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Crisis Contacts
In a crisis situation, please contact:
- National Crisis Textline – Text NUIG (or any message) to 50808
- University of Galway Student Counselling – email: counselling@universityofgalway.ie
- Student Health Unit – call 091 492 604 or email: healthunit@universityofgalway.ie
- Chaplaincy service – call or text 087 203 7538 (also emergency laptop loan)
How to contact us
We are here to help, and we enjoy hearing from you. However, to avoid a significant volume of unnecessary queries (especially at crunch points in the semester) we ask you to stop, think, and seek out all available information and help first. Before getting in touch do please first consult all the information in this handbook, especially by consulting all relevant sources listed above. If you have checked through all these sources of information and need further help, you should consider contacting individuals in Journalism and Media.
Contact list and About Us available at this link https://bit.ly/jm_lecturers
In all email correspondence with academic and support staff, remember to address the recipient politely, formally, and properly, or your query may not get answered. Please include your student number as well as relevant course titles and codes.
For general enquiries please email Journalism and Media Administrative Officer Ms Shania Collins (shania.collins@universityofgalway.ie)
For enquiries or concerns about individual courses, students are encouraged to approach relevant members of our teaching staff. Academic staff may also hold drop-in in-person or virtual consultation hours during the semester and students can discuss any issues during these times or make an appointment. Problems are resolved far quicker in person. Individual contact details can be found on our website as above.
If you are experiencing difficulty in dealing with the academic demands of a course you are enrolled in, please contact the individual lecturer in the first instance. With so many students in class, it is easy to feel lost; it is very important to us that you let us know if we can help.
If you have questions concerning the programme, please check this Handbook first!
After that you should contact Shania Collins as the first point of call.
Alternatively, Programme Director, Dr Kelly Fincham can be approached about academic concerns. This is best done by dropping in during office hours, advertised at the beginning of each semester. Dr Fincham’s office is upstairs in St Declan’s in Room 304 (some virtual meetings may also be available).
Student Consultation Hours, Semester One Mondays and Tuesdays 4-5pm in St Declan’s
If you cannot make the times posted drop in or make an appointment by emailing Dr Fincham at (Kelly Fincham @ University of Galway.ie)
All general enquiries that cannot be answered in this Handbook should be directed to the Journalism and Media Administrative Officer Ms Shania Collins (shania.collins@universityofgalway.ie)
Talk to your student reps!
Feedback on your experiences can be provided to your class representatives: they are appointed early in the year through the Student Union and meet regularly with lecturers on the staff-student committee in Journalism and Media.
Feedback on your experiences can be provided to your class representatives: they are appointed early in the year through the Student Union and meet regularly with lecturers on the staff-student committee in Journalism and Media.
University of Galway’s systems are organised in such a way that we can only contact you on a universityofgalway.ie email account. You must check your email regularly – at least twice weekly during term and frequently during the summer months.
The University of Galway is GDPR compliant and as such we will only respond to emails from students from that student’s University of Galway email. Please use your University of Galway email address for all correspondence with the university. You may not receive a response if you use a personal email address.
Email etiquette
Email is a formal written document, and forms part of your record at university, so it is advisable to treat it formally. Normally students will address the lecturer formally (e.g. “Dear Dr X”) and will also include details of their name, class and student number. Do take time to use proper grammar and spelling. Avoid informalities such as text-speak or casual forms of address (“hey” instead of “Dear X”) so as to ensure that you are properly understood.
Email response times
As academic staff receive a high volume of email, you should normally expect a response to your email within three working days and sooner if possible. The working week is Monday-Friday, excluding bank holidays. You should never expect responses to emails during weekends, public holidays or outside ordinary working hours (9-5pm, Monday-Friday).
Email outside of the teaching term
Unlike primary and secondary school teachers, academics do not take holidays for the entire summer period but instead will take two or three weeks’ leave during the summer holidays and otherwise are on duty and are required to make themselves available for student contact from April through to August.
However, during the summer months, we also engage in research or related activities such as attending conferences. This means that we are often away from Galway for long periods; we can also be out of email contact for protracted periods. So while you are welcome to contact staff during this period, you should be prepared for a longer-than-usual response time.
Social media
We will endeavour to contact you on your official email address but there may be occasions when we need to reach you on your mobile phone number. You may wish to set up your own closed WhatsApp group for ease of communication. University staff are generally advised against ‘friending’ students on networks such as Facebook. Students should therefore not take offence if a friend request to a staff member is declined.