New Network Administrator Arrives in Hopkinton School District

By Oliver Josephson

A little over a month ago, a new network administrator arrived in the Hopkinton School District. This happened when our previous network administrator, Mr. Ainsworth, left during the summer to pursue other opportunities. The network administrator works at closely with the rest of the technology department, made up of five members to support Harold Martin School, Maple Street School, and Hopkinton Middle/High School. They are responsible for 500 computers, 45 printers, and 1200 users in the district.

The new Network Administrator, Mr. Roger Guay, is responsible for maintaining the network and server infrastructure for the district, including all servers, switches and routers in all the schools. He also helps to solve problems that may arise with computers, printers, projectors and the rest of the equipment the school district provides. According to Mr. Matt Stone, director of technology for our school district, “being the network administrator is one of the most important positions in the school’s technology department. We immediately advertised and began to gather applicants.” During the process of hiring a new network administrator, the applications were sorted and five semi-finalists were interviewed. Then a second round of interviews take place with three candidates with a committee that included members of the technology staff such as Ms. Batchelder, Ms. Gagnon, Mrs. Pond, and Mr. Stone. After that round, the committee tells Mr. Chamberlin, the superintendent of the Hopkinton School District who the position should be offered to.

Guay has worked with computers and technology his entire life. He went to college to be a programmer and earned a BS in Computer Science. At the time, he thought he would be a programmer for the rest of his life. In the end, he became a network administrator because he could not find any programming jobs that would hire someone with no experience right out of college. He discovered jobs for network and system admins. “I kind of fell into it out of necessity but in the end, I really enjoy it,” says Guay. Guay began doing tech repairs in school districts ever since his first real job out of college in 2005, as the network administrator for the Newfound School District, but left because of wanting to be closer to his girlfriend who is now his wife. Throughout his life Guay has done technology repairs for software and hardware. He has built computers from spare parts, installed and configured various operating systems from Mac OS 7 all the way to OS X, Windows 95 to 7, to all different flavors of Linux. Guay has even used Solaris from time to time.

What actually led Mr. Guay to work for the Hopkinton School District was because he needed a change. He spent his time working in a private sector for almost five years after leaving Newfound and did technical support and some programming at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. “The hospital was going through rough times and layoffs were just around the corner, so I decided to not stick around and began looking for other jobs closer to home. When I saw the job posting online for Hopkinton, I realized that I missed working in a school district so I applied. Hopkinton is a lot closer to my house, so the commute is great too,” says Guay.

As Mr. Guay is beginning to work for our schools he says, “it is very busy. I’ve been here a little over a month and I’m still learning how this particular district operates.” He is currently working on making sure all the servers and network are up and running. In this process, he is managing user accounts, district e-mail, and the websites for the schools. “The best part of my job is that I get to work with a great team,” says Guay. “I am most excited about working in this district because of the great people working in the district. I’ve met a lot of people who are passionate about teaching and are very interested in integrating technology more into their curriculum.”