sustainable
ICT, Cloud Computing and security.
Gain in 2011 World
University Rankings
The World University Rankings, published
today by Thomson Reuters, show NUI
Maynooth is now numbered among the top
400 universities in the world and is the only
Irish university to increase its ranking this
year. The rankings are based on 13 separate
performance indicators designed to capture
the full range of university activities including
teaching, research volume and influence,
industry income and international outlook.
The ranking caps a highly successful year
for NUI Maynooth which continues to be the
fastest growing university in Ireland, with
9% increase in CAO undergraduate first
preference applications, 12% increase in
postgraduate applications and ranked 4th
in research income per academic in Ireland.
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Maynooth Alumni Association Stay Connected, Keep Connected
4
Professor Philip Nolan, President of
NUI Maynooth commented that ‘these
distinctions are testimony to the
calibre of teaching and research at NUI
Maynooth and on the priority we place
on equipping our graduates with the
best possible qualifications and skills’.
New Framework
for Understanding
Origin and Evolution
of Animal Species
An international research project led by Dr
Davide Pisani, an evolutionary biologist from
NUI Maynooth, and financed by Science
Foundation Ireland and NASA, has made a
fundamental breakthrough in the study of
the relationships between groups of animals,
providing a new framework to understand
the origin and evolution of animal species.
The three year project, which used
phylogenomic methodologies developed
over the past ten years, analysed the
largest hereditary (genomic) data set of
255 genes and over 49,000 amino acid
positions from 33 different species. The
study focused on tardigrades, or ‘water
bears’ as they are more commonly known, an
animal group that has existed for over 600
million years, has proven to be the one of the
most resilient on the planet, and can even
survive in outer space. Dr Pisani’s research
findings have groundbreaking ramifications
for the way we classify groups of animals,
their relationships with each other and our
understanding of how they have evolved as
well as having significant implications for
scientists in other fields such as synthetic
biology, geology and parasitology.
Minister launches
University collaboration
The Minister for Education and Skills, Ruairi
Quinn T.D. formally launched BioAT – a
unique PhD collaboration between Dublin
City University, NUI Maynooth, Royal
College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI)
NUI Maynooth
points increase
NUI Maynooth has experienced the highest
growth in CAO first choice applications
of any university in Ireland this year. The
number of first choice applications to the
University grew by 8% year-on-year, while
the number of students applying to third
level institutions remained flat. In recent
years NUI Maynooth has been Ireland’s
fastest growing university and shows a
cumulative growth in CAO first choice
applications of 55% over the past five years.
This year NUI Maynooth saw particularly
strong growth in the demand for specialty
subjects in Arts and Sciences, indicating
students are thinking ahead to possible
career opportunities at an earlier stage.
Individual subjects like Psychology (505
points) Media Studies (455 points)
and Science Education (470 points) all
experienced strong demand growth.
Points for general Arts admission (the
University’s most popular course) rose
to 380 while the BSc in Pharmaceutical
and Biomedical Chemistry saw a
surge in points from 365 to 400.
Key teaching degrees at NUI Maynooth;
Primary Teaching with Froebel (465)
and Science Education (470) have also
held up well despite the perception
of current challenges in employment
and NUI Maynooth’s new degree
Law (LLB) has points of 460.
3
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and Institute of Technology Tallaght - which
will add strength and depth to Ireland’s
important biopharmaceutical and biomedical
device industries. One of the first significant
university collaborations in this area, BioAT
(BioAnalysis and Therapeutics Structured
PhD Programme) will help drive Ireland’s
push for cures to diseases like Alzheimer’s,
Cystic Fibrosis and Cancer. A total of 29
doctoral researchers have commenced the
four year Bio Analysis and Therapeutics
doctoral programme which will deliver multidisciplinary PhD projects with applications
to cancer, cardiovascular, respiratory,
neurodegenerative and infection / immune
diseases. The programme is structured to
ensure the highest level of transferrable
skill and knowledge between academia and
the needs of industry and works to develop
graduates entrepreneurial skills as well as
the highest quality of academic research.
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LL.B. Degree accredited
by the King’s Inns
The Honorable Society of King's Inns
has accredited NUI Maynooth’s new
four-year, full-time undergraduate LL.B.
Bachelor of Laws degree. This adds to the
Department’s portfolio of accredited law
degrees, which includes the B.C.L. (with a
focus on Law & Arts) and the B.B.L. (with
a focus on Law & Business). The new LL.B.
was designed to reflect recent research
on what legal education does well and
what it fails to do adequately. It was also
tailored to reflect the needs of potential
employers in highly competitive markets,
including large international law firms,
multinational businesses, regulatory
agencies and international organisations.
Accordingly, it emphasizes legal writing
and advocacy skills and incorporates
experiential learning wherever feasible.
The King’s Inns accreditation will add
to the range of choices available to law
students at NUI Maynooth and enhance
their ability to compete internationally.
The Department of Law has experienced
rapid expansion at NUI Maynooth. This
September, three new postgraduate
degree programmes were introduced;
LL.M. – Master of Law (for law graduates),
M.L.S. – Master of Legal Science (for
graduates from any discipline) and the LL.M
International Business Law (dual degree
with the Catholic University of Lyon).
5 years of
2
the Maynooth
Chamber Choir
In May this year, the Maynooth Chamber
Choir celebrated its silver anniversary with
a gala concert with former President Mary
McAleese as Guest of Honour. The Chamber
Choir, consisting of twenty two students
from NUI Maynooth and St Patrick’s College
Maynooth was conducted by Aengus
Ó Maoláin, a graduate of music at the
University, former President of the Maynooth
Student’s Union and inaugural member of the
Maynooth Alumni Advisory Board (MAAB).
8
Speaking after the performance, President
McAleese congratulated the Choir on their
twenty five years and, quoting Yeats, noted
that that the choir’s dedication and passion
for music epitomised ‘education not filling
the pail, but lighting a fire’. The Maynooth
Alumni Association invited a number of
alumni as guests to this anniversary event.
Cerebeo
new spin out
Cerebeo – a new company dedicated
to improving the speed, efficiency and
effectiveness of the €1 billion Outsourced
Drug Research and Development industry
was spun out from NUI Maynooth earlier this
year. Cerebeo is a specialized outsourced
research company using some of the most
innovative models and techniques available in
science and is the second company spun out
from the research of Professor John Lowry,
who was winner of the 2009 Enterprise
Ireland Lifesciences Commercialisation
Award. The company is targeting a turnover
of €6m by 2016 and will be recruiting two
technicians by the end of this year.
Researchers point
way to free citywide broadband
Scientists at the Hamilton Institute at
NUI Maynooth have devised a solution
to what is a major challenge for cities
worldwide – the provision of widespread,
free, effective broadband for all their
citizens. For more than 10 years, this has
been a goal of cities in their drive to support
the ‘smart economy’ but it had remained
elusive due to technological limitations.
The two main barriers to creating successful
municipal wireless networks are Interference
from the many WiFi transmitters in close
proximity to each other and Fairness – the
allocation of bandwidth evenly between
users. Professor Doug Leith and colleagues
Ken Duffy and David Malone have developed
software programs which circumvent the
Interference and Fairness issues meaning the
WiFi transmitters operate effectively. The
software has been proven in trials and the
NUI Maynooth team is currently preparing
for large scale demonstrations in association
with industry partners with a view to bringing
the software to market as soon as possible.
