From There To Here: 50-Odd Years of WIT

Hello and welcome to the machine, a computer science education podcast. I'm your host, Rob O'Connor. We do have some new episodes coming soon, but here's a bit of bonus material. It's slightly off topic, but it's certainly worthwhile. This podcast is recorded as part of my work at WIT Waterford Institute of Technology. In late 2019 I started a project to make an audio documentary about the upcoming 50th anniversary of the college in 2020. I, along with a couple of students, recorded interviews with lots of members of WIT staff, both current and retired, capturing their memories of the place and the people. In the middle of all this, then a global pandemic interrupted the proceedings and I'd be 100% honest with you. The project fell by the wayside as more pressing matters took over, but I was sitting on hours and hours of really good audio. In May of 2022, WIT, along with OIT Karlo, were re-designated the Southeast Technological University, SETU, and I figured if I was ever going to do something with the audio, I'd better do it now. So I put the head down, stitch it all together, and the result is this audio documentary. It's also a radio documentary, as it will be broadcast on WLRFM on the 10th of May 2022. That might be in the past when you're listening to this podcast. Sadly, in the intervening period Mrs. Mary Morrissey, one of the cleaning staff I'd spoken with, passed away, but I'm very glad that I got her memories down on tape, and when you hear herself in Mary Lacey's contributions, I think you'll agree that they steal the show. So turn up the speaker, pop in your headphones, maybe even stick on the kettle. I hope you enjoy from there to here 50 odd years of Waterford Institute of Technology. Higher education at that stage did not feature large in any one's family. The ethos of the college in those days was a candle. Let's find out what other people are doing, and let's cherry pick. Let's take the bets, but let's do them here, and we did that. I always say, if you want the students, if you get the students to be enthusiastic about what they're going to learn, they'll teach themselves. You really can't teach students. You have to kind of encourage them to learn, that's a whole different thing. They have models, once a week, you know, models and that, because I used to be peeping into the glass in the door, and I used to be looking, "Oh geez, look, look, look, look, look at me, man, you have not known, look, look, look, look, look, look, and they'll be all run when we're there. We used to make a laptop, a museum-roam-lapped, everything was laughing and innocent, like, you know." When that was soaked, and he coming in to do his day's work, like our whatever, you know, so like, it was dangerous times too, you know? You don't always have to look up before you sit down and see if there's anyone on the roof or looking at the window or, yeah, really good. It was just one big team with one big objective, and at the time, we had done it. For a short amount of time, it had a big impact because it was a recognition that the southeast needed something different, and then all hell broke loose, and it was produced into nothing. It could have been something. If we could change the way we teach and environmentally teach and to create that kind of more dynamic environment, that would be my aspiration for the future. "If we would build this place, break by break, so you'll go and make your break. And that's just exactly that kind of language." During the 1960s, Ireland, like much of the Western world, went through a huge social and cultural upheaval. One area that experienced massive change was education. In the 1960s, about one-third of Irish children finished their schooling at primary level. Only about 60% were still there age 15. Fewer again completed the leaving cert, and only a minuscule amount went on to third level. The Irish government at the time recognized education and training would be key drivers of the country's future economic success, and so put in place structures to encourage Ireland's younger population to stay on past those basic levels. This documentary is about one of those initiatives, and follows the development of Waterford Regional Technical College, WRTC, and hew a groove from its initial set up in 1970 through to being re-designated Waterford Institute of Technology in the 1990s, and the Southeast Technological University in 2022. My name is Rob O'Connor, and I work as a lecturer in WIT in the Department of Computing and Mathematics. Once upon a time, I was a student there too. This documentary isn't a definitive history, but it does capture the memories and thoughts of some of the key people who were there on the ground in their own words. Waterford was one of the first RTCs to be set up, part of an initial group of five, which also included at Lone, Carlo, Dundalk, and Slego. The next voices you'll hear are Dennis Moran and Ray Griffin, two individuals who will feature throughout this piece. When the system was set up, the government had recognised that it needed a technician level education, because none of the country really, other than a city in Gilles was what happened people did city in Gilles education at night time, and that's how they got on to anything above. If you were an electrician or a fitter or a plumber or whatever it was, if you want to do anything more exotic than that, you have to go and take city in Gilles. Very tough courses, but that was it, so they figured that really should be a national system. On at all, five or six, seven or eight percent, that sort of time, people were going on to the university. They were generally just middle and upper middle class people kind of business, whose parents saw them, to whom it was natural to consider going on. The working class didn't particularly, and what I call the administrative class, the clerical staff, that kind of level. I mean, if it happened apart from doctors and engineers and lawyers, people went to the bank and went to the insurance, and that was the kind of economy at the time, and then there were the trades. I mean, there were, I mean, there was a very extensive trade base, very good trades people. It's like when these colleges were set up first, they were put under the administration of the local vocational education committee, and now that was had to do with what I would call efficiency, because one of the dramatic things about these colleges was that five and the more produced out of a hat very quickly, that's why the utilitarian structure was like a Lego type design. There were designed quickly, built quickly, and put into operation quickly, and slotting them under an existing administrative structure was part of that urgency to get them off the ground. I am Anne Fielin, and I am senior administration in the president's office. We would have established the organization, such in September 1970, but I think the first person on the scene would have been the porter at the time who was Jim Pieden, and he was here for donkeys years, while he always maintains he was the first employee because he had opened the doors to let the principal in. Oh really? I worked for DSP. I was working on the rural out the county, and the asker would I wind the electrician on the way in the evening, I might give a few hours with him, and would I also do Saturday? WRTC was being constructed on a