2005 Press Releases

14 Sep 2005

Conferring Ceremonies at University College Cork, 15 September



Conferring ceremonies continued today (15 September 2005) at University College Cork with 560 undergraduate and postgraduate students conferred from the Faculties of Arts and Science.

The Conferring addresses were given by John A. Murphy, Emeritus Professor of Irish History, Professor John R. Higgins, Head, Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, UCC and Professor Peter Kennedy, Vice-President for Research Policy & Support, UCC.

Addressing graduates at conferring ceremonies Professor John A. Murphy said:

    "I hope that you will continue to bond with your alma mater and keep an eye on its development from close quarters.  As citizens, you will be interested in government policies on higher education.  As graduates, you have a voice in the election of the UCC Governing Body and the National University Senate and you can be involved in Convocation, the assembly of NUI graduates.

    Graduates should feel that they are an integral part of the university community.  A university is nothing unless it is a community - comprising undergraduates, graduates, lecturing staff, retired staff and, yes, the dead as well as the living, the past as well as the present.  That is why UCC has an active heritage committee, and a policy of naming buildings after those who shaped its history.  A university is the secular counterpart of the theological concept of the communion of saints:  it is, or should be, a true community of scholars.

    Now, from time to time, a university may need a new mode of governance, administrative reform or restructuring of its academic bodies.  Similarly, it has to be responsive to, but never dominated by, the needs of the wider community or the 'knowledge economy', so called.  But it does not exist to serve market forces or to gear its research to utilitarian demands.  It cannot adopt a corporate business ethos and still be a university.  The inter-active student-lecturer relationship is the central and distinctive university experience.  The university community is rightly entitled to claim, and continue to claim, your graduate loyalty and support, but not as UCC Inc. or UCC p.l.c.  Moreover, as graduates in the humanities, you must help to ensure that your alma mater continues to cherish the liberal arts - the historic core of Western learning - and that it will not jettison a particular discipline because it may not be perceived as relevant to the market economy.

    Finally, this university while always striving after excellence - per ardua ad astra -  should not become fixated with its rating in a global academic league table, drawn up God knows where and for what purposes God alone knows. "



Text of Address by Professor John R. Higgins, Head, Department of Obstetrics & Gynaecology, UCC

It is an honour for me to address this conferring ceremony.  Let me start by adding my congratulations to you, on your graduation today.  This is your special day. Enjoy it! Relish it!  You have earned this moment "in the sun".  I hope that you are able to share this day with as many members of your family as possible. Graduation marks another important transition.   From parents' point of view, it is a day of joy, tinged I am sure with some relief, and perhaps even some poignancy that you have moved closer to independence.  

It is traditional to tell the new graduate that "the world is your oyster".  While not denying the opportunities that exist across the globe for the U.C.C. graduate, I wanted to reflect for a few minutes on the theme or idea that for the U.C.C. graduate in 2005, not only is the world your oyster, but for the first time, for this generation of graduates, "Ireland is your oyster".   The economic transformation of the past two decades means that Ireland now needs to import rather than export graduates.  The opportunities here at home are comparable with any developed country in the world.

I was a medical graduate in 1988, not even a generation ago! - It was expected that the majority of us would leave Ireland and permanently live and practice abroad.  I remember clearly at our induction to clinical practice being informed that if we chose a career in hospital medicine, we had odds of one-in-ten of living and working in Ireland.  Similar odds existed in all the professions and for all graduates across all the faculties of Irish universities.  In addition, a huge percentage of my peers who had not gone on to university had left Ireland in the mid-1980s, often travelling across the globe, but very often to the United States and very often as illegal immigrants.

I am sure many of you, like me, spent summers in the U.S. on a J-1 visa.  As a doorman in mid-town Manhattan, I met many fellow Tyrone men living there.  In those summers, the best of Tyrone footballers were to be found in their "home ground away from home" in Gaelic park at the end of the Broadway local.  How things of changed!  In 2005 you need to take the Luas or the DART to Tyrone's "home ground" away from home!!

