Interesting Facts about our Campus Buildings

The Cluain Mhuire campus, otherwise known as the Centre for Creative Arts and Media (CCAM), is housed in a former Redemptorist Monastery, which has been home to the Department of Creative Arts and Media since 1998.

The campus building is one of Galway City’s iconic landmarks due to the distinctive three sail-shaped copper panels at the front of the main building. This unique design also serves the practical purpose of housing the Library and IT Centre.

The Killybegs Campus building has had an interesting history as an Industrial School, a TB Sanatorium and a Hotel, before becoming the Hotel Training and Catering College in 1969, making it our longest running educational campus across the region. In more recent years it has become home to a Seafood Innovation Centre and to a 27m Turbine Training Tower, the only GL approved training tower in Ireland.

The Letterkenny campus is one of the original network of Regional Technical Colleges established in Ireland. The campus was also referred to as the Donogh O’Malley Regional Technical College, Letterkenny, until 1992, in honour of Donogh O’Malley, the reforming Minister for Education.

The Letterfrack campus building was originally built as St Joseph’s Industrial School in 1887 after the designs of the Cavan architect William Hague. In 1987 Connemara West began running furniture courses there. The campus is now the National Centre for Excellence in Furniture Design and Technology.

The Mayo Campus occupies a building that was previously used as an asylum. In the Census of 1901, 609 patients were recorded as being present in the hospital. The building’s Victorian architecture contains many hints about its earlier use. The campus now offers programmes including Nursing and Social Care, which adopt very different ways of dealing with conditions that were often stigmatised in the past.

Mountbellew was the first agricultural college in Ireland, set up by the Franciscan Brothers in 1904. The original college was demolished in 1971 and replaced with a new building in 1975. In 1986, the Franciscan Brothers’ Agricultural College established a link with GMIT to deliver a Higher Certificate in Business Studies (Agribusiness). As a campus within the new TU, it will cooperate with Teagasc and the Galway/Roscommon Education and Training Board.

A striking mural was unveiled at the Sligo campus in September 2021. Created by Friz, a wellknown local artist, she said: “What a beautiful blank canvas IT Sligo asked me to paint. After mulling over the concept of a place of learning, where people seek education and knowledge is passed down, I decided on the symbol of the owl, a symbol of wisdom and associated with the counterpart Goddesses Minerva and Athena.”