Aug. 15, 2017 – Hailing from Euless, Texas, Matthew Berry, IT specialist, started in Administrative IT Services as a student assistant five years ago. Now he supports the computers, printers, and servers for UNT's University Resources, Communications and Marketing, Printing Services and Central Receiving. He's part of the Administrative IT Services team.

He's also one of the primary Macintosh OS X support providers in AITS. "My job dictates that I support both operating systems, so my familiarity with them is very high, but I slightly prefer Windows," Matthew said. "I just can’t justify purchasing Apple products for personal use when a cheaper option exists for me."

Supporting UNT Printing Services specifically is challenging, he said, because of all the very large vendor-provided printing presses that need to hook up to a regular computer. Vendor software isn’t always easy or logically developed, he said.

Even though he was a computer science major, he says he learned "everything I needed to on the job whenever I could fit in a moment to teach myself something new." Creating and maintaining automated processes for the deployment and support of computers looked like an interesting career choice, he said. 

"I’ve seen Matt develop from the time he was a student-worker to his current role as a key provider of solutions in our diverse service environment," said Aaron Powers, IT manager. "His academic background makes his advancement in technical aspects of the job no surprise, but what has really amazed me is his growth as a communicator and champion of customer service. Effectively deciphering and delivering information among people with such a wide array of technical comprehension is no small feat, and Matt is really shining. Our team and the university are really lucky to have him."

Matthew enjoys working in IT because rather than keeping up with the latest technology as a hobby, he "gets" to do it as a career. One of his favorite things about working at UNT is the variety of sandwich shops immediately available to him in the area.

Recalling his proudest achievement at UNT, Matthew mentioned a time he and his team had to figure out how to upgrade the program Perceptive Content, document management workflow tools, for roughly 200 people. "Given the circumstances, it went well; we had to miss the celebratory cake offered to us though since we still had some machines left to patch," he said.

In his leisure time, Matthew likes to play video games, solve Rubik's Cubes and read. Recently, he traveled to Peru on vacation to visit family, which reminded him that his Spanish-language skills need work, he said. Using Duolingo in his smartphone "is pretty neat," he said. It's very casual but an effective way to learn a language. Matthew's spare time also includes caring for Jenkins, his cat.

Another online learning platform Matthew has tried includes UNT's LyndaCampus.

"We were required to undergo several courses that interested us and it was an interesting opportunity. A lot of things you wouldn’t expect to be offered are available as guides. Specifically, courses such as macOS Sierra for IT administrators were pretty helpful in training people on Sierra in our environment, he said.