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Speeches from Jingle and Mingle event

Published December 20th, 2017

Full text of speech by Geraldine Ruane, Chief Operating Officer

Good afternoon everyone and a very warm welcome to everyone that has joined us today. I see we have staff members from all our functional areas….

  • Academic Registry
  • Day Nursery
  • Disability
  • Health Service
  • Sport
  • Student Counselling
  • Commercial Revenue Unit
  • Diversity & Inclusion
  • Estates & Facilities
  • Human Resources
  • IT Services
  • Programme Management Office
  • Office of the COO

I am also delighted to say that the Provost has very kindly joined us today and will say a few words to us in a few moments.

I felt it would be great if we could capture some of the thoughts of our staff from within CSD and some testimonials from our academics and students of their experience of our Services.

(‘Corporate Services Division… the Journey’ video shown)

I hope you enjoyed that. It’s just a taster of all the hard work that continues to be done within the different corporate services, by our 850 staff, day in day out.

I’ve a sense of déjà vu actually – I remember standing here this time last year thanking you for all your efforts in helping to implement new systems and structures. And that message is the same today.

As you will have seen in the video, there has been significant improvement in services delivered to college and I want you to know that it doesn’t go unnoticed by students and members of the college community. 

It would be wrong to pick one functional area as I believe all the functional areas play their part in ensuring that students and staff can enjoy their experience of studying and working in Trinity and that visitors can enjoy our beautiful campus.

I would like to introduce my Senior Management Team (SMT) to you who are here today. We have some new members to the team. As I call out your name I would like if you would raise your hand and say hello.

  • Paul Mangan, Director of Estates & Facilities
  • Alison Oldam, Director of Student Services
  • Adrian Neilan, Commercial Director
  • Tony McMahon, Director of Diversity & Inclusion

New members

  • Antoinette Quinn, Director of Human Resources
  • Patrick Magee, Director of IT Services
  • John O’Sullivan, Director of Programme Management Office

Unfortunately we are losing Alison Oldam, Director of Student Services. I want to wish Alison our best wishes and to say thank you for your contribution to CSD and to Trinity.
I hope you have enjoyed your time and experience in Trinity and in Ireland.

 The SMT and I have a vision for corporate services division and that is that we are a professional team creating the environment for Trinity to achieve its objectives.

We implement this vision by adhering to the values of

  • respect
  • excellence
  • responsibility & accountability

As it said in the opening to the video, here in Corporate Services we are on a journey, and these values will be our signpost as we continue on our way.

Thank you for enhancing the user experience and delivering high quality services, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

My ask of you is to you to continue to work to make Trinity a great place to study, work and visit.

I would now like to call on the Provost to say a few words.  Please give him a very warm welcome.

Thanks to the Provost for his inspiring words. I wish everyone a Happy Christmas and enjoy your mulled wine and mince pies, mingle and jingle and see you all in the New Year.

Full text from the Provost’s speech

Thank you, Geraldine, and good afternoon everyone. And can I just start by congratulating everyone involved in putting together the video – those behind the camera, and those in front of it. You have got across in a wonderfully succinct and energetic way all that’s going on in CSD in Trinity – its centrality to the college and the recent achievements.

And for me, watching, I’m very struck and I’m really delighted at the sense that’s coming across of the huge advances in the past few years. To hear Aidan Seery and Leona Coady and Alan O’Keeffe talking about the transformative and positive changes that have happened over the past five years, I can only say how absolutely delighted I am that this has happened and that the benefits are being experienced.

These achievements across the whole CSD are the result of individuals and teams taking great decisions and working together to implement them. I know the challenges in effecting deep-rooted change in an institution of the size and traditions of Trinity College, so I just want to congratulate everyone and emphasize how important your work is to the running of the college and how inspirational your dedication and energy and ambition is.

CSD goes across the college – from student services to HR to academic registry to IT services to estates and facilities, and much more – I think that Geraldine mentioned thirteen functional areas.

Without excellent CSD the university could not run in the way it does. Trinity’s headline successes – LERU, going up in the rankings, the Green Flag for sustainability, research breakthroughs – all these are built on strong CSD. What is striking and comes across so well in the video is the extent to which CSD is keeping apace with technological advances and, in particular, using technology to integrate services ever more closely.

In this university we are very committed to interdisciplinarity - and also of course, to research collaboration and global relations. All these are inter-related – they are all to do with integration, coordination, collaboration. It’s about not staying in our silos or sticking rigidly to our disciplines but finding common purpose and ways to collaborate. It’s the sense that we are stronger together and that we can learn by other ways of doing.

I think it’s very powerful – and a great source of Trinity’s strength – that we are bringing this sense of integration and collaboration across all the university’s activities. All the functional areas in CSD are working together to improve efficiency and flexibility, build capability, improve sustainability, deliver high quality services, and enhance the experience of all users – students, staff, and visitors.

As university staff, we are each of us ambitious, in our particular spheres and we’re ambitious for Trinity. We know that by working together we can better achieve our aims and better serve the university as a whole.

Students and staff both – at different periods of our lives and careers we need to call on the expertise of CSD – on counselling, the Day Nursery, Sport, Health, HR, IT services, Academic Registry.

It is immensely reassuring to know that not only is each of these units so strong in itself, but that coordination and integration is so high. And, that there is such a commitment to continuous professional development and to drawing on the best international practice and the latest technologies to ensure that services are world-class.

On behalf of the whole university, I thank you most warmly for your commitment and I congratulate you on your multiple achievements. I thank also the Chief Operating Officer herself, Geraldine Ruane, for the leadership she has shown over the past year.

And I wish everyone a happy Christmas and that you all have a wonderful and deserved break and I look forward to seeing you back in the new year to confront new challenges and opportunities.