Emigration, of course, was a long established tradition among Irish graduates.  Thus it was the contribution that Irish men and women made in other countries that defined, to a large extent, how we were viewed by other nationalities and what was meant by the concept of Irishness.  

The Irish tradition in Australia, where I did all my higher training in Obstetrics typifies this.  In no other country does such a high percentage of the population claim Irish descent.   Bob Hawke, the Australia Prime Minister, who addressed the joint houses of Oireachtas, captured this idea.  As he put it........  "Ireland is the head of a huge empire in which Australia and the United States are the principle provinces.  It is an empire acquired not by force or Irish arms but by force of Irish character.  A force not of political coercion but of spiritual affiliation, created by the thousands upon thousands of Irish men and women who chose to leave these shores or who were banished from them to help in the building of new societies".

We would never have dreamt in 1988 of the economic transformation that has taken place in the intervening years.  You now have unparalleled opportunities to chase your dreams here in Ireland.  Uniquely, this generation faces a different challenge for we shall no longer be judged by our contribution abroad, but by the society that we build here in Ireland.  In the past we were "poor and happy".  Expectations of the quality of life were moderated by our economic weakness.  

In particular, we face the challenge of balancing our wealth generated in a low tax economy with investment in public services.  I spent August back in Australia and I was struck again by the sheer quality of their public services from education, transport, public sports facilities and of course health care.  

Health care and the state of the Irish health service, in which I work, probably as much as any issue, is at the fulcrum of the debate as to how we move forward.  I make the case today, that we in health care have much to learn and need input from outside the health care area.  In university terms, graduates of the Faculty of Medicine and Health will need input, experience and expertise from the graduates of the Faculty of Commerce/Science/Engineering and others.

I have selected three areas to illustrates this point and these are
1. Process within the health service,  
2. Nurturing of leadership
3. Role of innovation/research (particularly with regards to basic bioscience laboratory research)   

Process
One area in particular where health care could learn from the world of commerce is in the area of "process".  What I mean by that is how the health care organisation functions to deliver services to our citizens.  Generally, the health service is viewed as being inflexible and non-responsive.  In offering explanations as to why our health care service is slow and inefficient, amongst others, two main reasons are proffered.  

First, it is suggested that health care delivery, especially in the hospital sector, is very complex.  It is as if the accepted complexities of say a new neurosurgical technique impacts on the task of organising outpatient appointments!!   When one looks at the commercial world, it is clear to me that many large companies are involved in extremely complex manufacturing processes or service delivery with time dependent components across multiple jurisdictions.  

Second it is suggested that because health care is in the public sector "due process" must be followed. My limited direct experience of "due process" in the commercial world suggests that they are even more thorough, more demanding and more detailed than that which exist in the health care system.  The difference, however, is that they have been designed and evolved with the ultimate aim of facilitating effective and efficient decision making rather than stymieing or smothering decision making.  The setting up of the HSE should help address the key area of process and I wish it every success.

Nurturing leadership
Another area in the health care system, where we need to learn from the commercial world, is the capacity of large companies and organisations to foster and nurture personal ambition, enthusiasm, energy and drive within their employees.  In addition, they allow ability to be the only barometer of career progress within an organisation and link that progress to appropriate and incremental financial reward.  Our hospital CEO posts are frankly underpaid.  These posts need to be revamped and the salaries increased, not by a percentage, but by a factor increase.   From an organisational point of view is inconsistent to have senior mangers paid less than some of the employees.  

In the hospital sector, clinical leaders need to engage fully in hospital management.  The central function of the hospital is after all patient care.  I am critical of my consultant colleagues for their lack of engagement in recent years. Commercial companies would however never allow a situation where the main providers of their service became detached from the management systems in the company.  In the real world engineers can lead manufacturing companies with ease, marketing managers can become CEOs, finance directors can move to become general managers and the organisation provides or tailors the particular expertise and experience needed to support any individual leader.  