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2
1. Dean McCarthy (BSc 2008)
2. Class of 1996 (l-r); Vivienne Lee, Louise Gargan,
Brendan McEvoy, Maura Flynn Dempsey, Patrick Neylon, Mark Greville
3. (l-r); Gemma Ennis, Professor Tom Collins, Interim President,
and Ann O’Brien, Director of Access
4. Sandra Hughes (BA 2009)
5. (l-r); Professor Chris Morash, Professor Tom Collins, Interim President,
Mary O’Donnell and Professor Peter Denman
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Celebrate
& Connect
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‘Celebrate and Connect’ was the theme of this
year’s annual ball held in Pugin Hall on Saturday,
11 June. Alumni from the graduating classes of
1971, 1991 and 1996 celebrated on the night.
Apropos graduates from every decade
since the 1960s were represented at
the Ball. Minister for State, Brian Hayes
TD, who is a 1991 History and Sociology
graduate, was guest at the President’s
table which also hosted representatives
from across the education sector.
Maynooth Alumni Association Stay Connected, Keep Connected
Professor Tom Collins, presented two awards
on the night. The President’s Alumni Award
this year went to writer Mary O’Donnell.
Mary is a prominent writer, has published
six collections of poetry, three novels and
two collections of short stories. She is
an influential drama critic, has presented
on national radio, and has written many
articles across a span of academic journals
and glossy magazines. Her status has been
recognised by admission to Aosdána, the
elite association of Irish writers and artists.
She has been recognised by numerous awards and
honours including the Listowel Writers’ Week prize,
the William Allingham Award, the V. S. Pritchett Prize,
and earlier this year, the Fish International Short
Story Prize. Alongside her national and international
prominence, Mary has maintained a close connection
with Maynooth, serving as a member of the University’s
Governing Authority and as a guest lecturer of creative
writing to a select stream of our English students.
Gemma Ennis was inducted into the ‘Made in Maynooth’
Alumni Hall of Fame. Gemma, an Access Student
graduated with a BA in German and Mathematics in
2002. She worked in the NUI Maynooth Access Office
where she developed a number of very successful school
outreach programmes, in particular ‘Sowing the Seeds of
Science’, before completing a Higher Diploma in Primary
Education. She is currently acting deputy principal in
Kilbride National School, Trim. In her acceptance speech
Gemma commended the work of the Access Office
and in particular, Ann O’Brien, Director of Access.
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Within Ireland there are ongoing debates about
rural development, urbanisation and regional
development. These debates are typically carried
out in the context of fairly sharing resources,
history or personal freedoms. The wider
implications for the economy are rarely considered
in the debate. However, a large literature shows
that the nature of the settlement patterns and
the types of urban centres that develop will have
a crucial impact on national competitiveness,
productivity and growth. This literature points
particularly at the important role of urban centres.
Of course the focus on spatial issues in the
Economics literature is not new. For example
Adam Smith in his famous The Wealth of Nations,
published in 1776 observed that ‘There are
some sorts of industries, even of the lowest
kind, which can be carried on nowhere but
in a great town.’ Over the last two decades a
substantial body of research has quantified
the impact of space on the development of
modern economies and key underlying factors.
One of the overarching processes that have
influenced economic development has been
globalisation, which has seen increasing trade
in goods and services and the movement of
capital and workers and has thus resulted in
increased international competition. Countries
have responded to this competition by
addressing shortcomings in the factors that
determine competitiveness which has resulted
in the convergence of some factors such as
corporation tax rates and basic human capital
indicators. However, for other variables, and
particularly those that are less evenly distributed
within countries are observed to diverge. This
implies that specific locations are becoming
more important – place matters more.
Professor Willie Smyth,
Dr Fran Walsh
(Proinnsias Breathnach),
Professor Dennis Pringle,
Professor Patrick Duffy.
A number of papers have shown that higher
employment densities increase productivity.
This is due to production externalities e.g.
shorter transport distance, increased supply
and demand for skilled labour (competition),
increased interaction. Furthermore, many
papers have shown agglomeration economies
and coagglomeration economies i.e. that there
are returns from additional scale. However,
the impact of the agglomeration economies
appear only to apply to places very close to the
agglomeration. In summary scale, density and
distance matter for economic development.
Of course cities can become too large, congested
or sprawled making them relatively more
expensive and at some point uneconomic. It
has also been shown that growth is reduced
if too large a proportion of the population
becomes concentrated in one city.
When the economic recovery in Ireland gains
momentum growth in Ireland is likely to follow
the same underlying principles as elsewhere.
Thus growth will be predominantly urban.
However, Ireland has a poor urban structure with
relatively low urbanisation, relatively small cities
and a high concentration of the population in
one city. This could reduce growth compared to
what would be possible if Ireland had a spatial
distribution of the population similar to that of
other EU countries. While this distribution is to
some extent driven by the historical settlement
patterns which cannot be changed quickly, other
factors such as poor planning and a tendency
towards ‘parish pump politics’, also play an
important role. In the context of the international
experience, it would be more sensible to
concentrate resources and to forge closer links
among parishes, villages, towns or counties.
Ireland’s Poor
Urban Structure will
Reduce Growth
Alumnus, Edgar Morgenroth (BA 1994, MA 1995),
currently Associate Research Professor at the
ESRI, argues the case for forging links between
Ireland’s parishes, villages, towns and counties.
40 Years of
Geography
This year the Geography Department in Maynooth
celebrates its 40th birthday and all past students, staff
and lecturers are invited to join in the celebrations.
The Department will host a full complement of social and
academic events. This semester we began with a very
special event on 19th October; a meeting of song and
conversation with one of Kildare’s most important cultural
figures, Luka Bloom. Two public lectures were held this
semester; Derek Gregory, a leading figure in modern
human geography, gave a talk on 25th November about
the historical geography of aerial warfare and on 8th
December one of our most distinguished alumni, Gerard
Toal, Professor of Government and International Affairs
at Virginia Tech and the academic most responsible
for developing the field of Critical Geopolitics, gave a
talk on post-conflict society in the Caucasus. You can
learn more about these events here – http://geography.
nuim.ie/studygeography/anniversary/events.
We are, of course, in nostalgic mode and are seeking the
help of our alumni in creating a visual and oral history of
the Department. So, please seek out your old field trip
and other photos, scan them and send files along to us.
The details of the project and the many ways you can
get involved are detailed here – http://geography.nuim.
ie/studygeography/anniversary/history. To get you in
reflective mode, we have up on the web some back issues
of the Geography Department magazine, Milieu, still going
strong after all these years – http://geography.nuim.ie/
study-geography/alumni-network/past-issues-milieu.
Perhaps you can remember contributing to the magazine.
You may remember reading it –we defy anyone to forget
once they have read the footnotes for Denis Pringle’s
article on ‘Geography and Sex’ in the inaugural issue!
We have also created a webpage with links to all the
articles by members of the Department that have
been published in the journal, Irish Geography – http://
geography.nuim.ie/studygeography/anniversary/
publications. You will probably need to be logged in via
a University to download these for free but you can in
any case preview the first page of each article which
may indeed be enough to set alight your memories
of lectures and tutorials. At the end of this history
project we hope to have a fine website for our alumni
but also a film of the history of the Department which
we will launch with a red-carpet première in June 2012
for students, lecturers and staff, past and present.
Professor Mark Boyle is head of the Geography
Department at NUI Maynooth.
Professor Gerry Kearns joined NUI Maynooth this
year from Virginia Tech where he was Professor
of Government and International Affairs. In
November 2011, he gave the third lecture in the
Professorial Inaugural Lecture Series which was
launched earlier this year at NUI Maynooth.
Save the Date, June 2012
Geography Department Film Première
→ 01 706 6492 or email [email protected]
Maynooth Alumni Association Stay Connected, Keep Connected
2012
WWW.ALUMNI.NUIM.IE
11 The Bridge
10 The Bridge
While the focus of public attention has been on fixing the
banks and getting the economy moving again, there is the
danger that the deeper challenges of constructing a more
democratic and effective political system, of delivering quality
public services accessible by all, of reducing inequalities, of
weaning ourselves off dependence on fossil fuels and moving
to a carbon-neutral society, and of raising the quality of public
deliberation and engagement will be seen as less pressing.
