The
Conferring Addresses were delivered by Leonard Hobbs, Research Manager, Intel
(attached), Hon Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy, Judge of the High Court (attached)
and Dr Anita Geoghegan, Managing Director, Lancaster Laboratories (attached).
Picture: Brigitte Crowe, BSc Hons (Environmental Sciences - Earth Science) and Mark Carroll, BSc Hons (Environmental Sciences - Geology) who graduated today (September 9th 2010). Mark is one of four UCC graduates who have secured one-year contracts as geologists in Brisbane, Australia.
_____________________
Conferring Address by
Mr Leonard Hobbs, Research Programmes Manager,
Intel, 10am, September 9th 2010
Mr
President , UCC graduates and Friends,
May I
begin by thanking you for this prestigious invitation to address this UCC
graduate class of 2010? As a UCC graduate myself from over 20 years ago, I am
indeed honoured to speak to you here today and congratulate you on reaching
this summit in your educational journey. You have done the entrance exam, the
junior cert, the leaving cert and here you have arrived to what is I’m sure a
proud moment for you, your family and friends.
Congrats
also to all the Mums and Dads. On
behalf of these graduates, I would like to thank you for the many years of
packed lunches, the thousand of miles you have driven and the hours you have
worried, as you guided these young minds on their journey thus far. Congrats
also to your teachers and not just those here at UCC, but also the primary and
secondary heroes who shaped your young minds.
As a
young lad in Cork, our summer days were filled with trips to Garretstown. On
the way home, my Dad would stop for the unusual combination of fresh mackerel
and ice-cream in Kinsale. Later, he would invariably strike up a chorus of ‘the
bear went over the mountain..and what you think he saw..well, he saw another
mountain…and so it is with your journey ahead. Life is a series of peaks and
troughs, with great efforts required to scale the next summit and great relief
to be had as you reach the peak and free wheel down the other side. As a UCC
graduate, you are well prepared to take on the tough climbs ahead. Today, you
received your golden ticket to what can be a great journey ahead and you have
received the basic skills to make a serious contribution to society. I
encourage you to go on to be creative, innovative and look to be a Willy Wonka as
opposed to an Umpa Lumpa. I’m sure that the skills you have learned here at UCC
go well beyond the academic learnings. For my part, I have very fond memories
of my time with the Philosoph where I learned to think on my feet and survive
the heaving cauldron of G19. A place where RTE broadcaster Joe Duffy, then the young
president of the Students Union of Ireland was stopped in full flow by a
heckler, who wanted to know if the red tie he was wearing was, in fact, a nose
bleed !
These are
difficult times we now find ourselves in, with the Celtic Tiger is in rehab…but
we have been here before and as a country, we will again emerge even stronger.
When I was a graduate in 1986, Ireland was going through some very tough times.
Cork, in particular, was taking a battering and struggled to celebrate its
Cork800 event. The sad joke at the time was that the 800 represented not the
age of the city but that there were only 800 jobs left in the city after the
demise of the large multinational employers at Ford and Dunlops. Further afield
DEC, the one shining light of US investment was imploding with the loss of several
thousand jobs in Galway. But in the early 90’s, the Celtic tiger was born with
the arrival of new leading edge multinationals from the booming computing
industry such as Intel, IBM and HP, followed later by the successful creation
of our own multinationals, such as Iona Technologies. These companies were
attracted, in large part, by the availability of a young, well educated
workforce. Their success in Ireland over the last 20 years has been enabled by
the talent of this workforce. They have thrived in Ireland, producing world
class results in manufacturing and, most recently, in R&D, such as my own
company’s success in the hugely important discipline of Nanotechnology.
Unfortunately, the tiger has not had such success in his second phase as the
property boom could not be sustained. However I firmly believe that the tiger
will ride again and I am encouraged by the number of you here today who have
chosen the all important area of science within which to build your careers.
