ST PATRICK’S COLLEGE CAMPUS – NO STUDENTS TO BE SEEN
Maynooth University consists of two connected campuses: an older southern campus, with 19th-century buildings, shared with St Patrick’s College, and, across a public road, a modern northern campus.
Maynooth University was formally established as an autonomous university as recently as 1997, yet traces its origins to the foundation of the Royal College of St. Patrick in 1795, making it, simultaneously, Ireland’s youngest university and one of its oldest educational institutions.
Maynooth has an international reputation for research in humanities; social and spatial sciences; mathematics, communication and computation; and human health.
In the 1990s the EU kindly organised and paid for me to undertake a post-grad in “UNIX – Core Kernel” and I was a bit surprised that I had to travel all the way to St. Patrick’s College in Maynooth every day for the duration of the course. At the time I did not understand the distinction between Maynooth University and St. Patrick’s College and am still a bit confused.
I was the only person from Ireland on the course and I met some very interesting people from Europe, Africa and Asia and the professor in charge was from China. The tutors were from Ireland and Britain. So, it was a bit sad to see the campus devoid of students because of Covid-19.
The University opened for teaching in 1849 as “Queen’s College Galway” with 68 students. A year later it became part of the Queen’s University of Ireland. The Irish Universities Act, 1908 made this college a constituent college of the new National University of Ireland, and under a new charter the name of the University changed to “University College Galway”. It was given special statutory responsibility under the University College Galway Act, 1929 with respect of the use of the Irish language as a working language of the University. It retained the title of University College Galway until the Universities Act, 1997 changed it to the “National University of Ireland, Galway”.
Located close to the city centre, it stretches along the River Corrib. The oldest part of the University, the Quadrangle with its Aula Maxima was designed by John Benjamin Keane; it is a replica of Christ Church, one of the colleges at the University of Oxford. The stone from which it is built was supplied locally
More modern parts of the university sprang up in the 1970s and were designed by architects Scott Tallon Walker. The 1990s also saw considerable development, including the conversion of an old munitions factory into a student centre. Under the early 21st-century Presidency of Iognáid G. Ó Muircheartaigh, NUI Galway announced details of plans to make the University a “campus of the future” at a cost of around €400 million. Ó Muircheartaigh’s successor James J. Browne continued with that plan.
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