Trinity College, Dublin

The College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, branded by the board as Trinity College, the University of Dublin, and officially incorporated as Trinity College Dublin (TCD; Irish: Coláiste na Tríonóide, Baile Átha Cliath), is the sole constituent college of the University of Dublin in Ireland. Founded in 1592 by Queen Elizabeth I through a royal charter, it is one of the seven ancient universities of Great Britain and Ireland. As Ireland's oldest university, Trinity contributed to Irish literature during the Victorian and Georgian eras and played a notable role in the recognition of Dublin as a UNESCO City of Literature.

Trinity was established to consolidate the rule of the Tudor monarchy in Ireland, with Provost Adam Loftus christening it after Trinity College, Cambridge. Built on the site of the former Priory of All Hallows demolished by King Henry VIII, it was the Protestant university of the Ascendancy ruling elite for over two centuries, and was therefore associated with social elitism for most of its history. Trinity has three faculties comprising 25 schools, and affiliated institutions include the Royal Irish Academy of Music, the Lir Academy, and the Irish School of Ecumenics. It is a member of LERU and the Coimbra Group. Trinity College Dublin is one of the two sister colleges of both Oriel College, Oxford, and St John's College, Cambridge, and through mutual incorporation, the three universities have retained an academic partnership since 1636.

The college contains several landmarks such as the Campanile, the Graduates Memorial Building, and The Rubrics. The 16th century Trinity library is a legal deposit library that serves both Ireland and the United Kingdom, and has housed the Book of Kells since 1661, the Trinity College harp since 1782, and a copy of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic since 1916. A major destination in Ireland's tourism, the college grounds receive over two million visitors annually, and has been used as a location in movies and novels. Trinity is also home to the world's oldest chairs in French, German, Irish, and English literature, as well as the world's oldest student society, The Hist, which was founded in 1770.

Notable alumni of Trinity include literary figures such as Oscar Wilde, Jonathan Swift, Samuel Beckett, Bram Stoker, Sheridan Le Fanu, Oliver Goldsmith, Thomas Moore, J. M. Synge, William Congreve, and three of the best-selling novelists of all time; writers David Benioff and Sally Rooney; statesman Éamon de Valera; philosophers George Berkeley and Edmund Burke; and recipients of the Nobel Prize and the Booker Prize. Trinity alumni also invented the binaural stethoscope, steam turbine, and hypodermic needle; pioneered seismology, leprosy cure, radiotherapy, and linear algebra; performed the first artificial nuclear transmutation; and coined the term electron. Additionally, the university is associated with two prime ministers, four presidents, and fourteen chief justices of Ireland.

History

First 50 years

A medieval University of Dublin was founded in 1320 under a papal brief issued by Pope Clement V in 1311, and the university maintained an intermittent existence at St. Patrick's Cathedral over the following centuries, but it did not flourish and finally came to an end during the Reformation period. After that, and some debate about a new university at St. Patrick's Cathedral, in 1592 a small group of Dublin citizens obtained a charter by way of letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I, incorporating Trinity College at the former site of the disbanded Augustinian Priory of All Hallows, immediately southeast of the city walls, provided by the Corporation of Dublin.

The college's first provost was the Archbishop of Dublin, Adam Loftus (after whose former college at Cambridge the institution was named), and he was provided with two initial Fellows, James Hamilton and James Fullerton. Two years after the foundation, a few Fellows and students began to work in the new college, which then lay around one small square.

During the initial 50 years following the foundation, the community increased the endowments, considerable landed estates were secured, and new fellowships and academic chairs were established. The books which formed the foundation of the great library were acquired, either by private purchase or donations, a curriculum was devised, and statutes were framed. Trinity College Dublin is one of the two sister colleges of both Oriel College, Oxford, and St John's College, Cambridge, and through mutual incorporation, the three universities have retained an academic partnership since 1636.