green field site on the cork road, on the outskirts of Waterford City, opposite Ballyback housing estate. Jim Fielin was asked by his employer, the ESB, to help with some of the electrical work being carried out during the building phase. Jim liked the look of the place, and saw a job opportunity with this new organization. If you get our offer to job here, Jim, yeah, would you be a bit foxy? I said for him or I'll be asked or have to do, it'll be a fair question. That's a fair question and a fair answer. Did you agree to give it that answer? Oh no, no, I love that. Jim took the job and officially started work for WRTC in 1970, shortly before the college officially opened. The 7th July 1970, when I was the 4th to win, when we started in that building, 4th building, the day we went in there, we had the builders on their feet. They were finishing it up and they didn't get finished until nearly the fallow on Christmas. We didn't have a big crop of students. I think, if my memory is right now, and I think we put 700 truer hands from that September until the bailing out in the summer. To put that in context, there would now be around 10,000 students registered in anti-academic year. We had more food, we had them don't get them, we had them from Karik, South Europe, we had a few car people, we had them kill any wakes to it, and found that back. Two of the original cleaning staff, Mary Morrissey and Mary Lacey, recall what the building was like in those early days of WRTC. Cold, wasn't it, it was very cold in that push, I mean, there was only three, there were only three powders or four, and there was only about four or five cleaners when we went in there. situation that you were in, and you called, was that this class here, it has 10 in it for Archimedes sake. And this class down here, being moving up at the next half. So you had to take some of the format this century years to bring them down to make up the number down here. So that's where you were going, you were going from Billy to Jack. We had very little furniture to work with, and you had no one to go to to say anything. We didn't have money, and we had no heart of cold water or a canteen. We had a canteen, but we had no one to run it, and we had no utensils, we had no yet. So bear with us. And after the canteen, there were a small room in it, and we had the staff that we did have, and they'd have the cup of tea there, and we had big kettle and I put on the kettle. There were only few classrooms, first of all, and that's over the bridge we called, and none of that was there, it was only just a few classrooms on the floor, wanted to turn stage floor. We had no polish, we had no none, and not showing it, we weren't unsure since all we had was washers, this wouldn't go yet. And so we spent in the Pigeon Roche opening with ourselves from home to wash the floors. There was a recruitment relief to staff up the new organization. Vini Martin was working in Trinity College Dublin at the time, and both she and her husband Eric took up lecturing roles in the science department of Waterford Regional Technical College. I'm Vini Martin, and I joined the college in 1971, and I was initially a lecturer in biology. I have three careers in the college. I was a lecturer in biology for about 12 years, and then I set up the department of adult and continuing education for about 12 years, and my last 12 years I was head of development, which involved a portfolio of different things. When I came into science, the biology lab, I just walked into it. I've been used to quite well equipped labs in Trinity, and I walked into a big bare room with a few benches, sinks, and a middle-class square. And they had these things, it wasn't a microscope. Now the two of my trade was the microscope, and there were no microscopes. They had bought the department of education and flung a few things in there to get us started. And they bought these things called bio-viewers. And the bio-viewer, you know, if you have children, you buy them a thing, it's a little plastic thing, like a purple object, and you put in a little ring of film into it, and they looked through it. Well these bio-viewers had little biological slides, and you looked through and you pretended you were using a microscope. So we had about 20 of those, and that was the way we started. Despite the meager resources, Vini was impressed with the initial crop of students. They were fantastic. The first group of students were absolutely fantastic. There were a lot of them who just couldn't afford to go to university. So we read the benefit, and we got great students in the early years. They were very highly motivated, very appreciative, very patient, because basically we didn't know what we were doing. We did our best, but we had the clue. But they were absolutely polite, and respectful, and very clever. Throughout the 1970s, there were three heads of the college. Our first principal was a Dick Langford. He originally came out of Bayley's new street, Warford. With our second principal, Dean, was a Danny O'Hare. He left us then and went for higher education, and our third principal was Ray Griffin, which I was wonderful, friendly, with a home, like a house, on fire. My name is Ray Griffin. I used to be the head of the college here. I had the title of which has changed over the years, but in my time, it was director. Presently, I'm the supervisor of my grandchildren. Nothing more than that. My command is a lecture in engineering. I remember in my first group of students, we had about seven students in the class. The dream of any lecturer nowadays, about seven students. First of all, the impression I was having to invent it ourselves, I had a natural expectation when I came here that there would be programs, and syllabus, are now organized based on what we were doing. When I arrived here, there was none of that. The college had just started, and you're more or less left to yourself to get what your part of the job was off the ground and get it functioning. It took a couple of weeks for that to dawn on me. That's, I really have to do this myself. Nobody's going to come and tell you what to do, and there's no guidebook on the matter. So my first impression, the first two or three months, was trying to shape the courses that I was teaching and hoping that I was getting it right. That scene to be of you shared by many staff members from that time, get stuck in and figure it out. By modern standards, that might sound unprofessional, but that's an unfair comparison. Nothing like the RTCs had existed in Ireland before, and it was all new. In many ways, the early days of Waterford Regional Technical College was like a modern business startup. Larry Cosgrave was the head of science in those early days, and Vini Martin recalled something he said. When I think of the early years, it's expressions come into my mind, and one of them is a pair of hands, because when we were developing the curriculum, there was going to be this new type of scientist in industry, called a technician. And Larry Cosgrave had come from an English poly, and the debate was going on as to whether you train technicians or educated technicians. And Larry was very much an educator, and he said, we are not training areas of arms, you know, so we had to write the curriculum. There's not a good thing of theory, and that they would understand what they were doing, and the fundamentals of