Dean of Students’ Roll of Honour Recognises Student Learning Through Volunteering

Posted on: 20 April 2012

More than 450 Trinity College Dublin students were commended at the recent Dean of Students’ Roll of Honour ceremony for their participation in extracurricular, voluntary activity both inside and outside the College.  The Roll of Honour aims to recognise the learning outside the classroom which students gain through extra-curricular voluntary activity.

Minister for Children and Youth Affairs Frances Fitzgerald TD, Provost Patrick Prendergast and Dr Amanda Piesse, Dean of Students, with some of the student volunteers being honoured.

Speaking at the event the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs, Ms Frances Fitzgerald TD said: “The level of commitment shown by you over the course of the year in addition to your studies and other commitments is a truly impressive achievement and one of which you should be immensely proud, just as you should be proud of the positive impact that you have had on your communities. The individual decisions that you have made in giving your time and skills are really decisions to participate in the future of your communities and are the essence and foundation of democracy.”

Dean of Students Dr Amanda Piesse continued: “Getting you all together today to articulate and to demonstrate and to mark your contribution to this is in large part an acknowledgement of the part that you, as individual students, play in helping to develop our collegiate impact on both the local and the global stage. You are, quite simply, the lifeblood of the College.”

Trinity College students engage in a great variety of voluntary causes ranging from the travellers’ rights organisations, to debate coaching, to development work overseas.  In applying for the Roll of Honour, students were required to critically reflect on their expectations and experience and articulate the learning acquired through their voluntary activity. Their activity was then signed off on by an appropriate representative of the volunteer programme.  These activities benefit the student in terms of confidence, knowledge and transferable skills, while the community gains additional resources through the creativity, skills and positive attitude brought by student volunteers. Voluntary activity by students also has the potential to develop civic-mindedness and a lifelong commitment to community service.

Minister Fitzgerald’s support of the Dean of Students’ Roll of Honour serves to underline how students can positively impact on the community through active participation in unpaid formal and non-formal, social, cultural, political, inter-personal and caring activities.  At the event each student received a certificate in acknowledgement of their efforts.