Philip Ray makes an effort to ride his bike to work every day.
Because he lives only three miles from campus, the Information Technology (IT) manager at the School of Natural Resources and Environment (SNRE) easily can commute on two wheels. Sharing similar environmental values with SNRE, Ray also saves gas with his frequent bike rides, and when he can’t bike, he carpools to campus with his wife.
While biking provides great exercise Ray also is active in martial arts.
As an undergraduate student at Southern Connecticut State University, Ray noticed a poster for the martial arts club and decided to join. “I had always been fascinated by the martial arts, but they had never seemed accessible,” Ray says.
More than 15 years later, Ray holds first-degree black belts in Tang Soo Do and Hapkido, two distinct Korean arts. Tang Soo Do is like tae kwon do, though it emphasizes tradition and philosophy over sport; Hapkido focuses more on self-defense with joint locks and throws, Ray says.
When he moved in 1993 from New Haven, Conn., to Ann Arbor so he could study at the School of Information (SI), there were no Tang Soo Do instructors in the area. As a result, Ray temporarily set aside his hobby.
While at SI, Ray met his wife, Laurie Alexander, another SI student who now is head of reference and instruction at U-M’s graduate library, as well as head of the Shapiro undergraduate library. During graduate school, Ray also was involved in a project with the Medical School and after graduation both Yale and U-M offered him IT positions. “I chose U-M because it had a more sophisticated technology environment,” Ray says. He worked with the Medical School and the School of Kinesiology before joining the SNRE staff in 1999.
When a Tang Soo Do instructor moved to the area in 2001, Ray started his hobby again, achieving black-belt status after four years. He now practices four days a week for two-to-three hours each day. “It’s a lot of fun and it helps with fitness,” Ray says.
Originally drawn to the information field for its problem-solving aspects, Ray likes thinking through problems and identifying possible solutions. “As a kid, my dad got frustrated because I would take things apart and not put them back together,” Ray says. “Now I put them back together.”
As IT manager, Ray works with two other staff members to solve problems with networking, printers and projectors. Based in the IT office in the Dana Building, he fixes computer and technical glitches for all SNRE faculty and staff. While he performs a variety of duties throughout the day, he focuses mainly on direct service. “The classroom is always the first priority,” Ray says.
Ray is working on the Climate Savers Computer Initiative, a campuswide effort that includes developing best practices for energy saving policies on computers. Ray says the project, which began in spring 2008, is more challenging at U-M than in a business setting because “you have to match up with university culture and practices. We have to accommodate a wide variety of needs of faculty and staff.”
Ray says he enjoys working for SNRE because of the close relationships among staff and faculty and the strong sense of community; nearly all the faculty and staff of the school are located in the Dana Building.
The weekly Spotlight features staff members at the University. To nominate a candidate, please contact the Record staff at [email protected].
