The B.A. (Hons) in Early Years and Childhood Studies Student Awards for 2023 took place on Friday 20th October. A small reception and prize-giving award ceremony was held on campus in UCC.

The fourth transnational meeting of the Erasmus+ project titled "Digitalisation of multilingual programs in the EHEA" (DIMPE) was held at University College Cork in Ireland 16-17 October 2023.

Congratulations to our colleague Dr Fiona Chambers who has recently been elected as Vice President of CEREPS, the European Council for Research in Physical Education and School Sport. CEREPS was founded as a non-governmental, non-profit organization in Luxembourg in autumn 2015. The purpose of CEREPS is to develop, to implement, to evaluate and to disseminate research on European level about aims and objectives of physical education, school sports and other physical activity in school contexts (PE).

The School of Education is currently the lead partner in the delivery of a series of numeracy professional development workshops for adult practitioners. Series 2 of Numeracy-Meets is aimed at supporting practitioners who teach specific adult numeracy vulnerable groups. Funded by the Adult Literacy for Life (ALL) Collaboration & Innovation Fund 2023, the Numeracy-Meets are organised by third-level practitioners interested in the promotion of numeracy in partnership with the National Adult Literary Agency (NALA). Numeracy-Meets are an informal, yet structured community of practice for numeracy practitioners to share best practice, resources, and personal insights into teaching adult numeracy.

Congratulations to our colleagues João Costa, Diarmuid Lester, Camelia Bran and Kate Feeney, as well as all the Teaching Fellows from the id+ Project Team, who recently received the Frank McGrath Perpetual Award for Wellbeing and Welfare at the University Staff and Campus Companies Staff Recognition Awards 2023. This Award is presented to individuals or teams who demonstrate outstanding contribution towards wellbeing and welfare at UCC.

The UCC Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion Unit (EDI) recently ran a Soapbox event to share knowledge of EDI initiatives across the university. 

On the 1st of September UCC’s New Avenues to Teaching (NAT) initiative (https://www.ucc.ie/en/nat/) will launch the project “EKARA - Exploring Knowledge and Awareness of Reasonable Accommodations/Adjustments for ITE Students with Disabilities in ROI and NI". This project is funded by SCoTENS within the 2023 Seed Funding competition. It is an innovative, collaborative project between the UCC School of Education and the Education Department at St. Mary's University College Belfast.

In collaboration with colleagues in the Cork Centre for Architecture education, and the Civic and Community Engagement unit, the School of Education in UCC was delighted to facilitate an embedded community research project with visiting scholars and undergraduate students from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro (UNCG) in the month of June. Nine UNCG students studying kinesiology, and communication studies, along with their two professors, Kristen Christman and Donna Duffy engaged in a community research project with the Fairhill Community Association. 

Congratulations to current UCC School of Education PME Year 1 students, Pádraig McAuliffe and Alice Murray, who have been awarded bursaries from the Cork Branch of the Irish Mathematics Teachers Association (IMTA).

A huge thank you to the Cork IMTA for their generosity in supporting incoming UCC PME mathematics student teachers through these bursaries. This support is especially valuable given the shortage of mathematics graduates pursuing teaching through the consecutive ITE route.

Well done to Pádraig and Alice on their successful applications, and many thanks to Seán O'Donovan (Cork IMTA Chairperson) for presenting the awards on behalf of the IMTA!

To celebrate National Science Week, UCC Science Education and The School of Chemistry were delighted to host UCC staff and their children for an evening of chemistry magic!