by Iain Mac Labhrainn, National University of Ireland, Galway

Dear Partners,
I am delighted to welcome you to the Galway Symposium of the European E-Competence Initiative. I’m sure that this will be a very productive few days and I hope that you will enjoy your stay in the West of Ireland. Our organisation, the Centre for Excellence in Learning & Teaching (CELT!), is relatively new. It was established just over two years ago when I moved to Galway, but the university itself has had a much more distinguished history.

It was founded in 1845 as Queen’s College, Galway, a title which changed with the politics of the times. It has seven faculties (Law, Arts, Science, Engineering, Celtic, Commerce & Medicine) and over 14,500 students in undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. In recent years, in particular, it has grown dramatically with many new buildings being constructed across the campus and the development of ‘outreach’ centres across the whole west coast of Ireland which support programmes taught through the Irish Language.

It is a bilingual institution and you are very welcome to practice your Irish whilst here. The most important expressions are ‘sláinte’ and ‘aon deoch eile, más é do thoil é’. Andrew can provide translations. Seriously, though, this is Europe's oldest living language and traces its roots back through history to a common Celtic family.

The university's research income has soared in recent times thanks to funding from the Irish government and the benefits of the so-called "Irish Tiger" economy. Grants worth tens of millions of Euros have been obtained in areas such as the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI - linked with Austria); the National Centre for Biomedical Engineering Science & REMEDI (adult stem cell research and biomaterials); the Centre for Human Settlement & Historical Change; Applied Optics; etc. This, coupled with the growth in student numbers (from about 4,000 to 14,500 in ten years or so), has put pressure on buildings and space, but the university owns some 110 hectares of land along the river (which flows from Lough Corrib through the city and into the sea at Galway bay) and is currently building along this stretch.

CELT itself is still somewhat understaffed, but we hope soon to fill a number of posts to get us up to our fully operational level. Our areas of interest include academic staff development, eLearning, audio-visual technologies, teaching and learning methods, higher education research and civic engagement (exploring the university's role in society) and we are funded from a variety of sources in Ireland, Europe and the US.
Anyway, enough of this and I will end simply by welcoming you once again and I hope that you get a chance to explore the city and some of the region during your stay.

Best regards,
Iain Mac Labhrainn

Publisher:
European eCompetence Initiative

Editors:
Andrew Hamilton
Dirk Schneckenberg
Jenny Booth