Postgraduate degrees from SEFS included MEngSc; MSc (Food Science & Technology); MSc (Science); PhD (Engineering); PhD (Food Science & Technology); PhD (Science).
Students from the Faculty of Commerce graduated with a BComm (Hons); BSc (Hons) Mutual & Credit Union Business; MBS (Economics of Business Practice); MBS (Food Marketing); BComm (Hons): International with French; International with German; International with Irish; International with Italian; International with Spanish; BSc Hons: Accounting; Business & Financial Economics; Finance. 
The Conferring Addresses were delivered by Professor Roger Whatmore, CEO, Tyndall National Institute, UCC (attached); Mr Dara Murphy, TD and Mr Mark C. Nolan, Charles Nolan & Sons (attached).

P icture:  Lynda McSweeney Walsh, Head of Education at Fota Wildlife Park who received an Honorary Degree of Master of Science with Dr Michael Murphy, President, UCC on September 8th 2011.

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Honorary Degree of Master of Science , Lynda McSweeney Walsh , 10am, 8th September 2011
Fota Wildlife Park, Cork is the largest tourist destination in this region and the fifth largest outside Dublin.  Hundreds of thousands of visitors visit annually to explore the parklands, its wildlife and the natural environment.  Education and learning lie at the heart of Fota’s mission and have a major role to play in promoting nature conservation to students of all ages. What is perhaps less well known is that Fota Wildlife Park runs a highly successful, award winning educational programme for primary, secondary and tertiary students in Ireland.  This programme is led by Ms Lynda McSweeney Walsh whom we honour today.
Lynda, a UCC Zoology graduate, has directed the Fota Wildlife programme for 17 years.  Each year between 12,000 and 14,000 students attend education programmes in ecology, wildlife and environmental science at Fota, led by Lynda.  Each of these programmes is about six hours’ duration.  So by any calculation, Lynda has delivered in excess of 1 million students’ hours of environmental teaching at Fota during that period! 
These programmes include summer programmes for children in primary education ranging from ages 4-12 years and are some of the most popular summer camps in the Munster area. The Summer Camps have been developed with the aim of engendering a respect for the natural world in children of all ages; this is achieved by taking a "play" approach to learning with the aim of enthusing and encouraging an interest in nature and its many wonders. Through years of valuable experience and programme revision, the education department has carefully put together a selection of activities which address each participant’s requirements and interests.
In past years, Lynda has run a series of Department of Education approved Cúrsaí Samhraidh (summer courses) module for primary school teachers.  The course entitled “Nature in the classroom – bringing nature inside” is designed to facilitate and enthuse teachers to bring nature to the primary school classroom.
The Fota Education Department was one of the five centres chosen nationally by Forfas to become an approved centre for Primary Science. Discover Primary Science (DPS) is the national programme to foster interest in science and engineering among children in primary schools.
At second level, she delivers programmes for junior and Leaving certificate students as well as, transition year students in Ecology and Environmental Science. At third level, Lynda offers a Biodiversity Conservation module for third level students.  This course focuses its attention upon the importance of biodiversity, the impact associated with anthropogenic activities and the possible solutions which will facilitate a balance being created between the needs of humans and those of biodiversity.  A large number of third level institutions partake in this course annually including Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, IT Tralee, Mallow College of Further Education and Bray Institute of Further Education - Bray Senior College.

