113 graduands and their families attended the annual Business Information Systems (BIS) Graduation Breakfast in UCC on Wednesday 21st October ahead of their conferring following completion of the four year degree programme.
Every year BIS hosts such a Graduation Breakfast which recognises the hard work and achievements of the graduands over the course of their college career. David Merriman, Chairman of the BIS Advisory Board welcomed guests, including special guest John Shea, Vice President of Eaton Vance Management and Chief Information Officer of Eaton Vance Corp, one of the organisations in the USA that welcomes many BIS students each year on their six month work placement.
David Merriman introduced guest speaker Chris Kennedy, CTO and Founder at Trustev, who himself graduated from BIS in 2007.Chris addressed the graduands, sharing his story of how he founded what is now one of the world’s leading online fraud prevention technology providers; as well as offering advice and wishing them success in their careers, encouraging them to “just do it” and don’t be the one in five years’ time saying “I could have done that”.
Each year a number of sponsored awards are presented to graduands at the Graduation Breakfast. These include the “Spirit of BIS” Award which was presented to Kate Keane by Stephen O’Brien, Senior Consultant IT, Morgan McKinley; and the “Connected Creativity” Award which went to Niamh Twomey and was presented by Fergal Murray, Regional Business Development, Dell.
Regina Murray, Senior Director – Education, Microsoft Western Europe, Microsoft, Ireland presented a number of Microsoft sponsored awards. Stephen Connolly and Kevin Quinlan won the BIS .NET Project Award; while Shane O’Shea won the Microsoft Entrepreneur Award; with the BIS .NET Project of the Year Award going to Owen O’Doherty.
Marcelle McAuliffe, Manager, Bank of Ireland (UCC) presented the BOI sponsored BIS Citizen Award to Dylan O’Brien and Clara O’Connor, and Bank of Ireland Most Innovative Project Award to Shane McCarthy. The Bank of Ireland Student of the Year Award went to Clare O’ Loughlin
Addressing invited guests, Professor Ciaran Murphy, Head of BIS said “A special mention must be given to the parents of all our graduands for the support and encouragement they give their sons and daughters through their BIS journey, and are here today to see the fruits of their labour. Upon completion of the four year degree programme, which covers a broad mix of business and technology-based subjects, our graduates are equipped to work both in Ireland and internationally, and we know they will do BIS and their families proud on the next step of their journey.”
Anyone interested in learning more about BIS (CK 203) in UCC can find out more at http://bis.ucc.ie/.