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2016 Press Releases

CARL honours community engagement trailblazers

12 Dec 2016
Trish Shiel, Clinical Manager, Eating Disorder Centre Cork, BSocSc graduate Hazel McDermott and Dr Siobhan O’Sullivan, Applied Social Studies, UCC, at CARL's Outstanding Community Engagement Awards.

UCC’s Community-Academic Research Links (CARL) initiative hosted its first Outstanding Community Engagement Awards ceremony to highlight the impact of its projects.

Celebrating CARL’s 50th student-community project, the event gathered community representatives, academic staff and students to draw attention to the significance of these projects to date.

Madge Fogarty, founder of Postnatal Depression Ireland, stressed the benefits of engaging in collaborative endeavours, with awards presented to students for Outstanding Community Engagement projects.

Monica Coll and Siobhan Sully received awards for their work with Home Share Clare, which looks at alternatives to institutional respite services for families. The pair presented their findings at two national conferences, and the project report was referenced in a HSE report on alternatives to institutional respite. The community organisation used the project findings to leverage funding of €30,000 for the continuation of the service.

Another winner Hazel McDermott partnered with the Eating Disorder Centre Cork for her project, which involved surveying GPs and professionals to gain greater insight into their understanding of eating disorders. Her work has resulted in a follow up project with the School of Dentistry and the organisation is following on her recommendations arising from the project.

MSc Corporate Finance students Emma Keane, Conor Scannell, Peter Bresnan, Conor O'Donovan, Ruiqian Yan and Sean Lordan joined forces with Carrigaline Lions Youth Centre for their project.

A final award was made on the night to recognise the contribution and support of staff on CARL projects. Dr Kenneth Burns from the School of Applied Social Studies was named CARL Supervisor of the Year 2016. A founding member of CARL, Dr Burns has supervised the greatest number of CARL projects to date and is supervising three projects this year.  

Organisers described the event as “reflecting the increased focus of staff and students in forging partnerships with the broader community and in supporting activities and projects that address questions of broad societal interest.”

University College Cork

Coláiste na hOllscoile Corcaigh

College Road, Cork T12 K8AF

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