Address by President McAleese at Lisburn Institute of Further and Higher Education
Address by President McAleese at Lisburn Institute of Further and Higher Education Friday, 7th April 2000
Mayor of Lisburn, Chairman of the Board of Governors, Director of the Lisburn Institute of Further and Higher Education, members of the Board, distiguished visitors, members of staff, students and guests, it was with great a pleasure I accepted your kind invitation to meet you and visit your college this afternoon. I am far of course from being among strangers. There are many friends here and hopefully more friendships to be made before the day is over. Lisburn is itself a place I know well of course, not far from my own birthplace and the home of a considerable number of my large clan. But in another life when I was involved in education I was of course aware of Lisburn as the home of one of the flagship Institutes of further and higher education on this island.
Lisburn’s prosperity, its wellbeing, its competitiveness, the sophistication of its civic society, the development and harnessing of the talent of its people of all ages - these things are directly linked to the quality of education delivered here in its own heart. The Lisburn Institute has a long and distinguished tradition of faithful and dynamic service to the local community. I have just visited the impressive Cecil Webb library named after the Institute’s first director. First appointed in 1914, Cecil Webb spent 27 years as Director setting the building blocks of excellence with which the college has become identified.
Cecil Webb knew that an ivory tower remote from local business and industry would be of no value to a community with ambition. Instead he committed the Institute to serving the education and training needs of the thriving local textile industry, establishing a close partnership with the local community. He was an innovator and risk-taker, able to read future trends and to position the Institute to be ready for them. His establishment of the Motor Engineering School was such a new departure that the Department of Education initially turned it down. Whatever the Department said in its letter of rejection was obviously the very spur needed by the indomitable Cecil and of course history records that bureaucratic determination was no match for him and he did indeed set up what was to be recognised as one of the finest Motor Engineering Schools in these parts.
So the foundations of your Institute were laid. These foundations, the insistence on excellence and a close bonding with the local community, continue to be characteristics of the college to this day. This year, Elaine McKibben, one of your students, was awarded the silver medal in the London’s Chamber of Commerce Private Secretary’s Diploma. Taking second place in an international field of 5000 candidates is a fine tribute to Elaine and your college. The close links with Lisburn are reflected in the fact that the Chairman of your Board of Governors, Sam Semple, born in the town, has been associated with this college as a student, teacher and now, in his eighties, Chairman of the Board. What a wealth of experience! What a lifetime of loyalty!
Cecil Webb had profound insight into and faith in the benefits of having links with the wider community. He himself had been the principal of Clonmel Technical School in Tipperary before coming to Lisburn. Many of the ideas for the Motor Engineering School were borrowed from Pembroke Technical School in Dublin’s Ringsend - an early example of cross-border cross fertilisation and a very important reminder of what a relatively untapped resource we still have in the potential for partnership and sharing.
Today, your openness to constructive co-operation with external education enterprises is reflected in your association with Queen’s University Belfast, your participation in the Open College/Open Learning Programme and the initiation of a partnership in the development of plastics with the Institute of Technology in Athlone. These external links enable you to serve more fully the needs of the 5,000 students that flock to your Institute from a catchment area that extends far beyond the boundaries of Lisburn. Out of these new partnerships comes a new energy and out of that energy, new opportunities.
A sincere commitment to inclusive education is a common aspiration in both your motto and mission statement. You know from experience that every human being who is helped to blossom through education adds to the sum total of human equity we rely on to build up not just the human person but the family, the community, the town, the country. Every child whose potential remains locked in and unrealised is such a sad waste of a life and such a loss to the individual and to all of us. You show that commitment to inclusivity in real ways particularly through opening an outreach centre in Poleglass. This was genuine reaching out to a community that would have had few traditional ties with the Institute. It involved courage and risk taking on your part and on the part of your first students. The success of this venture can be seen in the fact that you have decided to continue the Glenwood Community Campus for a second three-year period. The benefits of this outreach campus can also be seen in the achievements of some of its early students. Maura Megahy enrolled in the Access foundation course which facilitates the entry of adults into university by non-traditional routes. Not alone did Maura enter Queen’s University but is presently studying for her Masters degree in Irish Studies having graduated last year with a 1st class honours B.A. Another student from the Glenwood Campus who took the same route as Maura is Roisin O’Reilly. Roisin is now studying law at Queen’s University. The story of Glenwood is but one example of your commitment to “Break down barriers and thereby foster inclusion”. By your deeds you shall know them and your deeds say it all- you mean what you say, you walk the talk.
The establishment of the Glenwood Campus is but one of the many ways this Institute has chosen to continue and maintain the original aims of the technical education movement in “educating all classes and creeds”. By bringing together people of varying religious, social and political backgrounds, the Institute is providing the seed bed for a future where people are comfortable with diversity, joyfully curious about differences whether of race, religion, identity and accepting of a world which thrives on difference and shrivels when we only accept as equals those who think exactly as we do. Educated side by side, united by a common purpose, your students learn to appreciate that difference can be enriching and mutually beneficial. Through this sharing of experience and understanding we can continue the process of breaking down the barriers that have in the past held us apart and indeed held us back.
There is a further means by which education can help to build bridges. In the words of its mission statement the Institute aspires to “enable students to recognise and develop their full academic, vocational and social potential”. Self development and an awareness of what one can give to the community enhances a person’s self respect. A healthy self-esteem is the fundamental basis for generous sharing and humble receiving. A willingness to give and a pre-disposition to receive are indispensable in bringing individuals and communities together.
As present and future leaders in our community many of you have and will have the opportunity to bring people together and to show that difference can be enriching. Seize this opportunity. In doing so you will be doing honour to the community that has nurtured you and the college that has contributed to your education. A college that has as its motto Education for the entire community. May the fruits of your education be a blessing for yourself and those with whom you associate.
Thank you for listening.