REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY McALEESE AT REGIS UNIVERSITY DENVER, FRIDAY, 19 MAY, 2006
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT OF IRELAND, MARY McALEESE AT REGIS UNIVERSITY DENVER, FRIDAY, 19 MAY, 2006
Go raibh maith agaibh go léir as an bhfáilte sin. Táimid iontach sásta bheith anseo libh i Denver san áit speisialta seo.
Martin and I are delighted to visit this beautiful and very welcoming campus. I thank Fr. Sheerin for his very kind introduction and for this chance to feel that unique university ambience once again. Before I became President my working life had almost entirely been spent in two universities in Ireland and I have never lost my appetite for University life.
Mind you, I have just learnt how easy it is to access Regis University life from a very long way off thanks to your state-of-the-art distance learning programmes. It is truly impressive to see how easily the cutting edge of modern technology sits in a University with such a long and proud tradition. Here is a place for the intellectually curious to be curious about the past, the present and the future, to have their imaginations stretched and challenged so that they are fearless in believing that they too can, through their lives, make a singular contribution to the world of science, technology, humanities, and letters. We all need young men and women who believe in their mission as investigators revealing the world, explaining it, exploring its possibilities.
The breadth of the courses that you offer, and the extraordinary reach that you have are a crucial local and national resource in awakening and forming that sense of mission and purpose in this and the coming generations. Through the many schools and institutions here, Regis College, the School for Professional Studies, Rueckert-Hartman School for Health Professionals, the Institute on the Common Good, and the Centre for the Study of War Experience you cover a vast array of highly relevant political, social and economic challenges - you set the scene, offer the formation which allows your students to make their unique contribution to the betterment of the human condition.
And what a wonderful location for such an adventure right on the edge of the Rocky Mountains just ideal for contemplation and study and I am sure many other noisier pursuits besides.
It was most heartening to learn that Irish studies is one of the courses on offer here in the shadow of these glorious mountains. Having just come from the inauguration of an Irish studies programme in Missoula Montana, it seems to me that Ireland and curiosity about Ireland is well served in the western United States.
In the days before planes reduced the distance between us to mere hours, Irish emigrants made the tortuous journey from a poverty ridden, famine ridden, and politically oppressed country to this place. No easy life was set out for them here, just hard labour but crucially the freedom to plan and build a better future for their children. That they did and in this city’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade we hear echoes of their lives, echoes which your course vindicates and validates. It does that and more covering as it does “1500 years of Irish history, language, literature, sociology, religion and archeology”. That shows a huge respect for the heritage those immigrants knew of and the future they helped to create with their hard earned dollars and cents posted home to keep Ireland going until better times came.
I come from those better times, from a prosperous, sophisticated Ireland which is now itself home to many tens of thousands of emigrants from other countries. We know our prosperity and our peace are built on the lives of quiet suffering and endurance that helped build this place. As if to reinforce that debt it is good to see that your Irish studies course is offered in conjunction with the National University of Ireland in Galway – and the Irish Government has given funding to help this match-up take place. We are very pleased that this has proved so successful. I can assure you that the interest in our history and culture shown by Irish studies staff and students in this University is warmly appreciated by the people of Ireland. I know some of the student and faculty get the chance to visit Galway University. I am sure the friendliness and legendary fun of that great city of Galway has reached out and drawn you in, making even stronger the bonds of affinity, kinship and friendship between Colorado and Ireland.
Of course your link with NUI Galway now includes a joint MSc in Software and Information Systems which is available online worldwide. Could anything better typify the move from donkey and cart picture postcard Ireland to the high tech global leader in software technology that Ireland has become in recent decades? You are playing an important part in the shaping and re-imagining of this new Ireland with its unique meld of the quaint and quantum physics, of tradition and trade, of craic and computer. Today almost 40 per cent of our workforce have third level qualifications and what characterizes us is a hunger for knowledge. The first Irish who came here came to escape a different hunger. Now their children’s children help this university push out the boundaries of human understanding and insight. We take delight in the fact that Ireland accompanies you on those roads to discovery which Universities are particularly good at. Let me close by thanking you for your attention. I wish you, this university and the Irish studies programme every success in all the years to come.
Is iontach an obair atá ar siúl agaibh anseo. Gurb fada buan sibh‘s go raibh míle, míle maith agaibh.