18th and 19th centuries

During the 18th century, Trinity College was seen as the university of the Protestant Ascendancy. The Parliament of Ireland, meeting on the other side of College Green, made generous grants for building the College's 18th-century neoclassical Parliament square. The first building of this period was the Old Library, begun in 1712, followed by The Printing House and the Dining Hall. During the second half of the century, the Parliament Square slowly emerged. The great building drive was mostly completed by the early 19th century with the inauguration of the Botany Bay, the square which derives its name in part from the herb garden it once contained. Today, the square contains Trinity College's own Botanic Gardens. Between the 18th and 19th centuries, Trinity became home to the world's oldest chairs in French (1776), German (1776), Irish (1840), and English literature (1867).

The 19th century was also marked by important developments in the professional schools. The law school was reorganized after the middle of the century. Medical studies had been taught in the college since 1711, but it was only after the establishment of the school on a firm basis by legislation in 1800, and under the inspiration of one Macartney, that it was in a position to play its full part, with such teachers as Graves and Stokes, in the great age of Dublin medicine. The Engineering School was established in 1842, and was among the first of its kind in Ireland and Britain.

Buildings and grounds

The main site of Trinity College has been described as retaining a tranquil collegiate atmosphere despite its location in the centre of a capital city, and despite it being one of Dublin's, and Ireland's, most prominent tourist attractions, with more than 2 million visitors annually. This is, in large part, due to the enclosed and compact design of the college, with the main buildings looking inwards, largely arranged in quadrangles (called squares), and the existence of only a few public entrances. In addition to the main site of the college, Trinity owns a number of buildings nearby in central Dublin, as well as an enterprise centre near Ringsend and a botanic garden in Dartry. The college has been used as a location in numerous movies and novels.

Patrick Wyse Jackson, curator of the Geological Museum at Trinity, assessed the architectural merits of the entrance and entry buildings in 1993:

"The imposing entrance to Trinity College, consisting of a central area flanked by two square pavilions, was built in the 1750s of Leinster Granite from Golden Hill, Co Wicklow, and Portland Stone was used for the architraves, swags, and Corinthian pilasters and half-columns... The masonry cost £27,000. Between 1990 and 1992 the central portion of the building was cleaned. Passing through the gateway one walks over a wooden floor of interlocking hexagonal setts (similar in pattern to the basaltic Giant's Causeway), and into Parliament Square, which is dominated by the identical Corinthian fronts, in Leinster Granite and Portland Stone, of the Chapel on the left and the Examination Hall on the right. Further into the square on the left-hand side is the Dining Hall, restored after a fire in 1984. For reasons unknown, until 1870 the clock in the portico was set fifteen minutes after Dublin time."

The hexagonal setts are made of oak, chosen for its noise absorption qualities, and was a common form of paving in the forecourts of hospitals.

Main site

The main college grounds are approximately 190,000 m2 (47 acres), including the Trinity College Enterprise Centre some distance away, and buildings provide around 200,000 m2 of floor space, ranging from works of older architecture to more modern buildings. The college's main entrance is on College Green, and its grounds are bounded by Nassau and Pearse Streets. The college is bisected by College Park, which has both a cricket and a rugby pitch.

The college's western side is older, featuring the Campanile, as well as many fine buildings, including the Chapel and Examination Hall (designed by Sir William Chambers), Graduates Memorial Building, Museum Building, and The Rubrics (the sole surviving section of the original 17th-century quadrangle), all spread across the college's five squares. An organ case held within the Examination Hall was noted by Dublin Tourism to be the oldest existing Irish made organ case, reputed to have been built in 1684 by Lancelot Pearse. The gilt oak chandelier which hangs in the Examination Hall was taken from the old Irish House of Commons in nearby College Green.

Charter

Trinity is governed in accordance with amended versions of the Letters Patent of Elizabeth I, as well as various other statutes. On several occasions, the founding Letters Patent were amended by later monarchs, such as James I in 1613, and most notably Charles I in 1637 - the latter increased the number of fellows from seven to 16, established the Board – initially consisting of the Provost and the seven senior Fellows – and reduced the panel of Visitors in size. Further major changes were made in the reign of Queen Victoria, and more again by the Oireachtas, including in 2000.

Organisation

The college, officially incorporated as The Provost, Fellows and Scholars of the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, is headed by the Provost. Linda Doyle has been Provost since August 2021.

