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SPECIAL FEATURE | Creating Opportunity Out of Change


Creating Opportunity Out of Change

Trinity College Dublin’s Strategic Plan

Trinity's Strategic Plan 2009-14 has been developed in a time of great uncertainty, where many assumptions can no longer be held to be true. We believe that the University, as an institution, has never been needed more.

Every generation is faced with its own unique set of challenges and each individual and community have their chance to create opportunity out of change, rather than merely passively reacting to it. What could be a nobler purpose to education and the university than helping individuals and society to build a better world?

To this end, we asked some Trinity alumni, students, friends and staff to reflect on the world as they see it, what they consider are the great tasks for this generation of Irish women and men and what a university’s role should be?


In the following pages we interview:

» Peter Sutherland, Trinity Foundation Board Member and international businessman, who has keen interest in education and Ireland.
» Jane Ohlmeyer, Historian and TCD Academic looks at Ireland's economic situation from historical perspective.
» Austin O’Carroll, a Trinity medical alumnus who now works in inner city Dublin with homeless and other disadvantaged groups.
» Shane Naughton, an alumnus who grew a successful business in New York.
» Cathal Reillly, the 2008 Student Union President and final year student who, with his friends, is directly affected by the changing environment.

Responding to these interviews is an article by Professor Patrick Prendergast, the primary architect of College’s Strategic Plan who reflects on the mission of a University and what Trinity plans to achieve over the next five years.


16 | Trinity Today