Annual Dinner of the TCD Association of Northern Ireland
Malone Golf Club, Belfast
Friday, 09 November 2012
Ladies and Gentlemen,
What a pleasure and privilege it is to be here tonight in this fine club. And how wonderful to see so many of you gathered.
Tonight we celebrate your connection with Trinity College. As Provost I’ve had the pleasure of attending a number of alumni dinners, because of course Trinity has alumni all over the world – On the last count, 92,000 alumni living in 130 countries. Two weeks ago I was in Singapore, which I found a veritable hotspot of Trinity people. A lot of doctors, not unsurprisingly, but also lawyers, business people, and even a former Honorary Consul for Ireland.
But it’s particularly special to be in Belfast because Trinity, which is also known as the University of Dublin, has never been merely a University for Dublin; or indeed for Leinster. It never was a regional university. Trinity has always drawn students from around the country, North and South. Today it admits students from all over the world – and I’ll talk later about our global strategy.
It is an epicentre for students from around Ireland and the UK. On graduation, some remain in Dublin and Ireland. Many go to London, Belfast, and further afield. All retain, as do all here tonight, a profound attachment to their alma mater. Countless silken ties of love and thought, as Robert Frost put it.
Trinity has been particularly fortunate in the talent it has attracted from the North. I think, in the 19th Century, of the politician Isaac Butt and the physicist Thomas Andrews.
In the 20th Century:
- the judges Sir James Andrews, Lord Chief Justice of Northern Ireland, and Sir Donnell Deeny of the High Court;
- the poets Michael Longley and Derek Mahon;
- the journalist and BBC governor Lucy Faulkner, who was wife of the Prime Minister Brian Faulkner;
- And of course our former President, Mary McAleese, who was Trinity’s Reid Professor of Criminal Law;
- the great Denis Burkitt who gave his name to the childhood cancer Burkitt’s lymphoma; and the late lamented historian R.B. McDowell.
Indeed I always think of Burkitt and McDowell as the quintessential Trinity graduates. Burkitt, who was born in Enniskillen and attended Portora School, coined that line which I’m always quoting in speeches: “Irish by birth, Trinity by the grace of God”.
R.B. McDowell, who was educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institute, was a Trinity fixture. He entered College as an undergraduate in 1932 and he resided there until he was 94. He never retired. He wrote two histories of the College and every undergraduate, certainly every arts undergraduate, has an R.B. story.
Mention of Portora reminds me that this great Enniskillen institution was something of a feeder school for Trinity. I think of Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett.
But I guess I’ve made my point! Trinity is not just the University of Dublin, but of Ireland, and Trinity without its Northern Irish alumni would quite simply not be the same place.
Some of the 1960s Northern Irish students have left their inimitable recollections of life in Trinity as undergraduates. Michael Longley wrote of “inhaling poetry with our Sweet Afton cigarettes. We smoked and drank like troopers. We read our poems in public for the first time.” Derek Mahon wrote: “Trinity in those days wasn’t much about work, although quite a lot of reading got done.” I must say I think that’s a quite wonderful distinction between work and reading. In Trinity we aim to produce creative, innovative students who think outside the curriculum. Ideally I’d like them to work and read. But if they can’t do both, I’d take the reading. Certainly if it produces poets like Mahon.
Memories like these provide the beautiful social history of the college, which is missing in more official accounts. Everyone here tonight has their own memories of student life in Trinity.
In the bad old days of Archbishop McQuaid in the 1950s and 1960s when Catholics were forbidden to attend Trinity College, there were as many Northern accents heard in Trinity as Dublin ones, possibly more. That’s part of our social history.
The situation today is a bit different. McQuaid’s ban was lifted forty years ago and there is now no shortage of Dublin accents. But as many of you are aware, in recent years the number of students coming to Trinity from Northern Ireland has fallen dramatically. There are complex reasons for this, which I’d like to go into tonight because this is a crucial issue.
Trinity recently launched its new global relations strategy. You may have heard, or seen reported in the media, our ambition: “to be Ireland’s university on the world stage.” A key action towards achieving that ambition is to encourage more international students and more student exchanges.
By bringing together a community of scholars and staff of all religions, and none; of all political beliefs and none; we help challenge fixed ideas and generate new ideas. One of my predecessors as Provost called Trinity “a small republic of letters”, and we take pride in living up to that ideal. A rich learning environment means diversity in the College. And that includes, of course, Irish diversity. To play on the world stage, we need to inhabit the home stage. A Trinity College taking in students from Africa, Asia and America, but few from Northern Ireland? That’s not what I want. That’s a betrayal of our traditions and roots. To be international is, first, to be local. Ireland has a particular talent at making the local international; how do we take advantage of this? Well, before I consider this question, I guess I should introduce myself properly, since after just a year in office, I’m still something of a neophyte Provost.