that. So the pair of hands and writing the curriculum was very interesting. Even though WRTC would have been seen as a progressive organization, it did suffer from money of the gender inequalities of the 1970s. The year I started, four women started at the same time. Mary Martin, Helen Fitzpatrick, Uniliams, RIP, and myself. So we were the first four women in WIT, or I use interchangeably RTC. The time we were recruited, there were probably about 12 men recruited at the same time. So it was about four women and 12 men. Three to one would have been considered a good ratio at the time. This was a different Ireland. The civil service still had a marriage ban, meaning that all single women had to resign from their job if they got married. That ban wasn't lifted until 1973. WRTC was not considered part of the civil service, so it didn't have the marriage ban in place, but other inequalities were baked into the system. The structural things were problematic. I mean, I was quite annoyed that I was actually on a grade higher than Eric, but I was getting less money, because there were two salary scales, one for married men, and one for single men, and one whether or not. So this was very strange, and actually my first salary was quite amusing now, because my first salary was 1,800 pounds per year, 1,800, not per month per year. But I thought I was the richest person in Christendom, because I had been living in Trinity, and 500 pounds per year. So that was a huge job in my salary. But the salary scale, that was the beginning of feeling a bit annoyed about the way women were treated. And then the second thing was automatically, they husband got all the alliances. So I was working. I was after they took all the tax and the tax rates, took quite high then, took all the tax off me, and the difference salary scale I was ending up with quite a small tape on, home pay. Of course, there were lots of other things as well. The year after that in 72, our son was born, and there starts more problems for married women in education, because childcare didn't exist. And if you didn't live near your family, we had no family in water for it. You had to make the best arrangements you could manage with neighbors and women who are willing to take children into their own homes with no certification. There was no guarantee you'd believe in the dark and you hoped it would be okay. And we had good experiences, not experiences with regard to childcare, but it was a nightmare. Another one I'll tell you about, there was no maternity leave. So when I got pregnant, I'd been there about a year and I became "Fail pregnant" as they say in water for, and there was no maternity leave. So I had to go out and recruit someone to do my lectures for me and there was luckily it was somebody in UCD finishing a PhD in Kendo and I had to pay him out of my own pocket. So I just gave him what I was getting, less the tax and all those things. So you had to do that and of course because you had no income then you wanted to get back to work as quickly as you could, so it was all difficult times. As I always said, "Once we start to grow, whatever we ask the best you do, you do." He didn't mind because he wanted the place to get bigger and not to get smaller. One of the things that we faced when the college was starting here first, people didn't really understand what we were about. The interpretation was quite, sometimes it was quite heartful. I remember on one occasion somebody referring, I was being introduced to somebody and I said, "He works on the tech out in the car road." Now at that time I had an image of where this place was going and I found that quite diminishing explanation of where I was working. I believed I was working in an institution that had a long trajectory to go but it was going places. That was a difficult story to tell by the way, in and around Waterford. I had no understanding of there was something here that was going to develop. The WRTC did develop. For the rest of the 1970s, the college grew incrementally bigger and better with each academic year, bringing on all sorts of courses and trades, secretarial services, science, engineering and business. The student and staff population increased and the place began to resemble what we see today. The WRTC was firmly established. The early 1980s saw a huge expansion of Waterford Regional Technical College in terms of student and staff numbers as well as the physical footprint of the place. It was a time of growth and development. The vehicles of the college in those days was a can do. Let's find out what other people are doing and let's cherry pick them. Let's take the backspits. Let's do them here and we did that. Dennis Moore and Joined WRTC in 1982. Dennis Moore is my name and my last post was head of engineering, head of the school of engineering. Now I joined only expected to stay about a year. I really had no intention of staying but it just drifted on kind of business and there was about 10 or 15 years there where it was just like holding on to the tail end of the dog. It was fabulous. I mean it was the best time in the world, the best time in my career because it was so exciting because we had so much, we had so few resources but we had so much commitment from everybody, from all the areas. And everything that's here at the moment was ultimately created in that decade or decade and a half. The language we preached that the staff here was that it would be their effort that would make this college be what it could become and I have to say they rose to the challenge unbelievably. I mean you just have to be in or on this place for a short period of time to know that the staff are so ambitious for the institution and they just deliver. Once that they can see something that can be done they go and do it and it has always been that way here, the language I used to use was if we would build this place brick by brick so you go and make your brick and that used to use exactly that kind of language. Growth was quite a rapid because I think there was a European grants scheme which helped a lot of people to come to the colleges. More and more staff were coming and more and more subjects. The humanities were being developed in the college including music, art and design. The art classes were unexpectedly popular with some members of staff. In the 1980s WRTC introduced the first degree level qualification into its offering. I think in the early 80s we managed to get our first degree off the ground and that was a game, that first degree was a game changer. In applied computing, BSE and applied computing, that established the fact that it was possible to produce a degree out of one of these colleges. The 80s were spent very largely in trying to harness together the gaps that you couldn't actually freely start a degree in areas that were well served by the universities but computing was new, it was a bigger challenge for universities as it was for us and in fact I suspect we had a bit more flexibility than the universities to plunge in. When I came to the IT, it wasn't a computer at the place, they had a name in Hardhouse. But the IT revolution took place and computers were everywhere. In the early days, I remember we worked with a lecturer called Michael Ryan who went on to be Professor Michael Ryan in DCU and every staff meeting we had, Michael would talk about we need to buy programmable calculators and that's