DCU Graduate Profiles

Will works at the Lois Bridges centre, an in-patient unit that treats people with eating disorders. Previously, he himself received treatment at the centre and so had a personal understanding of the issues, particularly for male patients.

He points out that “one in three people with eating disorders are men” but the issue remains relatively hidden.

Will had already begun to work with Lois Bridges as a co-facilitator for a support group for men with eating disorders. It was then that a colleague told him about the Certificate in Peer Support, saying “I think you'd be really good at that.”

“I went into DCU with a lot of educational baggage,” admits Will, who had started University courses in the past but could not complete them due to his struggles with a binge eating disorder. 

At DCU, a number of aspects of the course were a welcome surprise including the emphasis on discussion and engagement and the supportive atmosphere fostered by the teaching staff. 

“It’s a really multi-faceted course where you're learning about many different aspects of mental health struggles,” says Will. He found the diversity of the course participants from a wide variety of backgrounds made for “a rich learning experience”. 

One of his “lightbulb moments” was the realisation that Peer Support is not about trying to “fix” people. Instead, he believes it’s about understanding that everyone has a unique way of dealing with their issues. “There are many ways to walk up a hill,” says Will.

His experience on the course has given him greater confidence in bringing his personal experience to the table when discussing cases with the multidisciplinary team at Lois Bridges. “I'll say things and they go, ‘I actually didn't think of it that way.’”

After his previous experiences in higher education, he is particularly proud to have received a first in his Certificate. “This time I think it was something I was really passionate about. I was using my lived experience and it gave me a sense of meaning to everything that had come before,” says Will. 

In many ways, Olufunke recalls, the task of keeping a watchful eye on Cemitope’s medical monitors and devices gave her a routine that provided some distraction from the terrible reality of the situation. “That was the life I knew,” she says. Olufunke didn’t realise quite how serious her daughter’s condition was until very near the end. “It just happened so fast, and she just died suddenly.”

In the months and years that followed, Olufunke admits that it was hard to cope with the profound grief she experienced. Despite receiving mental health support and treatment, she still felt at a loss. “When she died, suddenly I couldn't find my place in the world anymore.” 

At one point, a counsellor suggested that taking on a new challenge could help to fill the void. But it wasn’t until some time later that a visit by DCU’s University of Sanctuary team to Mosney provided a possible answer. When they told her about the newly introduced University of Sanctuary scholarships, Olufunke jumped at the opportunity. “I was like, OK this is it!”

Olufunke successfully applied for the scholarship and was accepted on the BSc in Management of Information Technology/Information Systems. She threw herself into the challenge of learning coding, among other aspects of the programme, and says that her background in accountancy and her strong maths skills gave her a head start. She also praises the approachability of her lecturers and the supports provided by the University of Sanctuary team.

Overall, the programme gave her great confidence. “The entrepreneurship course we did was just, wow! If I wanted to set up a company, I know how to go about it. I know where to get the funds and how to go for government approval.”

Above and beyond the positivity of learning new skills, Olufunke says the course transformed her emotional state. “Gradually, I was healing,” she says. “Now I could channel my energy into something else, and that really helped me.”

While completing the programme part time, Olufunke secured a job with Irish Life. The role is in the financial sector rather than IT, but she says her DCU degree gave her many transferable skills, which are helping her to advance professionally. “I’ve been doing my professional [accountancy] exams and I've just been passing all of them because I’m using the skills that I learned in DCU. I'm transferring them back to my professional exams, and I've been scoring good grades.”

After she began studying for her degree, Olufunke was granted residency status and moved out of the direct provision system. She volunteers as Youth and Charity Officer in the Prince of Peace Charity. This involves visits to the residents in the Mosney direct provision centre where she enthusiastically promotes the University of Sanctuary scholarship programme to the residents. She proudly says that she has persuaded five others to follow in her footsteps to DCU. 

Looking back, she says her time at the University was a turning point. “DCU helped me put my life in a different perspective”, she said. “It's just a very lovely place.”

The problem was that “primary teaching wasn’t an option for deaf people at the time” because there was no course in Ireland for people using Irish Sign Language (ISL). 

Four years later, when DCU opened applications for the first ISL Bachelor of Education (B Ed), Kevin was among a small group of deaf students to successfully apply. 

Despite having a close bond with his fellow ISL students, connecting with hearing students was a challenge initially. “We're used to interacting with hearing people, whereas all the other hearing students might never have met a deaf person before. They didn’t know how to interact with us.”

Kevin says that an invitation to the ISL group to present to the full B Ed class on their experiences was a great icebreaker. The deaf students also offered ISL classes to their classmates. 

“So we kind of made the first move, I guess, and the rest is history. We interacted with a lot of other people and we made a lot of friends throughout the wider class group.”

