Published on: Thursday, 10 September 2015

For more information on Good Start please visit www.mycit.ie/goodstart
 
The Good Start programme helps to get new students off to the best start in CIT. Good Start is five weeks of campus wide activities and events which focus on success, belonging, motivation and independence; the whole student experience. This year Good Start will be officially launched on Thursday 17th September with a Carnival which will happen throughout the campus.
 
The Good Start team help new students settle in, become familiar with the campus, meet people, get prepared for study and find out who’s here to help. The Good Start team are all recent CIT graduates from a wide range of disciplines, Lisa Moran (Visual Communications), Yvonne Mackey (Accounting), Laurence Lomasney (Structural Engineering), Lynn Marie Dennehy (Fine Art), Jamie Googan (Sports and Exercise), and Bryan Looney (Sports and Exercise).
 
The Just Ask! campaign offers information and advice to new students from mobile information points manned by the Good Start team. The Just Ask! campaign also offers tailored Just Ask! sessions hosted by different services in CIT, such as Just Ask! about IT, Just Ask! about the Library and Just Ask! about study. Also this year many academic departments are hosting their own transitions to higher education projects which aim to improve both social induction and academic induction of incoming students.
 
CIT's Good Start programme is an initiative to aid Student Retention and Engagement for third level students, particularly 1st year students. The Good Start team's aim is to help 1st year students settle in to college socially and academically. Good Start is part of CIT’s Strategic Student Retention and Engagement Initiative and CIT Registrars Office. CIT’s Good Start programme is now recognised nationally as a model of best practice.
 
Good Start has an active and vibrant social media presence which highlights Good Start activities, as well as the many existing and excellent student supports that are available. CIT has a long established reputation for student care. This together with a commitment to continuously improve and innovate, sees CIT move forward with new projects based on international models of best practice to maintain and improve the retention of student and contribute to maximising the success of all.
 
The Good Start Programme of events which operates across CIT’s four campuses at Bishopstown, CIT Cork School of Music, CIT Crawford College of Art and The National Maritime College of Ireland.

Image Credit Darragh Kane