They see a reformed political system, as a means to a
more egalitarian and sustainable society, with an economy
that serves the good of society rather than giving priority
to the needs of global capital and its allies within Ireland.
Achieving such an Ireland will require a decisive move
to a new model of development, the need for which
has been largely missing in the reform debate so far.
Mapping Options for
Ireland’s Future Development
While the 2011 general election was full of the promise of
reform, what has been delivered by the Fine Gael/Labour
coalition has been rather piecemeal and incremental. We
still await the constitutional convention, promised for this
autumn and now postponed until the spring of 2012. In the
meantime, energies dissipate and expectations decline.
Yet, the need for radical change remains. While the focus
of public attention has been on fixing the banks and
getting the economy moving again, there is the danger
that the deeper challenges of constructing a more
democratic and effective political system, of delivering
quality public services accessible by all, of reducing
inequalities, of weaning ourselves off dependence on
fossil fuels and moving to a carbon-neutral society,
and of raising the quality of public deliberation
and engagement will be seen as less pressing.
Maynooth Alumni Association Stay Connected, Keep Connected
In this context, it is important to hold to ambitious agendas
for change. Foremost among these over the period of the
general election was mention of the need for a second
republic to re-found the institutions of the state and of
the economy, embodying new values and a new vision
of the sort of society we aspire to. ‘Towards a Second
Republic’, a new book by Peadar Kirby and Mary P Murphy
published by Pluto Press and launched in the Mansion
House, Dublin, on November 3rd is the first book-length
treatment of what a second republic would entail.
While a new republic inevitably requires major reforms to
our electoral and party political systems, to the way the
state’s bureaucracy functions, and to relations between
the executive and the legislature, the authors believe
that the reform agenda has been too limited to these
types of reform. Indeed, they worry that we could reform
our systems of governance without equally thorough
reforms to our economy and society. No reforms would
be complete for example without addressing the issue of
gender equality. Furthermore, they raise the possibility
of whether a second Irish Republic would embrace the
whole island, the nationalist and unionist traditions, and
the sectors of Irish society that identify with neither.
–– Kirby and Murphy map out the options facing Irish
society around three models, or ways in which the
state and the market interact. The first is the current
model, inherited from Celtic Tiger Ireland, which is
a radical free-market and neoliberal model in which
the state sees its role as being to service the needs
of global capital in the first place and only weakly
attend to the needs of the most vulnerable in society
thereafter. While this model has bankrupted the state,
ruined the banking system and led the economy into
its most severe recession since independence, there
are few signs of any decisive move away from it.
–– However, a second model is emerging from civil society,
particularly from the trade union and other social
movements, as well as from sectors of the political
left. This is labelled in the book as a developmental
social democratic model under which the state would
set more robust social goals and seek to develop an
economic system to achieve these goals, particularly
through investment in strengthening Irish enterprises
across a broad range of activities. Such a model will
require a more broadly based and just taxation system
from which quality public services could be funded.
–– The contours of a third model are also visible on the
horizon of some sectors of civil society which seek
to respond to the twin challenges of greenhouse gas
emissions which are causing global warming, and
of peak oil which is going to see the price of oil and
oil-based products climb steadily. These are leading
society into a time of huge uncertainty which will
require a transition to a steady-state economy based
not on economic growth but on the redistribution
of goods and services. Achieving this may well
make necessary a very different model, what the
authors call an ethical or ecological socialism, as
incentives dramatically change for all of society.
Yet, outlining ideal-type models is the easy part.
More difficult is to identify as clearly as possible the
social forces that support these different models
and that can help to make the transition to a new
model. In this regard, the relationship between ideas,
interests and institutions becomes crucial. Clearly,
the economic and banking collapse has opened up
new spaces in which to debate ideas, spaces that had
been largely closed down during the Celtic Tiger.
But ideas on their own don’t being about change.
This requires that wider sectors of society begin to
identify their interest with the change agenda, begin
to see that the sorts of changes being promoted
would best serve their needs. This is beginning to
happen but needs to go much further. Finally, only when
broader sectors of society support the need for the
fundamental changes outlined here can institutions be
built that give a more permanent expression to these
changes. A crucial part of the institutions that might
build a new Irish society relate to developments in the
European Union and the book examines how out of
the present crisis in the EU may emerge institutions
that better facilitate an alternative model, effectively
moving us closer to Berlin and farther from Boston.
‘Towards a Second Republic’ therefore maps out
an agenda for long-term and radical change at this
crucial moment in our history. Its authors see it as
a tool to aid debate and guide activism rather than
simply as an analysis of where we are now at. As
such its value will lie in the extent to which it clarifies
options and encourages action to achieve them.
Dr. Mary P Murphy is a lecturer in NUI
Maynooth in Irish Politics and Society. Her
work is widely published and she has made
regular appearances on Irish television.
Professor Peadar Kirby is currently
Professor of International Politics and Public
Policy at the University of Limerick.
WWW.ALUMNI.NUIM.IE
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12 The Bridge
Princeton
Review
Alumni in
the News
NUI Maynooth graduates have a broad business and social reach.
See for yourself just some of the ways the University’s graduates
made their mark on the world during 2011.
2
1
NUI Maynooth becomes the first and
only university outside of North America
to feature in the Princeton Review
This Autumn, prospective US undergraduates will
be turning once again to the Princeton Review’s
college guide ‘The Best 376 Colleges: 2012 Edition’
for guidance in choosing their preferred university
or college. But this year they will find a a new choice:
the NUI Maynooth. NUI Maynooth is the first and only
international university outside of North America to
be selected for the publication since it its inception
in 1992. The ‘Best Colleges’ review, which features
the top 15% of all US colleges, is internationally
recognised as the key resource used by US students
in finding an educational institution that best suits
their requirements both academically and personally.
The selection process is based on an assessment of
the academic programmes offered by the universities,
combined with a student survey conducted by the
Princeton Review with students who have attended
the college, covering areas such as ‘Academics’,
‘Student Life’ and the ‘Student Body’. The Princeton
Review conducted surveys among 5,000 current NUI
Maynooth students as part of the assessment process.
Discussing this achievement, Prof Lawrence Taylor, Vice
President for International Affairs at NUI Maynooth
said: ’It is an honour for NUI Maynooth to be the first
and only university outside North America to be
included in the Princeton Review ‘Best Colleges’ guide.
Our selection can be understood as a Quality Mark
for the University. The feedback of former students
is critical to the selection process and our inclusion
is testament to our focus on an excellent academic
record combined with a dynamic, student-friendly
environment. Our approach is in line with the American
educational philosophy that considers the many factors,
both academic and social, that determine the best ‘fit’
between student and university. Finding a university
which suits the whole person is critically important in
order for a student to excel, and the Princeton Review
helps students to find the educational institution where
they can best develop both academically and socially.’
Maynooth Alumni Association Stay Connected, Keep Connected
For many students in the USA, the possibility of
attending university in Ireland is attractive and becoming
more of a reality. The cost of studying in Ireland can often
be less than studying ‘out of state’ in the US, and the
high quality of Ireland’s education system is recognized
worldwide. The intimate, collegiate campus and the
variety of degrees offered by NUI Maynooth are similar
in many ways to selective universities in the US, known
as liberal arts and sciences colleges. These colleges
offer the highest quality of education in an intimate
campus setting that focus on the student’s personal
development in addition to their academic achievements.
