UCC Academy was established in 2014 as UCC’s in-house consultancy.  With over 40 employees, the Academy provides a range of services in areas including Programme Management & Change Management, Creative Services and International Relationship Management.  The Board of UCC Academy wishes to appoint a Chief Executive Officer to lead the next phase of the Academy’s evolution.

Lansdowne Executive Search has been retained to manage this appointment process. See the opportunity HERE.

The full job specs are here: 

Candidate Briefing

A group of finance staff from Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, visited University College Cork in June, and we were excited to meet with them to discuss the inner workings of UCC Academy! 

Birgit Felton (Head of Division of Financial and Accounting), Carolin Felder (Management of External Funding), Janina Meier (Vice Department Manager, Tax Department), Alexander Vorwerk (Finance and Accounting Department), and Julia Böhm (Management of External Funding) were hosted by Mary McSweeney, Senior Finance Manager at UCC.

The visit included meetings and tours across UCC locations, including the main campus, Mardyke Arena, and the Beaufort Research Laboratory (MaREI) in Ringaskiddy. Discussions covered a range of topics relevant to financial management in both UCC and RUB, including EU research funding, subsidiary models, financial structures, reporting, philanthropy and donations, and online systems.

Cathal O'Mahony, EU Grant Manager at MaREI, commented that the visit included "very insightful discussions on best practices to support research excellence in European funding programmes.

UCC Academy Website Steering Group begins work on an overhaul of the Academy website

UCC Academy Project Manager attended the UN Climate Change Summit (COP27) at Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt, in November on behalf of the Smart Protein Project.

In a world of tightening marketing budgets, how can businesses create video content that immediately speaks to existing clients, wins the attention of new customers and delivers sales?

Nicole McDonagh, Conference and Video Lead at UCC Academy, explains how businesses can leverage relatively inexpensive phones and apps to promote their brands and products in a marketplace full of distraction.

We look back at what has been a transformational period for Conference UCC as it navigated the pandemic and incorporated the benefits of virtual connection with the welcome return of in-person events.

Orla Egan has been an instrumental figure in telling the story of LGBT lives in Cork. As well as establishing the Cork LGBT Archive, she has written a book, the Queer Republic of Cork, Cork’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Communities 1970s-1990s. She has also written a play and directed a documentary on the subject. It has been a labour of love driven by her passion to raise awareness of queer lives in Cork.

UCC Rugby will celebrate a significant milestone in its history later this year, as it marks 150 years in existence. The club has not only left its mark on the pitch over that 150 years but also contributed something else of huge significance to the University, originating the distinctive skull and crossbones which later came to represent UCC Sport overall. The rugby club was founded in 1872 by medical faculty staff and students, with the skull and crossbones as a fitting emblem.

UCC Academy welcomed three new members of staff in recent months, all of whom will bring their extensive range of talents and skills to bear as the academy continues to develop.

International Nurses Day took place last week and we spoke with Dr Noeleen Brady from the School of Nursing and Midwifery at UCC about an ambitious project which aims to improve the mental health and wellbeing of staff in Irish hospitals. 

As we mark Earth Day on April 22, we look at two UCC projects which aim to improve our environment for future generations

April 21 is UN World Creativity and Innovation Day. We look at the ways UCC Academy is supporting creativity and innovation throughout the campus.

We recently caught up with Aoife Tierney and Ian Dooley who joined UCC Academy through our graduate programme in 2020.

In the eight years since joining UCC Academy, Guanhao Lin has progressed from intern to financial analyst, and most recently to financial accounting manager.

UCC Academy has welcomed six new joiners from a diverse range of backgrounds and experience to its team as University College Cork’s in-house consultancy gets ready to take on 2022.

UCC Academy has donated €200 to Cork Simon Community after 14 members of staff walked, cycled and ran 2,344 kilometres throughout August as part of a Distance Challenge organised by Ian Dooley and members of the company’s Sports and Social Committee.

John Buckley became the first employee to avail of UCC Academy’s paternity policy following the birth of his son, Oisín.

UCC Academy has inducted three new University College Cork graduates into its ambitious Graduate Development Programme. 

Is there a more ironic question than “any comments or feedback?”. Despite being specifically designed to illicit a response, all too often it is met by the kind of silence that left Paul Simon wondering about people’s inability to communicate.

Given that there are so many different ways of communicating, and a corresponding number of ways of misunderstanding or misrepresenting each other, conveying our ideas, thoughts and opinions can be difficult at times.

