Giving Practical Expression to MTU’s Values
by Pat Culhane, MTU Business Academy Manager
30th November 2022
I started as Munster Technological University’s (MTU) new Business Academy Manager 18 months ago. MTU, itself, is less than two years old. Having been a guest lecturer and research supervisor in, what was, Cork Institute of Technology (CIT) for years, I always got some sense of its caring culture. And it is fantastic to be immersed in this culture now across our campuses.
Here at the MTU Business Academy, we have strong ambitions to grow executive and professional education in Ireland’s South-West region and beyond. We promote and support a portfolio of part‐time programmes across management, leadership, accounting, finance, diversity & inclusion, human resources, data analytics, aviation, marketing, and more – from short certificate courses to a variety of master’s programmes, such as the MBA in Strategy. At surface level, at least, this is what we are doing. What we are doing, though, runs deeper than this.
For decades, both CIT and IT Tralee, as they were, have outstanding records in facilitating part-time business education which continually had direct, positive impacts on practice. The new MTU Business Academy is, in a way, honouring this tradition.
Recently, the inaugural MTU Strategic Plan, 2022-2027 was launched, which is underpinned by our values – being inclusive, engaging, dynamic and bold. The MTU Business Academy strives to give practical expression to the university’s values, thereby contributing to its mission.
Over the past year, I, and colleague, Isabel Rossiter, have paid particular attention to the prospective student experience.
We built our new website – mtubusinessacademy.ie – and run marketing campaigns via digital and traditional channels to promote the portfolio of over 30 part-time programmes.
Gone are the days where “all the information is up there” [on the internet] as being sufficient. People from every walk of life deserve to be easily made aware, should they wish, of the educational offerings we have. And to access course information in a seamless, clear, and respectful way. This is what we strive to facilitate. And this is why our website was recently shortlisted for the ‘Website of the Year’, Cork Chamber Digital Marketing Award.
Accessing key course information (e.g., start-date, fees etc.) is one thing, but we feel that it is better to also give prospective students a deeper sense of who we are and what we are about here in MTU. In doing so, we share experiences of the students, graduates, and lecturers – their stories of and around the courses. Check out the MTU Business Academy YouTube channel for these, such as Margaret Whyte, Programme Manager at Dell Technologies speaking with Caroline O’Reilly, Head of Dept. of Management & Enterprise about completing her Bachelor of Business (Honours) programme. And Patrick Kiely, Sales Teams Leader at Zevas Comminications, chatting with Programme Director, Mike Falahee, about his time as a Higher Diploma in Business in Sales Management student.
What is clear when I listen to these conversations is the genuine, strong relationships between students, graduates and lecturers, well beyond the completion of their programmes.
These relationships are built within MTU’s caring culture – caring for and looking after one another, which is, often, difficult to measure over time. There’s no better proponent of this culture than our President, Professor Maggie Cusack. Her passion for equality, diversity and inclusion is infectious, and you can see her vision taking hold, positively, across the university and beyond.
Building on this, the new MTU Business Academy blog aims to further give practical expression to MTU’s values. It will highlight experiences of outstanding individuals and groups involved in our part-time, executive & professional programmes, emphasising the impact these experiences have on practice. A feature of the blog is that they will also appear in digital audio format, with the blog-post’s author reading it out. This is for people with visual impairments, people who may not have the time (e.g., busy parents) to read it, and those who prefer podcasts.
So here it goes, MTU Business Academy’s blog. We hope you enjoy it.