In the hospital sector St James Hospital - the biggest hospital in the state- and Cork University Hospital - soon to be the biggest hospital in the state - have with the setting up of clinical directorates with hospital consultants at their head given a lead but this idea needs to be developed further.  Each major hospital should have a clinical director who is selected/appointed, not elected, and whose appointment is time limited which always brings an urgency to ones approach. I believe this would move the strategic development of clinical services within the acute hospital sector onto a new level.  It also, importantly, would draw the clinical staff into the process of taking responsibility and accountability for the financial impact of their clinical actions.   Consultants are in many respects the Roy Keane of the Hospital sector - driven, energetic, focussed and betimes awkward and difficult.  Great managers like Alex Ferguson can harness their great potential - weak managers send them home from Saipan!!

Innovation/research
The health care sector also needs specific input from the world of science.  The intellectual capital of large university hospitals is not being realised.  In the past, we spoke of  "adding value" to our investments; more recently, the idea of the "knowledge-based" society has gained prominence - Both of these concepts have relevance to healthcare.   In Melbourne, where I trained, every large university teaching hospital was co-located with a significant research institute.  We need to develop research centres of real substance on the campus of all our major hospitals.  These centres would focus on three areas (1) Clinical and Translational Research     (2) Technological innovation and biotech development - developing links with industries here in Ireland    (3)  Basic bioscience laboratory based research - even if not translational basic bioscience research will gain a certain relevance and focus from the hospital location.  The ultimate aim of research in the Biosciences is to improve the quality of life.   

The development of these research centres is a challenge that the University sector needs to address.  In my area, we hope the development of the new Cork Univeristy Maternity Hospital offers some model of what can be achieved if the University and Health sector work in concert.  An entire floor - the top floor - is devoted to research, innovation, teaching and training.  While welcome, our development is not nearly of the scale or scope that a large general hospital requires.  

There is another vital non-tangible benefit that the University sector with its emphasis on research and innovation brings to the hospital system and that relates to the very important philosophical change that needs to take place within the health service organisation.  For too long the philosophy, even of those who lead the service, has been one of "containment", one of "survival" or of avoiding "pitfalls".    We must now have a leap of imagination and join many other areas of Irish society  " in pursuit of excellence".  

Can I finally return to the idea of the "world as your oyster".    If I was asked to be proscriptive I would encourage you all to travel the globe now - to live and work in other societies and to the see the best other countries can offer. But do not to stay away to long - return to Ireland and I hope to Munster - where you will have the opportunity to build a society of which we can all be proud to re-define the very concept of Irishness. There is a great challenge for you to consider on your graduation day.  

I wish you every success and happiness in your careers.  I am sure your time spent in UCC will help you realise your dreams.


Text of Address by Professor Peter Kennedy, Vice-President for Research Policy & Support, UCC
President, academic colleagues, ladies and gentlemen,

May I begin by offering my heartiest congratulations to our newest graduates.  Well done!

INTRODUCTION

I'd like to take the next ten minutes or so to share with you some personal thoughts on working in the Knowledge Economy.

When I was in secondary school twenty-five years ago, my favourite subjects were Accounting and Applied Mathematics.  I knew I wanted to go to university, but I wasn't sure what to study. Should I choose a career in Business or in Science?  

In the case of Accounting, I had heard that doing a primary degree wouldn't be enough to make me an accountant.  I'd have to sit a huge number of exams for years afterwards.  From a Leaving Cert perspective, more years of exams didn't sound like fun.  So I choose Engineering.

I was certain I wanted to do Electrical Engineering.  Power stations are power stations.  Transmission lines are transmission lines.  Solid, stable technology.  Get a degree, then a nice job in the ESB, sit back and generate electricity for the rest of my life.  No more exams.  No more study.  Bliss!

The year was 1980 and Ireland was projecting a shortage of Engineers.  I signed up as a trainee engineer with Philips Radio Manufacturing Company in Dublin.  Guaranteed well-paid employment every summer, no obligation to work with them when I finished.  And the factory was a ten-minute walk from home.  Heaven!

ELECTRICAL VERSUS ELECTRONIC

My experience in Philips had a profound affect on my career.  It taught me very dramatically the value of Research and Development in a global economy, and the need for lifelong learning.