another expression that's going on, ask anyone in the early days of science, programmable calculators, because Michael was always saying we needed these things, we couldn't see any use for them at all. But Michael persevered towards the end of the 70s or early 80s. The college decided we had to buy this computer and we bought a thing, I think it was called a fax. It was a huge thing and it had to have a special room and we had to build a prefab at the back with a false floor and their conditioning. I'll tell you this computer and better accommodation we had. And this huge thing was put in there and you have to practically revess it to figure printed and whatnot to get in there. That was set up, Don Mann and Michael Ryan got their great big computer and then gradually started to teach computing and from that emerged the computing degree and not facture of all the steps. But I remember they taught the computing degree with hardly any specialist staff because there were no computing degrees in Ireland, ours was the first in Waterford. I remember gradually, secretarial studies with the big thing in the early years where women mainly, I think they're all women actually came and learned typing and shorthand. What typing and shorthand went as computers came in and it became work processing and keyboard skills and things like that. So gradually, women were brought in to the IT courses so we saw the growth of computing and computing grew very rapidly. Don Mann who was the head of the department at the time set up, we set up the back card where we set up a studio and we put in, I think, 30 computers and he bought the screens from one magazine and he bought computers and they don't play sales and he bought the keyboard, the keyboard, stitched them together and it sat up there for two years, nobody won't hear it because it was back days, everything was line driven and with that it was, I think it was DOS one at the time or something like that. That was the Aces and we went to the whole progression, DOS one to all of that, you may remember. But two years or three years later, the Mac came out, the small little box Mac. We put that into a studio next door, two days afterwards and you couldn't get a seat in there. It was quite amazing. So the Microsoft thing, until they got their own gift for us, I mean, their own front place, until they mimicked what in fact the Mac was doing, it was ignored. So you go up there and the two, you go to the side by side, it's a bit jammed inside there, steam coming out of the place, and just nobody in there, nobody bothering. As the college group bigger, more administration staff were needed to keep the show on the road. Karline Clark and HR administrator. Elizabeth White, exam secretary. Tony Wheeling, in the estate's office, I did originally work in the building technology department. I started in WIT in 1984. There wasn't money in minstaff at that stage, you were all in one office up around where I think marketing is now at the minute. I was Mr. Rose Secretary in the School of Business and then I was, WRTC was under VEC at that stage. So I was brought into head office for eight years into Caroline's and came back out in '94. Well, I was the reverse of Karline, I actually started in the VEC in 1978 and I came to the college in October 1980. So following up from my Karline I was saying it was a very, very small office at that time. I was trying to think there was probably about eight or nine staff at minstaff that was all there was. I think there was three schooled secretaries or they may have only been department secretaries at the time. There was accounts, there was admissions and there was exams and then there was a grants person and the reception and there was Mr. Griffin's secretaries. So as far as I can remember that's all the admin staff there was. Well, I started as a student in civil engineering in 1977 and I started here on January the 7th 1980 and I was working as a technician in the construction department servicing like civil engineering architecture and all those ones. They were based on the top floor of the 77 building which now the business building and about 1996 because of the solid of the college et cetera, et cetera. They needed an estate office to kind of run and manage the institute facilities or whatever. So I kind of moved to like to transfer a window in the premiership. I moved across to the estate office. So I've been in there since 1996. Typically we were all in the one office as we said and basically there was no no one coming underneath this and it was all very relaxed. Everyone got on with their job but there was no mad demands on your time as there is now and we all got on really well in there. You just have a few of the heads of department or head of school coming in as I said we were all up there where the marketing offices and life was just nice and yet had a good crack there. Yeah exactly as Caroline said it was so small I mean even regarding students we knew quite a lot of the students there was so few students but the numbers were small and in those days the students used to come to collect their grants every I think was every Thursday or Friday I can't remember because I know on a Wednesday everything had to stop and the checks had to be typed up literally the the checks were taken there's the checkbook and a long sheet and everybody had to type them up those the type writers at the time hand wrote them and then Mr. Griffin had to physically sign every one of those checks and those checks were issued to students I can't remember because of the ASF grants as they were at the time and you know how much that would have been. I told you that they were only paid per attendance so the attendance had to be taken every day in fact was taken I think every class every day for there was only certain courses on ESF grants was European Social Fund and there was they were paid only per attendance so if they didn't attend you you talked to them that amount of money so I can't remember I wouldn't have been a whole lot but I mean it was 16 I don't know that sounds too much for that period. So the students kind of came for those checks as I say I think for that once a week so you kind of got to know the students and we all issued I don't know who we should the checks I can't remember and I certainly was involved in it and like that the checks were issued to the students and then maybe if Mr. Griffin was at a meeting and that he wasn't there to sign then they would be clamoring for their money and whatever it might have been to go drink and or whatever I don't know or pay something but if Mr. Griffin was away or whatever you always had to in advance sort out how you were going to get the checks signed because obviously couldn't pre-sign the checks you know. The social life at the college was also starting to take off. We ran dances this goes in the canteen for the students and right it wasn't easy to the worry. Why was it a worry? Well yeah we were surrounded with laughs yeah and then you had them and even tell you with them bands and stuff that was going at that time it here and me. It was the student nightshade and basically every single touristy night in what is the canteen now which is most of where centrist now that was half the size because the kitchen area was if you like on the back wall the staffed tea room was at the end of it and there was the auditorium which