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The Legacy of Hugh Brady

delta_bravo · 2014-07-13 23:06:13

Thought there might be a thread already about this but I see now that Hugh Brady's 10 year tenure as president has ended I was wondering what people's thoughts were on it. There probably aren't many people around now that can compare it to Art Cosgrove's term but I think these past ten years are probably different to any…

13-07-2014 11:06pm

#1

delta_bravo

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Thought there might be a thread already about this but I see now that Hugh Brady's 10 year tenure as president has ended I was wondering what people's thoughts were on it. There probably aren't many people around now that can compare it to Art Cosgrove's term but I think these past ten years are probably different to any other that have gone and probably will ever happen for a long time.

The campus itself has undergone massive change. Many new research facilities and improvements built. Even when I started in 2006 there has been huge changes: Science building, Student Centre, School of Law, Sports Centre and campus accommodation improvements to name a few. On the other hand we have also seen a loss of green space to car parks due to a lack of a multi-storey and also the running track allowed to decay which was a particularly big loss to the campus. There were other big plans that I think have fallen by the wayside or have been curtailed - The UCD Gateway Project was going to be a massive redevelopment that was going to involve a hotel and massive changes which I personally think it's for the best it never went ahead.

The introduction of Horizons will probably be seen as the biggest change in the way courses were made. I thought it had a lot of merits but I remember in the early days there were a lot of teething problems with the implementation of it. Part of his restructuring also included the merger of departments particularly in the Arts area which was often resisted and made him fairly unpopular amongst certain staff. This and for many other reasons Dr. Brady was a fairly contentious figure.

There was also a major push on commercialisation of the university with major focus on research units and clusters and attracting top staff to improve the reputation of the university. This also brought a lot of attention of the salaries in UCD of certain staff which often exceeded that of a government minister, Brady defending this as part of his drive to increase the ranking of the university.

Overall I think Brady's influence on UCD has been positive - global rankings have improved, the campus has improved (albeit with some issues) and it is still a well regarded university in Ireland. Although he took full advantage of the cheap money available at the start of his tenure with extravagant spending which has definitely affected the college in recent times. I was in UCD from 06-11 in Humanities so looking forward to hearing opinions from others of their time.

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