Technological University Dublin (TU Dublin): Ireland’s first technological university, TU Dublin was established in January 2019 following the merger of DIT, IT Blanchardstown and IT Tallaght.
Website: Tud.ie
TU Dublin is spread across five campuses: Grangegorman, Aungier Street and Bolton Street, all in the city centre, and Blanchardstown and Tallaght, in northwest and southwest Dublin respectively.
It is one of the State’s largest providers of higher education, with 18,416 full-time students – 17,639 of whom are undergraduates and 1,077 postgraduates – and the largest provider of part-time education; of its almost 8,000 part-time students, 5,501 are enrolled in undergraduate programmes, 2,459 in postgraduate courses.
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“We also have a strong apprenticeship programme with links to industry and work placements across our five campuses,” says a spokeswoman for the university.
TU Dublin works closely with Solas, the State further education and training (FET) authority, to provide apprenticeship education and training courses, offering 16 apprenticeship programmes in areas such as aircraft management, brick and stone laying, industrial insulation and logistics.
Although the term “technological university” is especially associated with the sciences and computing, TU Dublin has a strong footprint in creativity and the arts. It offers a four-year BA (Hons) in Culinary Arts (TU942), for example, and its Commercial Modern Music undergraduate course (TU961) is offered through the Brighton Institute of Modern Music (BIMM) Dublin.
“The breadth of courses and our small class sizes means that the students are supported and their experiences are individual,” says the spokeswoman.
TU Dublin sees partnership as a “key strategic pillar” of the university. It has developed strong working relationships with industry, “offering students access to successful entrepreneurs, work experience and mentorship to ensure our students are prepared for the world of work upon graduation”.
In a world in which increasing reliance on technology has been accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic, there is ever more need to understand the tech on which we all depend. This is something TU Dublin is keenly aware of and it considers teaching students about potential consequences of this societal shift to be among its core responsibilities.
“Although we take a technology-focused approach to education, our students also learn to consider the human impact of new technology, from driverless haulage trucks to the depletion of our natural resources required to produce the latest consumer technologies,” says TU Dublin’s spokeswoman.
“With our eye firmly on the future of our planet, our innovative education model embeds sustainability as a learning outcome in programmes, from apprenticeship to PhD, producing responsible, sustainably minded graduates in many economically crucial sectors.”
In terms of on-campus facilities, the Grangegorman campus has undergone significant redevelopment in recent years. During the past 250 years, Grangegorman has been the site of a workhouse, a hospital and a prison; now it has been integrated into the life of the city as a health and education campus. Two new academic buildings opened on site during the 2020/2021 academic year, accommodating 10,000 students. The campus also has four full-size sports pitches and an indoor sports facility that includes a state-of-the-art cycling studio.
The Tallaght campus, meanwhile, is home to TU Dublin’s Technical Development Centre (TDC), a facility dedicated to developing of the university’s energy and environmental programme within its School of Engineering. Key aspects of the TDC include a software lab and an EV lab, the latter dedicated to developing electric-vehicle technologies.
