Mark Wehrly

According to Mark, "Maynooth was a very different place on the eve of the millennium when I started my academic career, studying English and History. On campus in 1999, there were fewer students, fewer buildings, and lots of talk of the Y2K bug causing chaos!"

Three years later Mark graduated on the day the world marked the first anniversary of the cataclysmic events of 9/11. The world was a very different place.
Mark recalls a particularly energetic and enthusiastic debate surrounding those events in my final BA degree year. Despite many differences of opinion, there was a great sense of collegiality and togetherness. He says "we were - students and teachers alike - united in our desire to make sense of the post-9/11 world - and to cheer on Ireland (sadly without Roy Keane) at the World Cup in Korea and Japan!"

Doing Arts was a great fit for Mark because it gave him lots of options. After graduating, I worked as a journalist for 18 months in the sports department at Ireland on Sunday (now the Irish Mail on Sunday). Mark came back to Maynooth University to do a PhD in history in 2004, and went through a very different – but equally rewarding – second career in Maynooth, forging new friendships and exploring new horizons, both intellectually and in “the college of life”.

Since graduating in 2009, Mark worked in various academic institutions as a lecturer in journalism and history, before fate called him back to Maynooth once more in his current job as a National Administrator with the Golfing Union of Ireland, whose headquarters are in Carton House.