Griffith College Dublin

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Griffith College Dublin
An Coláiste Uí Ghríofa, Baile Átha Cliath


Established	1974
Type:	private
President:	Diarmuid Hegarty
Students:	8,500
Location	Dublin, Ireland
Campus:	Urban, 7 acres
Affiliations:	HETAC, HECA
Website:	http://www.gcd.ie

Griffith College in Dublin (GCD), (Irish: An Coláiste Uí Ghríofa) is a private college located on South Circular Road in Dublin, Ireland. The college was established in 1974 and as of 2002 has 18,500 students studying on a full and part-time basis. The college runs full time courses in design, business, journalism, law, computing and has a range of part time courses available. The college offers professional accountancy programmes for ACCA, ACA, CPA and IATI. The college is owned by Mr Diarmuid Hegarty who purchased the former Griffith Barracks premises from the government in 1992 at a cost of IR£2,000,000. As of 2007, it is largest private educational institute in Ireland.

Many of the undergraduate degrees require application via the Central Applications Office application system. Most of the college's undergraduate and postgraduate courses are accredited by the Higher Education and Training Awards Council, some of its professional law courses are accredited by Nottingham Trent University, England and these are recognised by the King's Inns for entry to its Degree of Barrister-at-Law which is a professional qualification for practice at the bar.

The Griffith College Campus is also the home of the Leinster School of Music & Drama, established in 1904. The Leinster School offer theory classes in Music & Drama to groups and individuals subject to availability. The Leinster School is also an examining body and have a Theory Examinations Syllabus with levels from Preparatory to Grade 8. The application form and all syllabuses are available on their website.

1 Academic
- 1.1 New Courses Starting 2007
- 1.2 International University Collaborations
2 Student activities
3 Facilities & Services
4 Graduation
- 4.1 Professional Excellence Award
- 4.2 Distinguished Fellowship Award
5 Expansion
6 Picture gallery
7 External links

Griffith College operates a semesterized academic year, with two semesters from September to January and January to June.

The Clock Tower, Daniel O'Connell Building

The College is divide into a number of faculties:

The School of Professional Accountancy
Business
Law
Computing Science
Journalism & Media Communications
Design
Graduate Business School
The Professional Law School

Griffith College also provides a number of training courses in CAD(City & guilds), HRM(ICM), Psychology(ICM), Supply Chain Management(IIPMM) and other courses in Administration and Office Skills, JEB Teachers Diploma and ECDL/EUCIP.

The Professional Law School runs courses for the examinations for entry to the Law Society of Ireland, King's Inns, New York State Board of Law Examiners and the California State Bar Association. The college also runs the IILEX Diploma in Legal Studies. The IILEX and FE1 courses are available via distance learning and at regional locations in Limerick, Waterford and Galway as well as in the Cork in Griffith College Cork. In 2006 Griffith College, FE1 course students, won eight of the Law Society’s nine entrance examination first-place prizes, and in the past 6 years Griffith Students have won 30 of the Law Society FE1 prizes.

A number of new courses are Starting in Griffith College in 2007, BA in Photographic Media(HETAC), Diploma in Photography(HETAC), BA in Fashion Design and BA(Hons)in Fashion Design(HETAC). The School of Professional Accountancy started a new Full time ACCA programme and a new formats to the MBA programmes begin at the Graduate Business School.

Griffith College, is partnered with a number of International Universities, in Norway, Germany, Italy, Spain, USA, Mexico, Brazil, India, Korea and China. Also a number of students participate in the EU educational exchange Erasmus programme/Socrates programme

The Students' Union's is the representative body for all Griffith College students. Comprising of Students Union President elected annually by the college students, assisted by a Sports, Welfare and Societies officer and a welfare officer. There is also a Students Liaison Officer who assists students settling into college.

Sabbatical Executive Officers (Directly Elected by the Union Membership)
	2001/02	2002/03	2003/04	2004/05	2005/06	2006/07	2007/08
President	Elaine Ready	Paul Walsh	Shauna Tilley & Stephen Stokes	Shane McDonell	Killian Faughnan	Shane McCrann	Peter Molloy
Deputy President	(No such office)			Iain O'Connor	Michael O'Riordan	Tomas Moore	Paddy Burke
Sports & Societies	Paul Walsh	Philip Connor	Stephen Stokes	Iain O'Connor	Michael O'Riordan	Tomas Moore & Aimee Sullivan	Paddy Burke
Entertainments	(no such office)	Keith Gavaghan	Shauna Tilley	Shane McDonell	Killian Faughnan	Shane McCrann	Peter Molloy
Welfare	Elaine Ready	(No such office)				Ciara White	Ciara Healy
Student Development Officer. Non Sabbatical Position Full-time SU manager	Michelle Banks	Ray Egan	Barry Stokes				Paul Mullally

There are a variety of clubs and societies in the college including:- Rugby, Chess, Soccer, Gaelic Football, Debating, Poker, Pool, Paintball, Basketball, Visual Communication & Art, and Toastmasters.