So Lynda has managed to mix working with animals and children at the same time - a very difficult task.  I am sure there are lots of interesting stories from the class room, but Lynda recalled one to me recently whereby she described how she was explaining extinction to six year olds. When she had completed her explanation, a young child said ‘my granny is extinct’.  ‘Well’, said Lynda, ‘I am not sure that extinction is the right word - we usually think of extinction as referring to animals and plants groups, rather than individuals’ - but the six year old continued to protest –‘but you said extinction is when something is dead and gone forever- my mummy says my granny is dead and gone for ever- so she is extinct!’ 
In 2008, the Education Department at Fota Wildlife Park received the prestigious Sandford Award.  The Sandford Awards scheme was established by Lord Sandford and was pioneered to promote an acceptable standard of educational provision that schools should seek while visiting heritage education areas. The Award Scheme currently encompasses 150 historic sites within the historical and cultural environments of Britain and Ireland.  The Heritage Trust seeks to encourage innovation, transferability and sustainability alongside fun and enjoyment in education programmes. The initial judging process is detailed; nominated organisations are subject to intense scrutiny in terms of all aspects of their day-to-day business.  The teaching skills of participating staff are reviewed as well as the applicability of the course content and the manner in which the information is disseminated.  Currently, Fota Wildlife Park’s Education Department is one of five zoological institutions to receive this award in recent years and is the only zoological institution to attain it in the Republic of Ireland - a testament to Lynda’s leadership and skills.
In addition to these activities, Lynda also leads programmes in outreach and has worked with many inmates in the former Spike Island prison where she ran environmental education programmes in 1998 / 1999.  She has led collaboration for Fota with Scouting Ireland in the development of nature-based courses aimed at both Beavers and Scouts throughout Ireland. Since 1996 she has been responsible for collaborating with Scouting Ireland in organising “The National Animal Awareness Day”.  This event is held annually at Fota Wildlife Park. Lynda is currently working with Scouting Ireland in developing a sensory garden for children with special needs.  The programme encourages children of all ages to become pro-active in nature conservation by actively participating in in-situ conservation.  In January of this year, Lynda introduced a review and audit of waste, water and energy consumption at Fota Wildlife Park.  The aim of the project is to introduce a means by which Fota can reduce its carbon footprint by initially implementing a series of environmentally sound waste management strategies.  As a conservation-based organisation, it is essential that the park takes the initiative to become environmentally friendly in its day to day operations within the park.
Lynda McSweeney Walsh is a very talented educational leader, married to Andrew and mother of Ava and Clara, a proud UCC graduate who was inspired by her mother in environmental education.  She continues to inspire thousands today. "In the end, we will conserve what we love and respect. We will love and respect only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught or allowed to experience." [Attributed to Baba Dioum, an African conservationist]. Lynda, today we as a university recognize your contribution in inspiring our young people, helping them to understand and allowing them experience their ecological and environmental education, by awarding the degree of Master of Science (Honoris Causa).

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Conferring Address by Professor Roger Whatmore, Chief Executive Officer, Tyndall National Institute, UCC, 10am, 8th September 2011

Distinguished guests, congratulations on your graduation,
I am very grateful to the President and Professors Fitzpatrick and O’Halloran for this opportunity to speak to you this morning.
I am a great fan of the 1950’s satirical songster Tom Lehrer, who penned such classics as Poisoning Pigeons in the Park and the Masochism Tango. For those of you who have never heard of Tom Lehrer, as a last piece of study set by your Alma Mater, I can strongly recommend a course of watching his videos on u-tube, or downloading and listening to his songs.  His lyrics are completely timeless, and as fresh and relevant an antidote to the realities of life in the “real world” as they were 50 years ago.
When I was asked to give this talk, I couldn’t help but think of Lehrer’s song: “Bright College Days” which has many highly relevant stanzas.  For example, I see before me people with:

“Hearts full of youth

Hearts full of truth

6 parts gin to one part vermouth”

And the immortal lines in the song

“Soon we’ll be out, among the cold world’s strife,

Soon we’ll be sliding down the razor blade of life”

