With the NUI came conferring ceremonies held in UCC for the first time (previously they were all held in Dublin). These are days of ceremony and celebration, connecting our graduates and their families to the great tradition of European scholarship that goes back a thousand years.

Student superstition has it that to cross the Quad before graduation, or even to set foot on the grass, is to risk bad luck and failure in exams. On conferring days, graduates gather to cross the Quad together, and get their photograph taken there.

Since 1908, UCC has grown - from 115 students to over 20,000, from one building to dozens, from less than 20 staff to more than 1,600 today. Since 1997, we have become a university in our own right within the NUI, but we retain the UCC name as part of our heritage of learning since 1845.