Student feedback on NUI Maynooth from
the Princeton Review ‘The Best 376 Colleges:
2012 Edition’ included:
’The academic standard at Maynooth is impeccable, with
lecturers, lecture halls, tutors, and labs of the finest stature’
‘Almost all my lecturers are great orators that bring
their subjects to life, creating a genuine interest
among their students’
‘Continually encouraging us to engage in discussions,
to ask questions, and to develop not only a well-informed
but an independent way of thinking’
‘There is always someone that you can approach
for help and guidance’
‘I like the friendliness of everyone on campus,
from the President right down to the cleaners’
3
4
5
1. FORMER PRESIDENT OF NUI MAYNOOTH,
BECOMES PRESIDENT OF ROYAL COLLEGE
OF SURGEONS IN IRELAND
→ Tom Collins (BA 1975)
Professor Tom Collins became the third president
of Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland – Medical
University of Bahrain, earlier this summer. He
is currently chair of the National Council for
Curriculum and Assessment in Ireland and was
also an advisor to the Irish Government on Adult
Education during his time as Director of the
Centre for Adult and Community Education at NUI
Maynooth. Professor Collins holds a First Class
Honours Bachelors and Masters Degrees from
Maynooth where he also completed his PhD in 1988.
2. BECOMING A SENATOR IN SEANAD ÉIREANN
→ Marie-Louise O’Donnell (MEd 1981)
A native of Foxford, Co. Mayo, Marie Louise
was nominated by An Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, to
stand in the 24th Seanad. Senator O’Donnell has
been involved in third level education throughout
her career and has lectured extensively in
Ireland, Europe and the USA in Education, Irish
Drama, Irish Culture and Language. A regular
reviewer and media contributor, she presents a
weekly show on RTE’s ‘Today with Pat Kenny.’
3. ECONOMICS AND FINANCE GRADUATE,
IS ON THE WINNING TEAM
→ Barry Cahill (BA 2002)
Playing for Dublin in the nail-biting All-Ireland
senior football final against Kerry in September,
Barry Cahill and fellow alumni, Alan Brogan,
Bernard Brogan, Ger Brennan, Declan Lally
and David Henry brought the Sam Maguire
Cup back to Dublin after a sixteen year gap.
Congratulations to the Dubs and the Kerry team
(which also included another NUI Maynooth
alumnus, Marc Ó Sé) for a fantastic sporting
occasion. All seven alumni were graduates of
the MBNA-GAA Sports Scholarship scheme run
by Tom Maher, GAA Officer for NUI Maynooth.
4. SPECIAL ASSISTANT TO THE PRESIDENT
OF THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
→ Margaret Wagner Dahl (BA 1988)
In March, University of Georgia President
Michael F Adams, named Margaret Wagner
Dahl an administrator with nearly 30 years of
experience at the intersection of biotechnology
and economic development, Special Assistant
to the President for the Georgia Health Sciences
University/UGA Medical Partnership.
5. PERFORMING THE ROLE OF MARIA CALLAS
IN THE NATIONAL CONCERT HALL, DUBLIN
→ Regina Nathan (BA 1982)
Internationally renowned Regina Nathan
enraptured audiences with her virtuoso
performances in this year’s much acclaimed Casta
Diva concerts. In lyric soprano roles which have
taken her across Europe, as far as Kuala Lumpur
and New York’s Carnegie Hall, Regina has appeared
on stage with, amongst others, Placido Domingo
and Frank Patterson. A recording artist with many
solo CD’s, Regina was also awarded a Higher
Diploma in Education from Maynooth in 1983.
WWW.ALUMNI.NUIM.IE
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14 The Bridge
‘Narcissism is not just tolerated in our day
and age, it is glorified… The hallmarks
of cultural narcissism are deeply woven
into the fabric of our current society’.
Children of the
Self-Absorbed
A well read, well analysed friend recommended
a book to me which he thought helped explain
adult anxieties of our age. This was the American
psychologist Nina Brown’s 2001 Children of the
Self-Absorbed: A Grown-Up’s Guide to Getting
over Narcissistic Parents. It sounded intriguing
and promising. Could the uncertainties, the
restless fluidities and the relentless search for
completion that seems to define my (middle
ageing) generation be explained by past parenting?
I tracked the book down immediately and pored
over it on the train from Dublin to Maynooth.
The more I read, however, the more I realised
that Brown’s message – at least for me – was
not about the failings of the past. I raked my
memory but couldn’t recover a culture of selfabsorption amongst my parents’ generation. At
least not in the modest middle class circles I was
part of whilst growing up in Australia during the
1970s. No, the more I read and thought about
it, the more I realised with creeping trepidation
that her analysis implicated my post-1950s
generation in the epidemic of narcissism and its
consequences for children today. Our children.
In Australia our parents’ generation were the
beneficiaries of a golden economic summer. There
was a pretty steady enhancement of working
and middle class well-being during this time.
Maynooth Alumni Association Stay Connected, Keep Connected
They experienced a run of continuous economic
growth that stretched from the late 1940s to the
early 1970s and many did very well from it. Most,
however, had smelled the whiff of privation early
on through exposure to depression and/or war.
Many had their parents’ straitened experiences
stamped on them in some way. I was aware
of this as a child – of what people had ‘been
through’ – but it wasn’t presented to us with pity.
I don’t think self-absorption describes
their mindset or their rearing of children, at
least generally. There was restiveness and
unhappiness with roles, especially as the age
of freedom dawned in the 1960s. Women
regained identities beyond the anonymous
confines of traditional marriage, and many
other values and cultural outlooks were able to
flower. But it’s fair to say that adults weren’t
as focused on themselves as we are.
Not so for neo-liberalism’s children. And here
we can cut to Ireland of the Celtic Tiger boom
years. Unlike the ‘Pope’s Children’, the tiger
cubs were the product of two intersecting
changes to social values and roles. The first
was ‘cultural pluralisation’ – the blowing open
of narrowly stereotyped roles and values
from the 1960s in the face of feminism, gay
rights, environmentalism and the like.
Brendan Gleeson, Professor of Geography
and Deputy Director of NIRSA (National
Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis).
The second was the great prioritisation of
economic values, and material gratification
that followed in the wake of the world neoliberal ascendancy from the mid-1970s.
One dimension of the new narcissism is its
childlessness – the adult gaze reflected back to
itself through the looking glass of a society besotted
with the here and now, not what is to come.
The result was a relentless underlining of the individual
as the centre of social life. From this flowed outwards
a culture increasingly devoted to the needs and the
anxieties of the ‘self’, expending enormous energies
on the repair and development of ourselves. The ‘Me’
generation was proclaimed in the 1960s but most of
our parents looked on with bemusement, too busy
with babies to join the happening. The message was
really picked up by those who followed in their wake.
Children by their nature demand a different perspective
on time. They are fragile, sensitive and often
unpredictable; their ‘now’ is not the solid, rational and
knowable ‘here’ of we adults. Their developmental needs
question our momentary wants and impress upon us the
importance of the future as a horizon of social concern.
Since the 1970s kids and young people have been
reared in an increasingly atomised, liquefied culture
where social relationships and values are fluid, and
the only thing that is really solid is the individual. At
the (beginning and the) end of the day there is me.
The rise of an increasingly agonised consumerism
captures these changes. Children and young people
have emerged as massive new consumption markets.
Teenagers face an ever proliferating array of electronic
must have’s – phones, music players, games – that have
been incorporated in everyday culture as the necessary
not optional mainstays of networking and friendships.
We are now familiar with the increasingly alarmed
debates about the penetration of children’s lifeworlds
by advertising which is attempting to push new,
annually obsolete ‘necessities’ into the core of family
and civic life. The sexualisation of children’s fashion
is merely the sharpest edge of this wedge that is
trying remorselessly to open out childhood to the
claims and dictates of consumption. More generally,
society seems ever more focused on a self that isn’t
childlike or young. The individual at the centre of
our society is an adult. The Australian commentator
Anne Manne has written of ‘The New Narcissism’
in Australian (and Western) society. Manne writes,
‘Narcissism is not just tolerated in our day and age, it
is glorified… The hallmarks of cultural narcissism are
deeply woven into the fabric of our current society’.