The project aims to develop innovative materials to convert waste heat into electricity.

Maggie Cardosi, UCC's North American Representative based in New York, shares her experience of remote working.

Eight new people have joined UCC Academy in recent months, underscoring the continued growth of UCC’s in-house consultancy as it emerges from the pandemic and prepares for a new academic year. 

With Ireland's vaccine roll-out underway and due to ramp-up in the months ahead, we can begin to hope that "the end is truly in sight."  

 Over the next two quarters, businesses will begin to plan for a gradula re-opening of the economy and return to the offices they left behind in March 2020. 

Research has shown that we make distinct judgements about people based on their writing, irrespective of the platform or communication channel.

After the successful launch of its graduate programme in 2020, UCC Academy is once again offering graduates the opportunity to join University College Cork’s in-house consultancy.

As restrictions continue to be lifted, we will soon find ourselves returning to our offices and fleshing out some of the more tangible aspects of the era defining phrase - “the new normal”. 

Seven new people have joined UCC Academy in recent months, reflecting the transformative shift that has occurred during the pandemic and demand for talented professionals with a proven background in innovation, creativity and communication. 

During these exceptionally challenging times, it is more important than ever that we continue to prioritise our health and wellbeing at work.

A University College Cork-led research project has received €3.2m in European funding to develop a more cost effective way to measure air pollution.

It is hoped that the research team, drawn from industry and academia and coordinated by UCC, will bring about the creation of low cost electrical sensors for detecting harmful particles in the atmosphere, and that these devices can be subsequently deployed on airplanes, ships and other platforms to monitor air quality.

For many people, compiling reports and collating data can be a task that lingers until such time as deadlines approach. 

Check out the great work from our project team supporting Cork Discovers.

Human interaction and engagement are more important than ever during this global pandemic. We’ve all been affected, and the events industry has quickly changed focus to deliver online and hybrid events with the same impact as before. 

At UCC Academy our Conference UCC team have been working behind the scenes, developing best practice for online events using a range of platforms including OnAir. 

As remote working extends from the short to the medium term, online platforms are increasingly important. And for those that moved overnight to working in the cloud, the learning curve was particularly steep.

A few weeks after the closure of UCC’s contact tracing centre, we take a look back at the exceptional volunteers who answered the call to help.  

Launched in 2019, UCC Academy’s ambitious Graduate Programme offers successful applicants the opportunity to have their voices heard while working on projects that are strategically important University College Cork.

UCC Academy’s most recent Community of Project Managers event saw Eoin Hahessy, Head of Media and PR at UCC, Michael Tobin from the University’s Audio Visual Media Services unit, and Judie Russell, Communications Project Manager with UCC Academy, discuss the importance of communications in a socially distant world.

EU Project Manager and Nutritionist Jackie Lyons shares tips on remote working as part of our Bite-Size learning series. 

UCC Academy considers holistic staff supports and makes plans to return as a paperless office

Hear from members of our project management team in this podcast from UCC Academy.

On 3 September 2019, Sinéad Harding, Head of UCC Project Centre, was invited to speak at the Project Managers Network event at the Printworks, Dublin Castle.

On Friday 27^th September, Cork will be joining 24 other cities across Europe in celebrating European Researchers' night. The aim of ‘Cork Discovers’ is to bring researchers closer to the public and to increase awareness of the impact of research on daily life.

On June 12th, the UCC Academy communications project managers and digital marketers took the first train to Dublin to attend a conference on digital marketing for the public sector at The Helix. The agenda included a packed line up of speakers starting on the topic of crisis management.

UCC Academy CEO Arlene Vithaldas presented the new business strategy to the UCC Academy team at the Mardyke Arena on 23rd January 2018. She also welcomed the most recent joiner to the PrimeUCC team, Magdalena Tyndyk.

On March 6th, the Community of Project Managers (CoPM) held an event in the Boole Library Creative Zone on the topic of Project Governance. Project Governance is the framework by which project decisions are made. It is a critical element of any successful project, as it ensures that there is appropriate accountability and responsibility within the project team. We were delighted to be joined by some of UCC’s leaders in project governance, who shared their experiences of best practice governance frameworks and examples.

Cork is getting set to host its first European Researchers’ Night under the banner Cork Discovers – a world of research. On the night there will be a series of free events, at venues within the University College Cork campus and across the city, designed to illustrate how research impacts on our daily lives.