About Me
I started my path to my current career by deciding to attend the University of Nebraska at Kearney in 1996. The college offered an
education close to my home town and a program in Computer Science and Information Systems that I was interested in. Over the course
of four years I learned the theory and practice of programming as part of my Bachelor's Degree, and gained a minor in Graphic Design.
My hope with graphic design was to work with more computer-assisted forms of design, but I was a bit too early for the curriculum
at the time.
During my time as a student I became more interested in the development of web sites. I worked as a technology assistant at the local library in Kearney and spent a summer creating their web site as an internship for college. That brief introduction was enough to make me focus on web design as my career was started.
Shortly after graduating at UNK I accepted the position of webmaster for the college. The first two years were spent designing the look and feel of the site and training campus "pagemasters" in the use of Dreamweaver and FrontPage to maintain their own sections of the site. Soon the popularity of the web, and the need to keep content up-to-date, brought the IT department to the decision to purchase a Content Management System. Thus, the last five years of my work with UNK was spent in implementing the Ektron CMS, developing templates for the campus content updaters, and developing training programs for those same "pagemasters." The use of a CMS brought my programming knowledge to the front of my career path at this point.
I spent a brief period of time working for the University of Wyoming on an in-house content management system of their own. Most of the work there was done in VBScript, and less of my time was devoted to the design aspects of pages. While the language was new to me at the time, it didn't take long for me to catch on and begin expanding the system's abilities for users.
My family moved back to Nebraska in order to be closer to relatives, and we found ourselves in Lincoln. I accepted a job as a developer of online content for the department of Online and Distance Education. I spent the first two years developing online tutorial sites and maintaining existing tutorial systems. After two years the department purchased a content management system and opened a new position to head the project. The following three years were spent working with Sitecore to create templates for content developers and maintaining the system.
During my time at UNL I started my own distance learning experience by starting work on my Master's Degree in Instructional Technology at UNK. This web site is a final component of my last class in order to graduate.