NUIG in hot water over Covid cluster

From this week’s Galway City Tribune – NUI Galway management declined a request from a Head of School to move a business class at the centre of a large cluster of Covid-19 cases to online-learning.

At least 14 members in one class of 27 Master’s students at NUIG tested positive for Covid-19 last week, The Galway City Tribune has learned.

The MSc Marketing Practice class had returned to campus in early September, sooner than undergraduates, who only commenced the academic term this week.

Head of School at the J.E. Cairnes School of Business and Economics, Dr Tom Acton, has told his lecturer colleagues that he asked university management to pause on-campus teaching last Thursday, September 24.

The request, he said, was not agreed to by management – despite information confirming that students on several programmes at NUIG had tested positive for the deadly virus.

The MSc Marketing Practice class was moved to online learning the following day, last Friday, after an eleventh-hour announcement from Simon Harris, Minister for Further and Higher Education, that all third level courses should be taught online where possible.

In an email issued to colleagues on Friday, seen by The Galway City Tribune, Dr Acton said: “Last (Thursday) evening, based on data over the last week, I made a proposal to UMT (university management team) members along these lines, to pause on-campus student presence, which was not accepted. However, the Government has just now issued such an instruction.

This is a short preview version of this article. To read it in full, see this week’s Galway City Tribune.

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