Douglas Community School past pupil Kieran O’Callaghan, who did his Leaving Certificate in DCS in 2003, graduated in Mechanical Engineering from CIT. As part of VisionRE of the Cork Institute of Technology, Kieran has won the Cruikshank Most Technically Innovative Project first place award in the Enterprise Ireland/Invest Northern Ireland Young Entrepreneur of the Year Competition 2009. They received a First Place Award of €7,500, and a €20,000 Intellectual Property/Patent Consultancy Award.

Pictured receiving their award for “Terrain / Obstacle Detection System for the Visually Impaired”, Kieran is standing between Etaion Ni hAilpin and Norma Downing (both Business Administration, CIT).

Thanks in part to Kieran’s contribution, CIT went on to win the Island-Wide Innovation Award.

Owen Casey

A group of 20 Transition Year students have just started a module in Web Design in the school. Run by four past pupils who are currently in University College Cork; the Douglas Community School students are learning how to write HTML code. They will each design their own webpage with pictures, links, music and videos. Watch this space, as we hope to post the best ones here! They will also have the opportunity to visit UCC to use the computer labs there, and to show their webpages to the head of the computer studies department.

The past pupils of Douglas Community School who are running these classes are Eoin Coakley, Niall Browne, Aaron Sammon and Conor Hodnett, who are all thoroughly enjoying their return to their alma mater. They feel that they would have greatly appreciated the opportunity to participate in a class like this when they were in Transition Year, and hope that the module may spark an interest in programming for some of the students involved. They hope to see some of our present Transition Years studying Business Information Systems (BIS) or Computer Science in UCC in the years to come!

For those interested in web design, a very useful website is: www.w3schools.com.

C Ó Conaill

DCS past pupil Kieran O’Callaghan is heading to Kansas City, Missouri, USA later in the month to compete in the final of the Global Student Entrepreneur Awards.  He is in a short-list of just 30 finalists out of a nominated 1,500 students worldwide.

Craig Murphy, a recent graduate of Douglas Community School and now a freshman at Iona College in New York, placed 22^nd in his first collegiate competition last weekend. Murphy, from Togher AC in Cork and grandson of the famous Kerry footballer Jas Murphy, was fifth man for the Gaels covering the 8-kilometre course in 24:08 at the Paul Short Invitational held at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania on 2 October 2009.  Iona placed second in the meet with 55 points, 11 points adrift of the winners, Indiana University. This was an outstanding run for Craig as it was his first race of the season with all his attention focused on the NCAA Cross-Country which will be held in Terre Haute Indiana in November. Craig was a star here in Ireland at schools level winning All-Ireland titles on the track and over cross-country as well as representing Ireland on numerous occasions. All at Douglas Community School would like to wish him the very best of luck in the future.

The staff of Douglas Community School invites all enterprising past pupils to talk to our business and Leaving Certificate Vocational Programme Classes.

Our past pupils continue to be an inspiration to the upcoming generation. More details HERE.

Mairéad Carter