29 May 2006

UCC President to retire effective from 31 January 2007

The Chairman of the Governing Body, Prof. Enda McDonagh, today (29 May 2006) announced that the President of UCC, Prof. Gerard T. Wrixon, had written to him, to inform him of the President’s intention to retire with effect from January 31st 2007.

In his letter to Prof. McDonagh, the President said:

“When I was appointed President of University College Cork in January 1999, I brought with me a varied spectrum of objectives to be worked on during my term of office.  These objectives included maintaining and building upon the University’s national and international reputation measured by its teaching and research achievements and by the continued physical development of the campus aided by the greater involvement of private donors, as well as developing management and administrative structures and practices commensurate with the ever increasing size and complexity of the University.  Since assuming office, I have relied on the counsel and support of you as Chair and many other Governors as a continuing source of encouragement to me in the work involved.  

I was deeply honoured by the decision of the Governing Body to extend my period of office as President beyond May 2005 to the maximum ten year term provided for chief officers of universities pursuant to the Universities Act 1997.  The year since then has been a personally rewarding one in that I have been here to see the initiation, following a wide consultation process, of what I consider to be important structural innovations intended to bring about more effective management of the University’s financial and intellectual resources.  Inevitably it will take some time to fully embed and successfully operate these new structures.  

In recent times, I have been reflecting on what lies ahead for the University in the medium term, particularly in the context of the following:

• that a new Governing Body will take office in February 2007;
  
• that a new Strategic Plan for the University 2006/2011 will be in place by the end of this year;
• that later this year will see the roll out of a number of new and potentially very significant multi-annual national programmes of relevance to the Irish university sector, namely –

• the Strategic Innovation Fund
• the resumption of the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions
• the National Research Plan
• the National Development Plan.

Each of these will help implement recommendations made in reports on higher education by Skilbeck (2001) and the OECD (2004), while recognising the important role played by universities in enterprise development as contemplated in the report of the Enterprise Strategy Group (2004).

In summary I foresee both considerable opportunities over the next several years for further advances on a number of fronts within the University as well as major competitive challenges to be met.  I believe that the University is now in a strong position to both seize these opportunities and to meet these challenges.  Both in Cork and nationally, the University is recognised as being successful and I believe there is commitment within the staff, both academic and administrative, to build on what has been achieved thus far.  

It is clear therefore that the University is entering a new and exciting phase in its development and I believe that the next Governing Body, the University’s management team and staff in general should be assured of a continuity of leadership throughout this critical period.

In order to ensure this continuity I have decided to retire from the office of President with effect from 31 January 2007.  I am informing you and my fellow Governors of my decision well in advance so that the appropriate University statutory procedures for the appointment of my successor can be initiated at the next Governing Body meeting on 13 June.”

235MMcS