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Mícheál O Foghlu, EdD programme

I studied for the EdD from 2003-2010. At the time I was working as the Executive Director Research in an Irish ICT (Information and Communications Technology) Research & Development centre in WIT (Waterford Institute of Technology), the TSSG (Telecommunications Software & Systems Group), which I had co-founded back in 1996. For me the EdD included many valuable elements:

The quality of the teaching staff who created a safe environment for students to explore a wide range of complex areas in innovative ways.
The quality of the core structured part of the course, i.e. the first two years, which provided stimulating reading in both core domain (for me higher education) and in the methodologies and methods of conducting social science research.
The experience of a cohort of students from around Ireland all sharing the experience together and often providing a mechanism for us to learn as much from each other as from the course itself.
The intensity of the focused weekends at the Dublin site that created a motivation and a momentum.
The opportunity to do some real research in the domain as the second part of the programme.
The explicit need to be reflective and reflexive and deeply evaluate oneself and one’s motivations and experiences in as objective a manner as possible -- this is an invaluable skill in any role.

After completing the EdD I went on to lead a spinout from the TSSG, as CTO (Chief Technology Officer), in 2010. FeedHenry was a company that built a mobile platform for enterprises, hosting server-side code in the Cloud (using an emerging technology called Node.js), with a client-side targeting iPhones and Android devices, that had only just started to become dominant in the market. After winning successful seed funding (Kernel Capital and private investors), and Round A funding (led by Intel Capital), and establishing a positive trajectory in the market, FeedHenry was acquired by Red Hat in October 2014. After the acquisition I became Senior Director in Red Hat and site lead for the local Waterford software engineering office. After two and a half years I moved to Google Munich as Engineering Director in 2017 to lead a set of global teams working on Google’s software development tooling ecosystem. I am finding the amazing culture of Google a continuing inspiration, and I am very impressed by the fact that Google does high quality research into its own organisational culture, publishing the results in peer reviewed journals, and sharing the knowledge with the world via re:Work with Google (https://rework.withgoogle.com).

So, after this set of experiences, my main observation on the value of the EdD for me is that the patterns of thought, and the structured use of critical self-evaluation, reflection and reflexive learning, is the key set of skills that underpinned my own future success in the fast paced world of technology, where the dominant tools and techniques shift dramatically every few years.

Christina Morris, EdD Programme

Christina Morris, is a senior education officer in the Ministry of Education in Barbados and one of our Caribbean EdD programme graduands. Christina was awarded her doctorate from the University of Sheffield last year and she has shared this lovely photograph which depicts herself along with the amazing cake that her colleagues presented her with at a special celebration event in honour of her doctorate.

We hope the cake tasted just as good as it looks!

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