Dublin City University
A Modern University with a Focus on the Future

Located on an 85 acre campus close to Dublin Airport and the M50 ring road, DCU is home to over 9,500 students engaged in a wide range of undergraduate, postgraduate and research programmes. A thoroughly modern university, students here enjoy purpose built facilities which are being constantly added to in an ambitious capital investment programme. Along with excellent sports, social and residential facilities, as well as adjoining parks, DCU is an ideal setting, highly conducive to study and research.

DCU was established in 1980 to meet the needs of Ireland's rapidly growing and technologically demanding industrial sector. It has provided the University's staff with a "clean slate", allowing them to devise highly relevant and often multi-disciplinary programmes and to employ new approaches to learning. In the area of undergraduate degree programmes, for example, there is a strong emphasis on continual assessment, which helps to ease the strain of exam pressures, and on breaking programmes into modules.

Our teaching and research programmes, therefore, reflect the current and anticipated needs of Ireland's industrial and commercial sectors while at the same time meeting the most rigorous national and international academic standards. This emphasis on relevance and flexibility continues to attract large numbers of high calibre students from throughout Ireland and abroad and to ensure strong demand for DCU graduates in the workplace. Employment statistics for DCU graduates show they fare consistently well above the national average for graduates from all third level institutions combined.

We believe that DCU is uniquely committed to creating an environment which will stimulate entrepreneurial awareness and activity among its students. Our Enterprise Officer co-ordinates a range of activities designed to achieve this, including workshops on how to generate new business ideas and seminars on funding of new ventures. There's also over €2.5 million available in prize money each year in a new business idea competition and a state-of-the-art innovation and enterprise center in the heart of the campus.

Superb facilities

Students at DCU enjoy exceptional state-of-the-art teaching and research facilities. These include the new library, recently completed at a cost of over €22 million, television and sound studios, computer laboratories and networking facilities, language and interpreting laboratories, a video-conferencing suite, print and graphics laboratories. These are in addition to modern research and teaching laboratories in the areas of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering and computer applications.

Other on-campus student facilities are also extensive. They include a large restaurant which provides a wide range of hot and cold meal options, a new €6 million student center, a state-of-the-art sports complex and campus residential accommodation for 522 undergraduate students. New sports pitches and a pavilion have recently been completed as has a large University Arts Centre and a further 430 bedrooms are currently being built.

Other major additions either under construction or at planning stage include a new building for Engineering & Design, Health Science and Research, a new aquatic facility and a building for the National Institute for Cellular Biotechnology, which is located at DCU.