Annual Report 2024-25
The 2024–2025 academic year marked a significant milestone in the history of Mary Immaculate College, defined by both renewal and ambition. It was a year that welcomed Professor Dermot Nestor as the College’s eleventh President and saw the development and launch of MIC’s new Strategic Plan, Pathways Lit, Futures Found, setting a clear vision for the Institution’s future as a flourishing learning community rooted in educational excellence, human dignity and social justice.
Introduction
This Annual Report highlights the breadth of achievements, innovation and progress realised across the College during the year, made possible through the dedication of our students, staff, alumni and partners. Together, these accomplishments reflect an institution that is not only responding to change, but helping to shape the future of education and society.
This year our community conferred degrees on 1,800 graduates, among them a record 33 doctoral candidates whose research ranged across education and the liberal arts. From Educational Psychology to History, Philosophy, English, Geography, and Drama - this is a clear sign of a maturing research culture that also produced over 300 scholarly outputs and secured almost €1m in national research equipment funding. Our teacher education programmes commanded the highest CAO entry points in the country, and more than four of every ten school leavers seeking to become primary school teachers made MIC their first choice, the largest share of any provider in Ireland. We introduced new degrees in Drama and English, and in English Language and Literature, launched the Department of Business and Accounting at MIC Thurles, exceeded every one of our widening participation targets, and were named Education Provider of the Year at Ireland's Climate Change Leadership Awards. Our international engagement extended from Brasília to Boston, Cambodia to Canada and from Buenos Aires to our partners across Europe. Our finances closed the year in surplus, with reserves dedicated to the ambitions that lie ahead.
The same commitment animated our work far beyond our lecture halls. On campus, we continued to invest in the excellence of our teaching and learning. Over 130 staff now hold the Universal Design badge, and the new GATE Centre stands ready as a space where postgraduate students and staff will develop their teaching together. With partner schools, families, and communities in Limerick and Dublin, programmes such as EDNIP, TED, and City Connects continued to demonstrate what education achieves when it is built together; children supported to flourish, families welcomed as partners, and schools connected to the full strength of their communities.
Alongside last year's report, these achievements describe a trajectory. The library project received the approval of An tÚdarás Rialaithe to proceed and welcomed its design and delivery partners. Within firm reach is a building that will stand at the heart of campus life for generations of students, and that gives physical form to our belief in learning as a shared, communal act. Our researchers in the Arts and Humanities extended the College's reach into questions of national consequence, the future of our coastal heritage, the health of our democratic media, the culture of our creative industries. Our climate commitments moved from pledge to measurable achievement, with emissions now 14% below baseline and falling. Two years of evidence point in one direction, and that direction is forward.
This was also the year in which the College took the measure of itself. We brought A Flourishing Learning Community to a rigorous, evidence-based conclusion, and we built its successor, Pathways Lit, Futures Found, from an extended period of listening across both campuses. I set out clear priorities on taking office, and the College community has tested them against its own work, its constraints, and its ambitions. The plan that emerged is therefore one the entire community shares, and it is one that commits us to answer an era of profound change from the deepest resources of our tradition.
One moment from this year asks to be marked above all others. After an association that began with the College’s foundation, the Sisters of Mercy have decided to withdraw from its governance. Their contribution lives in everything this report records, in our ethos, in the generations of teachers formed here, and in the tradition of care first kindled by Catherine McAuley. On behalf of the entire College community, I record our profound gratitude, and our commitment that the vision they entrusted to us will continue to animate all that we do.
Professor Dermot Nestor
President, Mary Immaculate College
"I commend this Annual Report to you as the record of a community that thrives, that serves, and that leads with integrity, a community whose pathway is lit and whose future is ours to find."