The terms "University of Dublin" and "Trinity College" are generally considered synonymous for all practical purposes. Trinity was originally founded using the models of the University of Oxford and University of Cambridge in England, both of which are collegiate universities that each comprise several quasi-independent colleges. In one sense, the University of Dublin exists only as a degree-granting institution, with the college providing the education and research; Trinity College was the only college to ever be established within the university.

Governance

The body corporate of the college consists of the provost, fellows and scholars. The college is governed according to its statutes, which are, in effect, the College Constitution. Statutes are of two kinds, those which originally could only be amended by Royal Charter or Royal Letters Patent, and which now can only be changed by an Act of the Oireachtas, and those which can be changed by the board but only with the Fellows' consent.

When a change requires parliamentary legislation, the customary procedure is that the Board requests the change by applying for a Private Bill. For this, the whole Body Corporate's consent is needed, with Scholars voting alongside Fellows. An example of a change that requires parliamentary legislation is an alteration to the composition of the Board. This last happened when the governance of the college and university was revised and restated by an Act of the Oireachtas in 2000.

Provost

The Provost serves a ten-year term and is elected by a body of electors consisting essentially of all full-time academic staff and a very small number of students. Originally the Provost was appointed for life. While the Provost was elected by the Fellows at the start, the appointment soon became a Crown one, reflecting the growing importance of the college and of the office of provost, which became both prestigious and well-paid. But as time passed, it became customary that the appointments were only made after taking soundings of college opinion, which meant mostly the views of the Board.

With the establishment of the Free State in 1922, the power of appointment were passed to the Irish Government. It was agreed that when a vacancy occurred the college would provide a list of three candidates to the Government, from which the choice would be made. The college was allowed to rank the candidates in order of preference, and in practice, the most preferred candidate was always appointed. Now the Provost, while still formally appointed by the Government, is elected by staff plus student representatives, who gather in an electoral meeting and vote by exhaustive ballot until a candidate obtains an absolute majority; the process takes a day.

Academic profile

Since considerable academic restructuring in 2008, the college has three academic faculties:

• Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences
• Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics
• Health Sciences

Each faculty is headed by a dean (there is also a Dean of Postgraduate Studies), and faculties are divided into schools, of which there were 24 as of 2021.

Academic year

The academic year is divided into three terms:

• Michaelmas term lasts from October to December
• Hilary term from January to March
• Trinity term from April to June

Each term is separated by a vacation, and whilst teaching takes place across all three terms in postgraduate courses, for undergraduate programmes, teaching is condensed within the first two terms since 2009, with each term consisting of a 12-week period of teaching known as the Teaching Term. These are followed by three revision weeks and a four-week exam period during the Trinity Term.

Internally at least, the weeks in the term are often referred to by the time elapsed since the start of the teaching Term: thus the first week is called "1st week" or "week 1" and the last is "Week 12" or "12th week".

The first week of Trinity Term (which marks the conclusion of lecturing for that year) is known as Trinity Week; normally preceded by a string of balls, it consists of a week of sporting and academic events. This includes the Trinity Ball and the Trinity Regatta (a premier social event on the Irish rowing calendar held since 1898), the election of Scholars and Fellows, and a college banquet.

Second-level programmes

Since 2014, Trinity College's science department has established and operated a scheme for second-level students to study science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

The system, similar to DCU's CTYI programme, encourages academically gifted secondary students with a high aptitude for the STEM subjects, and was named the Walton Club in honour of Ernest Walton, Ireland's first and only Nobel laureate in Physics. The programme was centred upon a pedagogic principle of "developing capacity for learning autonomy".

The educators in the programme are PhD students in the college, who impart an advanced, undergraduate-level curriculum to the students. The club was set up with a specific ethos around the mentoring of STEM subjects, and not as a grinds school. The scheme has been immensely successful and undergone growth in scope and scale year on year. It has also diversified beyond its traditional weekly club structure, running camps during school holidays to offer an opportunity to study STEM to those unable to join the club.

Эх сурвалж: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)