***PERSONAL CONTEXT***
I’m an engineer - BAI 1987 - from Wexford, from a small place called Oulart, known only to sporting enthusiasts and historians of 1798. My father was a haulage contractor and my mother a nurse at St Loman’s Hospital, Dublin, who became what we now call a homemaker when she married.
I’ve spent most of my career at Trinity because I fell in love with it as an undergraduate, but I had two long stints abroad, doing post-doctoral work in Bologna and the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands, and I’ve also held visiting professorships in Warsaw, Delft, and Barcelona.
My experience abroad left me with more than just a smattering of some European languages, but with an absolute zeal that all Trinity students get to have a similar experience of living and studying abroad. At the moment the proportion of students who spend time abroad is about one in twenty. One of the goals of my provostship is to improve that figure.
My own research, since the late 1980s, has been in the area of medical devices. This has been most rewarding, not only because Trinity is at the forefront of next generation medical device research and the sector is one of the growth areas for Ireland’s economic recovery, but also because this research is interdisciplinary, combining the strengths of engineering and medicine.
Interdisciplinarity is one of the key strengths of a Trinity education. I know there are those here who graduated decades ago and I think you would agree that your education was broad and wide-ranging, but in recent years the emphasis on interdisciplinarity has been deepened and formalised across all schools.
The Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience for instance has Principal Investigators from Psychology, Physiology, Biochemistry, Engineering, Psychiatry and Genetics. While our Centre for Nanoscience brings together researchers from Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Engineering, Pharmacology, and Chemistry.
When it comes to these and other interdisciplinary research areas like Immunology and Clinical Medicine, Trinity is ranked among the top research institutes worldwide, so we know interdisciplinarity is working.
Just over a year ago I put myself forward as Provost – having served as Vice-Provost & Chief Academic Officer – because I was excited about some of the changes I saw in College which pointed to what Trinity could achieve. I was also apprehensive about potentially less desirable outcomes and wanted to be in a position to influence things for the better.
These are difficult times, but also times of potential radical change. People can be more inclined to take risks during crises because they’ve invested less in the status quo. So it’s an “interesting” period to be taking up the provostship – although I know that’s also a Chinese curse!
When I consider the intractable issue of funding and student fees, currently tormenting the government and the third level sector in Ireland, the word ‘cursed’ certainly comes to mind! But I’m not going to go into funding tonight, you’ll be glad to know.
I would say just two things: first, Irish universities are falling down in the rankings and everyone accepts that this is due to under-funding; and second, let’s have a discussion with all options on the table and nothing “off limits”. We will only find a solution if we’re calm, flexible and realistic.
***ADMISSIONS***
Let me turn now to the other issue currently perplexing us: the issue of admissions, which I touched on earlier when I spoke of our distress at falling numbers of students from Northern Ireland.
As I’ve said, there are complex reasons for this, and the reasons vary round the island. Certain counties in Ireland have strong links with UCD, NUI Galway, or UCC, and little past tradition of sending students to Trinity. In these counties we want to go on a recruitment drive but we’re not, as it were, reclaiming. However when it comes to Northern Ireland, well I guess I feel a bit like President Obama would if New York and Massachusetts were suddenly to vote red! What did we do wrong? How can we reverse this?
Let me outline for you some of the biggest problems and the steps we are taking to address them:
One major obstacle is that Northern Irish applicants know little about the CAO system we use to admit students, and some schools actively discourage their students from applying through the CAO. We have not helped matters in recent years by taking no active steps to encourage applications from Northern Ireland.
Under my Provostship, all of that is starting to change. We know the importance of peer influence, so one of my initiatives has been to recruit
student ambassadors from every county in Ireland, who will challenge misconceptions in potential students.
So far 174 students from all 32 counties have applied to become ambassadors. 21 of these are from Northern Ireland. Let me read you a selection of things they’ve said because their love of Trinity has inspired me, and I hope it will inspire you.
A student from Antrim had her bags packed to go to university in England, before accepting a place in Trinity to study Law. She told us that, in her school, students were encouraged to apply through the UCAS system, and that information about the CAO system was discouraged.
Now that she’s in Trinity, she is actively involved in our clubs and societies and is currently doing an Erasmus exchange programme, studying at Leiden University in the Netherlands. So a student after my own heart! She says:
“Little is known in my home county about what a special place Trinity is - the unique campus atmosphere, the overwhelming variety of societies. The courses available at Trinity are diverse, and immersed in the experience and enthusiasm of excellent lecturers. Even more than that, the prestige and long history of excellence emanating from the College make an education from Trinity stand out.”
Another student from Donegal reported that he was initially concerned about fitting in given his strong northern accent and farming background, but he quickly came to see Trinity as a ‘hidden paradise’, where ‘diversity, in all shapes and forms is accepted and celebrated’. According to him: “Trinity often feels like Hogwarts, except here the magic really happens!”