That particular song is a little number about the “college reunion” - getting together with the friends we all make in our heady college days.  And let’s face it we all make close friendships at college – and some of them may actually survive a lifetime.  Indeed some, like I did, may have already met that very special person with whom we want to settle down for the rest of our lives - and annoy.
College reunions, of course, are great.  I have been to two since I graduated – which was so many years ago now that it is hard to remember exactly how many.  At the first one – I found myself sitting opposite someone I had shared a house with as a post-grad.  I hadn’t seen him for 15 years.  “Hello” I said – “I haven’t seen you for ages - what have you been doing since we were in that house together”.  Back came the reply: “I’ve just come out of prison”.  Now, that was a bit of a conversation stopper.
All of this just goes to show two things.  That College Reunions are great fun, so don’t miss them, and that whatever might have happened in your 3 or 4 years in College, you never quite know where life is going to lead you.
Of course, as UCC BEES and SEFS graduands, you start your “real lives” with a number of distinct advantages.  The first is the knowledge that you are coming out of Ireland’s first and only 5* university, and the only one which has shown year on year improvements in its rankings over  the last 3 years, for which I think the academic staff here deserve a big round of applause.  The second is that you are graduating as scientists, and what better grounding could there possibly be for living life and appreciating the world around you?  None! Excepting, perhaps, engineering, of course, which also trains you to make and fix things, which can be quite handy.  I am, you need to understand, a scientist who pupated (so to speak) over a period of 18 years in industry and emerged as an engineer.  As I said, you never quite know where life is going to lead you.
To be serious for a moment, science is going through a remarkable period of discovery at the moment.  It is actually becoming cool.  People are talking about “Geek Chic” – probably because of Professor Brian Cox.  Take the subject of astronomy.  Prior to 1988 we knew for sure of only 9 planets – and that reduced to 8 when poor Pluto was downgraded.  As of 10^th August this year there were no fewer than 573 confirmed extra-solar planets, with a further 1,235 candidates from the Kepler mission awaiting confirmation by ground based observations.  The first analysis of an extra-solar planetary atmosphere has been made this year.  Personally, I can’t wait for the analysis of a planetary atmosphere which shows the presence of a gas which confirms the existence of life on another planet outside our own, and event which was predicted by that great environmentalist James Lovelock back in the 1960’s, when he was asked how we might look for life on planets such as Mars.
The hunt for the Higgs Boson - the so-called God Particle – by the physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider has now come down to a very narrow band of energies.  The bulletins from Geneva are starting to read like a suspense novel.  Will they find it or won’t they?  I am dying to know the ending!
Palaeontology has shown, just in the last few years, that Homo Sapiens shared the planet with at least 3 distinct species of Homo – the Neanderthals, Homo Floriensis and, most recently, the Denisovians.  The techniques of modern molecular genomics have been applied to two of these.  Substantial parts of the genomes for the Neanderthals and the Denisovians have been decoded and we now know that the gene sequence for modern Europeans contains significant parts which derive from those ancient species, perhaps giving us immunities that we would not have otherwise had.
Of course, the fact that modern man would mate with anything on two legs, while it might be “new news”, is not entirely surprising.
One final point on all of these recent advances is that none of this excellent science would have been possible without astounding engineering – to make new telescopes, satellites, high energy particle colliders and gene decoding machines – good science and good engineering are inextricably linked – one is totally dependent on the other.  It is also completely dependent upon good government funding.  Speaking as a substantial taxpayer, I am much happier seeing my nickel going towards this than underpinning property development that no-one (apart from the developers and some politicians) actually wants - or needs.
So, to finish I am going to set you some challenges as biological, earth and environmental scientists.  In the next 25 years, which realistically is all I have before I will be too senile to understand what you have done, I want:
To know if there is life elsewhere in the universe
To see a proven and reliable method for carbon capture and sequestration
To see an energy efficient and economical method invented for converting lignin into vehicle fuel
Radical improvements to photosynthetic efficiency which can be applied to food and fuel crops
A reliable - and enjoyable - functional food that prevents senility, so I can get a further 25 years beyond that!
Bain taitneamh as an lá – enjoy the day
And as the Irish saying goes,
Go n-éirí an bóthar libh
Finally, a quote from another favourite singer of mine – Bobby McFerrin
“Don’t Worry – Be Happy”

ENDS

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Conferring Address by Mark C. Nolan, Managing Director, Charles Nolan & Sons Ltd, 3.30pm, 8th September 2011

