Student facilitator Pat is a class act

Date Published: 13-Sep-2012

The best teachers are the ones who inspire, the ones who are passionate about their subject and genuinely care for their students.

NUI Galway is blessed to have Dr Pat Morgan as she ticks all those boxes and indeed got a President’s Award for teaching a few years ago, something she is very proud to have received.

But as one of the college’s four Vice Presidents, Pat doesn’t get to teach for the next three years (the first of her four-year term is almost over), but she doesn’t mind too much as she preaches the university’s motto, ‘learning and leadership for life and work’.

Her proper title now is Vice President for the Student Experience and at the start of this first college term she made the local headlines after she issued students with the Code of Conduct and a letter telling them the college was adopting a zero tolerance attitude to students who mis-behaved.

It is into her office in the Quadrangle on the college campus any badly behaved students are summoned. Though the room is quite light and bright and her personality is bubbly, she says that she can be quite firm if she has to.

As she was a student in Galway, and one who fully enjoyed the experience, she is empathetic to students, even the ones who get into trouble. But, as she lived in Newcastle and in other student locales around the city, she also understands the frustrations of local people subjected to all-night parties.

“But honestly, the students who have to be disciplined by us are quite a small number overall, about 100 out of 17,000 a year. I don’t think students have become any bolder or behave any differently but our overall acceptance of alcohol has changed and the price of alcohol is cheaper, making it much more accessible.

“I also believe that young people nowadays don’t have the same level of embarrassment that we had. The likes of Facebook seems to make certain behaviour acceptable but I tell students that, apart from a conviction and a fine or disciplinary action by the college, prospective employers might get to see what they have been up to on Facebook.

“Some employers in the US ask for access to Facebook and other social media accounts. I don’t agree with that but I do warn students that they have to think how their behaviour might affect their job prospects in the future.”

Pat has been praised for the way she handled complaints in the past year. She puts her analytical skills down to her background in bio-chemistry which she studied in Galway in the late seventies.

It was where she met her husband, Gerry Morgan, who works in the physics department. They married and went to California, where Gerry was doing a PhD in the renowned Stanford University. Pat, who had completed her PhD in chemistry in Galway, was quite happy to work in admin in Stanford, but later got an opportunity to work for two years in Madison University in Wisconsin, where she experienced 14 feet of snow the first winter she spent there!

Showing her independent spirit, she returned to take up a lecturing job in Galway a year before Gerry was finished his work in the US.

She didn’t baulk at the admin job in Stanford, saying that it gave her an insight into the inner workings of one of the best universities in the world, something that is helping her now in her Vice Presidency role.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.