And yet contemporary Western societies remain
transfixed with the present, and its relentless
speeding up. Our institutions, communities, built
environments, values, habits and consumption
increasingly betray our neglect of children and
young people. And very dangerously for children,
our contemporary work habits, our work obsession,
are a central feature of a narcissistic age.
We are starting to learn how much the
contemporary workhouse culture is harming
our children and young people. Parental
absenteeism is hurting and harming kids.
Part of my work in recent years has pointed to
the neglect of children in our urban environments,
to urban processes that seem mindless of
children’s needs. I’ve written and spoken on this
in Ireland in recent years. People here get it.
My starting point is that many developed
nations, especially the English speaking ones,
have for some time neglected children in their
collective thinking and in their public policies.
Our cities are increasingly designing kids out. But this
is more than a problem of urban thoughtlessness.
It betrays a deep self-absorption in a society
that has generally neglected its regenerative
systems, including those that care for children.
Anne Manne senses ‘something fundamentally
flawed’ in our contemporary social makeup. It is
a special perversity of the age that we should
spend so much time before the mirror without
ever noticing our darkening blemishes.
WWW.ALUMNI.NUIM.IE
17 The Bridge
16 The Bridge
Coincidently it is also 100 years since the birth
of the father of Computer Science, Alan Turing.
To mark these milestones, the department will
hold a reunion of computer science alumni around
Easter of 2012 to which we hope as many of
our past students as possible will attend.
Calling all
Computer
Science
Graduates
25 Years of
Computer Science
at Maynooth
2012 marks several significant anniversaries for Computer
Science in Maynooth – it marks 25 years since the foundation of
the department with the appointment of Professor Meng Er; it is
ten years since the first graduation class from the denominated
degree in Computer Science and Software Engineering.
The creation of the Chair of Computer Science in 1987
at what was then St Patrick’s College marked the
expansion of the Science Faculty with a new subject.
The department was based in Logic House. In those
days all undergraduate students enrolled for just the
general science BSc degree and graduated with either a
three-year general degree or a four-year double honours
degree. Therefore, the first computer science graduates
were those eight who accepted the general degree in
1990. At that stage the department staff consisted of
the professor one permanent academic, and a secretary
with additional teaching by contract and occasional staff.
The following year the first honours class graduated,
although at that stage computer science was offered
only as part of a double degree. The first graduates with
Single Honours Computer Science emerged in 1997. The
other major programme offered at that time was the
Higher Diploma in Information Technology, the oneyear conversion course. For several years, the numbers
on the HDipIT dominated the department’s teaching,
peaking in 1999 when 140 students were enrolled.
In 1993, the department moved into the Callan Building
on north campus, sharing with Biology. The department
has always been keen to expand its portfolio of courses.
In 1996, under Professor David Vernon, the MSc in
Software Engineering was inaugurated, combining
advanced postgraduate modules with industrial practice
and scheduled to allow part-time participants from
industry. However, the main expansion of the department
came in 1998 with the start of the denominated degree
in Computer Science and Software Engineering (CSSE).
This resulted in a rapid expansion of the department
with the addition of ten new permanent academic
posts in three years and a large extension on the
Callan Building tripling its lab and office space. The
CSSE degree has been restructured twice since then
to address problems caused by the lack of qualified
applicants after the dot-com crash. The third professor,
Ronan Reilly, ensured it is now more integrated into the
general undergraduate programmes with a common
first year shared between science allowing students
to transfer in second year. In addition, computer
science is now integrated into the Arts, Multimedia
and Music Technology curricula – it is possible to
take an undergraduate degree combining computer
science with almost any other subject on campus.
As well as teaching, research and outreach has equally
been a priority in the department. The first PhD student
graduated in 1998 and staff have been leaders in EU
and SFI grants worth several million euro, particularly
in the areas of digital holography, computer vision,
geo-computation and principles of programming.It is
also notable that three research institutes on campus
owe their origin to initiatives started by computer
science staff – Hamilton Institute, National Centre for
Geocomputation and An Foras Feasa. The department’s
Summer School for Chinese students has become a
regular fixture. The department also runs an annual
computing summer camp for teenagers and staff
have given public lectures for primary school children.
Our undergraduates have competed in international
competitions and have twice been highly placed in
the finals of the Microsoft Imagine Cup in Seoul and
Paris. Our students have also contributed to the NUI
Maynooth robot soccer team who have done well in
international Robocup finals, winning it once in a joint
team with Newcastle University from Australia.
As well as being a significant anniversary, 2012 is
a significant milestone for the future of Computer
Science at Maynooth. We are launching two new
degrees – the BSc in Computational Thinking is a new
three-year accelerated undergraduate programme in
computer s cience, mathematics and philosophy for
highly qualified applicants. In addition the department
is lead partner in a new European Erasmus Mundus
MSc in Dependable Software Systems with St Andrews
University and Université Henri Poincaré, Nancy. Our
alumni celebration will highlight these developments
with keynote speakers from Carnegie Mellon University
and Microsoft followed by a party in the new Phoenix
student restaurant. We look forward to meeting our past.
Imagine Cup 2008, Paris, France
‘Acid Rain’ team with Aodhan Coffey (Team member), Liam Cronin (Microsoft),
Karl O'Dwyer (Team member), Brian Byrne (Team member), Tom Lysaght (Mentor)
l-r: John Harpur (Lecturer), James Cotter,
Cormac Corish, Margaret Slattery
Ruan Ó Tighearnaigh, Professor
Meng C. Er, Martin Fay, Leo Ruaine,
Philip Fitzpatrick, (missing from photo
Antoine Farrugia)
Maynooth Alumni Association Stay Connected, Keep Connected
Get in touch
If you are interested in attending this reunion,
please email the alumni office at
→ [email protected].
WWW.ALUMNI.NUIM.IE
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18 The Bridge
Where Are Our Alumni Now?
Eugene Magee
Martin Nugent
1964 BA
Dublinked
Dublinked opens window on
€27 billion EU open data market
Dublin’s Local Authorities and
NUI Maynooth invite businesses,
technologists and researchers
to join unique new data network.
John Tierney Dublin City Manager and Professor Philip Nolan.
Get in touch
Alumni wishing to get involved in Dublinked
email [email protected] or visit
→ www.dublinked.ie
Across the EU, public sector bodies are
estimated to be sitting on a potential
treasure trove of data, worth up to
€27 billion*. Through a unique initiative
between Dublin’s Local Authorities and NUI
Maynooth, businesses, technologists, app
developers, researchers and entrepreneurs
have been invited to join Dublinked – a
membership network to mine, exploit and
utilise public data to generate new revenue
streams and address regional challenges.
Dublinked is a data sharing initiative
that sees previously unreleased public
operational data being made available online
for others to research or reuse. With the
initial data coming from Dublin City Council
and Dun Laoghaire Rathdown, South Dublin
and Fingal County Councils, it is expected
that other public and private organisations
in Dublin will link up with Dublinked to share
their data and invite research collaborations.
The information is curated by NUI Maynooth
to ensure ideas can be commercialised as
easily as possible and to minimise legal or
technical barriers that can be impediments
for small and medium businesses (SMEs)
seeking to develop and prove business ideas.
The initial release of data consists of
over 100 environmental, traffic and
planning datasets including planning
application data from across the
region, water flow, rainfall and energy
monitoring and air, water pollution and
noise maps for the Dublin region.
Dr Ronan Farrell, Director of the
Callan Institute at NUI Maynooth
is Dublinked Co-ordinator.
