Matt CowgerAssistant Systems Administrator
Matt Cowger is an operator. Not your conventional operator, mind you - he's neither a scam artist nor into heavy construction equipment (to the best of our knowledge). Matt does like to make things go, however, especially computing systems. Combine this zeal for enabling systems with a passion for networking and you get a systems administrator par excellence. And Information Resources gets a fine addition to our Systems & Communication staff.
A Western Washington native, Matt's family "followed the fish" - his father is a fishmeal broker and plant designer - by living in Kirkland, Redmond, Kenmore, Edmonds, two locations in Maine, and even a stint in Massachusetts before Matt enrolled in Bowdoin College in Maine.
At Bowdoin Matt took control of his "system" in a couple ways. Shortly after arriving, he approached the networking unit for a job. He had, after all, helped build a fiber optic network for his high school when he was in ninth grade. Not only did he get a job, but by his junior year at Bowdoin Matt had full root access to computing systems, a degree of systems access and security trust that is scrupulously restricted to those few who are responsible for making the network go.
Another way Matt operated successfully at Bowdoin was in the formation of a mountain bike racing team. Still a current weekend passion, mountain biking was close to a religion for Matt at Bowdoin. His new team placed well in the regional point series its first year, and by his senior year the team began to attract sponsors.
Matt completed his studies at Bowdoin in 2003, worked briefly for AT&T Wireless as an "outage analyst," and joined PLU last Fall. These days he's operating at full throttle, bringing new systems online and orchestrating a complex array of networked systems and services with passion for excellence and commitment to making it all work in ways unnoticed by network users. Our kind of operator.