Good afternoon, President, Dr Murphy, Head of the College of Business and Law, Professor Lynch Fannon, Heads of Schools,lecturers, distinguished guests, and most importantly, my fellow ‘Comm Graduates, your families and guests.
When I was invited to speak at your graduation ceremony I initially thought what advice would I have liked to have heard at my graduation in July 1985 , but I quickly realised that in the summer of 1985 I wasn’t really amenable to advice from any source.
Therefore, I beseech you to understand that anything that I may recommend this afternoon, in my short address, is asserted as personal suggestions from a small family business practitioner’s experiences, rather than as self-congratulatory or know-all type of advice. My suggestions are in turn based upon the insights of exceptional people that I have found helpful in my career.
Before you finish today though, it is vitally important to note and remember not only what course you have graduated in this afternoon but indeed to note and  remember what course your college friends have graduated in. I tell you this in the context of a UCC with 4,000 students compared today’s almost 19,000 full time students.
Last September, I telephoned one of my old college friends who lives in Dublin and invited her and her husband to stay with us in Cork for our BComm class of ’85’s twenty-fifth re-union due to be held in the Aula Maxima . I was shocked when my friend informed me that she wouldn’t be permitted to attend our BComm class re-union.
When I enquired why not, she told me that during our time in UCC that she was actually enrolled in the faculty of Arts …not Commerce ………!
Congratulations to each of you and of course to your families who are sharing in your success. Some of you are perhaps embarking on further courses or new careers which may necessitate emigration.
I do not view emigration by young Irish graduates as a societal failure, but rather I view emigration as an opportunity to enhance one’s life-experience compared to previous generations of Irish emigrants during the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, the majority of whom commenced at the very bottom rung of the economic ladder in their host countries.
Compared to those emigrants, we are bombarded every day with information, from innumerable and different media sources.
This information is regularly advanced by opinion leaders who wish to influence and shape our attitudes and beliefs. Renowned French poet, essayist, epistemologist and philosopher Paul Valéry, wrote in his diary six months before the start of The First World War that “political conflicts distort and disturb the people’s sense of distinction between matters of importance and matters of urgency”.
Always try and distinguish between what really matters and the disproportionate, sometimes hysterical, pronouncements and frenzied claims by so-called opinion leaders whether in politics, business or economics.
As you have learned from your lectures, manipulated facts and statistics are often used to support whatever agenda is being postulated by the intelligentsia, but please be wary of supposed objective and impartial facts.
There is no such thing as unprejudiced or unbiased facts. As Stephen J. Gould wrote, “facts are not pure and unsullied bits of information” they are invariably influenced by selective interpretation to support prior conclusions.
Try to avoid an unquestioning reliance on ‘facts ‘and ‘statistics’ by being aware of the source’s agenda, or biases. Supporting evidence is invariably the subjective and selective moulding of facts to favour the opinion leaders’ assertions, a phenomenon known as ‘Confirmation Bias’.
I like to think of ‘Confirmation Bias’ as a tendency to seek evidence that increases confidence in one’s preferred ideology or viewpoint , regardless of whether your preferred beliefs provide any confirming evidence, while at the same time ignoring any evidence that disagrees with your preferred beliefs.
Three extremely insightful and perceptive men one a judge the second a palaeontologist, and the third man, the winner of the 1960 Noble Prize for medicine, each concurred that pure objectivity is probably unattainable.
In 1921 Judge Cardozo incisively wrote that “We may try and see things as objectively as we please. None the less, we can never see them with any eyes except our own.”
Stephen J. Gould  observed that “ Impartiality (even if desirable )is unattainable by human beings with inevitable backgrounds ,needs ,beliefs and desires .It is dangerous for a scholar even to imagine that he might attain complete neutrality ,for one then stops being vigilant about personal preferences and their influences-and then one truly falls victim to the dictates of prejudice”
Dr. Medawar in his 1964 BBC Radio talk succinctly said, “there is no such thing as an unprejudiced observation. Every act of observation we make is biased. What we see or otherwise sense is a function of what we have seen or sensed in the past.”
So try and be more conscious and vigilant of your own personal subjective prejudices, by trying to see issues from another’s perspective. This doesn’t mean you have to agree with the opposing argument or empathise with the person, or be reading their mind. It simply means you should at least try and understand the argument from their perspective.
Identifying our own preconceptions, assumptions and biases which tenaciously behold us, will help you avoid potential duplicitous conflicts of interest or conflicts of duty. A conflict of interest exists when a person’s private interests interfere or have the potential to interfere in any way, with the interests of their employer or organisation, including one’s duty to a client or patient.
