Marie Matthews, who according to Human Resources holds the position of Computer Support Specialist III, has been working for several years to design and organize the structure of the Emory Web, working with departments all over campus to provide Emory with a presence on the internet.
Matthews, though, is a seeming mass of contradictions. Someone who is immersed daily in technology, she strongly prefers trains to airplanes as a means of travel. Her daily mode of transportation is a truck, and she says that learning to drive a stick shift was one of the greatest accomplishments of her life.
Her first positive experience with computers came during an internship for the Georgia Trust for Historic Preservation. They asked her if she had any experience with computers; she told them of her two-day fiasco. Their response, said Matthews, was, `You've had more experience than us. Figure it out." She dived right in. "I thought it was great fun," Matthews said, "and I ended up really getting into the guts of the system to figure out why it didn't work."
That experience didn't result in her being transformed into an instant computer whiz, but it did diminish her feelings of terror. Her next position was in the Clerk's Office of the Georgia House of Representatives, keeping track of legislation. She moved from there to work for a professional association; half of her responsibilities were as a lobbyist, half were "computer stuff, mostly d-base programming."
At Emory, Matthews' job evolved from dealing with site licenses for software to trying to provide some form and structure for Emory's presence on the World Wide Web. Matthews said that several people had suggested to her, "You ought to do web stuff." She had a student working with her by the name of William Morse, who was system administrator of a machine named `Vader." [Morse's job has also evolved; he is now on staff at the law school, overseeing developing of their web site.]
"We were at Georgia Tech one Friday evening, looking at the web," Matthews said. "I said, `Let's make a deal; you load the software and install it, and I'll write some pages.' And that's exactly how it got started."
If there is anything such as a typical computer nerd, Matthews does not seem to fall into the category. She shares a small house in Inman Park, built around 1907, with her two dogs, one of which failed obedience school, the other of which is a stray that a friend found wandering, eating out of trash cans. When she won a $50 door prize at Staff Fest last year, she went out and bought a Skil saw and built a railing for her front porch.
With a stated preference for public transportation ("I need to start taking MARTA again"), she gets to work each day by way of a Ford Ranger pickup truck. "With a stick shift," she is quick to add. "I didn't drive at all until after my husband died a couple of years ago." Several friends taught her to drive in the parking lot of the nearby MARTA station. "Learning to drive a stick shift is one of the greatest accomplishments in my life," she said.
A travel aficionado, Matthews has been cross country four times by train. "I've traveled virtually every major route AMTRAK goes. I would choose trains over flying any time," she said. "Texas is big. I learned that by train."
Matthews' job continues to evolve; her life outside Emory continues to change as well. "One day I'm going to finish up my master's degree in computer science at Georgia State," she said. She'll have to return to her technical side to complete that, however. Her two remaining classes are statistics and numerical analysis.
-- Nancy M. Spitler