Maynooth Alumni Association Stay Connected, Keep Connected
He sees businesses and entrepreneurs
using this data to develop innovative and
interesting business ideas which would
drive job growth while also enhancing city
living. ‘We have seen fantastic examples
in other cities of new user interfaces
for public transport information, the
property market or healthcare data. One
of the unique benefits of Open Data is
that applications developed here can
easily be adapted for other cities around
the world and we look forward to working
with our Dublinked partners to develop
new businesses from Dublin’, he said.
Dublinked is unique in providing both open
data and an additional research zone,
where members can access additional
datasets and participate in regular
member events (membership fees vary
and are based on company size).
Jonathan Raper is CEO of PLACR, a UK
company specialising in the use of open
data similar to that provided by Dublinked.
His view is that ‘Open Data is incredibly
exciting and its potential is practically
endless. However one of the issues can be
that public sector bodies often do not move
at the pace that SMEs require to prove their
ideas and get it to market. What is exciting
about Dublinked is that the Local Authorities
have partnered with NUI Maynooth to
remove many of these impediments. This
is a key learning from around the world’.
*2009 EC Report – Re-use of
Public Sector Information – Review
of Directive 2003/98/EC
1972 BA
1960s
1970s
In the college of my generation, it was
impossible to separate the recognized
college of the National University from the
Major Seminary and Pontifical University.
For me and my contemporaries, the
University was really a place or state where
we spent time before continuing into
Theology and on towards the Priesthood.
Many did not complete that journey
so there are plenty of us lay graduates
from the pre-NUI Maynooth era.
St. Patrick's College Maynooth had its
first intake of lay students in 1968. I
arrived with a small number of others
in 1969. It immediately struck me as a
friendly and welcoming institution if
somewhat quaint. The lecturing staff
were predominantly clerical—An tAth.
Cardinal Tomás Ó Fiaich (later Cardinal) was
Registrar, an tAth. Pádraig Ó Fiannachta
(Ollamh na SeanGhaeilge), Fr Liam Ryan
(Professor of Sociology): all brilliant
and kind men. By the time I was in third
year, the numbers of lay students and
lay staff were increasing dramatically.
The College bore no real resemblance
to the modern day Maynooth but it was
nevertheless a unique, intriguing place.
There were only 300 undergraduate students
and no more than four postgraduates in the
Schools of Arts, Philosophy and Science.
The Faculty were entirely clerical, the
students were entirely male, residential
and seminarians. Yet it was a place of high
quality learning and academic achievement;
probably because we had little else to do!
The atmosphere was designed to be
monastic in the original sense, bound
into a programme of prayer and silence.
The campus was an inspiring beautifully
maintained, almost sylvan setting. Mind you
this sylvan tranquility was pierced almost
every day by the clamor from some of the
bloodiest ball games I have ever witnessed!
Perhaps more in keeping with our
surroundings, we had the highest quality
musical and theatrical performances in
the Aula Maxima. On the Seminary side of
things, we had amazing liturgies and liturgical
music in the four chapels including of course,
the spectacular Pugin College Chapel.
Many of these things were difficult to leave
behind as were the people with whom I
shared them. The people were amazing
and the relationship unique because of the
unusual place we found ourselves. Those
who stayed the course, ended up as Parish
Priests, Clerical Academics, Bishops and
Church Leaders. The rest of us have gone on
to have careers in Law, Medicine, Politics,
Academia, Business and even the Stage. I
have yet to meet one who does not reflect
fondly on ‘the Maynooth experience’.
I travelled daily by bus from Edenderry,
Offaly and as the next few years passed so
too did a growing number of fellow students
from the Maynooth hinterland. I studied
Irish and Sociology for my BA. and studied
for my HDip Ed while doing my teaching
practice in Kilcock. I moved after three years
to Clongowes Wood College, Clane, where I
am now Assistant Headmaster. I returned to
study in Maynooth a number of times; to do
a Masters in Irish (1983) and later a Higher
Diploma in Educational Management (1993).
What would be my highlights? Meeting and
falling in love with my wife Mary O’Donnell;
being part of the winning Sigerson Cup
team in 1975; graduating with an MA in
1983; continuing to live nearby so I can
have the pleasure of occasionally walking
through the College grounds; to take pride
in the growing reputation of NUI Maynooth
and finally, meeting the many friends I
made while studying there who have gone
on to make a significant contribution to
Irish society especially in education.
Mary Dunne
1977 BA
In September 1974 I joined a long queue
of students waiting to register for first
year. There was a significant number of us
from rural backgrounds, others the eldest
of the family and therefore the first of
the family to obtain a leaving certificate
or indeed register for third level.
My years in Maynooth were indeed some of
the happiest years of my life. As students we
were fortunate to have had gifted teachers
in the Geography Department like Paddy
Duffy, William J Smith, Fran Walsh and
Denis Pringle. Geography was no longer the
study of mountains, rivers and lakes. Field
trips to the Burren were educational and
entertaining. Professor Pete Connolly had
the gift and capacity to keep us spellbound
by his insightful analysis of the works of
Thomas Hardy and Dickens. Professors
Liam Ryan and Micheál Mc Greal sensitized
us to sociology and social psychology.
College life centered on Callan Hall and the
Russell library as the new campus did not
exist at that time. A friendly atmosphere
was a unique part of the Maynooth
experience and I made life-long and true
friends during my time in Maynooth. I
have recently attended the weddings of
my friends’ children and it’s wonderful
to catch up on all the happenings.
I graduated on November 9th 1977 with a
BA in English, Sociology and Geography.
On completion of my post-graduate
course in Froebel College, Sion Hill, I
began teaching in Kiltale NS, Co. Meath.
I later became a principal and during this
phase I was seconded to the Primary
Curriculum Support Programme (PCSP)
and worked as a Geography facilitator.
I now work for the Department of
Education and Skills as a Primary School
Inspector in the Dublin/Meath area.
I have had wonderful opportunities in my life
so far and in many ways the opportunities
which have come my way are as a result of the
influence and impact of my undergraduate
time in St. Patrick’s College Maynooth. I look
forward to the next reunion in the college and
a chance to catch up with contemporaries
from those happy and exciting times!
WWW.ALUMNI.NUIM.IE
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20 The Bridge
Deirdre Heaney
Constant
Patrick O’Meara
1980 BA / 1981 HDip Ed
1983 BA
1980s
Only three things have really shaped me.
First is family: I was born into one where hard
work, aspiration and education mattered
most. Thanks to Donogh O’Malley, I enjoyed
a financially painless school life in Tipperary
and I arrived in Maynooth on 2nd October
1977, two days after my 17th birthday. I met
Michael Ryan, roommate, soul mate and
lifelong friend, along with Brendan Fox, Martin
Fitzgerald, Jack Caesar, Liam McNiffe, Mark
O’Carroll and others. They have all gone on
to have spectacular academic and teaching
careers. I was lucky. These extraordinary
people helped to shape me and they have
had the most profound influence. Greater
now in wisdom and girth, we meet regularly.
Maynooth offered a shy, uncertain young
man a secure, rich learning environment,
formally and informally. We learned to work
and party hard as a matter of principle.
Some did wonder if Maynooth at that time
could offer the full university experience.
Whether it did or not, it has been the second
great influence in my life. At 20, I wasn't
ready for teaching. So after two summers on
the beaches of Los Angeles, I spent eleven
incredible years learning by doing, in Foróige,
under Michael B Cleary, probably the leading
educationalist of his generation. Foróige has
been my third vital shaping influence. Ann and
I now live happily in London. I am a director
at BITC, where companies work to improve
their environmental and social impacts.
Maynooth was the springboard to all that
I have done in my working life. In it I laid
the foundations of my most important
friendships and gained the knowledge of
how to conduct them. I owe it much.
