---

Welcome to the May 2021 Newsletter 

Welcome to the May Newsletter

Welcome to the May Newsletter

Welcome to the May 2021 newsletter.  The sky is bright, the birds are singing, there’s a whiff of vaccines in the air... there is more hope around, at least in this fortunate part of the world, than there was this time last year.  Year on year comparisons – this time last year we …

Read more.

Save the Date! WST Summer School 2021

Save the Date! WST Summer School 2021

Pencil in the dates and get ready to join us at our WST summer school on Tuesday 13 - Thursday 15 July. This WST Summer School, as always, will include a mix of sessions with UCD colleagues, the emphasis on workshopping and networking events.  Following hot on the heels of the WST21 biennial event in …

Read more.

Remote Working Stories: Paula McGarry, Director, UCD China Joint Colleges

Remote Working Stories: Paula McGarry, Director, UCD China Joint Colleges

When we began this series of ‘Remote Working’ interviews in May 2020 it was out of curiosity about how colleagues were coping with the move off campus.  How do you do the work of the office when you are not sharing the same space with your colleagues anymore?  Fourteen months into our disrupted lives, …

Read more.

The story behind Power Query

The story behind Power Query

By Michael Garvey, BDIC Programme Officer,  China Joint Colleges Office I have worked in China-facing roles for my entire UCD career, which stretches back to 2010, including in my current position as Programme and Operations Manager with the China Joint Colleges.  This type of position is certainly a bit different to what a programme manager might do within a traditional …

Read more.

Working in the Distributed Office: What can Agile ‘DO’ for me?

Working in the Distributed Office: What can Agile ‘DO’ for me?

One of the Agile team’s overarching aims is to empower and support our colleagues, harnessing their creativity and innovation and in the process of doing so – to help foster a continuous improvement culture in everything we do.  This aim was put to the test from March 2020 when our working lives changed literally overnight.  …

Read more.

A look back at WST21

A look back at WST21

The week of the 8th March saw our biennial Work Smarter Together event, in an online format.  The theme this year was ‘work smart while being apart’ – we felt this captured the spirit of Work Smarter Together and gave voice to the great efforts being made in every area of UCD during the unprecedented …

Read more.

My WST21 Experience: Jean Lynch

My WST21 Experience: Jean Lynch

By Jean Lynch, Counsellor, Student Counselling Services When the Work Smarter Together (WST21) invitation arrived in my inbox at the start of the year, I almost consigned it to the Trash as I have probably done with similar missives in the past. Not because I see no value in the idea of enhancing campus-wide staff communication but simply because I …

Read more.

My WST21 Experience: Elena Keany

My WST21 Experience: Elena Keany

By Elena Keany, Deputy Team Lead, Student Desk, UCD Registry The words of John Donne’s sermon No Man Is An Island were tolling loudly for me at the end of this year’s WST21 event. No man is an island, Entire of itself; Every man is a piece of the continent,  A part of the main. If a clod be washed …

Read more.

News from the WST Communities of Practice

News from the WST Communities of Practice

The WST Communities of Practice have been busy over the past few months.  Here's a brief round-up of news from: UCD Public Engagement Community of Practice; URMAN (UCD Research Managers and Administrators Network); Project Management-Community of Practice and the School Managers Community of Practice. UCD Public Engagement Community of Practice  By Dr. Fergus McAuliffe, Communications …

Read more.

Update from the Excel Learning Community

Update from the Excel Learning Community

By Gregori Meakin, College of Arts and Humanities Office Across the University, lots of colleagues are being creative with Microsoft Excel.  The Excel Learning Community emerged from the Remote Working Group as a platform to using Excel. It is a Community of Practice - a repository of experience, skills, curiosity and enthusiasm, born simply from an interest in using Excel …

Read more.

Google Workspace Community on Google Currents

Google Workspace Community on Google Currents

By Aidan Curran, IT Services - Enterprise Applications Group Waffle! Hamburger! Kebab! Yes, all things you’ll be eating on your way home from your first night out post-lockdown - but also actual names that people call the nine-dots icon in the top right corner of your Gmail and Google Calendar. Seriously; there are articles and guides out there telling you …

Read more.

MURAL members workshop

MURAL members workshop

The Agile team is a big fan of MURAL – the online collaboration tool – we use it for all our workshops and training sessions. As we developed our own use of the tool, we found that participants in our workshops were catching the bug and became interested in …

Read more.

Lean HE Ireland Update

Lean HE Ireland Update

This is the first Lean HE Ireland update from UCD:  Lean HE Ireland now exists!  (The HE is higher education). What is Lean HE Ireland? Lean HE Ireland is a network currently involving colleagues from UCC, DCU, UL, QUB, TU Dublin, University of Ulster, and UCD – …

Read more.

Remote Working Group: Key Principles Workshop

Remote Working Group: Key Principles Workshop

The Remote Working Group was established by the USM Project Team in April 2020 in response to the move to remote working across UCD. Since setting up the group, which meets weekly, there have been over 150 attendees in total, with a usual weekly attendance of around 40 people across multiple areas including School …

Read more.

USM update

USM update

Greetings Colleagues. A lot has happened in the world of the USM since our last WST Newsletter post. This post is a quick snapshot of some of the headline activities that the Project Team have been involved in, drawing attention to key milestones we’ve experienced in the last year. USM Remote Working Group – …

Read more.

---

Read archived WST Newsletters

---