I would ask
you not to be distracted by the seemingly endless debating of the previous
tiger’s financial failings and instead look forward to the real challenges
facing Ireland and the world today. It is by addressing these issues that we
will not only make the world a better place but also, we can recover the
prosperity we have enjoyed in recent times. The challenges are many in the
areas of health, energy, environment and food availability. For example, fossil
fuels account for 80% of the worlds energy and we have a finite supply. Our population
is estimated to grow from 6.5 billion in 2005 to a figure of 9 billion in 2050.
At that time, when you will be
thinking of retiring, there will be a huge strain on our services such as
pensions and medical resources with three times as many people over 60 as there
are today. As such we need significant breakthroughs in how we manage health,
create energy and manage food supplies. The good news is that your life
expectancy will be approaching 100 so you will have lots of time to work on
these challenges !
That
said, we live in an exciting world where information is available at
unprecedented levels due to the growth of the internet, communication is global
and almost instantaneous, and travel is accessible to all. I would encourage
you to travel. The great philosopher and honey loving bear Winnie the Pooh once
said that ‘you can’t sit in your corner of the forest and wait for people to
come to you...you have to go to them sometimes’. We have a great tradition in
Ireland of explorers from St Brendan to Ernest Shackleton. Emigration can have
great personal impact, it can also bring great opportunity as travel is a
wonderful educator. So do go and bring your talents to the world. Look to learn
from others, to sharpen your skills and when the time is right, return and feed
the next tiger…your country needs you and indeed, my pension needs you !
Woody
Allen said that 80% of success was in showing up. However, I would think it is
a little more complicated than that and I would offer you three recommendations
from my own adventures to date. Firstly, get to know yourself. Understand what
you are good at. Invariably, this will be what you enjoy doing the most, where
you are ‘in the zone’. Try to build your careers in this direction and if it is
not possible, then try and incorporate some of this talent in your daily
routine. Secondly, you should know what success means to you and be able to
measure it. One of my own favourite’s is Stephen Covey’s definition. Success is
not what you yourself define but rather what you would want your friends,
colleagues and family to say about you when you are done. Finally, have
fun…have a sense of humour and carpe diem.
I honestly believe that you are not only
a capable generation but you are also a more confident generation than have
gone before. You are the soldiers of the smart economy and the future captains
of world leading industry. Good luck in all your endeavours. I hope you enjoy
your day today. Tomorrow, I would
ask you to look to the next mountain.
____________________
Conferring Address by Hon Mr Justice Patrick McCarthy, Judge of the High Court, 12.30pm, September 9th 2010
Members of the
University and Ladies and Gentlemen,
165 of you have
today been conferred with degrees either primary or post-graduate. For
each of you, accordingly, today represents the culmination of a high degree of
commitment in the study of the law and, in a number of instances, French,
German and Irish. Whether you have today been conferred with primary or
post-graduate degrees you may be justifiably proud of your
achievements. You can also take a special pride in the fact that you have
studied in the Faculty of Law of this College, the distinguished history of
which dates from the foundation of the College. Its high standing can only be
of great benefit to you as you seek to advance your careers. I take pleasure
also in commending your parents and families for the support which they have
given you during your studies.
In the early days of
the Faculty a Diploma in English Law was conferred on persons who studied there
for two years but this became defunct. The records show that the first
degree of Bachelor of Laws (which was then the primary degree) was conferred in
1858. There were as many as six students in 1850 (when the total student
population was 954) but only three in 1875. This deficiency was remedied,
however, by 1888 in as much there was an increase of almost 300% to
eleven. The age at which students graduated must have been much lower than
now because in 1862 no one was over twenty-one and three were aged only
sixteen. This was a high average age because there was, apparently, a
child prodigy of fourteen in the medical faculty and an Arts man of thirteen.
As
late as the early 1960s the student body still numbered in single figures.
However when I entered the institution in 1977 it had expanded somewhat to in or
about 120. Whereas in Victorian times there had merely been two professors
(who cannot have been overworked) two full-time lecturers were added to
the existing staff of four full-time and nine part-time members that
year. A law faculty can only benefit from the contribution, of necessity
a limited one, of lawyers in actual practice - the latter nine were in that
category. The Dean was Edward F. Ryan who enjoyed a national reputation
in the areas of Criminal Law and Land Law and the second of the two professors,
scarcely of lesser distinction, was a leading solicitor, Brian Murphy. It
was only the following year, with the appointment of the first full-time
professor, Bryan McMahon, now my colleague on the High Court bench, that the
transformation of the faculty to what it is today (with 566 students and 54
staff members) began. Its development has extended to a highly regarded
doctoral programme, ten such degrees having been conferred last year and a
total of 4 this year. The Faculty has also spawned the Centre
for Criminal Justice and Human Rights, which, having built a national
reputation, is now well on its way to international standing.
