For almost two centuries missionaries from Maynooth brought Catholicism to the world with fervour. Last Monday the university began delivering a different type of knowledge around the globe, but with the same zeal.

Ireland’s smallest but fastest-growing university began delivering masterclasses by e-learning for engineers around the globe at Intel, as the first global education partner for the world’s largest computer chip manufacturer. With more than 80,000 employees working for the American multinational, the partnership is significant and the project will initially involve up to 60 Intel staff a year.

This symbolises the transformation that has taken place in the decade since NUI, Maynooth broke away from Ireland’s largest Catholic seminary,

St Patrick’s College, which shares the same picturesque Kildare campus, 50 minutes southwest of Dublin city centre. Total student numbers have more than doubled to 8,400 and Maynooth’s 249 academics secured the most competitive research funding per academic in the republic — ¤128,657 each — last year. Special employment preparation classes for undergraduates have helped it gain the best employment record of any Irish university, at almost 100%. These are the factors which make NUI, Maynooth the 2008 Sunday Times Irish University of the Year.

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• The Times University Guide table

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• The Times University Guide table

Coupled with the increasing academic calibre of its intake, the university rose three places to fourth in our league table. Some of this increase in student calibre is down to the controversial policy of offering a ¤1,000 scholarship and first preference on campus accommodation to those getting more than 500 Leaving Certificate points. The numbers at Maynooth getting this support have risen tenfold to 140 since it began.

Our University of the Year award is not determined solely on league table position. If it were, Trinity College, Dublin, which tops it, would win every year as it consistently has the highest academically rated intake.

The league table assesses a range of qualities, chiefly the academic calibre of entrants, and also exam results, research quality, graduate employment, completion rates and the ratio of students to staff.

The student experience and the institutions’ role on regional, national and world stages are also considered for our University of the Year award. Maynooth put in a strong performance in most of these areas.

But Maynooth’s rapid advance is no fluke. Belfast maths professor John Hughes was appointed its president in summer 2004. “I saw a tremendous opportunity to create something.

“Maynooth was surrounded by Intel, Wyeth and Hewlett Packard but was not really working with industry or attracting the best students.”

Hughes refocused research into seven areas where it had international strength, such as geographical information systems, and augmented this by attracting top researchers from around the globe. Research money was pursued more aggressively.

The results eventually came with ¤31.9m in competitive research funding secured last year. Industry contracts from more than 50 multinationals, commercial spin-offs and inventions have flowed.

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