Last week I was invited to the
Inaugural Lecture at the start of Professor Andrew Deeks 10 year term as UCD
President. He also published his new Strategy 2015 - 2020.
Andrew is the first ‘non Irish’
President of UCD since John Henry Newman was Founder and Rector in 1854. Newman
only spent 4 years as Rector but was a noted educationalist and writer on the
role of a university in society. From humble beginnings in UCD he foresaw 'a
flourishing University, which for a while had to struggle with fortune, but
which, when its first founders and servants were dead and gone, had successes
far exceeding their anxieties'.
The passage of time indeed
proved Newman right and Andrew Deeks is rightly proud of what UCD has achieved
but as he is very ambitious for UCD he states 'we cannot rest on our laurels'.
To remain competitive in every sense the new strategy calls for a new genre of
interconnection globally at academic level to match the communication that
exists between continents, countries and economies.
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| UCD Campus |
Our mission is to flourish in
Ireland and in the world 'through the excellence and impact of our research and
scholarship'. Our values are excellence, integrity, collegiality, engagement
and diversity, the strategy states ‘Our aim must be truly global in our
international reach, in our engagement with all levels of society and with all
regions of the world and in the quality and extent of our campus and
facilities. We will bring the world to Ireland and Ireland to the world’. This will all be achieved using 10 key
objectives and 6 strategic objectives.
In his very entertaining
Inaugural Address, Professor Deeks traced the voyage of discovery of mankind
from the Industrial Revolution into the current age of The Internet of Things
to show the need for interconnecting academic institutions geographically and
virtually. This will result in maximum
research and innovation impact.
He made a powerful association
that made the new UCD Strategy not only an agenda for his term as President but
an essential for UCD to become the global world class university he wants UCD
to be. If we all pull together around this new Strategy or Growth Engine in UCD
I'm sure we will succeed in raising our ambitions to compete with the best on
the world stage.
Certainly we in the UCD EGA
will continue our current strategy of raising our national and international
profile in the issues most concerning the Irish Nation - Job Creation, Austerity, Food, Water,
Energy, Economic Recovery, Diaspora,
Farming and Gender. These have been the economic and social themes of our principal public events
in the past two years. We hope to continue to discuss and debate the burning
issues of the day in the years ahead and in that way play our part in ensuring
the place of UCD as a creative innovation engine of growth in Irish and
international society.
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| UCD President, Prof.
Andrew J Deeks and Minister for Education & Skills, Jan O'Sullivan TD |