was on the left hand side which is roughly where the kitchen is now and I was in the auditorium we used to have the intimate gigs as we called it. Paul Brady played there, Christy Moore played there, Dorsk I think the bone terrace but I won't swear on that and I know that you two played in October because I have a ticket off. I'm sorry in February 1980 and it was £1 ticket in. And wouldn't it story about that? I something tells me that their fee at the time was £200 now which it seems a lot but they probably hold about £400 at the gig but when they were wheeling out their gear they damaged one of the windows in the door and there was an argument with where I assume was Paul McGinnis who's the manager of you to over their money and he said we're going to have to take back £15 and I think he settled on the tenor to cover the cost of replacing the window in the door. When they used to have a disco once they weren't just down in the canteen, you weren't seeing the canteen when the next day we'd have to clean up, there'd be a tireless rubbish off of the walls, there'd be water everywhere, women with walls, there'd be people who need to appreciate it you know and this is what we used to have to face then when the students were finished. I just have some noise to them students, they all have it in there like you know what was praised but then again they weren't as many students, they weren't as many students but especially right away. Now the girls are chosen to celebrate to all the clubs but at that time it was in their old. As the students and staff population increased events such as these became impossible to run in the canteen but by all accounts it was fun while it lasted, clean up aside. It's kind of the downside of success and the downside of you know progress in general what I mean as I say it was just a different time and everything was quieter in the sense that because everything was, I mean the summer there was nobody here hardly, I mean there was the few technicians around that few would mean and there was nothing needed. We didn't have summer camps and things like that. I remember we used to go outside in the front there and we used to sit the sun as a good day and there'd be a few up on the roof with buckets. I think Jimmy Kelly would have been one of the prime leader of that. The girls are gone and we would be just sitting at the grass and next man you get a bucket of water, do you have that top of your head? Art from the windows of the labs, the science labs over the front door. There was no kind of canopy out over the front door in the day so like what you got was this like that's important to be coming along. I think a poor Nikki, a poor Nikki, one day he was coming in to work, he was an elderly man in our eyes at the time and out came the bucket of water and he was a poor man was so and he coming in to do his day's work like whatever you know, so like it was dangerous times too, you know, you don't always have to look up before you sit down, see if there's anyone on the roof or looking down the window or yeah, really good. Joe Fielin was a lecturer in the Department of Engineering and he summed up the academic journey of the 1980s into the 1990s. The diploma was beginning to raise its head and we spent a couple of years developing the diploma. The staff taught we'd never been the runner of the diploma, you know, it was beyond us. But we got to the diploma and then a few years later somebody suggested we run a degree and the degree was beyond understand as well. because we ran the degree and then we, somebody said we'd run masters and you know, no, no, we couldn't run masters and then of course we eventually wound up with a few PhDs. I always say if you want the students, if you get the students to be enthusiastic about what they're going to learn, they'll teach themselves. You have to kind of encourage them to learn that's a whole different thing. There was what I call a very high degree of academic freedom in this place that if a lecturer had the capability of developing a new course, of bringing staff along that could populate that course, they had the freedom to do so. So they're computing area developed very rapidly and the business school developed very rapidly and the Greek courses and engineering started to develop. So in a sense during the 70s, we were offering what was the received wisdom. And from the 80s onwards, we were doing what that staff were capable of driving. As WRTC grew, it took on more physical space. An opportunity came up to buy the Good Shepherd Convent closer to Waterford City. We were invited down there and there was this wonderful, powerful woman, Sister Nora. It was quite a young nun. I'm the rest of the nuns were very empathy by that stage, but they had taken the decision they were going to sell the Convent and they liked the idea that it would go for education. But Sister Nora was nobody's photo and she knew the market value of the Convent etc. etc. But what I remember is being taken on a tour of the Convent before we bought it with a group of people. And the thing that sticks in my mind is the laundry. Now, nothing had broken at this time and nobody knew any of the things that were revealed later. But we were taken into the laundry and by that time there were holes in the roof, there were pigeons flying in and out and there were these big sinks there. And what you call the manholes is it for pressing the moisture to the sheets and things like that. I went in there, a cold shutter went on my back when I looked at it because I didn't know if people had gone in there and worked in that place when they were having babies out of wedlock. And it was not a happy place. I'm not lingered there and a lot of work had to be done by the college to convert that into a very pleasant county area which it is now. I remember when we had moved in, one of the music teachers had to teach in the chapel. There's an annex each side and one side was where the priest put on his vestments. And on the other side, I believe, was where the penitents, I think they might have been called sat. It was a separate room. They could see the altar, but nobody could see them. We put a piano in there and the singing teacher, Anne Woodworth used to teach in there and she said it was always cold. No matter how much eating you put on and she always felt there was a spirit or ghost in that room. So we had other ghost stories from other people who went to other parts of the building. So it was an interesting building. Ray Griffin has a son, Ray Junior, who now also works in the college. So I came in here as a lecturer in 2005 and I'd been lecturing in DIT for about five years and before that I was a stockbroker. But I'd done part time lecturing in CIT and UCC. And I was interviewed here loads of times and they said no, chose the standard of lectures or much higher than me. But I think I'd five job interviews here. And I'd say there was a bit of toxicity about the brand cause, a weirdness of like my dad would have loomed very large at the time in the place. Now he's, he's gone 20 years now from WIT, but at the time he'd run the place for 21, 22 years. And it was built in his own image in that he had hired most of the people and he had built up kind of crawling under belly the place from the 800 students or so to the kind of eight thousand, seven, eight thousand that was when you were tired. So I'd say the interview