Pervasive conflicts of interest or conflict of duties are, in my opinion, the root cause of corporate malfeasance which undermines trust, the bedrock of business.
It is not just the ethical harm caused by conflicts of interest but the huge consequential financial cost that harmful conflicts of interest cause. Doctors who are hired as consultants by pharmaceutical or medical device companies failing to disclose their financial relationships, to their patients when deciding to prescribe a drug or choose a medical device for them. Accountants mesmerised by lucrative consultancy fees failing to robustly audit their client’s books ,politicians appointing friends and supporters to state bodies without any regard for the appointees’ suitability or competency, the same lawyer or firm acting for both sides to a transaction……….
So how do we identify our preconceptions and biases to enhance our awareness in order to become better business practitioners?
Essentially, we have to know ourselves which is very hard work, because invariably as the philosopher Kierkegaard contended, we view ourselves subjectively whereas “the real task is in fact to be objective towards oneself and subjective towards all others.”
Knowing oneself is not a new idea, inscribed over the entrance to the six thousand year old Temple of Apollo in Greece is the famous aphorism or maxim “know thyself”.
Sun Tzu, the 6^th Century BC Chinese military strategist, similarly wrote: “ know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. If ignorant of both your enemy and yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal.”
We must try to firstly know ourselves. We must try to cultivate a deep understanding of ourselves, of our strengths and our weaknesses, of how we listen, of how we learn and most importantly, an understanding of how we interact with others and the company we choose to keep.
According to Peter Drucker in his paper titled ‘Managing Oneself’, written in 1999 when he was ninety years old, knowing oneself involves both hard work and feedback analysis for you yourself, plus taking responsibility for relationships and the company you choose to keep.
On a lighter note, may I now suggest a few practical tips from a business practitioner’s experience?
Unfortunately, I continue to encounter presentations let down by avoidable punctuation and typographical errors compounded by either indecipherable or over elaborate prose.
If you are not absolutely sure when to use a possessive apostrophe or confused between the contractive version of “it is” -“It’s”-or “the possessive version “its”, which has no apostrophe, or you want to ensure people actually read and understand what you’re attempting to communicate, then purchase a good style guide.
The incorrect application of these apostrophes is compounded by reliance on automatic ‘spell check’ type programmes which give a recipient the impression that the writer is either sloppy or indifferent, rather than giving the impression they’re professional and conscientious.
First impressions really do matter, so when addressing a letter, ensure you get the name and title of the person and the formal name of their company or organisation to which you are writing to are correct. If it is a CV that you are sending, don’t forget to contact any referees you include in advance so that they won’t be surprised if a prospective employer contacts them.
My last practical suggestion is to request that you please don’t forget the non-profit sector, preferably those organisations whose ethos is primarily voluntary. Organisations founded on volunteerism are always available to welcome new young enthusiastic volunteers and I assure you the work will be both stimulating and rewarding.
Life is uncertain, nobody can predict the future but as long as you continue to act in good faith, never diminish your desire to continue the learning you’ve commenced during your time in UCC, treat people equally and always refuse to be indifferent throughout your professional careers, you will preserve the most valuable asset you or any organisation can ever have...your reputation
I sincerely wish you continued success and remember as Viktor Frankl, an Auschwitz survivor, maintained; that just because you are unable to control what happens to you in life, you yourself can always control how you react and what you do about whatever happens to you in life.
Congratulations again to each of you, your families and your friends. Enjoy the rest of this special day and thank you for the opportunity to be part of your memorable day.

Bibliography
Drucker, Peter F.,   “Managing Oneself ”,Harvard Business Review, January 2005
Frankl , Viktor,E.,   “Man’s Search For Meaning” , Beacon Press, Boston, 2006
Gould, Stephen J.,  “The Mismeasure of Man”, W.W.Norton & Co., New York 1996
Kierkegaard, Soren , “The Living Thoughts of Kierkegaard”, The New York Review of Books, edited by W.H. Auden,1999
Medawar, Peter, Sir,   “Is The Scientfic Paper a Fraud ?”, BBC Radio Talk, 1964
Nickerson , Raymond S., “Confirmation Bias”, Review of General Psychology,Vol. 2, No. 2, 1998
Pagonis, W.G. Lt.Gen.,   “Moving Mountains: Lessons in Leadership and Logistics from the Gulf War ” Harvard Business School Press,1992
Val éry, Paul ,  “On Political Parties”, This Quarter, Paris ,Vol.IV, No.4, June 1932
Young-Bruehl, Elisabeth ,“Why Arendt  Matters” Yale University Press, 2006

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