It’s rainy here in Swansea today, summer is definitely over, and lots of new students are arriving at universities across the UK.
So let’s have one last look at blue skies before the rollercoaster of the autumn term starts to move.
These blue skies and inviting blue waters are courtesy of Wexford, on the River Slaney in Ireland. If you look on the right of the card, you’ll see what looks like an ecclesiastical building with a rose window, and to the left of that a substantial stone building. And that building is one of the Wexford campuses of the South East Technological University.
The university is a new one – it’s only formally existed since May 2022 – but its predecessors have a longer heritage.
Ireland decided in the 1960s to establish a number of technical colleges – called Regional Technical Colleges. There were fourteen created, mostly new, but a couple evolving from nineteenth century colleges. In time they became Institutes of Technology, and in 2018 new legislation allowed Institutes of Technology to gain university status, as Technological Universities, if they merged with another Institute.
The first Technological University was created in 2019, and four others followed, the South East Technological University being the most recent one to be approved. It was created from the Institute of Technology, Carlow, and the Waterford Institute of Technology, and also has sites at Wexford, Wicklow and Kilkenny.
The journey to university status has not been uneventful: the idea was rejected by staff at both Carlow in 2019 and Waterford in 2021, and the government turned down a request for additional financial support in 2019. But subsequent merger proposals gained support, and the university was approved in November 2021. It’s also known by its initials, SETU.
Incidentally, the creation of the technological universities has left a couple of institutes of technology still unmatched, as it were. And one – Dundalk Institute of Technology – is doing something very interesting. The Institute is in advanced talks with Queen’s University Belfast to become University College Dundalk, a college of Queen’s University Belfast. The plan has government backing, and awaits the passage of legislation to confirm the arrangement.
Here’s a jigsaw of the postcard. It’s been posted, but there’s no date on the postmark. However, it’s got an 82c stamp with a sea aster on it, which was issued in a booklet of self-adhesive stamps in 2008. So I reckon that’s when this was sent.
Weather not too bad so far – very high seas but have had a couple of swims. Have not contacted your brother this time. Will bring Pam down in October – see you then.
SETU recently appointed a Chief Academic Officer and Deputy-President, Professor Harriet Dunbar-Morris, and as Harriet is my pal from back in the days of the 1994 Group (remember them?) I’m delighted to celebrate with this postcard. Sláinte, Harriet!
