The good doctor has left the building, but the buzz remains
Michael Daly chats with Dr Brendan McCormack about his time as president of IT Sligo, the successful decades-long battle for university status and transitioning to life in retirement.
TWO weeks ago today one of the key players for more than 20 years in third level education in the north-west, Dr Brendan McCormack, a former president of IT Sligo, turned off his laptop, slung a bag over his shoulder and slipped quietly out the entrance of the ATU campus in Sligo.
After 24 years working at an institute but regarded as an institution, a place which will never be short of names, among them Sligo Regional Technical College, now the Atlantic Technological University, he retired “early”. No more long days up and down the road to meetings in Dublin, the 6am starts a happily fast-fading memory.
‘Early retirement’ is pushing it a bit, it’s just one year ‘early’, and that’s not because he wanted to go early. It’s because the job was done. For Brendan and those on a team that spanned from Galway to Donegal, the ‘job’ for the last 20 years, the ‘big game’, to attain university status, was won. Having played a key role for 12 years, it made perfect sense once university status had been won to give his salute to the crowd and quit at the top.
When he met with the Sligo Weekender last Thursday for a chat, the 64-year-old Westmeath native had the look of a man who was already a ‘veteran’ of retirement.
He wears it well – quite literally. In shorts and a cotton T-shirt, he seems to have made the transition to retirement rapidly. The weather was playing ball too – a beautiful morning at a friendly Drumcliffe ‘tea-house’, under the reassuring shoulder of Ben
Bulben. Whatever about the casual attire, he was also wearing his signature smile. A friend confirmed it travels with him all the time: “I have never seen him in bad humour, the smile is never far away.”
A keen gardener, he reveals over two large pots of tea and crunchy scones that as he’s no longer ‘on the clock’ he has been spending more time indulging one of his many passions – beekeeping. Who knew?
Perhaps anticipating a grilling about his thoughts on the future direction of education in the northwest, it seemed rude, when the door was opened, not to first ask about the beekeeping.
He was quickly into his stride. Clipping along at a steady canter he explained the joys of getting a queen bee delivered in the post. Apparently, she slept all the way from the banks of the Rhine, ‘snug as a bee’ in a perforated matchbox and once gently awoken and popped into the hive, this well-travelled one-time fräulein had the place buzzing:
“I have a magnificent queen bee who came from Germany – in a small box inside a brown envelope. I have three hives. It’s just something I started doing when I worked in the Blackrock Clinic – a friend had beehives on the roof of the clinic, and I just got hooked.
“Yes, I’m a beekeeper, I love it, there’s quite a few of us in Sligo. I think we should all keep bees.
“It’s important to understand how important bees are for our environment.”
When asked how retirement was going his response was emphatic: “Brilliant. I love it. I love the freedom of not having to be somewhere at such a time. I hope that feeling doesn’t wear off.
“I have spent most of the last two weeks with a drill in my hand doing the jobs around the house I promised I’d do years ago. It’s been a good start.” Beekeeper, ‘Mr DIY’, one time tenor with the local Orpheus Choir, and for good measure a former Commodore of Sligo Yacht Club (at the time when they built a new €2.2m clubhouse), he certainly played his part in transforming the education landscape in the north-west and brought others together to push development in Sligo, but he and his family have lived and contributed to the town and county, there was a lot going on beyond the campus walls, too.
Perhaps one of the less frequently commented on strengths he has shown is a life-long ability to deal with a disability he has had from birth. Brendan was born with one leg much shorter than the other. He has a prosthesis from well above where his left knee should be. He’s more than happy to talk about it, if it was or is a challenge, that doesn’t come across from him: “Technically the word to use is ‘disabled’. That’s the correct word I suppose.
“But I have never felt less able than anyone else. I was born this way. I have had a prosthesis all my life. To me it’s ‘my normal’, it always has been,” he explains, the pace or tone of his voice never changes. Talking about it, no more than living with it, clearly is not not an issue.
He goes back to his childhood: “In Cappagh Hospital I had a series of operations. I was fitted with my first prosthesis when I was two years old. I went back there when I was five, seven and 12 to have new ones fitted as I grew. It was my leg; it didn’t make any difference to me.
“Technically, or in what might be called ‘the national understanding of it’, I would be described as disabled, but I have never felt disabled. I’m not interested, nor do I care about labels. It hasn’t held me back.”
Should there be any lingering doubt as to where he is with his ‘disability’, he slays that dragon in the most convincing way possible, through humour, self-deprecation almost, as he evokes the spirit of Christy Brown and ‘My Left Foot’, laughing his way into another story: “We used to play soccer in Cappagh against the asthmatics. You’d be sitting there after an operation on a Friday, and someone would say ‘sorry for your troubles, I know you had an operation, but can you play on Monday?’”
And he did – play on Monday. That ‘nothing will stop me spirit’ has always been there.
“We played against the asthmatics in a big field. Some of us had crutches, some of us were still in wheelchairs after an operation. We used to try and outrun the asthmatics, and their strategy was to try and run faster than us,” the story tails off into a dam burst of laughter.
Having a prosthesis clearly is not an issue for this man. “It’s my leg – it doesn’t make any difference to me.” Next question.
