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| July 2007 Spider Morgan Benton, '96, Uses Problem-Solving Skills to Spin Virtual Webs In the spring of his senior year, Benton, a leadership studies and sociology double major and physics minor, identified a problem and a solution: Because he had not gone abroad as an undergraduate, he deemed his education incomplete. He decided to pursue a challenging international experience following his graduation to round out his education. “I’ve always been a good communicator and I wanted to handicap myself by choosing a destination where I didn’t speak the language,” Benton said. “I didn’t want to go to a big city because I knew I would find other English speakers to hang out with. I wanted to grow from this experience.” A high school friend told Benton about the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme operated by the Japanese government. JET recruits young graduates from 44 countries to assist in international exchange and foreign-language education in local governments, boards of education and elementary, junior and senior high schools throughout Japan. Benton, who at the time was studying Taoism, meditation and judo in a Zen circle organized by his faculty advisor and sociology professor Hilquias “Keo” Cavalcanti, was intrigued, despite the fact that he didn’t speak a word of Japanese. Akira Suzuki, the University’s Japanese-language professor, suggested Benton request a placement in Hokkaidō, a large, primarily agricultural island in northern Japan. Benton did, and JET assigned him to teach English at a junior high school in Niikappu, Hokkaidō, a town of 6,000 with a reputation for raising racehorses. Following World War II, Japan’s English-language program primarily focused on teaching grammar and reading, according to Benton. He complemented that program by teaching his students proper pronunciation and developing their conversational skills. During the two years he taught in Niikappu, Benton met and married Nozomi Nishimura, a nutritionist at the junior high school where he taught. The couple moved to the town of Hiroo, Hokkaidō, a fishing village of 9,000, in fall 1998 when Benton received a new assignment to teach English to junior high students there. But in time he encountered another problem. “When Nozomi became pregnant with our first child,” Benton said, “I realized that my prospects for raises and career advances were just about nil. So what now?” Benton found the answer to that question when he returned to the United States for a visit and his stepfather introduced him to Riven, an adventure problem-solving video game. “I got completely sucked into it,” Benton said. “I would stay up all night [playing it] and go for eight hours at a time without going to the bathroom. One night when I was out with my best friend from college I found myself thinking, ‘How can I cut this short so I can go back to playing the video game?’ “I realized I was fascinated with computing and problem solving. This was during the midst of the dot-com boom when people were making lots of money with very little experience.” Believing he had stumbled upon the ideal career, Benton searched the Internet for bridge programs that offered online undergraduate and graduate computing courses for working professionals. He found and enrolled in an online degree-program in information systems with a computer science focus through the New Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) in Newark. He started taking classes while living in Japan, but in summer 2001 he moved with his wife and, by then, two young daughters to the United States so that he could begin working as a full-time lecturer with NJIT in the fall. Benton completed his master’s degree in information systems in January 2002 and immediately began working on his Ph.D. During this past academic year, Benton served as an assistant professor of information systems in the Department of Integrated Science and Technology at James Madison University (JMU) in Harrisonburg, Va., a position he will retain in light of his successful defense of his doctoral dissertation May 7, 2007. For his dissertation, Benton built a Web-based system which he dubbed QuesGen to help teachers write better multiple-choice questions. His ongoing research will continue to focus on developing Web-based technologies to improve teaching and learning. Benton said he views his work as an information systems specialist as somewhat analogous to his experience as a leadership studies student. Jepson students look at a single phenomenon, leadership, through many different lenses, Benton said. Likewise, information systems professionals must consider many different perspectives when crafting a Web site that addresses a particular theme or topic in a way that is easily understandable to a wide range of people. Creating a Web site is essentially an exercise in problem solving. “Information systems is the intersection between the technical side and the human side of technology systems,” Benton explained. “[As an information systems specialist] I talk to people in management, translate their problems into technospeak and then work with the programmers to design the technological infrastructure that will support human problem solving.” For example, to coincide with the Jamestown quadrennial celebration this year, Benton developed a Web site the general public could use to search Virginia’s more than 2,000 historic markers. In the process, he worked with many people, including employees of the Virginia Department of Transportation, employees of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, Global Positioning System (GPS) specialists who mapped the placement of the markers and advocates for people with disabilities who worked to ensure compliance with accessibility laws. “Designing such a Web site requires a real interdisciplinary approach, one that takes into consideration the needs of a lot of different stakeholder groups,” Benton said. “That’s what Jepson was all about.” Not surprisingly, it was the interdisciplinary approach of JMU’s Department of Integrated Science and Technology that attracted him to his current position, Benton said. The department comprises 47 faculty members with degrees in 37 disciplines. Students entering the program take classes in a variety of scientific and technological subjects before choosing their area of concentration. The strength of such a program rests on the interdisciplinary versatility of its graduates, who, like Jepson students, pursue a wide range of careers throughout the world, according to Benton. To underscore the value of an interdisciplinary approach to education, Benton referred to his experience as one of three faculty members comprising a team that advised six students on their senior capstone projects this past year. “I’m on a team of three faculty—a virologist, an environmentalist and me, an information systems specialist. We have difficulties understanding each other because we are siloed in our own specific areas of study. But our six students are equally fluent in all these areas. “I am really committed to the idea of interdisciplinary studies,” Benton said, “and I continue to get more and more excited about it as time goes on. I feel like a fish in water!” It appears the problem solver now has one less problem to solve: He no longer has to search for a challenging, rewarding career where he can fully utilize his problem-solving competencies. He has found it. |
Morgan Benton, ’96, thrives on solving problems. In
fact, problem solving has shaped the course of his life in
interesting, unexpected ways. 