Kevin found some of the academic lectures could be challenging. In contrast, he loved the more active learning opportunities and fieldwork. “I absolutely loved that because those classes involved a lot of hands-on activities and they really suited me,” says Kevin. 

“For example, Local Studies was one of our modules where we would go out to visit a river, or we would go out to see things. Everything was very visual and tactile, and it really felt connected. I think we're visual learners because we're visual communicators.”

Alongside the B Ed modules, Kevin believes he picked up important transferable skills like adaptability and resilience, which he uses as a teacher. “You know, everything can go wrong at any point,” says Kevin. “So, if something comes up, I'm able to adapt and change things so that the day goes smoothly.”

Kevin graduated from the B Ed with First Class Honours and was awarded the DCU Chancellor’s Medal in recognition of his academic and extracurricular achievements, including his work with the Deaf community. 

Kevin, and his ISL classmates, Aimee Ennis McLoughlin and Aisling O'Halloran, are all now teaching at the Holy Family Primary School for the Deaf.

Reflecting on his experience at DCU, Kevin recalls a moment in a teaching placement class when he asked the children what they wanted to be when they grew up. 

One child told the class: “Deaf people can't be teachers.” Kevin says that the child “didn't see me as a teacher, because I was replacing a hearing teacher.”

That has all changed now. As Deaf teachers, Kevin, Aimee and Aisling are providing their pupils with new role models and opening new horizons.

Her anxieties quickly vanished as she settled into student life, immersing herself in psychology and her second subject, philosophy. “There was so much guidance in the programme and so much help and support that it really just made it just so easy.”

One of the main things that impressed her was the quality of her online course. “I found it brilliant, and the same lecturers who teach on the psychology course and in the philosophy one are also teaching the in-person one as well,” she says. “Sometimes you would get the impression that online isn't as good as in-person. People see it as lesser but that's clearly not the case in DCU.” 

As a self-proclaimed extrovert, one thing Sinead did miss was the social aspect of college life. In her second year, she set about changing that and set up several Whatsapp groups where online students could chat informally. 

She then founded the Connected Society, which for the first time, provided a space for DCU’s online students to meet for social events and activities including summer and Christmas parties.

On the academic front, Sinead developed a growing interest in exploring the ways in which people with disabilities navigate and manage their Higher Education studies. 

She was a member of a working group organised by the Union of Students in Ireland (USI) and the Association of Higher Education and Disability (AHEAD), which advises policymakers on the student experience. Sinead was glad to be able to bring her experience of being an online student with a disability to the conversation. She feels this is vital because “what I might need as an online student with a disability is going to be different to the traditional 19 or 20-year-old in-person student with a disability.”

During her degree, Sinead had an ever-increasing interest in how psychological differences affect people in online education. Having completed her Bachelor’s degree, she is now studying this area for a PhD. “I really love having the ability to explore this area that I'm so interested in,” she says. 

Reflecting on her educational journey so far, Sinead has become a true ambassador for the advantages of online education. “It's really important that people realise that online education is so useful and so helpful in so many different ways. She points out that online and in-person students at DCU are treated the same. “They don't see any difference.”

The first two years of the course were “a nice balance” between pure maths modules and programming subjects. While his lecturers were great, Tomás says the step up to University-level maths can be challenging. He found that the DCU Maths Learning Centre was a great resource, which is used by students from a whole range of ‘maths heavy’ degrees. Having received the help and advice of tutors at the centre in his first two years, Tomás later went on to work in the centre himself. 

Things really clicked into place for Tomás in the second half of his four-year degree, when the course focused on the “real world” applications of the subject. In particular, his 8-month work placement in the Central Bank of Ireland gave him a clear idea of what it was like to work in his sector. “That gave me a great experience of the entire insurance industry and I got a real look at the types of work you actuaries do,” he says. It confirmed that this was “something I'm really interested in getting into.”

While he enjoyed his studies, Tomás reckons getting involved in clubs and societies is a really important part of the college experience. “They're a lot of fun. You make great friends through them and it's really a break from the college course.”

Tomás joined the Weightlifting Club in first year and never looked back. He served as chair and treasurer during his time at DCU and has travelled internationally to take part in competitions in Denmark and Wales. 

As well as making good friends, Tomás says that his sporting activities were great for helping him to unwind. “It wasn't all about the college stuff, even coming up close to exams. There's still that bit of a break. So I think it’s good for almost everyone to have a hobby or join a club.”

But while they might seem worlds apart, Tomás sees real similarities between his hobby and his course. He says weightlifting is “a very technical sport” where you need to keep making adjustments to get a lift right - a process similar to the one he uses in his professional life. “You know, we're doing calculations, changing little stuff, doing it over, thinking it through.” 

The difference is, with weightlifting, “I can turn the brain off a little bit and relax!”