Three Galway students were among the 30 recipients of awards at Athlone Institute of Technology’s Scholarship of Excellence ceremony this week – the highest number of recipients since the awards’ inauguration four years ago.
The ceremony saw scholarships awarded to Elora Mahon, sports science with exercise physiology, Athenry Vocational School; Colin Donohue, athletic and rehabilitation therapy, St Joseph's College, Garbally, Ballinasloe; and Besliu Steven, applied psychology, Galway Community College.
Scholarships of Excellence are conferred upon first-year students who have distinguished themselves academically at second level, achieving more than 500 points in their Leaving Certificate exams.
Achieving such high results puts such students into the top 20 per cent of CAO applicants and demonstrates a high level of commitment and dedication to their studies.
Congratulating the students on their scholastic achievement, AIT's vice president of academic affairs and registry Frances O’Connell said: “We are delighted to honour the highest number of students receiving a scholarship of excellence award this year. These 30 students have entered a range of degree programmes across all our faculties, a place on which is highly demanded by our CAO applicants annually.
“Thereafter, these awardees will be highly sought as graduates by a wide range of employers and enterprises in the region and beyond or will have the opportunity to continue critical, cutting edge, research in our technological university.
“We look forward to maintaining our recognition of scholarly excellence into the future as a technological university by continuing to formally recognise the high achievement of second-level students from our second level schools right across the midlands and mid-west regions and their performance on their Leaving Certificate examination.”
Scholarship of Excellence recipients receive a €500 bursary and a yearly gym membership, while their associated secondary school is awarded a commemorative plaque with the recipient’s name.
This year marks AIT’s 50th anniversary as an institute, and it currently stands as Ireland’s top-ranked institute of technology, sitting seventh nationally on the higher education leader board of all universities and institutes of technology.
Just last week, AIT was designated as Ireland’s third technological university with its consortium partners, LIT. The new university is expected to be in-situ before the end of the year.