Brendan’s exit from ATU didn’t go unmarked or unremarked. Of course, there was the official retirement function that took place in the Radisson Hotel – and it was a lovely occasion he thoroughly enjoyed. There was also another night, a memorable one too in Connolly’s when he and colleagues from the cleaning and maintenance departments marked his departure with a few lemonades!
In various fora there were glowing tributes to the retiring ‘Dr McCormack’. One of those, from the Chief Executive of Sligo County Council, Martin Lydon, was very much on the money and to the point: “He was brilliant at bringing different organisations together, collaboration was his strength …. he will be a huge loss to Sligo Inc.”
Brendan, from Athlone, has spent most of the last 10 years of his life turning a dream into reality that sees 23,000 students across three campuses become the Atlantic Technological University.
While the new ATU, the fourth of its kind nationally, formally came into being on April 1, the seeds for the project were sown in 2012. Keen to point out it was very much a collaborative effort by like-minded people from IT Sligo, GMIT and LYIT, he was appointed Project Manager for the Connacht Ulster Alliance, the consortium tasked with making a technological university for the north-west happen.
He talks about the future for ATU. “But we have a lot of work to do. I won’t be there obviously, but I sense it will take us two or three years to get our systems as one, and longer, maybe seven or eight years to have the culture that we are all one.”
One of the critical developments for the college came through an early marriage with online technology. Using online education was nothing new to the team at IT Sligo when Covid-19 arrived. Sligo was and is ahead of the game, so much so that more than 4,000 students study there on an ongoing basis via online learning.
“I remember one day back in 2000 discussing the challenges of attracting students to Quality Engineering. Noel Raftery and John Donovan were making the point that Leaving Cert students did not understand this discipline whereas those in the workforce saw it as essential, particularly in the manufacturing sector. But the challenge for them was to get to attend the learning while working, in some cases on shift. We started by delivering a course to Masonite in Carrickon-Shannon with our lecturing staff travelling over and back twice a week. “In walks Brian Mulligan with a cunning plan – why don’t we deliver online? With the support of Niall McEvoy, the HR Manager there at the time, we were grant-aided by Enterprise Ireland to purchase computers for the company so that we could deliver our modules remotely, and so was born the delivery of our programmes of education through online/blended learning mode.” Making the ATU happen involved many things, building trust between the leads at GMIT, IT Sligo and LYIT was crucial. Cards were held close to the chest in early discussions, but gradually it became easier: “Those relationships took time to ‘warm up’. Ten years ago, I was a registrar at IT Sligo and the registrars from five institutes, including Athlone, Dundalk, ourselves, GMIT and LYIT, met and agreed to explore this.”
Much has been said of the importance of ATU, this is Brendan’s view: “The difference for many families and students in the north-west is that they now have a university in their region, within their grasp.
“No matter how you look at it, the word ‘university’ is a huge selling point, it makes a big difference to have that within their ‘home area’ and the importance of that to us looking into the future is that if they get their education here, they are more likely to stay here and work.
“55% of our second level kids were leaving the region to study in Dublin, Belfast, wherever. It’s fine but will they come back? But, by educating them here, there is a greater statistical chance that they will stay here, come back here.”
Already ATU has clicked with the people of the north-west and beyond national and international borders. He says: “We now have 2,000 staff and 23,000 students already and we are growing, it is very much heading in the right direction.”
As for Brendan, his direction is in his own hands and for now he has no huge desire to do anything other than enjoy life and pursue the hobbies and interests that for too long he has had to park up. He’s no longer ‘on the clock’. It’s T-shirt time.
The new first year class at Colaiste Iascaigh.
Class 1B with transition year mentors at Sligo Grammar School.
Junior infants at Achonry NS.
The launch of Matthew Gammon’s exhibition, An Dáil Cleite/The Feather Assembly takes place this Saturday, September 10 at the Hyde Bridge Gallery, Sligo at 1pm.
This exciting new exhibition, consisting of 32 prints, represents Matthew’s recent study of the beauty and character of our most commonplace neighbour, the crow family. Matthew says, “I specifically looked at Rooks and Jackdaws in Counties Roscommon and Sligo, I wanted to bring my artistic vision of the often-ignored beauty of these most commonplace of animals that surround our everyday lives to the forefront.”
Many Sligo Weekender readers will remember Matthew as a librarian with County Roscommon Library Service, based for many years in Boyle Library, but Matthew has over the past ten years developed a passion for photography and printmaking.
In 2020 he quit his job after nearly thirty years of library work to focus full-time on his art practice. Matthew states, “this new exhibition is a step away from my usual subject matter of architecture and landscapes. I focus on domestic wildlife and like many other people, the Covid lockdowns and restrictions provided me with the opportunity to explore my locale, and with fewer people and much less traffic, my awareness and appreciation of the wildlife that lives on our very doorsteps was awakened.”
Matthew’s work has featured in a number of national and international exhibitions including multiple Annual Exhibitions of the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA) and the Royal Ulster Academy (RUA), the Original Print Exhibition of the Royal Society of PainterPrintmakers (RE), the 158th International Print Exhibition of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS), and the 2021 Member’s Juried Exhibition of the Center for Photographic Art, Carmel, USA. An Dáil Cleite / The Feather Assembly will be Matthew’s fourth solo exhibition.
The title of the exhibition is taken from the Seán Mac Fheorais poem, Cága.