"It's part of my own philosophy that the university should be open - we have no gates in this university," says the president of NUI Galway, Prof Patrick Fottrell, as construction work continues apace on several projects that will reshape the campus for the new millennium.
The £30 million building programme will start to refocus the campus on its major landscape asset, the lands along the River Corrib, which also constitute a vital urban resource for Galway and its citizens.
The university owns about 240 acres of prime riverside lands, which are secured from speculative development, and public access to walks and sports facilities there will be enshrined in the university's development plans.
"The university fathers were wise and bought land cheaply when it was possible to do so", Prof Fottrell observes. "That has given us an excellent landbank to work on - all we need now is the money to do it".
The first stages of the building programme will provide a regional centre for modern European languages, an environmental science unit and library extension, with a £7 million information technology centre also planned. NUI Galway has just been granted £500,000 to provide top-class facilities at its sports grounds at Dangan, along the river, and is to put a similar amount of its own finances along with that. The aim is to make these sports facilities accessible to all. Similarly, Prof Fottrell has reported progress on measures to encourage students from disadvantaged backgrounds to enter university, through second-chance or access courses. The first group of 12 such students, from Galway city, have completed their first year at NUI Galway, another 12 have started an access course, and 23 mature students from the city and Connemara have just completed access courses and will enter various faculties in the coming academic year.
The president stresses the university has an obligation to foster social inclusion, and notes that the number of such students so far is very small.
The policy of making the university accessible to all will be furthered when a creche is opened on campus in a couple of months.
Meanwhile, celebrations to mark the 150th anniversary this year of the enrolment of the first students at the Galway college continue. Sixty-eight students - all men - were enrolled in October 1849.
However, Prof Fottrell was able to tell the last group of engineering graduates of this millennium that in 1906, Galway produced the first woman engineer to graduate in Britain or Ireland, Alice Perry.