DkIT Hosts College Connect Workshops

22 July 2024

DkIT was delighted to recently host three College Connect workshops on campus for Youthreach Dundalk.

The College Connect initiative which DkIT is a committed member of, holds a vision of a student population that reflects and respects the diversity of the community in our region. The mission of College Connect is to provide ease of access to education for all. The organisation is made up of four Irish higher education colleges who are working together, these colleges are in the Midlands, the East, and North Dublin – and are known collectively as MEND. The participating Higher Education Institutes are Dublin City University (DCU, Dundalk Institute of Technology (DkIT), Maynooth University (MU) and TUS – Athlone Campus (TUS).

College Connect is a Higher Education Authority (HEA) funded three-year PATH 3 (Programme for Access to Higher Education) project. This initiative is a new way to support people in the MEND area who are socially and economically disadvantaged. This is sometimes called ‘experiencing multiple marginalisation’. Instead of each college working separately to support these students, the four colleges now work together.

The 3 workshops recently held in DkIT were individually themed, “What’s the Story”, “What it’s like to be a student” and “College and Beyond”. The first workshop called “What’s the Story” investigated why people go to college and the potential benefits. The group got to question and discuss their beliefs around access to college whilst looking at the similarities between going to college and school and the differences.

The second workshop focused on “What it is like to be a student” and the group viewed a student’s timetable and workload. They also discussed what they felt would be their biggest challenges and what they could do to remove these obstacles in order to go to college. This session ended with an in-depth look at all the supports and services that are currently available to students in DkIT.

The final workshop “College and Beyond” highlighted the various courses available to study in DkIT. In groups the participants spent time discussing what type of careers/jobs they associated with each college course and what type of subjects you might study while doing that course. Each individual group member got to focus on courses that specifically interested them, question why they were interested, and then investigate what studying that course might involve.

The Dundalk Youthreach participants gave the following feedback after the workshop “I heard a lot of interesting information”, “It was very motivating and personal” “I enjoyed learning about the courses and about the college and what life might be like as a student”, It was great learning more about how I could go to college and getting the relevant information for me”.