It's probably not generally known, but Miss Ireland, the rather lovely Niamh Redmond, is a student of Maynooth College. Now, in days of quite recent vintage, the idea of a student from Maynooth even watching a beauty contest, let alone competing in one, would have led to strong words from the bishops and dark glances in the boardroom. Even now, traditionalists might feel the cold wind of the zeitgeist blowing down their necks. After all, as one lecturer remarks, "clerics wear dresses, but they don't enter beauty contests".

Of all the colleges affected by the Universities Act 1997, it is Maynooth that has been changed most profoundly. In common with the other universities of the National University, Maynooth now has greater autonomy in matters of budget, staffing and course design, which were previously the responsibility of the NUI's board of general studies in Merrion Square, Dublin.

But Maynooth, for the first time, is now also a full university in its own right (NUI Maynooth) rather than a designated university institution under the National University of Ireland. It will also have its own elected governing authority for the first time, bringing to an end over 200 years of control by its trustees from the Catholic Hierarchy.

"It's not going to be just St Patrick's College, Maynooth, in another guise," says Dr Seamus Smyth, the personable head of the university who is destined to go down in history as both the first lay master and the first president, lay or otherwise, of the new university.

"There is a new governing authority that is charged with the responsibility of governing this institution. It will have 29 members, including academic and non-academic staff, students, alumni, government nominees, business and trade union nominees and three representatives of the trustees of St Patrick's College Maynooth. An organic link is represented by three members representing the trustees of St Patrick's College, Maynooth, but 23 members will be drawn from other constituencies."

For many years, the public perception of Maynooth, somewhat unfairly, was coloured deep purple - the colour of Catholic hierarchical vestments, the colour worn by the trustees of St Patrick's College. The authority consisted of 17 senior members of the Hierarchy - there were no academics, no administrators and the president was allowed to attend only by invitation.

In essence, Maynooth was three colleges in one, an apt comparison with the deity given the religious persuasion of the trustees: there was a Catholic seminary, a pontifical university and a lay college; the last belonged to the NUI and was a "recognised college" of that institution.

The "recognised college" designation was a formula dating from the Universities of Ireland Act of 1908, which sought to minimise the influence of Maynooth and the Catholic bishops in the secular NUI.

Under the new Act, the seminary and pontifical university of St Patrick's are separate entities from the NUI Maynooth. In practice, the college had operated as two separate entities for almost two decades, with separate accounts and a pro rata arrangement in place for shared buildings, staff and services - a not-uncommon arrangement between pontifical and lay universities in other parts of the world. For example, St Paul's Pontifical University in Ottawa, Canada, operates in a similar way with the University of Ottawa.

In 1994, the bishops decided to split the NUI section of the college from the rest. Dr Smyth became the first lay master of the new college - a transitional title until the new legislation created the office of president.

Maynooth was established as a seminary in 1795, though the traditional narrow view of such an education overlooks the fact that the original seminary contained the seeds and roots of many departments that still exist today. "In some ways, it has suffered from the success of that tradition," Smyth says. "Theology in Maynooth was the strongest faculty of theology in the English-speaking world for two centuries. Because of that, people forgot to look at other aspects of its scholarship."

Maynooth has long had a world-renowned reputation in classics and in English literature. It has been famous for its learning in the world of mathematical sciences since the early 19th century. It continues to have a strong reputation in the areas of education, the sciences and anthropology and has developed particular specialisations in economics, geography and sociology. It is also Ireland's third-level centre for space research. It combined these elements with a plurality of cultural backgrounds and religious beliefs among its staff, a plurality that defied false perceptions by probably including a greater cross-section of beliefs than many of its other third-level peers.

Yet its Cinderella status as a designated college, combined with a inaccurate perception of the institution as being dominated by theology, meant that Maynooth, like the prophet of yore, was sometimes not appreciated properly in its own land. Smyth describes it as a "fundamental" image problem.

"I suppose it is a particular and peculiar set of circumstances in the Ireland of the present day that sees a strength in theology as perhaps being an implied weakness for defining the future," Smyth says. "Again, on a world scale, that isn't the case."

He goes on to "call a spade a shovel", as he puts it: "What you're saying is that Maynooth was, in the past, because of its episcopal governance, a place where freedom of intellectual inquiry was also accompanied by orthodoxy of belief. Is that going to colour the future of NUI Maynooth? I have no hesitation in saying that it will not. "Orthodoxy of belief is part of theology, if you're teaching theology, but in terms of teaching geography or computer science I would hate to think that there was an orthodoxy of belief. Intellectual inquiry, unfettered in its freedom, is what the new university will have."

For now, NUI Maynooth is about to enter a new era in its history, with all of the challenges which that entails. "There's no model in Maynooth for how this is going to work in the future," Smyth admits. "It's a question of leadership and good luck allowing us both to carve two separate pathways for the future."

A week of celebrations

This week NUI Maynooth is holding a week of celebrations to mark its genesis as Ireland's newest university. Key events include a keynote address tomorrow by Chris Horn, CEO of Iona Technologies, to business leaders and a gala banquet on Saturday. There is also an exhibition illustrating the university's history and areas of academic leadership, which runs throughout the week in the science building.