Jay's Biography

Personal

I am a Christian originally from Memphis, TN. I have a wife, Morgan, who is trained as a teacher and counselor (B.A. in Psychology & teacher certification, Rhodes College; M.A. in Counseling, Immaculata University) but is currently working as a stay-at-home mother. Our son, Armstrong, was born July 5, 2004. We have lived in three states in the past four years: North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and finally back to Tennessee. When I'm not programming or consulting, I enjoy woodworking. Over the past couple of years I've designed and built several pieces of furniture, and I'm beginning to get into musical instruments, particularly mandolins and guitars. Some of my woodworking exploits can be seen on my Handcrafted by Jay Eckles page.

Education

I received my undergraduate education at Rhodes College in Memphis. There, I discovered that I loved computer science and excelled at business administration, so I decided to major in both! In May 2000, I graduated from Rhodes with a Bachelor of Arts cum laude in Computer Science and Business Administration. While at Rhodes I was a member of the Pi Kappa Alpha fraternity, and I served as the president of the Interfraternity Council. I was also a founding member of "Rhodekill", the Rhodes Ultimate Frisbee intercollegiate club team. I was honored with the Robert D. McCallum Award and membership in Omicron Delta Kappa.

I did my graduate work at the Pennsylvania State University in Great Valley, PA. I pursued a master's degree in the field of Information Science, a blend of business and technology that was a great match for my undergraduate double-major. And, no kids, that's not an online degree; my wife and I spent three years in Pennsylvania. In late 2003, both Morgan and I completed our master's degrees.

Technology

I have been involved in web development since 1996. I have started out with self-taught HTML to Javascript, CSS, and other client-side technologies. During my computer science studies at Rhodes, I became interested in server-side programming -- I already knew C, so I picked up CGI. In one weekend taught myself Perl and laid the foundation for what would become CGI Calendar and later Servlet Calendar. At the Vanguard Group in Valley Forge, PA, my duties led me to become highly proficient in ASP, and later I became an expert in Java Servlets, JSP, Custom Tags, and Java beans. More recently I did a lot of C programming on Linux as a Programmer/Analyst at AutoZone in Memphis. Currently I serve as the Associate Director of Information Services at Rhodes College, managing the bigger picture of information management and dissemination through the information systems.

If you have any questions or would like to contact me for any reason, please email me at j.eckles@computer.org.