UCD’s first female president: ‘I kind of barged on through, not thinking that…
Today, she officially takes charge of Ireland’s largest university with more than 35,000 students.
Despite economic gloom at the time, the mid-1980s felt like a time of possibility as a wave of younger people graduated with higher levels of qualifications and an international outlook. She returned to Ireland to work as a lecturer in UCD’s engineering department in 1992 before later being appointed vice-president for research, innovation and impact.
She puts the transformation down to a combination of factors such as a pipeline of talented female graduates, a recognition within academia of the need to promote women and rigorous action plans aimed at boosting female participation at senior levels.It is, she says, a model for other sectors of the economy where women are underrepresented at senior levels.
The university is investing in mental health supports, she says, while it now has 4,000 student beds, many of which are ring-fenced for first-year students.It is a gloriously sunny early afternoon and hundreds of students are stretched out on the grass by the lakeside. Feely is plugged into the college experience personally: her twin 19-year-old sons are in their first year at UCD and Trinity.
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