People in Business – Jim Browne, President NUI Galway

Lucky is a word that crops up frequently in a conversation with President of NUI Galway Jim Browne about his working life.

‘It started in Dean Kelly National School, Athlone where I was lucky to have a great teacher,’ he says.

‘I was lucky that Northern Electric were recruiting industrial engineers when I graduated and I was lucky that the government funded additional lecturing posts in engineering and the like just as I finished my PhD.

Jim graduated from then UCG in 1974 with a degree in electrical engineering and was taken on by Northern Electric – which had hardly been a year in Galway at the time.

‘I was sent to their factory in London, Ontario where I got fantastic training in what was then a high-tech environment,’ recalls Jim.

Following his return to Northern Electric in Galway Jim decided to pursue a Masters Degree at UCG and took up a contract lecturer position in engineering with the College.

He subsequently completed a PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Manchester University.

He returned to Galway in 1981 just as the Universities and Institutes of Technology were expanding to accommodate more engineering and science graduates as part of a government strategy to attract more foreign direct investment.

‘Again I was lucky, as I was able to tap into European funding for research projects in collaboration with Manchester University and local firms such as Digital and Northern Telecom,’ says Jim.

Some of these projects would have had benefits locally, helping to improve the manufacturing processes in companies such as Thermo King and CEL (now Valeo) in Tuam.

Jim has published over 200 academic papers and 15 books including translations into French and Chinese.

In 1996 he was appointed Head of the School of Engineering and Informatics and in 2001 he became Registrar and Deputy President of the University.

He was elected President of the University in 2008 and is currently in the sixth year of a ten-year term of office.

‘Third level education has changed dramatically in my time here and will continue to evolve quickly,’ he says.

‘Galway has moved from being an elite, fee-paying university catering for 2,500 students in the 1980’s to a mass education campus with 17,500 students and around 3,000 full time and part time staff.

There’s a greater mix of students with many more mature undergraduates in Arts, for example and a much wider selection of nationalities.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.