CLOSE to 1,000 students from 23 countries and three continents were conferred with academic awards across Mary Immaculate College’s 27 programmes.
This year also saw 13 students being conferred with PhD awards.
Limerick graduates fared particularly well this year, picking up less than nine awards for excellence, including Lisa Stuart from Annacotty, who was awarded the College Medal for first place in the Bachelor of Arts degree and the College Medal for first place in History,
Also among those graduating was the last ever cohort of the three-year B.Ed (Primary Teaching) programme, as following a review by the Teaching Council of Ireland, the course was developed into a four-year programme in 2012.
“I imagine that your years of study here at MIC have contributed much to making you more ‘magnanimous’, more open to reality in its fullness, more understanding of where we have come from and, ultimately, more desiring of building a new world, one that is more united, more big-souled, more at peace.
“I wish you well in whatever the future holds for you – and I invite you in whatever adjustments lie before you in life to always revisit the inspiring ideals and horizons that opened up for you here,” commented guest speaker Bishop of Limerick Brendan Leahy, who is chair of MIC’s governing body.
A total of 61 students who received first class honours in MIC’s four undergraduate degree programmes and the Graduate Diploma in Education (Primary Teaching) were granted a Mary Immaculate College President’s Postgraduate Scholarship for the Academic Year 2014 – 2015.
The scholarship will enable the students to pursue postgraduate study at MIC at graduate diploma or Masters level.
Speaking at the ceremony, MIC president Professor Michael A Hayes said: “It is true that as graduates you enter into a world of economic and social insecurity, where former certainties about employment and identity can no longer be assumed.
“But be certain of this, that your education and formation here will have put you in good stead to meet these and other challenges, for here you have been helped to play your role in creating a new knowledge society, but even more importantly a just society.”
