Donal Fitzpatrick wins Chancellor's Medal -
Postgraduate Award for 1999

The Chancellor's Medal is the University's principal award for merit. It is presented to the most outstanding student, at both undergraduate and postgraduate level, for both academic achievement and contribution to the extracurricular and social life of the University.

Donal graduated with a BSc in Computer Applications from DCU in 1995, and decided to pursue postgraduate research. Since then, he has gained a reputation in Ireland and beyond for scholarship, innovation and motivation.

Skier, cyclist, sailor, musician, hill-walker, martial artist, soccer fanatic and raconteur, Donal is well known to all sectors of the DCU community. So he should be - he's been here for eight years.

Picture shows Donal Fitzpatrick with his mother and father Donal and Margaret Fitzpatrick

Donal's personality is remarkable. He was the most sociable and outgoing of our postgraduate students, and the social life of the department revolved around him. He is always ready to help others, and his contributions to DCU and the world outside have been considerable. His prodigious organisational abilities have galvanised the University Folk Group for several years, and as Chairman and musical director since 1996 Donal has consistently taken them to the finals of the society awards. His contribution has been recognised by two Students Union  awards for Best Individual, a unique achievement.

Donal's musical abilities are not limited to choirs and orchestras, or to the piano and the conductor's baton. He is also one of Dublin's finest traditional flute players, welcomed in salubrious watering-holes throughout the County, and he is much in demand as a keyboards player for ceilis and set dancing.

Donal has been a valuable resource for the University chaplains too. At times of celebration and of sadness, he could be relied upon to produce appropriate music, either from his own repertoire or from his vast army of friends and acquaintances.

Picture show Sister Bernadette McDonagh with Donal

In the School of Computing, Donal has been treated as an unofficial Disabilities Officer since he was an undergrad. He has spent time tutoring, mentoring and advising disabled computing students on everything from programming languages to printers. Donal is the biggest single factor in the success of disabled students at computing in DCU, because Donal was its first blind graduate. He solved the problems, he stretched the system, bent and maybe even rewrote the rules, to achieve his goal. Many staff and students are grateful to him for what he made possible. For the past two years, Donal has been a member of the Executive of the National Council for the Blind in Ireland, extending his expertise to an even wider circle.

Donal's blindness seems to have spurred him to attempt things that most of us only dream of. In contrast to his caring side, he has been careless of life and limb (his own and other people's) in skiing, cycling and scrambling up and down mountains. He recently drove a racing car round Mondello park, and claims he didn't hit anything. I'm not sure the National College of Ireland were aware of that when they appointed him as an Assistant Lecturer, but I'm sure he'll be a credit to them and to DCU.