Conferring ceremonies concluded today (15 September 2006) at University
College Cork with over four hundred and sixty students graduating from
the College of Arts, Celtic Studies & Social Sciences.
Among the Bachelor of Arts (BA) degrees conferred were 58 BA (Early
Childhood Studies), 19 BA in European Studies and 102 BA (Major).
There were 17 MA's, one MPhil, three PhD's and one DLitt. One
hundred and eighty one students graduated in Social Science which
included 93 BSocSc, 15 BSocSc (Youth & Community Work), 16 BSocial
Work and three MSocSc. There was a further 52 MSocWork and an
MSocSc (Social Policy) and MSoc (Youth and Community Work).
The Conferring addresses were given by Professor Enda McDonagh, Chair,
Governing Body, UCC and Professor Áine Hyland, Vice-President, UCC.
Address by Professor Enda McDonagh, Chair, Governing Body, UCC
The Citizen Graduate
You could hardly wait for the day and now it's practically all over.
Well not quite. The celebrations will go on into this night and
beyond. The records and the memories will persist much
longer. Even the outfits, at least for the women-graduates
will provide a reminder and a reminder of what you completed this day
and what your mentors and minders together with your families and
friends join in congratulating and rejoicing. Let no solemn faced
speaker conscious of perhaps further future prospects and challenges
take from that. Let joy prevail.
No sooner said than qualified by some fleeting attention to the grander
dimensions of this day. Graduates and grateful for it but also
citizen-graduates and ready for it! Graduate of UCC, citizen of
Cork, Ireland, and more significantly for the future, citizen of the
world, of the increasingly one world.
A matter for rejoicing and celebration also. As a citizen, like
Paul of Tarrsus, of no mean city, you are simultaneously a citizen of
no mean world, but of a wonderfully rich and diverse world whose
landscapes and seascapes, peoples and cultures are becoming day-by-day
part of your glorious inheritance. In various ways your
university studies have helped you to understand and enter more fully
into this one world, to enjoy and celebrate it, and to share its riches
and responsibilities - to become truly world citizens with the special
privileges and tasks of your higher education and impending
professional occupations. To ensure this is a world to
continue to enjoy and not to destroy, the insights and skills of
its citizen-graduates will be essential and will no doubt be carried by
some of you from UCC to the sea of China, from Baltimore, Co. Cork to
Baltimore, Maryland, from Kerry to Kinshasa. For others in turn
the Sea of China, Baltimore US and Kinshana in the Democratic Republic
of Congo will become part of their local world through myriad contacts
and conversations. What a splendid prospect!!! And all
yours but not without effort, the kind of effort that led to graduating
to-day will be needed
for entry into world-citizenship tomorrow.
A few thoughts on the efforts of graduates may yield fresh print for
the benefit of all their fellow-citizens of the world, at home as well
as abroad.
They will do this only if they maintain and develop their curiosity
about the world, which their studies have helped to stimulate and
train. Such curiosity will ensure that the citizen-graduates
learn more of their one world, appreciate and enjoy it more. It
also helps them to conserve it where threatened as it is by diseases,
such as HIV-AIDS, war, pollution and
climate change.
A global citizen-graduate will go beyond learning and enjoying to help
at home with the many ills of our own society and abroad, either
directly by working in developing countries or indirectly by supporting
organisations such as Trocaire, The Rose Project, Concern and others.
The agenda facing global citizen-graduates is huge. Each can only
contribute a little but each one's little is very important. So in the
midst of to-day's well justified celebrations, you might tuck in the
back of your minds and hearts the thought of adding some engagement,
however small, with the great causes of peace and justice and
environment protection to the undoubtedly busy personal and
professional lives you will face in the years ahead. To the
distinction of graduate of UCC the badge of active global citizen will
enhance your life as a whole and provide new occasions of celebration
in the future. But for to-day let the revels predominate and
congratulations be generously offered and gratefully received.
Beir bua agus beannacht
292MMcS
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