Tipperary Student Recognised In WIT “Nobel Prize-Like” Awards

The Undergraduate Awards (UA) has announced its 2015 Highly Commended Entrants, including two students from WIT.

The Highly Commended Entrants from WIT are:

Katie Duggan, Waterford, for the Education category; and

Shauna McGrath, Carrick-on-Suir, for the Music, Film, Theatre & Art History category.

The WIT Department of Humanities alumni completed their undergraduate studies this year at WIT and both will graduate at WIT’s Conferring in late October with first class honours.

Cited as the ultimate champion of high-potential undergraduates, and according to the organisers, often referred to as a “junior Nobel Prize”, The Undergraduate Awards is the world’s largest academic awards programme, recognising excellent research and original work across the sciences, humanities, business and creative arts.

The Undergraduate Awards 2015 programme received 5,117 submissions from undergraduates in 255 universities across 39 countries. Highly Commended Entrants are those who were ranked in the top 10% of submissions.

“This is a fantastic achievement for WIT and its undergraduates,” commented UA’s Executive Director Louise Hodgson. “Only the very top students from each university can submit their coursework, and The Undergraduate Awards identifies the very best of the best. With over 5,000 submissions from so many universities this year, the competition was extremely tough.”

The Undergraduate Awards is an academic awards programme that identifies leading creative thinkers through their undergraduate coursework.

Shauna McGrath is from Jonestown, Carrick-on-Suir and attended Scoil Mhuire Greenhill in Carrick-on-Suir, graduating in 2012.

Shauna completed the BA Arts (English & Religious Studies) at WIT earlier this year submitted her final year project, a 5,000 word essay on the recommendation of Dr Una Kealy at WIT’s Department of Creative & Performing Arts. Her paper ‘“Just auhum, allas auhum”: The Nightmare of Ageing in Marina Carr’s On Raftery’s Hill and Woman and Scarecrow’ considers Marina Carr’s lurid depiction and exploration of female ageing.

Shauna says that she is delighted to have been highly commended particularly at her first attempt and because a lot of people who were on shortlist are now doing PhDs.

“I was very shocked, because the email said I was in top 10% of my field and it was unbelievable.”

Shauna is among the first group of BA Arts in English to graduate. Following a year out she plans to do a Masters and wants to stay working academically before going on to do a PhD.

“Overall I really enjoyed it. I liked the small classes, you get to know your lecturers and create contacts which is great especially if you’re academically focused,” she said of her choice of WIT to study Arts.

Katie Duggan’s entry ‘Critically Comparing and Contrasting the Irish and Finnish Approach to Educating and Caring for Children Aged 0-6 Years’ is an essay she wrote in her second year as an undergraduate studying Early Childhood Studies under the supervision of Claire Nolan at WIT’s Department of Applied Arts.

The essay aimed to compare and contrast the Irish and Finnish approaches to educating and caring for young children by analysing secondary data in relation to staff training, service provision, quality standards, pedagogy and curriculum.

Katie, who hails from the Dunmore Road area of Waterford, attended Our Lady of Mercy Secondary School in Waterford. She is delighted to be receiving a first class honours degree in Early Childhood Studies upon graduating and is currently studying a Master of Arts (By Research) in the area of early interventions in to preschooler’s mental health under the supervision of Dr. Katherine Cagney.

“When I found out I had been nominated I was stunned. I had put a lot of work in to my studies at undergraduate level and had always achieved satisfying results but I never believed that my work would be ranked in the top 10% in my field. It was an honour to be highly commended in the education category,” she says.

The next step for both is to secure funding for tickets to the Undergraduate Awards Global Summit in November, subject to funding. Highly Commended Entrants are now invited to meet their fellow awardees at the annual UA Global Summit, taking place in Dublin in November. The Summit will be addressed by the likes of philosopher AC Grayling, physicist Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, photographer Giles Dudley, human genome sequencer Craig Venter, and the world’s youngest professor Dr. Alia Sabur, among many more speakers and facilitators.