panels, the conflict of interest forms that made it very hard to hire me and I think it was gone about five years by the time I came in here. But like I've walked the card or was it this place and so is a child I crawled in here really. So we would have come in here on Saturdays when Dad was doing work and knocked around. Ray Griffin Jr. reflected on the developments in the college leading up to the mid 1990s. But like it was a remarkable time like from 83, 84 when the degree started to come to 92. When you think about it, like the first ten years was just kind of settling down and waiting for something to happen. And at that point I think he, I don't know, but looking back on what happened, it appears you just gave up on waiting for your ship to come in and started making your own future. Firstly degrees, the place was growing at exponential rates, student accommodation built in 1992, buying the good shepherd, Norco, the art school down on Newgate Street. There must have been an incredible atmosphere of Kando. Yeah, well yeah, I think probably part of what happened was that with the kind of development of going on these became much more complicated entities. And official them outside the college recognised that you can't tangle with a complicated entity without doing damage. So they tended to back off a bit and let them sail their own boat. Throughout the 90s more staff joined WRTC, including Willie Dunley, who eventually go on to be president of WIT in later years. I joined the college in 1996. It was February 1996, I was interviewed, but I actually started here in Easter in 1996. So it was interesting when I arrived because at that time it was during the years to hold us and there was nobody in the institute except one of two people walking around. So I actually was never in Waterford before, I did the interview so I had no idea what I was coming down to, but I had an interview in DCU in Dublin and in Waterford Institute of Technology and I got offered of a job in Waterford and accepted it. I'd like to say it was because I heard so much about Waterford and I wanted to be here. Well that's half true actually. I did a PhD in particle physics, I then went into industry because there was no jobs at the time in that area and I always wanted to go back to academia. So I had this idealized view of academia, but when I was walking around I saw an ad for a lecture position in Waterford and I asked a friend of mine not having me in Waterford or knowing nothing about the institute. What did he think of Waterford RTC at the time and he actually pointed at another colleague and said that's the best IT programmer we have in the company and he comes from Waterford. So based on that I made an application. I actually came with a very clear objective to do research because in the job I had previous to this I worked for a company that was involved in industrial research and was involved in the European framework program and prior to coming here I applied, I made an application for funding under Europe and under the European program and an actual fact I discovered the week of my interview that I had received that funding. So I actually was in a very lucky position that I came to the institute which I think was about 250,000 euros of funding and yes there was a lot of research going on or research going on in the institute but not research where you have that level of funding. So I came at a very clear view that I wanted to do research. I wanted to set up a research group. I didn't initially have the ambition to set up such a large research group but it was one of the reasons I came back from industry to academia for two reasons. One was I felt I always wanted to teach and And the second one was, I read it. really wanted to get back to doing research. I mean it was one of the great levels I had was research and the excitement and the freedom the research gives to give you to investigate an area to problem solve in an area where there are you know technical or scientific challenges. Willie along with him and Delester would go on to phone the TSSG research group. It's now named the Walton Institute and is one of the largest research centers in Europe. For a group that started out doing telecommunications research it very nearly didn't happen and all because of a phone line. Yeah it's a very funny story and it's true because it's so strange but and it shows the difference between the RTC and where we are at the moment. When I came here first as I say I came with funding for a European project and I was leading that project and that gave me the funding to set up a small research group. Now we had no physical location within the Institute itself but one of the requirements in the European project was that you would join teleconferences once a week and most of the teleconferences happened at two o'clock just after lunch in Brussels but of course two o'clock is one o'clock in Ireland and at that time we had a switch that was manually managed. So it meant that between one o'clock and two o'clock you couldn't actually get an international line. So I had this dilemma that I couldn't actually join the teleconference. By the way this was pre-demo-boyle phone. I mean mobile phones weren't that common at least. Academic members of staff were not given mobile phones and so I asked around and somebody said to me oh I think there's two guys I'm in the last time a guy called Paul who have a small room and they're working on a project for Waterford Crystal and that day I have an outside line. So I Julie went up knocked on this door. Aiman opened the door and I said I hear that you have a phone line with the direct line he said yeah I said do you mind if I can use it at one o'clock and he said no that's no problem we're at lunch. So I went in there between one o'clock and of course Aiman would come back in at two o'clock and we got talking and I don't know how I convinced Aiman I did convince him to join me in doing telecoms research and in actual fact myself an Aiman built a TSSG and it was great because anybody who knows Aiman Aiman is one of the best software engineers in probably in the country but I was an idealist he was a practical person so between the two of us we actually began to build the TSSG but it's all to do it's not having a phone finding somebody who has an outside line and that's how we started and what I think is really an amazing project which was the TSSG. The people who came in were of a certain level of qualification but suddenly there was a recruitment drive and the general level of qualification took a jump. Is this for staff or not talking about staff so all of a sudden PhDs began to appear where they were very thin of the ground the beginning I mean the engineering our first PhD was a source of great joy for us at the time. Nowadays you go up to any of the departments and you walk in there and their PhDs all over the place they're not that they're routine as in fact getting a PhD is no more mean thing but at the time they were fairly rare. In 1997 based on its achievements and developments WRTC was retitled WIT by the higher education authority. Waterford Institute of Technology came into existence. We just went into meltdown, duvelation, all over the distance literally, dance around the place, you know jumping up and down oh my god it's fantastic but finally finally recognized for a bottle of original finally and