Interview by Sonny McGreevy
From your perspective, what is the most serious issue currently affecting the academic experience of students?
“Interestingly, I think that’s actually the housing crisis, specifically students losing time each day to a commute. You have a lot of students here commuting and they don’t have the same 24 hours in the day as everyone else, they’re spending up to 5 hours a day moving about. I definitely think changes in how assignments are put out would be useful. I want to change all deadlines to midnight because what is 6pm to a commuter?”
Students often say feedback is slow, unclear, or inconsistent. What would you do to improve assessment and feedback across the university?
“I’ve definitely experienced this myself. I find when you get back an essay it’ll say 68 percent with feedback saying ‘great essay, well done’ and then nothing else. I think there should be a criteria set out for staff on markers to hit such as ‘where did you lose marks?’ and ‘where did you gain marks?’ And I think another side to this is that it’s not communicated properly how the academic system works in the college and a lot of students aren’t aware of the ‘glass ceiling’ of 72 percent. Even in more quiz-based STEM courses you’re still reasonably capped, so this needs to be communicated better. I also think that feedback is too slow, it’s coming out in some cases days before you’ve to write a final essay, so I think criteria needs to be set out for staff to correct this.”
How will you represent students in academic boards and committees in a way that leads to real change, not just discussion?
“For me the way I will represent students on those boards is to go in with the problems and the changes that students want. If that’s not given to me I want a clear and transparent answer stating what is stopping that, and if I don’t feel that’s logical I’m going to keep pushing. If it’s an answer that I feel gives students closure and helps students with what’s going on then I will bring that back to the student body.
“If I can see where things are working well in other colleges I’m going to bring that to the boards, for example with repeat modules. That works really well in UCD and I can bring that and examples from other places to them to better help our students here. My poor parents know I won’t take no for an answer!”
What reforms would you push for around exams, continuous assessments, or workload balance?
“Repeat exam fees need change. It’s €195 to repeat no matter how many you have, but to do all 8 exams in the Leaving Cert it’s €160. The change would hopefully work towards the abolishment of repeat fees as UCC has. The other side of that is taking away that cap on the repeat modules as well. If a student had a bit of a blip in a module and had to repeat it’s not fair to cap them at 40 percent. They’ve gone back, they’ve done the work, they’ve paid to redo this, give them their proper credit for a grade they deserve.”
How will you support students who are struggling academically due to issues like housing insecurity, mental health, or financial pressure?
“I think that is purely availability, we need to be there to talk to people and help them understand what supports there are for them. And it’s like what we were talking about earlier: pushing for reforms, pushing for changes that are going to help these students, because a lot of these issues now are going on too long for the college not to be acknowledging that they’re happening. The infrastructure is there for things like hybrid learning – we had it during Covid – so it’s just about pushing it through and getting it fixed.”
