THE founding president of the University of Limerick, Dr Edward Walsh, the most innovative figure in modern Irish higher education, has announced that he will retire from the post at the end of the 1997-98 academic year.
Dr Walsh, who is 57, said yesterday that a number of markers in the development of the university had been reached, allowing him to move on to enterprise and business-oriented activities. The university has exceeded its target of 8,000 students; is close to providing 1,000 student accommodation units on campus; and its £14 million library is close to completion.
Dr Walsh said he would be interested in a move to telecommunications and the media. He has accepted an invitation from the Government to become chairman of the Citywest Science Park in Dublin, which he sees as a "tremendous opportunity" to build on the experience of the National Technological Park on the Limerick campus.
The son of a Cork butcher and cattle-dealer, Dr Walsh studied at UCC before going to the University of Iowa to gain master's and doctoral qualifications in nuclear and electrical engineering.
In 1969, at the age of 29, he arrived in Limerick to become the director of its then still-unnamed institute of higher education. Three years later the first 113 students started on the campus at Plassey with, in his own words, its "limited menu" of engineering, science and business courses.
Those three subjects were to dominate the emerging National Institute of Higher Education. Dr Walsh emphasised the importance of applied knowledge and work experience as well as academic study, and was before his time in building contacts with both local and multinational companies.
He also favoured a strongly European orientation, with Limerick offering the first Irish degree in European Studies. His high-pressure lobbying, for which he was famous, led to Limerick becoming the first university to be financed by the European Investment Bank.
When the new college was put under the NUI umbrella in the mid-1970s, with UCC vetting its courses, open hostilities broke out. There were bitter public arguments with more traditional academics, and protest marches. Limerick students ceremoniously burned their NUI cards.
The dispute was finally resolved when the Limerick and Dublin NIHEs were recognised in legislation in 1980. Full university status followed in 1989, although Dr Walsh was not happy with the new university's legislative underpinning until equality was reached with the traditional universities in this year's Universities Act.
Asked about the highlights of his presidency, Dr Walsh singled out his introduction to Ireland of new US-style concepts such as modular degrees, transferable credits and the placement of students in industry.
Some 1,200 companies - from Boeing in the US to Asahi in Japan - take Limerick students on such placements.
He also mentioned Ireland's first Innovation Centre; the 1,000-seat concert hall; and the acquisition of the largest university art collection outside TCD.
Dr Walsh is also chairman of the International Commission on Technology in Higher Education, the Science, Technology and Innovation Council and the Birr Scientific and Heritage Foundation, as well as being either president, vice-president, chairman or a director of another 12 companies and foundations.
He was founding chairman of the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment, and is a former chairman of the Committee of Heads of Irish Universities and the Shannon Free Airport Development Company.
The Minister for Education, Ms Breathnach, said of Dr Walsh: "When few others could imagine the future needs of the education system, he could see the future coming. He was a man with a vision, but also a man with a gift for very practical application."
The former education minister, Ms Gemma Hussey, said Dr Walsh was "one of the finest educationalists I worked with as minister." He was extraordinarily talented and hard-working and with the courage to challenge sacred cows.
He was an innovator whose "mind was always pushing out the limits. Because he was so pushy, so anxious to make progress, he was the bane of many civil servants' lives.