Objective 5
Attract and retain an excellent and diverse cohort of students, faculty and staff
UCD values excellence and understands that excellent performance requires excellent people working in a supportive environment. Diversity, in all its forms, cultivates the exchange and development of ideas, an experience and understanding of cultural differences at all levels and a challenge to the status quo. The UCD community values these concepts and believes that diversity fosters excellence. Over the period of this strategy, UCD will continue to attract excellent and diverse students, faculty and staff from around Ireland and around the world, and will put in place appropriate support measures to develop and retain the members of our community.
UCD has the largest number and percentage of international students among the Irish universities and compares well with leading international universities for international faculty. We see continued growth in the numbers and quality of our international students and faculty as being a critical element in the development of the UCD community and in fostering excellence in our educational and research programmes.
In support of this goal, we will work to further raise the profile of UCD nationally and internationally. We will review our student recruitment programmes to ensure emphasis on excellence and widening participation and set annual targets for ensuring diversity in student recruitment. We will review our staff recruitment procedures to ensure that internationally benchmarked excellence is the standard we set for all of our recruitment activities.
UCD has been in the vanguard of supporting students from socio-economically disadvantaged communities and students with disabilities. UCD also has a long tradition of encouraging mature students and we value in particular the contribution they make to the dynamic of our classes. We will continue to grow this valuable part of our community.
To ensure we retain our excellent and diverse cohort of students through to graduation, working in partnership with our various stakeholders, we will ensure that we have in place a comprehensive suite of student support measures and that our student services are world-class.
To ensure we retain our excellent and diverse faculty and staff, we will put in place a comprehensive performance development programme, having undertaken a full review of our promotion procedures, training processes and leave provisions. We will work to ensure that all members of faculty and staff are enabled to achieve their full potential and are appropriately rewarded for their contribution to our mission, vision and community, and together, we will promote gender balance and equality of opportunity among students and employees of the University. Furthermore, we will engage with leading edge national and international diversity programmes to ensure that we achieve the benefits of diversity throughout the University and at all levels of leadership.
Success will be measured by the quality and diversity of student admissions which will be measured by including students' prior educational achievement, progression success and other measures of student quality and success, together with measures of gender, race, nationality and socio-economic disadvantage. Corresponding measures will be put in place to evaluate the quality and diversity of faculty and staff recruitment, and the career development and retention of faculty and staff.