Niamh O’Gorman
(MacMahon)
I began a BA journey in Maynooth in history
and geography in the fall of 1980. My first
impression of Maynooth was how connected
it was to the larger world. Because of its
history and connections to Catholic groups
globally, I knew students from several African
countries, India, the US, Germany and Malta.
Professors in Maynooth were responsible
for encouraging me to look to the larger
world and question the processes that
shaped it. Several months ago my niece,
who currently attends Maynooth, inspired
me to contact some of my teachers. I got
in touch with Dr. Prionnseas Breathnach
and Professor Paddy Duffy. They not only
remembered me and my friends but they
had pictures from our geography field trip
taken in 1982! I still remember the dry wit
of Dr. Pringle who managed to make me
laugh even in statistics class. Along the way
I was also influenced by Professor Vincent
Comerford in history who supervised my
thesis project and in the process, helped me
to develop both my writing and thinking.
Perhaps the best part of being a Maynooth
student was the friends I made. Over
long discussions about how to save
the world, I bonded with a unique and
eclectic group of people. I still remain
friends with many of them today. They too
played a part in shaping who I became.
I moved to NY in 1986 after completing a
graduate degree in counseling at UCD. I got
a job as a high school guidance counselor
and eventually moved into academia and
became an academic advisor. Last year
I took a senior advising position in the
Department of Economics and Business at
the City University of New York (CUNY)
I am married with two teenage children and
live in Dobbs Ferry, on the Hudson River
about 40 minutes from mid-town Manhattan.
I have never forgotten the excellent
teachers who opened my mind and helped
me develop as a professional. I am grateful
to Maynooth for introducing me to a very
diverse student body; it prepared me well for
my life in NY. I have many happy memories
of my college days spent in Maynooth.
Maynooth Alumni Association Stay Connected, Keep Connected
Brendan McEvoy
MA 1993
Seaghan Kearney
BA 1996, HDipIT 1997
2001 BA
Aoife Barron
2007 BSc
1990s
1990s
2000s
I took a circuitous route to NUI Maynooth,
completing my Bachelors degree in Business
Studies in University of Limerick and then
spending a year in Spain teaching English,
before attending Maynooth to complete an
MA in Economics and Finance. It was only
the second year the course had been run
and it was a relatively small class of about
25 people from wide ranging backgrounds.
My classmates were a fabulous group of
people and while we worked very hard, we
had great fun too acquainting ourselves
well with the Maynooth social scene! The
course was very challenging and highly
stimulating and I found our lecturers
extremely accessible and helpful and have
fond memories of many lecturers including
Prof Paddy Geary, Margaret Hurley and
Tom McCarthy. I also tutored 2nd year BA
students, which was a great experience.
I was fortunate to spend four great
years in Maynooth both as an
undergraduate and a postgraduate.
Although it’s probably clichéd; my days
in Maynooth were some of the best in
my life. Four years when not too much
seemed to matter in the outside world,
Maynooth lived up to and exceeded all
expectations for student life. The Roost, the
SU, the odd fry in the Rye and trips down
the country with the lads to play a Gaelic
match - life couldn’t have been any better.
I arrived in NUI Maynooth in 2003 to
begin my BSc in Biological Sciences; a new
Degree course at the time. As clichéd as
it might sound, the four years I spent at
NUI Maynooth were the most enjoyable
years of my life to date; I made some great
lasting friendships, had lots of laughs on the
buzzing social scene and to top it all, I left in
2007 with a First Class Honours Degree.
A student of Maths and Irish, I got all my
exams and thankfully never had to repeat
any. My graduation day was marked by
the unfortunate events of 9/11; a day that
changed the world in more ways than one.
I spent the preceding year as President of
the Student’s Union after a keenly fought
contest with the outgoing President Noel
Hogan. It was a year I thoroughly enjoyed
gaining lots of experience, working hard on
lots of projects and making many friends.
Having completed my final year project in
the Microbiology Department, I decided a
career in Microbiology was for me, so almost
immediately after completing my finals in
June 2007, I planted the seeds of my career
as a Quality Control Microbiology Analyst
in Wyeth Biopharma (now Pfizer) in Grange
Castle, Dublin. Here I spent 16 months learning
the ropes in the industrial field of Microbiology
in one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical
therapeutics producers, getting hands-on
experience in laboratory work and in the
production process of sterile vaccines.
Graduating in 1993, the economic
circumstances weren’t unlike the current
challenging environment, but I was
fortunate enough to be accepted on the
Bank of Ireland Graduate Programme. I
am still there all these years later, having
been able to benefit from a very diverse
career all within one organisation starting out in retail banking, moving to
Corporate Finance, followed by Mergers &
Acquisitions, Capital Markets and Risk.
I absolutely loved my time in Maynooth.
I made some great friends, learned
much and it is also lovely to think that
I graduated from the same college as
my father had 28 years previously!
My first three years were spent doing
a BA in History and Geography which I
enjoyed immensely. I followed this up
by completing the Higher Diploma in
Information Technology in 1997.
There are so many good memories from
my time in Maynooth – the Outdoor
Pursuits Club, the Bar-Exs, Geography
field trips to Galway and Westport,
assisting the Maynooth Ladies Soccer
Team but mostly my memories are about
the friends I met while I was there.
It’s funny the things you remember - hours
spent playing cards in the canteen, sitting
around the Arts Block between lectures,
crossing the bridge umpteen times a
day, films for £1 in the Aula on Sunday
evenings, chatting to people in the library,
walking everywhere looking for people (as
no one had mobile phones back then!)
Since leaving Maynooth I have worked in
IT. My first IT employer was actually NUI
Maynooth as I worked for the Computer
Department for a while. It was interesting
seeing the University from the angle of
staff member after being a student there.
Since then I have worked solely in IT mainly
for telecoms companies both in Ireland and in
the UK designing, developing and supporting
billing and document creation systems.
This year, some ex-classmates and I
decided to return to Maynooth and
attend the 2011 Alumni Ball. It was great
to meet up with everyone again and swap
stories and memories on what was a
very enjoyable evening. I wholeheartedly
recommend the night to all Alums.
After leaving Maynooth, I went down the
path of teaching receiving my first job in St.
Dominic’s, Cabra where I still teach today. The
intervening years have been interesting to
say the least. I stood for the local elections
in 2009 in the Cabra/Glasnevin constituency
narrowly missing out on a seat by just 7 votes.
However 11th October 2010 proved to be
a defining day in my life. A normal Monday
night playing 5-a side with the lads or so
I thought. 20 minutes into the game my
heart stopped. Only for a friend of mine,
Terry O’Brien and a donated defibrillator,
I would have become another unfortunate
victim to SADS. I now spend my time
promoting the importance of defibrillators
and their accessibility through the ACT
Campaign with the Mater Foundation.
(Seaghan has an awareness
video on YouTube)
This led me on to become a QC Microbiologist
in Pfizer’s new start-up Biotechnology
facility in Shanbally, Co. Cork in 2008. Here,
I spent 3 years in the most challenging,
yet rewarding job of my career so far. I
played a key role in a small, but dynamic
Pharmaceutical environment, working to build
a fully-functioning Microbiology lab from
scratch, in what would become the fastest
pharmaceutical start-up completion ever.
Unfortunately, the legacy of Shanbally
came to an end this year and I have been
one of the many people in this country
to face redundancy, but I have been
fortunate enough to continue my career,
now as a Quality Specialist in Cork’s
booming Pharmaceutical industry.
These trying, but wonderful life experiences
could not have happened if it weren’t for the
education and training given to me in NUI
Maynooth. I will forever look upon those brief
four years as valuable career preparation,
which hopefully will continue for years to come.
