Changing places was the brainchild of the late Irish woman and advocate of people with disabilities, Loretto Lamb, along with occupational therapist, Joyce Burns. Changing places allow families, carers and people with complex disabilities to manage their daily occupations of self-care and gives them the opportunity to engage in wider community activities with dignity.  The equipment in a Changing Places facility goes beyond what is available in a standard accessible toilet which often does not meet the needs of all people with complex disabilities. 

Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Simon Harris TD visited UCC this week.

The Minister met with students and staff and viewed the Old College Bar which has been transformed into the Calm Zone, a dedicated space of respite and calm for students, and in particular students on the autism spectrum.

In a session tailored for experts in lifelong learning across Ireland and Europe the MicroCreds HCI Pillar 3 funded programme team outlined the development of the national framework for ECTS bearing, quality assured microcredentials.

Dr Lynn Ramsey – IUA Programme Lead headed an insightful panel discussion with input from all seven IUA universities.   The panel explored universal vision for micro-credentials which was the first opportunity to formally engage with the wider academic community, policy makers, funders, and other sectoral bodies.

The successful launch will be followed by local events across units led by our own Project Lead – Mags Arnold m.arnold@ucc.ie

UCC today celebrated its recent Athena SWAN award successes, recognising the University’s commitment to promoting good practice and advancing gender equality in higher education.

At a virtual ceremony, Minister Simon Harris congratulated awardees to celebrate the advancement of equality in higher education.

Three awards cycles were included in the ceremony, with UCC receiving nine awards, including the Institutional Bronze award (awarded in 2019).

UCC President John O’ Halloran has unveiled the UCC Rainbow Walkway on campus to mark National Coming Out Day on October 11th and as part of UCC Community Week.

The UCC Rainbow Walkway has been installed to celebrate and recognise the diversity of the UCC community and to express UCC’s firm commitment to the creation of a campus that is inclusive, where the whole of the UCC community can feel a sense of welcome and belonging.

Career Services held their virtual fair in October and the data from this showed over 6,000 1:1 chats between students and employers and over 25,000 individual chat messages. 

The €1m award from the Higher Education Authority recognises the impact of the university’s innovative work in the field of inclusive education, and its efforts to open higher education to students with intellectual disabilities. UCC’s achievements in challenging deficit-focused perceptions of people with intellectual disabilities were profiled in an Impact Case Study reviewed by a panel of international experts. The Certificate in Contemporary Living was established as a pilot project supported by the Brothers of Charity, Cope Foundation and Enable Ireland. It was designed to meet the needs for non-segregated, inclusive post-secondary education for people with intellectual disabilities and was recognised as a model of good practice.

The UCC EmployAgility Award is a professional skills development programme, and demonstrates that you have engaged in, and developed professional skills through extra-curricular activities and work experience, all of which will help you to stand out from the crowd when applying for graduate roles and internships. 

University College Cork’s Bystander Intervention programme will today launch a series of audio-visual learning materials to Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) nationwide to raise awareness around active bystanders and sexual assault.

The materials include a fifteen-minute starter video explaining key concepts on how to be a pro-social bystander, intervening in unsafe situations, what happens when consent falls through, and how students can do their bit to make college campuses and local communities safer for everyone. The launch marked the new Bystander Intervention learning packages being offered to third-level institutions. HEIs are being offered the ability to upload and deliver the training through their own institutional learning platforms.

The project includes student ambassadors from a range of degree programmes as well Professor Louise Crowley, Director of Bystander Intervention in UCC, and Dr Clíonadh O’Keeffe, the Bystander Intervention Support Officer in UCC. The overarching aim of this wide release is to make students more aware of sexual assault and how they can stop it before a situation occurs.

UniCoV is a multi-site, randomised controlled clinical study led by the National University of Ireland Galway (NUIG) in partnership with Trinity College Dublin (TCD), University College Dublin (UCD) and University College Cork (UCC). Funded by Science Foundation Ireland, the four universities and the HSE and supported by the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research Innovation and Science and Department of Health, UniCoV will further develop and apply testing, screening and surveillance strategies, proven tools used by Public Health to assist with early warning systems for disease, in the context of SARS-CoV-2 infection in Ireland.

We are delighted to announce that the much cherished Old College Bar at UCC has been transformed into dedicated space of respite and calm for students, and in particular students on the autism spectrum.

The UCC Calm Zone, designed as part of the Autism Friendly University (AFU) initiative, will feature in the upcoming Venice Architecture Biennale in a show titled “Autistic Imaginaries of Architectural Space'', which showcases architecture through the lens of autism. The Calm Zone has been recognised as an example of architecture that has incorporated the principles of autism-friendly design as outlined in the ASPECTSS Design Index. 

UCC won the Best Student Experience Award at the Education Awards in 2020 and 2021.  A submission is being prepared for the 2022 entry in this category.  UCC won other others in 2021 also see here

UCC students returning to their families this Christmas will receive free antigen tests, as the university commences a programme supported by the Department of Higher Education, Research, Innovation & Science.  

Under the programme UCC’s 23,000 students will receive 5 free antigen tests. UCC ran the most successful antigen testing system in the higher education sector recently, with 1650 students & staff participating in the ongoing Unicov project.