I was sure when I entered Philips that I wanted to study Electrical Engineering.  The Chief Engineer, Sid Slator, was disappointed.  Electrical Engineering was about one frequency, 50Hz, he said.  But there were so many more frequencies: audio, radio, TV, microwaves....  Why limit my horizons?  Electronics, he said.  That was the future.

But Electronics meant ever-changing technology, and the need to learn new things forever.  Constantly learning.  More exams.  This was very different from the laid-back future I had desired.  Why choose this hard road?

It was the early 1980s, and Philips' Dublin plant was under pressure from the Japanese competition to reduce costs.  

In summer 1983, I was part of a team that built a machine to automate the production of a TV tuner.  We had a problem, we researched it, and we developed a novel solution.  There was a great buzz in the engineering team; we were using technology to compete in a global market.

Our machine worked.  It was so effective that it replaced the low-skill manual work of 20 people.  

Automation was making people redundant, but it was simultaneously helping to keep 500 other manufacturing jobs in Ireland.

Everything changed in 1986 when Portugal joined to EU.  Ireland was suddenly too expensive.  Philips closed its manufacturing operation in Ireland, and we lost 500 jobs.

Only one piece of equipment was moved from the Dublin to the new factory in Portugal; the automated line that we had developed three years earlier.

I learned two lessons.  Low-cost labour replaces high-cost labour.  And automation, once it gets a foothold, never retreats.

The most highly skilled employees in Philips moved on to other things.  But some of the older less-skilled people never worked again.

The projected shortage of engineers in Ireland didn't materialise so I, like so many of my friends, spent years abroad.  I suppose we can't really blame the educational planners for their terrible predictions.  As Physicist Niels Bohr said, "prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future."

GLOBALIZATION

I went to America, where I focussed on Electronics, spent another four years doing exams, and four more on research.  So much for the exam-free plans of my youth!

During that period, the world changed fundamentally.  Political blocks realigned, traditional industries disappeared, the internet was invented, the cost of communications plummeted, and businesses became global.

The electronics industry experienced the effects of globalization ahead of many other industries.  Today, supply chains are optimized so that each task is performed in the most cost-effective way. A product is designed in one place, components made in another, assembled in a third, tested in a fourth, and shipped from a fifth.  

The consequences of globalization for nations have been dramatic.  Quasi-monopolies have emerged very rapidly.  Twenty years ago, most microchip companies physically made their own silicon chips.  But chip-making factories are incredibly expensive so it doesn't make sense any more to own your own.  Instead, most microchip companies only do the high-value research and development piece; they get their chips manufactured under contract in huge factories in Taiwan.  

China's rapid domination of the textile industry has brought the dangers of globalisation into sharp focus for Europe.  We could lose our clothing industry overnight.  

We can no longer compete on labour costs.  So our manufacturing technology and business processes must be superior.  And our research and development must be better again.  There is no other way.

PREPARE FOR A CAREER

I offer the following advice to new graduates: prepare for a career, not a job.

What do I mean?  The world is changing rapidly.   Many jobs will disappear.  If yours does, make sure you're prepared for (or preferably already in) your next one.

I had a biochemist/molecular biologist friend in America who spent years at some of the world's best research centres learning how to identify genes.  His job was eventually automated.  Today, he, like everyone else, sends samples to a lab in the UK, where the work is done by a very expensive piece of equipment.

Automation and low-cost economies will continue to eat away at employment in the developed world. Our future lies in adding value through generating and exploiting knowledge.
 
But keep in mind that, in the knowledge economy, everyone potentially has access to the same knowledge base.  It's no longer what you know that matters, but how you can use what you know.  You need to develop this skill.

We've shown you at undergraduate level how to get started. A  postgraduate research apprenticeship will train you more effectively how to generate new knowledge and more importantly how to extract value from knowledge.   

In most organizations, people who have postgraduate qualifications are promoted ahead of those who don't.  So if you have the interest and the ability, do postgraduate study. And do it now while you're young...

Once in employment, follow emerging technologies, learn as much as you can, develop interpersonal and leadership skills.  Above all, know yourself.  Enhance your strengths and address your weaknesses.  Be the best that you can.

May I wish you every success in your careers.












 


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