The largest-ever cohort of graduates from the Technological University of the Shannon (TUS) are this week being urged to look to their values as they graduate into a changing world.
The TUS Class of 2024 – being conferred in a series of nine ceremonies over four days this week – has been described as a “milestone cohort” for the university, not just because it is the largest to date and contains the university’s highest-ever number of doctoral candidates, but because they are the first to have been educated under the aegis of the Technological University over most or all of their time in Higher Education.
President of TUS, Professor Vincent Cunnane, told the graduates: “Half a decade since the first TU emerged, and three years since TUS was founded, students just like you, who have spent all or most of your time in a TU, are starting to graduate, confident and skilled, into a dynamic landscape with a thriving jobs market.
“The Technological Universities can be one of the great projects of modern Ireland, it’s a matter of HOW great. The Technological Universities are public institutions that have the potential to realise a greater goal, a vision of a nation that is more equitable, more diverse, more integrated, more sustainable, more balanced and culturally aware, a nation driven by common values and greatly realised by the workings of education and Higher Education in particular.”
Chair of the Governing Body of TUS, Josephine Feehily, told the students: “Your education with TUS has been about more than the parchment you will soon receive.
“You will find values to be useful anchors in a complex, changing and more uncertain world. A world where questions are being asked about many institutions in Ireland and elsewhere. Institutions that we took for granted – ranging from media to churches to the international order and the global economy. Questions about whether those institutions are up to the challenges of uncertainty…not to mention the challenges of A.I., of war, of climate and who knows what next?”
Students were conferred with degrees across a broad range of areas, including Doctoral and Research Masters degrees in subjects ranging from Fine Art and Media through to Software and Computer Engineering, Polymers, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Sports and Health.