The primary purpose of a
university school of law is to teach law and not to train lawyers for
professional practice. The study of law, even at undergraduate level, is
one of the best training grounds for research because when one is dealing with
substantive law, research is of the essence. No professional lawyer could enter
into practical training without the benefit of learning the law at
university. I think that it is fair to say that in an era in which a
premium is put, even at University level, on vocational courses, a liberal
education in the traditional sense is hard to achieve. However the study
of law at least tends to that end. Of course because of the training of
the mind and the liberality of the education inherent in the study of law, if
not knowledge of substantive law itself, many opportunities now exist for you
in the pursuit of disciplines other than that of the practicing lawyer.
There is no doubt that you
emerge as a group into an uncertain and challenging world. You may be
leaving here without the certainty and comfort of employment that so many of
your predecessors had in the last twenty years. However, remember that
our present difficulties will pass and indeed they can be overcome with
imagination, vigour and commitment. You should not take heart just from
that fact but also- and I address especially those of you who hope to practice-
because the law is a high calling.
You are aware that you
follow in the footsteps of many lawyers of distinction. The rule of law is the
hallmark of a civilized society, and the framework within which are advanced
not just human rights, democratic government, accountability of those holding
public office and the independence of the judiciary but also economic and
social progress. Lord Bingham, said to be the most distinguished judge of
his generation in England, pointed out that:-
“None of this requires any
of us to swoon in adulation of the law, let alone lawyers. Many people on
occasion share the view of Mr. Bumble in ‘Oliver Twist’ that “if the law
supposes that …, the law is a ‘ass’ – a idiot”. Many more share the
ambition expressed by one of the rebels in Henry VI Part II, “the first thing
we do, let’s kill all the lawyers”.
but you could not have
achieved the results which bring you here today without a sense of idealism.
You now have the
opportunity to make a contribution to the maintenance and development of those
values. I congratulate you and
wish you the very best of luck for the future.
______________
Conferring Address
by Dr
Anita Geoghegan, Managing
Director, Lancaster Laboratories, 3.30pm, September 9th 2010
President, Members of the University,
class of 2010 and distinguished guests,
I feel very honoured to have been asked
to address you today.
Graduates, congratulations! You made it! You are all achievers, each and every one of you. You have been progressing towards this
achievement since you started school at four years of age and now you are here,
you have graduated from University College Cork, a very prestigious academic
institution. This is the reward
for all the hard work, determination and I’m sure some anxiety along the
way.
My daughter, who hopefully will graduate
here next year, said to me when I was preparing this, “Mum, PLEASE don’t make a
boring speech”. I can’t guarantee
that you won’t find it boring but I can promise you it will be brief. I recall my own graduation here in the
late ‘70s and my hope that speeches would be short. Unfortunately I wasn’t so lucky!
So today you are graduating. As well as having those all-important
letters after your name and a lifetime statistically higher chance of getting a
decent job you have also been transformed by the first class education you
received here in UCC. Because of
this education your thinking process has changed … how you think and how you
formulate ideas and opinions has changed.
You now have tools of thinking you did not have when you started your
studies here four years ago. These
thinking tools have now become instinctive, and in them lie the principle value
of a higher education. They will
stand to you in life no matter what you end up doing, both in your professional
and personal life. As Albert
Einstein said, “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has
learnt in school”.