These ambassadors will be telling their stories on a new Trinity Explore website, and we hope in the next phase to have them return to schools nearby where they’re from, share their experiences, and inspire the next generation to follow in their footsteps.
There are, unfortunately, other obstacles to Northern Ireland recruitment, and some of these are more systematic. The value of A-levels compared to Leaving Certificate results has been downgraded in the CAO system, and unless students are studying four A-levels then entry into our most sought-after courses is almost impossible.
Our solution here is a radical one.
We believe the entire Irish university admission system is in need of reform. Trinity has approved a feasibility study to see if we can adopt a more holistic approach in admitting students with the academic ability and potential to thrive at third level, and this is our contribution to informing national policy in the area.
The study will be launched in December, and in 2013 we will be admitting students onto three of our courses, including Law, using a number of different scales to evaluate applicants. One benefit of this approach is that Northern Ireland applicants will no longer lose out when their A-level results are evaluated.
We are making this radical move because we believe it’s not good enough to just spend our time talking about leadership. We have to lead. And this is one area where we’re determined to play our part.
***GLOBAL STRATEGY***
When we invite students from all round Ireland to Trinity, we’re inviting them into a truly international environment.
Higher education today is increasingly a globally traded and borderless activity. Staff, students, and research projects switch between countries and institutions, going to where the money and expertise is. People and projects no longer belong exclusively to one institution, but are truly international.
A world-class university in the 21st century has a multicultural campus, with staff and students hailing from round the world. Both staff and students refresh their ideas and perspectives by taking frequent sabbaticals and exchange programmes abroad. Research is collaborative and inter-institutional, taking advantage of global academic networks.
Trinity is positioning itself to be just such a world-class university. In the last few weeks alone I’ve signed memoranda of understanding in China and Singapore to deliver joint student training programmes. And the winners of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, Bruce Beutler, Jules Hoffmann and Ralph Steinman, are close collaborators of Trinity’s School of Biochemistry and Immunology. I could give you hundreds of other examples of the moves Trinity is making towards globalization, but I’m aware of having already held your attention long enough.
So I’ll just say that this is not something I leave to chance. I’m aware of the need for a co-ordinated, targeted approach to globalization. I recently created an entirely new post: the Vice-Provost for Global Relations, to which I appointed Professor Jane Ohlmeyer from the School of Histories and Humanities. Her goal is to improve our messaging abroad and focus global interest on Trinity. By creating such a post we are seeking to co-ordinate our activities towards the aim of opening Trinity to the wider world.
Again, I don’t have time to go through all these activities. But in sum, Professor Ohlmeyer’s role is to precisely articulate our core message.
What is our core message? Simply that our education and research are world-class and we want to share them. Articulating this will involve telling the story of Trinity’s excellence in a vivid, accessible way, and telling it strategically in places where we most want to be heard, and where we can have most effect.
***ALUMNI***
When it comes to spreading the message, of course we seek to enlist the support of our alumni. Indeed one of four key actions of the new Global Relations Strategy is “to further connect with our global alumni.”
The reason why so many students from Asia come to Ireland to study medicine is because when the newly qualified doctors go back to their own countries, they spread the word.
And back in the 1960s when Kathy Gilfillan from Eglinton, just outside Derry City, was planning to go to Edinburgh or Sussex she was persuaded by her “inspirational English teacher”, who was one of our graduates, to apply to Trinity instead. When Kathy arrived to start her course, she had to ask directions to Trinity, because she’d never been in Dublin before, although she’d hitchhiked across Europe. Kathy is now editor with Lilliput Press, one of the best small presses in the country. She is married to U2 manager, Paul McGuinness, whom she met at Trinity. And she has helped greatly with Trinity’s fund-raising initiatives, including recently the fund for the Long Room.
If her teacher hadn’t encouraged her, Kathy’s and Trinity’s trajectory would have been so different.
So, to you, our alumni, I thank you for your wonderful support for Trinity College. Alumni networks are key to the success of the contemporary university, and I’m delighted at the willingness of Trinity alumni around the world to get involved. I’m also happy that the perception that one can only help one’s alma mater by, say, endowing a building, is being temporised into something more realistic and sustainable. And of course support does not only mean financial; the contribution alumni make in speaking up for Trinity is most valuable and important for us. Kathy’s teacher gave support by spreading the word. Everyone here can do the same.
Trinity is more than just our alma mater. It represents an idea that we believe in. An ideal that higher education can change lives, and that in our “small republic of letters”, in the centre of Dublin city, we can bring together students from all around the world and play our part in transforming the world. It is why Trinity means so much to all of us.
And it is why we are all here tonight.
Thank you very much.* * *