WWW.ALUMNI.NUIM.IE
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22 The Bridge
2
1
5
4
3
6
1. Inaugural Graduating Class of NUI
Maynooth Law with Minister for
Social Protection Joan Burton and
Law Faculty
2. MA Military History and Strategic
Studies graduates Tom Kenny, Brid
Kenny and Liam Kenny
3. Dr Miriam Ryan, Office Vice
President for Research, who was
conferred with a BCL (Law and Arts)
in September with her husband,
Dr Kevin Mc Donnell and daughters
Hazel and Genevieve Mc Donnell
4. Willie and Paddy Mullins
5. Vinnie Muldoon, Danielle McVeigh,
Professor Philip Nolan, President,
NUI Maynooth, and Paddy Mullins
6. Noel Nynes and
Professor Philip Nolan
Maynooth
Alumni
Advisory
Board
(MAAB)
GRADUATIONS
2011
The objectives that the Board, which aims to meet
three to four times a year, has set itself, are:
To act as advisory group to the Alumni Office
To act as Ambassadors for NUI Maynooth
To help enlarge the alumni base
To increase the number of and numbers
attending alumni events
This year’s graduation ceremonies at NUI Maynooth in
early September and at the end of October saw over
2,000 undergraduate and postgraduate conferrals.
Almost 1,900 students, a record high for the
University, graduated during three days of
ceremonies on campus during September.
18 courses, including the Bachelor of Civil
Law and the Bachelor of Business Law
Degree awarded graduates for the first
time. Officiating at his inaugural conferring
ceremonies, Professor Philip Nolan, President,
NUI Maynooth encouraged graduates to
take some time from their celebrations and
reflect on the family, friends, lecturers and
classmates who had made this day possible.
Maynooth Alumni Association Stay Connected, Keep Connected
The Maynooth Alumni Advisory Board (MAAB),
which held it’s inaugural meeting on February
3rd this year, has been established with
three specific aims – to help set the strategic
direction of the Alumni Office, to identify ways
in which Alumni can benefit other alumni and to
explore how Alumni can help the University.
o help identify and prioritise key activities
T
to be built into the alumni annual plan
The President of NUI Maynooth, Professor Philip
Nolan, attended Board’s October meeting, at
which he expressed his delight that the Board
was in existence and was actively engaged in the
development of the University. Professor Nolan
updated the Board on his vision for NUI Maynooth
and indicated that he would like to present his draft
strategic plan for the University at the next Board
meeting which is scheduled for 19th January and
would welcome the Board’s feedback on same.
Among the Business Management graduates
who were conferred were two sports
scholars: Danielle McVeigh, NUI Maynooth
golf scholar and Vinnie Muldoon, NUI
Maynooth snooker scholar. Graduating with
a degree in Equine Business, Paddy Mullins
was accompanied by his father, Champion
National Hunt trainer, Willie Mullins.
l-r: Frank Fitzmaurice, Bernadette Coyne,
Áengus O'Maoláin, Karen Kelly,
Professor Vincent Comerford,
Hayley McCann and Flor Madden.
The Alumni Office would like to take this
opportunity to thank the Board members for
their time and commitment to the Maynooth
Alumni Association and looks forward to
working with the Board in delivering successful
initiatives for Maynooth Alumni during 2012.
MAAB Board members include:
Bernadette Coyne, Managing Director,
Amárach Consulting, (BA 1987)
Peter Finnegan, Director, Dublin
City Council, (BA 1976)
Frank Fitzmaurice, Director
Corporate Services, NUI Maynooth
Mark Greville, Director,
Bank of America, (BA 1996)
Karen Kelly, NUI Maynooth
Alumni Officer, (BA 2009)
Flor Madden, Executive Chairman,
Weddings at Home, (BA 1988)
Eugene Magee, Company Director, (BA 1964)
Hayley McCann, Secondary Teacher,
Geography and Religion, (BA 2007)
Gareth McLaughlin, Ebay Executive, (BA 2006)
Rob Munelly, Maynooth Student Union President
Aengus O’Maoláin, Education
Officer, USI (BMus 2009)
John Weafer, Social Researcher,
Weafer Research Associates, (BA 1979)
WWW.ALUMNI.NUIM.IE
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24 The Bridge
The Morpeth Roll:
A Personal and
National Heirloom
A unique project is underway on campus – the Morpeth
Roll, effectively a pre-famine census recently discovered
at Castle Howard in Yorkshire, is being transcribed
and digitised by the Centre for the Study of Historic
Irish Houses and Estates at NUI Maynooth.
In September 1841, George Howard, or Lord Morpeth
as he was known, and then Chief Secretary of Ireland
was presented with a unique gift on the occasion
of his return to England. His supporters in Ireland
gathered a testimonial of ‘outpourings of affection
and support’ comprising a farewell address signed
by approximately 275,000 people on 652 individual
sheets of paper. These sheets were subsequently
joined together to create a continuous length of paper,
approximately 412 metres in length which was then
rolled onto a mahogany spool. Effectively a pre-famine
census of peers, merchants, professionals, clergymen
and landed gentry, the Roll lay undiscovered until
2006. The Roll is currently on loan to NUI Maynooth
where it is being researched and conserved.
Lord Morpeth was a Whig politician at the time when
the Whigs were supporters of Catholic Emancipation,
the abolition of slavery and the extension of the right
to vote. In 1835 he was appointed Chief Secretary
of Ireland where, after long battles, he eventually
carried through reforming legislation on Irish tithes,
poor-law and municipal government. His defeat in the
1841 general election led to his departure as Chief
Secretary of Ireland and a campaign led by the Duke of
Leinster gathered 275,000 signatures of support from
across the country. These were collected in less than
a month, an amazing achievement given the available
modes of transport and communication at the time.
Maynooth Alumni Association Stay Connected, Keep Connected
The testimonial roll was presented to Lord Morpeth
at the Royal Exchange, Dublin, in September 1841.
On receipt, he acknowledged that it was the ‘richest
heir-loom I could bequeath to the name I bear.’ The roll
is unique both in terms of Irish testimonials, and as a
farewell gift to a departing official. It has huge research
potential, whether looked at as a pre-Famine census
substitute, a family heirloom, a genealogy resource or
a politically motivated document in its own right. As
a pre-Famine census substitute it is unparalleled and
its importance is multiplied by the scarcity of census
material from this period. Moreover, it has the potential
to provide a unique insight into Irish life, society and
politics in pre-Famine Ireland as well as providing
empirical evidence of mass political involvement.
Some of the most interesting signatures found on the
roll to date include historical figures such as Daniel
O’Connell, Thomas Davis and Charles Bianconi.
For many years the testimonial roll remained hidden
away in a basement at Castle Howard, Yorkshire, but it is
now on loan at NUI Maynooth thanks to the generosity of
Simon Howard, owner of Castle Howard and the efforts
of Prof. Christopher Ridgway, curator and Dr Terence
Dooley, Director of the CSHIHE. It is now the focus of
an important scholarly investigation with research led
by Dr Patrick Cosgrove, post doctoral research fellow
at the Department of History. The staff of the Russell
Library have carried out emergency conservation
work and Ancestry.com, the world’s largest online
resource for family history documents, has begun the
process of transcribing and digitising the document
to make it available on-line to the general public.
WWW.ALUMNI.NUIM.IE
NUI Maynooth Affinity Credit Card
YOU GE T.
You get a unique credit card and we give a little
back to the Maynooth Alumni Fund every time
you spend on your Maynooth Affinity Credit Card
Apply online at
www.bankofireland.com
or talk to us in our branch BOI Maynooth (076) 6230776
Bank of Ireland is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Lending criteria, Terms and conditions apply to all credit card applications.
Applicants must be 18 years of age or over to apply. Credit cards are liable to Government Stamp Duty annually, currently €30, per account.