During the spring students from the Journalism & Media Faculty operate a radio station GriffFm. The radio station is licenced by the BCI to broadcast for a couple of weeks, this gives students real experience to demonstrate their journalistic, presentation, interviewing and radio production skills. The station broadcasts on 94.3 FM and is also relayed online on the college website. GriffFM is broadcasting from the 29th of January to the 11th of February 2007.

There are a number of college publications in GCD, the most prominent of which is the student union magazine Griffiti. It is published every month of the academic year, and contains articles and stories which focus on general news, opinion and goings-on around the campus. Students of all disciplines are free to submit articles. The magazine's management dictates that the editor changes every academic year. Launched in 2004 the publication will be presided over by its fifth editor Katie Roche in August 2007 for the 07/08 academic year.

Roll call of Griffiti editors and staff
	2004/05	2005/06	2006/07	2007/08
Editors	Nicola Reddy / Cian Hallinan	John McSweeney	Celia Zwahlen	Katie Roche
Chief Writer(s)	(No such position)		Katie Roche / Bryan Cahill	Jane Ward

The Circular is the newspaper published by Journalism students, where examples of student work get published. The paper won the award for Small College Publication of the Year at the annual Oxygen Student Media (sMedia) Awards in 2005 and 2006, while Griffiti won in 2007. The Griff, The Griffan and 90 Degrees are other student publications which have been produced by degree, higher diploma and Print journalism students.

Glór uí Ghríofa (The Voice of Griffith) is the official college newsletter outlining college news, developments and campus life.

The college facilities include, Library, Common room, Computer Laboratories (248 workstations across 10 labs), CAD Lab, Photography Lab, Fitness Room, Sound Studios, Shop and Bar & Restaurant. The college also offers students a career advice service there is also a professional counsellor off campus providing an advice and counselling for personal and non academic issues. Wireless (WiFi 802.11g) access to the college network is also available for laptop users. For some of the courses (such as FE1 Course ) students can view archives of lectures on DVD in a designated DVD viewing room.

The College Library provides research and study facilities to students, the library holds an extensive range of set course texts and background reading material for all college programmes. Library texts are easily accessed via the online Library catalogue. As well as the large range of up to date texts we have online books. Online books are a quick way to access the most up to date computing references. Texts not held on site can be ordered through our inter-library loans service. Students also have access to over 15,000 journals, a growing catalogue of multi-media information resources, including CDs, CD-ROMS, VHS, DVD and music scores, and a comprehensive array of on-line databases including BSP, ABI-Inform, Westlaw.uk, Lexis-Nexis, Hein Online, Westlaw.ie, Emerald, Research for Libraries, Access Asia, Datamonitor, ERIC (fulltext), Communication and Mass Media Complete, Sage Communications, Avery Architectural Index, Design and Applied Arts Index, the ACM.Digital Library (plus SIGs), and Safari Books Online (technical e-books). Online material is available through moodle, to use moodle students must be fully registered students of the college.

AFP Building/Conference Centre and Halls of Residence

Griffith Halls of Residence is student accommodation located on the grounds of Griffith College Dublin, who offer a range of one, two and three bedroom apartments equipped with study area, Cable TV, Cooking facilities and Internet connectivity. Apartments are available to students of all colleges in Dublin and bookable for a Semester, Academic Year, or during the summertime for summer language schools and study abroad programmes.

AFP Building/Conference Centre and Halls of Residence

Griffith Conference Center is located on the college campus and provides modern conference facilities for a variety of uses such as Seminars, AGMs, Meetings, Examinations, TV Studio, Lectures, Training, Product Launches, Corporate events, Summer Schools, Concerts, Recitals, etc. The facilities include a 575 seat Auditorium, as well as smaller Suites and Rooms for hire. The Buildings were officially opened by An Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in September 2006.

The college graduation ceremonies take place each November in the Conference Center. In previous years the ceremony took place in Royal Hospital Kilmainham, and St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. In attendance are graduands their families, and friends, representatives of Validation Bodies, as well as political and diplomatic dignitaries.

The College awards its Professional Excellence Award to those who have achieved excellence in their careers, at the annual graduation ceremony and the recipient is invited to address the graduation. Recipients include Richard Roche, Dr. Veronica Dunne and in 2007 journalist, broadcaster and historian, John Bowman.

The college awards its Distinguished Fellowship award during the ceremony, to recognise individuals who have made a significant business or public service contribution on an international scale, past recipients include Edward Haughey (Lord Ballyedmond), Gillian Bowler, Dr. Martin Naughton and Nobel Laurette John Hume. At the 2007 ceremony President of Ireland, Mary McAleese was awarded the Distinguished fellowship award where on acceptance she addressed the graduation ceremony.

Griffith College has expanded beyond its base in Dublin.

Having previously established its Professional Accountancy Programmes in Cork in 2000 offering training in ACCA, CIMA, CPA and IATI, Griffith College acquired Skerry’s College Cork in 2005, the college runs a variety of full and part time courses in Business, Law, Media & Communications, Design, Secretarial and Office skills.

In 2006 Griffith College opens in Limerick with the acquisition of the Mid West Business Institute creating Griffith College Limerick.

There are also two campuses outside Ireland, in Karachi and Moscow respectively, the Moscow campus provides accountancy training.