Director Calls For The Establishment Of A School Of Music At GMIT

Director Calls For The Establishment Of A School Of Music At GMIT

14 Nov 2002

The Director of the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology, Ms. Marion Coy, has called for the establishment of a School of Music at the Institute. Addressing graduates, their families, friends and invited guests at graduation ceremonies today at GMIT, Ms Coy said such a development would enhance the cultural, social and economic life of the region. "It will provide a resource for the West of Ireland which is badly needed and redress a long-standing deficit in our educational and regional infrastructure. This is a project which I hope all of us can unite together to achieve."

In her conferring address, Marion Coy said she hoped that many of the graduates would be able to build their lives in the west region and contribute to the economic, social and cultural life of the west of Ireland. This would require some fundamental choices on their part. She said " If as a country we continue in our present pattern, over half the population of Ireland will be living in the greater Dublin area by the year 2030. The population of greater Dublin will grow by 50% in 30 years, while the rest of the country will only grow by 10%. Such a development will cause great social, personal and economic difficulties for all of us. We need as a region to focus on making "a small dent" in this unplanned development."

She added "We therefore need to commit to developing the capacity to learn and to manage change in a regional context. This will only work if we collaborate with each other and build an environment, which will sustain and meet everybody's requirements. Our human needs must be met so that we experience a sense of fulfilment in our three selves. We each need an opportunity to develop in our working lives, our social lives and in what is often referred to as "the third place" - our identity and independence as individuals."

Ms. Coy said that regional growth was therefore not a matter simply of economic development. It was a deeper and broader matter and she concluded by saying that GMIT would work with graduates at any stage so that they could build a future in the West of Ireland.

The Annual Conferring of awards at Degree, Diploma and Certificate levels took place over eight separate sessions at the GMIT Campus on Thursday and Friday, 14th and 15th November. In total, over 1900 awards were conferred on graduands from the School of Business and Humanities, Hotel and Catering Studies, Engineering and Applied Sciences.

This year's conferring ceremonies also marked the conferring of the first awards on the graduands of two new degree courses in the Bachelor of Arts in Fine Art and Bachelor of Science in Construction Management and two new masters in the Degree of Masters of Business Studies (Research) and in the Master of Science (Research).

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