A Galway-born academic has been honoured for his outstanding practice in higher education teaching.

Mary Immaculate College academic Dr Conchúr Ó Brolcháin, from Barna, has been awarded the Regional Teaching Excellence Award. Dr Ó Brolcháin lectures in the Department of Language and Literacy at MIC and was announced as the recipient of this year’s award at a recent ceremony held at the University of Limerick.

“I am absolutely delighted to receive this award in recognition of all the effort that is made at Mary Immaculate College to enable our students to become competent and confident teachers,” said a delighted Dr Ó Brolcháin.

“Teaching excellence is such an important part of our Institution’s ethos and heritage and I want to thank my colleagues in the LEAD team, in the Language and Literacy Department, and in the broader MIC community for all their help throughout the teaching excellence award process.”

Dr Ó Brolcháin’s research interests include bilingual and multilingual education in diverse contexts including language immersion, crosslinguistic pedagogy, and heritage language teaching at the primary level.

Conchúr is a former primary school teacher and principal and has taught at many levels within the education system with his current teaching duties relating to language teaching within the initial teacher education.

Dr O’Brolcháin says his teaching beliefs are deeply entwined with his own experience as a language learner, teacher, activist and with his identity as a bilingual parent and educator.

“My teaching philosophy has equality and inclusion at its core in which issues of diversity, fairness and learner autonomy are fundamental,” he said.

“I view the promotion and protection of Gaeilge and other minority languages as extremely important for Ireland’s societal cohesion and also as a means of empowering minority language communities to succeed in the education system,” he added.

The Regional Teaching Excellence Award is a collaborative initiative between MIC, UL, and TUS, which aims to showcase and champion outstanding practice in Higher Education teaching from across the region.

Since last October, a number of candidates from the three institutions have put themselves through the very rigorous process of compiling a detailed teaching portfolio comprising multiple sources of evidence of excellent practice.