Archive for John and Pat Hume Scholarships

The Hume Scholarship Scheme Returns…

Posted in Maynooth with tags , , , , on March 12, 2025 by telescoper

You may recall that I posted about the decision by the Management of Maynooth University to scrap the John and Pat Hume Doctoral Scholarships and followed this up with another post suggesting the decision might be reversed and another pointing out that it hadn’t been and then another at the start of this month (March) pointing out that the scheme was still “paused” for a “review” which was actually completed in January…

Well, all of a sudden there was an announcement yesterday from On High to the effect that the Hume Doctoral Scholarships are back. When I say “back”, it’s not really accurate as the scheme has changed. In the past it was entirely applicant driven: prospective students had to apply with their own project proposals (usually developed with the help of a prospective supervisor). The new scheme is quite the opposite: prospective supervisors have to submit Expressions of Interest (EoIs), outlining possible PhD projects which are then advertised. Students then have to apply.

You can find details of the new scheme here, where it says:

Established in honour of John Hume, an alumnus of Maynooth University, and in recognition of his important contribution to Ireland, the John & Pat Hume Doctoral Awards are offered across all disciplines at Maynooth University. 

No honour to Pat Hume, then.

The investigator-led approach is probably OK for science and engineering disciplines, but does not reflect how postgraduate research happens in the arts and humanities. There will be considerable resentment in some quarters about the way this change has been effected.

It is also worth mentioning that there are only 15 Hume Scholarships for the whole University; that’s just five per faculty. In the case of Science & Engineering that’s about 0.5 per Department. It will be a very competitive!

Having sat on this issue for the best part of two months, the deadline given to supervisors to submit EoIs is next Wednesday, 19th March. The EOI submission form went live today, giving just a week’s notice (Monday 17th is a national holiday and the rest of next week is a Study Break at Maynooth). The management of this whole issue has been very poor indeed, but at least we have some PhD opportunities to advertise. Prospective students can apply from March 20th until April 17th. It’s still too late, of course, as many students will already have accepted places elsewhere. I don’t know what’s been going on behind the scenes, but this is no way to run a University.

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Term goes on…

Posted in Biographical, Education, Maynooth with tags , , , , , on March 2, 2025 by telescoper

Here we are, about to start the fifth week of the Spring semester at Maynooth University. Teaching isn’t going too badly, but I have come to realize that I have a lot of continuous assessment marking to do – classs tests and mini-projects for Computational Physics and assignments for Particle Physics. The numbers of students involved are 32 in the first case and 23 in the second, but I have to do all the corrections myself. Ho hum. Still, I’m enjoying teaching particle physics again after a gap of 15 years or so so I can’t complain about that.

Last week saw some important achievements by research students. Two students in the Department of Physics – one of them supervised by me – submitted their PhD theses last week. Nominations of examiners have to be approved by Faculty and Academic Council but that should be a formality and we then have the viva voce examinations, so the process is not over yet, but the submission of a thesis is a landmark in itself and is to be celebrated.

Something less worthy of celebration is the ongoing chaos at Maynooth over funding for future research students. You may recall that I posted about the terrible decision by the Management of Maynooth University to scrap the John and Pat Hume Doctoral Scholarships and followed this up with another post suggesting the decision might be reversed and another pointing out that it hadn’t been. The Hume scheme has been paused for a “review”. That review was actually completed in January. It is now March and academic staff have still had no word about the status of the Hume Scholarships. Someone is stalling.

I have received a number of enquiries in recent weeks from prospective students about when applications would open as I’m sure is also the case for several of my colleagues. It has been very depressing to have to reply saying that I have no idea. As far as I know the scheme is suspended indefinitely. It’s now effectively too late for this year anyway, as most prospective students will already have lined up offers elsewhere. Only students not able to secure a place elsewhere will be available to apply if and when the scheme does open.

The timing of this is especially sad for the new Department of Physics. Our final-year Theoretical Physics class sizes are larger than ever but the Maynooth is sending them a very clear signal that it doesn’t want any of them to stay here for their PhDs.

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