UL Celebrates 40 years of Innovation with Alumni and Friends in China
Posted on: Wednesday, 2rd April 2013
As part of the UL40 celebrations, Professor Paul McCutcheon, Vice President Academic and Registrar, hosted over 70 alumni, university partners and friends of UL at two very special events held in Beijing and Shanghai. A delegation of UL’s International Education Division was also in attendance at both events.
China is now home to many Irish and Chinese graduates of UL. Alumni are dispersed throughout China in cities that include Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou and X’ian. UL Graduates are employed across a wide variety of sectors such as education, finance and engineering. Graduates who were in attendance at the Beijing alumni event included Diarmuid Sheehan (B.Ed. Materials and Construction Technology, ‘09) who is currently teaching at Yew Chung International School of Shanghai, Declan Costelloe (B.A. New Media and English) who is teaching English at Wall Street English in Beijing, and Harriet Wu, Programme Manager of the Global Academic Pathway Foundation Programme for the School of Continuing Education, Tsinghua University in Beijing.
The alumni event in Shanghai provided a great opportunity to catch up with graduates such as Dr. Wei Qian (PhD Economics, ‘99) Managing Partner of New Tigers Technologies in Suzhou, and Tienan Zhao (M.Eng. ‘91) Chief Representative at Trio Motion Technology in Shanghai.
The Third Level Graduate Scheme, offered by the Irish government, allows international graduates the opportunity to look for employment in Ireland. Graduates such as Yang Ming and Peng Yang availed of this opportunity. Yang Ming is currently based between China and Ireland and works in Market Research and System Development for Adare-based Company Samco Ltd. Peng Yang worked at KPMG in Dublin for two years before returning to Beijing. He is now working as an Audit Senior Associate at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Beijing.
Representatives from Tongji University and the Irish Consul General Austin Gormley also attended the Shanghai event.
Both Professor Paul McCutcheon and Irish Consul General Austin Gormley spoke about the importance of building relationships between Ireland and China.