Matthew Parker had to connect a politician from the United Kingdom and the class he was about to speak to in New Jersey with an audience in South America through the magic of technology.
“The video, the audio, the computer, the webinar platform – I was setting up,” Mr. Parker said. “The room was booked until five minutes before this guy was supposed to start. I literally had five minutes to throw this up and mike him.”
You won’t find Staying Cool During Crisis Webinar Programming 101 in any college catalogue. Luckily, Mr. Parker gleaned a lot from the professors he studied under at Middlesex County College.
In particular, Professor Michael Greenhouse in the History and Social Sciences Department planted the seeds of independent thinking, critical analysis, the importance of being prepared for life’s unforeseen crises – skills that serve him well in his job as technical support analyst/manager at Princeton University.
At Princeton, Mr. Parker offers information technology support to some 60 faculty members, 30 staff members and about 150 students, graduate students and masters students. To be the go-to guy for tech glitches in the 500 desktops, laptops, tablets and iPhones in the Bendheim Center for Finance, he often harkens to the life lessons learned in Prof. Greenhouse’s class.
“You’re there and you’re like, ‘Hey, I don’t just want to show up to this class and be told that today we’re going to read chapter one.’ I can read chapter one by myself,” Mr. Parker said. “I want to show up to the class and actually interact with the class and the subject. The people who weren’t prepared to do that, who didn’t think that’s how school worked, were the ones who failed (Prof. Greenhouse’s class).
“I completely got that and I respected that. If you were late, you were going to have a problem with (Prof. Greenhouse). If you showed up not having done what he asked you to do, like if he said, ‘You have to read chapters one and two and come and talk about it,’ and you didn’t read chapters one and two, he’d call you out.”
The journey from the well-manicured Quad lawn at MCC to the ivy-covered walls at Princeton started in the wilds of Alaska. It was there that he stumbled upon the Job Corps, a federal program created to train young men and women for careers. So he took several computer-related courses after high school. To get more advanced training, however, he would have to relocate to Edison.
Not only did he earn a bunch of industry-recognized information technology certifications and a paid internship with AT&T after moving here, but the Job Corps paid his tuition as he started taking business administration classes at MCC in 2001.
He had every intention of heading back to Alaska, but he fell in love with a Jersey girl. In fact, Laurie called him as the events of Sept. 11, 2001 began to unfold. She offered to come pick him up at MCC, where he was watching the news in library.
Not only did their romance begin to blossom, but so did Mr. Parker’s career. After a couple of semesters at MCC, he took an IT job in the Perth Amboy school district. About 18 months later, he was hired at Princeton.
Within five years, Mr. Parker had made the quantum leap from high school student to a job at an Ivy League school. He and Laurie got married and now have two children.
Mr. Parker, who went on to finish his bachelor’s degree, thrives on the fact that no two days on the job are the same. Setting up webinars and meeting with a committee to discuss cyber security one day, cleaning up after a flood in a computer lab and remotely wiping information from a misplaced iPad the next – he keeps his corner of the university going.
But no matter the task, he wants to challenge the impatient, know-it-all stereotype of IT workers – the one spoofed on that “Saturday Night Live” skit from a few years ago. Jimmy Fallon arrives to help an office full of workers, but in short order, he begins to mock their lack of computer knowledge. To work on their computers, he doesn’t simply ask them to step away from their keyboards, but rather barks at them, “MOVE!”
Mr. Parker says he tries to share his knowledge with his peers rather than “making them feel like idiots.”
“That’s another thing a lot of technicians do – they won’t share how they fix the problem because they feel that somehow takes away from their position, like if I teach them to fix all their problems, then they won’t need me,” he said. “I’ve just thrown that out the window. … If I think it’s simple enough to show people how to do it, I’m going to show them how to do it because that saves me time and it makes them happier because they get to fix their own problems.”
