FREE STUDENT NEWSPAPER
VOL 13, ISSUE 10
27 FEB 2012
NUIG President Responds to Quinn's Claims About Evaluation in the University System By Colette Sexton The NUI Galway President has rejected claims that students should have sole responsibility for the evaluation of their lecturers. At an event in the University of Limerick earlier this month the Minister for Education, Ruairi Quinn, said that the only people who can tell the HEA and the Department of Education whether lecturers are doing their jobs are the students. NUI Galway President, James Browne, disagreed with these claims, saying that evaluation must come from other areas also. “Ultimately there has to be also an evaluation by, let’s say, professional bodies who have some sense of what should be in
curriculum because they are looking at the graduates that emerge from it. Employers have a right to give feedback, the academics themselves have a right to look at international experience to see what’s being taught elsewhere,” according to the president, “there are lots of different sources of feedback. Students are one, albeit very important part of that but not the only part of it.” Dr Browne agreed that the evaluation of lecturers by students is significant and that University managers are keen to introduce this into the culture of third level institutions in Ireland. “The Minister for Education sets the tone and I think he is right to set the tone in terms of the need
for feedback and the need for students to be demanding and for lecturers to be responsive,” Mr Browne said, “...if the student leaders carry though in the individual colleges I think they will find that the great majority of University managers want to see this.” The importance of student representation was emphasised by the President. “The Class Representative group which the Students’ Union manages … are the direct contact into the students,” according to Dr Browne, “it is important that they would encourage students to demand the right to give feedback and then the responsible use of it when they have the opportunity.” Student feedback is
beginning to be imbedded in the culture of NUI Galway. Staff members applying for promotions must show they are getting student feedback and that they are taking their teaching seriously. The president said in the future, he would like to see each lecturer allocating a certain time that students can come to them for help or to ask questions. He does not believe that a lecturer’s job is solely to turn up on time and to deliver a lecture. Dr Browne said: “I would like to see every lecturer saying to his or her class ‘if you need to talk to me I am available whenever, my office is open at certain times to you’.”
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Huntington’s Disease Breakthrough at NUIG By Sinead Healy Researchers at NUI Galway have made a significant discovery in the treatment of Huntington’s disease. They found experimental drugs that could be developed as a way to slow the progression of this disorder. These findings were published last week in the intentional online journal PLoS Biology. They do not represent a cure, but rather open up a new possibility on how disease progression might be controlled. Huntington’s disease is a devastating inherited disorder in which cells in certain parts of the brain die away. It progressively impairs a person’s ability to think, talk and walk. Affecting over 100,000
people worldwide, Huntington’s typically appears during middle age and is always fatal. At present, there is no cure or way to slow disease progression. Available treatments are designed only to manage symptoms. An inherited mutation causing too many repeats of the DNA ‘letters’ CAG in a particular gene underlies this disease. The number of repeats is thought to affect how quickly a person’s symptoms will progress. In the Centre for Chromosome Biology at NUI Galway, Prof. Robert Lahue’s research team found that specific enzymes called histone deacetylase complexes (HDACs) are involved in the expansion of CAG repeats. Furthermore, by
blocking these enzymes in human cells in the lab with experimental drugs, they dampened down the expansion. This discovery suggests that inhibiting HDAC action slows down the mutation process and CAG expansions. Theoretically, slowing down these expansions would delay the disease. A key finding of this study was to pinpoint specific HDACs for selective blocking. Several laboratories in the US are currently testing new HDAC inhibitors in the laboratory for efficacy and safety. Prof. Lahue intends to collaborate with them to find out if dampening down these specific HDACs can have the beneficial side-effect of slowing CAG expansions
The winners and organisers of the Society Bursary Awards at the ceremony on 22 February. Photo by Joe Hyland, PhotoSoc. in the brain itself. One particular drug is already in preclinical trials in the US for another aspect of Huntington’s disease. Although excited about this discovery, Prof. Lahue was keen not to raise false
hopes emphasising that the HDAC inhibitors are still experimental and their development to potential drugs is still some way off. This study, which used yeast and human cells growing in the lab, was
funded by Science Foundation Ireland. Michael Conneally, originally from Galway and now US based, was credited with identifying the mutated Huntington gene in 1993.