that little peg above was standard IOT at the time our standard RTC at the time so everybody was enthusiastic as well. It's just the enthusiasm because we all felt that we were part of a new entity that was going past us and that was great excitement and we really wanted to be an institute of technology. The timeline has gone from me a little bit but I know we got a good report and we were granted the institute of technology status. That's huge. Yeah, I was great at the great shout out at the spear because you know like you're changing over to WIT. It was after the fabulous because so much work happened on by so many people and I'm talking about across every branch of the staff, management, staff, admin, everybody, lecturers, you name them, people stepped up to the place, even you know we were getting the grounds in order and you know panel was common and they'd be rolling out the red carpet for it was it was just one big team with one big objective and at the time we had done. But then it got water done because well first of all cork institute said we're just as good as water, we want to be cork institute of technology. So the next day if you're writing cork maybe on the phone said cork institute of technology without any approval at all. We're anger because we had been made in order to be designated as an IOT we have to jump through serious groups and you know comply with all sorts of criteria and regulations and prove ourselves and go from to panels and you know put our case forward to all these internationally people who are you know really looking at you in in in depth detail and then everybody has to suit them. The tragedy is that it was perceived as whereas being an upgrading it was never an upgrading it was a retightling and no more than that. For a short amount of time it had a big impact because it was a recognition that the southeast needed something different because it broke us out of the herd so the anatomy of solving the higher education conundrum in the southeast is that we need to be separated from the other IOTs or RTCs and that happened and then all hell broke loose and it was reduced into nothing. It was a major achievement we saw as a major achievement to be given this title of Institute of Technology. Unfortunately politics intervened and very quickly the other RTCs were also given the title and I suppose you have to put it into the context of that battle for university status so in a way we saw it somehow as a recognition of the fact amidst a mid-point between being a regional college and being a university but of course once all of the institutes were upgraded that took away that differentiator. We were happy that we had done well and we didn't wish any other institute L or anything like that we wanted to do the best we could but we saw it as a step towards university status for waterfront which we were crying out for and which you know we had all the right building blocks in place to achieve that but I saw it was diluted a bit and we felt a bit down about that but so we just got on with it there were a number of changes in WIT around that time. Jim Fielen retired as did Ray Griffin senior not too long afterwards. Keurren Byrne became the president of WIT with the view in developing the Institute further and seeking university status. The financial controller Anthony McFeeley acted as the president for a short period before Ruhri Nevin was officially appointed and in 2015 Willie Dunley took over that position. Many other members of staff retired and new ones came in including me. Research activities ramped up, new courses came on stream and the place began to take on a more international flavor. Frank Walsh joined the School of Business after a long career in the private sector. Well I had spent 30 years in industry before I came in so I found just it was terrific to impart some knowledge to students. I was a very enjoyable time lecturing after I've been working in industry in different parts of the world you know I just come back from Belgium where I had set up a shared service center for a multinational so go back to lecturing and telling people about in the School of Business about how business runs etc. was I found a very rewarding rewarding not in a financial sense but in you know what I mean. I found that the very impressed by the fellow lecturers that in the like the view we have of the state section is not sometimes is not great but I found I was impressed by the lecturers and the enthusiasm and the amount of work that the lecturers in the School of Business were doing a lot of money and that impressed me a lot and it's NWIT. I thought that was terrific, you know? - Ray Griffin, Jr. progressed his own career at WIT, increasing the Institute's research profile at the same time. - I knew way too much about this place. Like if you show me a bit of WIT scarting board, I probably could tell you the card are. So I am, like I've been crawled around this building when I was one or two. So like I just know the place inside out. I know the history. And so very soon I was able to put shape on my own professional career. I started teaching the kind of courses I wanted to and I took ownership of them probably quicker than most people twig. I think most people, like Dad described in the, when he arrived in here, as you're kind of waiting to be hand in the job description and it doesn't appear you have to shape your own universe as an academic. And what I found is it was really easy to get this place the same for you. You could walk into the AV people, people like Frank Hirschey and he would do anything for you. Are you could walk in to Hayden Mugra and he would do whatever he could for you in IT. And so like in short order, I had my dream office as single person office up in the Norco building, the AT building. Great bunch of colleagues who are, it's kind of like Noah's Ark. We've won everything. We can't do it based. We've probably a good thing in a work environment. But like people who have your back and will do anything for you. And so like I started initiatives like the Southeast Economic Monitor from a kind of radio interview that I probably shouldn't have done. I was at a conference in Greece and the late Billy McCarthy asked me to speak about the Greek economy, which I know very little about. But I spent an evening in Athens talking to people and I did a report and when I came back he asked me, why can't you do that for Waterford? And I decided I better kind of put some professional research rubric around it. And I got colleagues to, it would better ability to do the stats than myself to pitch in. From the early 2000s, the student population increased dramatically, bringing in a significant international cohort enriching the culture at WIT. - Liz Wight. - Back in the day, back in the 80s or whatever, you had a few foreign students, believe it's a foreign probably international students. They were going to the exception rather than the rule. I'm not exactly sure how they would have got here in the sense of what would have brought them to Ireland at that time. But certainly there is a change in the student body because I suppose we're in general, it's both our end of the more. - We're open. - Open society. - Country now in society. So you're getting a reflection of that. As well as the student population increasing, the research profile grew significantly. New groups formed and had