I am conscious that you are graduating at
a time that is less economically certain than when you started here in UCC and
it might seem a bit contrarian to say that this is no bad thing from your
viewpoint. You probably will have
to try a bit harder to find the right opportunity than those that graduated a
few years ago. This in itself will
present opportunities to you that you mightn’t have thought of otherwise. Now, for example, is a great time to
set up a business. Most of you
have not yet got used to the flash car and the big mortgage and are used to
living on little. There isn’t the
same personal or financial risk as there might be later. I know you are thinking “but I have no
money” but many businesses are established with very little and once you go
looking for money for a new business there are ways to find it. Also, it appears that we are emerging
from recession. A business that
starts now is likely to become established as spending in the economy
increases. Ireland needs
entrepreneurs. It just might be
you.
Many of you will have mapped out your
careers, decided by what age you will be married, have children, where you will
live. For some it will work out
like that, but for most the reality will be totally different. Life is full of surprises, not just
good ones but also disappointments and letdowns that at the time can seem
insurmountable. I am saying this
not to put you off but as someone who has had many such disappointments and
letdowns in life. At the time they
can seem like the end of the world but in reality they often turn out to be the
start of something new and great that couldn’t have happened if not for the
disappointment.
I graduated from this august institution
with a very poor result - a general degree where my highest mark was mid 40s -
and ended up in a boring job for a couple of years. Eventually I persuaded NUI Galway to let me do the 4th
year of the BSc and that then led
to a Ph.D. That was a great time
but it would never have happened if I had a got a decent degree in the first
place. After that, I started
working in what looked like an exciting new business for two years but that
went to the wall. I vividly
remember my 30th birthday when I fell off my bike into a ditch (the
car had had to be sold) and sitting there crying, feeling sorry for myself and
thinking I was all washed up … no job, rubbish CV, no babies, no
prospects. Well eventually I had
to get up out of the ditch and within a couple of months started a business,
Microchem Laboratories, with my husband.
I had never set out to set up a business
and wouldn’t ever have seen myself doing so, but like now, jobs weren’t
plentiful so doing something new was suddenly in the ‘possible’ arena where it
wouldn’t have been in economically better times.
Setting up Microchem was great. We worked all the hours that God gave
and had terrific fun doing it. We
had a most wonderful sense of achievement as it grew, we got new and bigger
customers, and more people came to work with us. It gave me the opportunity to build skills in areas where
otherwise I wouldn’t. I gravitated
towards HR and Finance and certainly as a science graduate I hadn’t thought of
these as possible career areas.
Eventually we had over 100 people working with us. In 2007 we sold the company to
ThermoFisher Scientific, an American multinational and rebranded as Lancaster
laboratories. My husband and I
still work there and are now learning the skills to become good corporate
executives and not just entrepreneurs. I’m telling you this to show that its possible for even the
most ordinary of graduates to have an exciting, fun and successful career, even
with the most unpromising of starts.
The next few years for you will be about
finding your own direction, identifying opportunities, the right career. Don’t forget that life is a team
game. There are lots of people out
there who will want to help and support you or pass their experience on to you;
they will be encouraging or give you advice at a crucial time. Look out for people like this as they
can be really helpful.
Parents, partners, families today is your day too. Congratulations to you all who have so
long and so well supported today’s graduates. You can rejoice in the lives of our new
graduates. After years of
nurturing and sacrifices to help them to this point today they are emerging
into the world of graduates equipped with the best education that this country
can offer and with all the capabilities necessary to compete globally. You have every right to be proud of
their achievements. I also think
it’s important to recognise the enormous contribution made by the academic
staff of this fine institution to the graduates achievements today and in
ensuring UCC’s continuing excellence and world class reputation.
All of you who have graduated today are
ambassadors. You are ambassadors
for yourselves, your families, for your town or city, your school, your sports
club and now, for University College Cork. You are ambassadors for those that helped shape you and
supported you until now. They are
all so proud of you today and you have done them proud. Now it’s up to you. Your reputation feeds into enhancing or
reducing their reputation by association.
Never, ever do
anything that reduces that reputation, that will make them loose that sense of
pride in you or your achievement.
And lastly, after four years of student life in Cork I
need hardly sell you the importance of having fun. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you so make sure
you enjoy yourselves along the way.
Class of 2010 congratulations again agus go
n’eirí an bothar libh.
Go raibh maith agaibh.
ENDS
1544MMcS
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