international impacts in areas such as health sciences and health promotion, material science, theater studies, poetry, pharmaceuticals, nursing, quality, entrepreneurship, technology and engineering. All human life was here. - It's very interesting that nobody outside of Ireland considers water for the Institute of Technology anything except a university and a leading research university. I mean, our graduates have gone right across Europe are leading research centers in major universities in Europe and the States, etc. So what I would say is that from the very beginning, this institute always outward looking, always was involved at the highest level in research and research networks, whether it's in life sciences, whether it's in engineering, whether it's in the humanities. Obviously the TSSG, as you say, had a special position because of it just of its scale. But from a president's perspective, this is an institute of international standing. This is an institute that sets its standards according to the international norm. And that's crazy right across the board. To me, it still strikes me and not to mean insulting to our fellow institutes of technology. But I always felt that waterford was different. The waterford always saw itself as part of the international community. So the way I used to describe it was that we're internationally focused delivering international excellence to the region as opposed to being regionally focused and then having some international connections. Some of the people I spoke with reflected on their professional achievements and legacies at WIT. - I suppose empowerment, freedom to be what you wanted to be and freedom to have ideas and to implement ideas, that would be a big, you know, a big one. - If you're, I say, what does it actually do when you're there apart from sort of just being, you know, managing your area? That's one achievement I would claim that in fact that we did, we turned it from being very basic, of course, into a very polished operation. - The research profile at this college has acquired is largely took off after my time. During my time, most of my inputs had been to try and develop the degree programs of the college. And that very often was done at the expense of promoting research. And what I did foresee that once you have substantial degree programs running in the college, automatically research becomes a growth on that. And that's exactly what happens. So, right, I mean, I sat back in admiration after I retired at the way in which the research profile of the college was much roaming. - I asked people about their hopes for the college into the future. They all gave a similar answer. - No university for whatever. It's just a structural thing because we have a university in all of it now. - I love to get over here. I really wouldn't get over here because I think they re-entoyed the church. They're at Morke and the students, the teachers, and everything worked out for all of that. And it's terrible to say that didn't pass them over the whole time. That's I think would be lovely for our two kids. I hope they guess before I do any of them. (laughing) - Mrs. Lee, would you have any wish for a place? - I sure would. I'd love like Mary said. But it seemed to fail the whole time to try to push it into a university. - They were. - We pushed. - And they still didn't guess it yet. Like love to see, I'd love to see that getting university now. - Well, for number one, all I want for the college is to be able to keep going. And number two, which would be very, very important. University. And I, to be alive, I jump as high as I possibly could. I'd love to see that university. - First and foremost, I hope and expect that we've come to university. I probably have a hope and aspiration for something more than that. I mean, that's something that's required for our community. It's required for us to continue to develop in one way. But I think what's more important is, for me personally, education is under a huge challenge. Education is changing. The walls are crumbling. The idea that there is this kind of building, there's this group of buildings, there's these people in these buildings, that is the center of all knowledge that we are the only ones that know how to educate, that we are the only ones that know how to do research, et cetera, that's changing. What we want to deliver is a creative, educated, you know, graduates who can take control of their own career development. In an environment that is hugely, a hugely disruptive environment, like the difference between education now and 20 years ago was, if you were an educator 20 years ago and you were teaching on, you know, a technical subject, for instance, you would be fairly confident that what you've taught your students would be good for 20, 30, 40 years within that industry. Today, industry is changing so rapidly that the skills and the tools we have to give our students today are very, very different. And that means that the environment under which we teach and the relationship with students and the collaboration with students, which, by the way, in the future, lifelong learning is going to transform, you know, our concept of a student. That, you know, if we could change the way we teach and the environment we teach and to create that kind of more dynamic environment, that would be my aspiration for the future. A kind of education is a partnership in which we are the curators, if you like, rather than the way education today is highly structured, you know, very clearly defined in hours and subject matter and margins, et cetera, et cetera. WIT ceased to exist on the 1st of May 2022, merging with OIT Carlo and replaced by the new Southeast Technological University. What the future holds for this new entity is anyone's guess, but if I've learned anything from speaking with people for this documentary, is that the old commas up to us will get out what we put in. For a number of years, a group of WIT staff, both current and retired from all departments in the college, have been meeting once a month in Harnie's pub in Dunhill to play a trade session under the name Dave's List. I started joining in a few years back to learn a few tunes, and I've learned a bit more than that. I actually recorded some of the interviews for this documentary one evening in the pub at a session, and that night, one of the retired members of staff Joe Fielin sang a song that, to me, sums things up nicely. Where we were, to where we went, is where we are today. My best member was a always black guy at the moment, a black guy at the moment, because I like talking and even the walkmen of the builders. She said, and he talked to Monday beyond tell me jokes and I'd be like, "Can I ever be saying I have a good joke for you? Do you know what I mean? I used to have mulling convulsions. Well, they'd have me, but we were always laughing, Charlie, weren't we?" Here you came down by under path, as I came on my way. We traveled then from where we went, to where we are today. I looked as nice, you could come and start, from the lamping down the sky. In one event, coincident, towards you and I. I missed the people that I worked with, people that we started, that I started with in the 1970s and worked side-by-side with all those years. From the first day to the last day, I loved it, to the best thing that ever happened. And I don't think I can anymore touch. Thank you.