Position:
Supervisor of the Camden
Language Lab/Web Developer
Length of Service:
Since February 2003
Residence: Philadelphia
Passion for language: Although coincidental, “it seems like every job I have been in has had something to do with foreign languages,” Docktor said. An undergraduate at Rutgers in New Brunswick during the early 1990s, Docktor minored in French and received a bachelor’s degree in political science and history. He performed a variety of duties in his first job at Bloomberg News in Princeton, including providing customer service to French-Canadian clients, and covering Canadian and French stories for Bloomberg’s nascent audio/video news service. As supervisor of the Camden Language Lab, Docktor said most of his job is dealing with the technical side of things – digitizing audio and visual materials and loading them to the server, and overseeing work study students. But Docktor’s fluency in French and familiarity with a few other languages does help. He speaks “basic but competent” Polish, which he picked up after meeting his Polish wife four years ago at a language school in Paris.
On call: In addition to supervising the language lab, Docktor is a web developer for the College of Arts and Sciences in Camden and serves as a backup PC troubleshooter, providing technical support to faculty and staff. His most common call? “When people don’t have Internet access or their email isn’t working,” Docktor said. He is studying to get a second bachelor’s degree, this time in computer science. He says the degree will help because the language lab is a server-based lab, and the demands on his technical knowledge keep growing. He gives high marks to Camden’s computer program – the faculty especially. “I’ve been very impressed how they go beyond the call to help,” Docktor said.
A folksy guy: Docktor is a longtime singer, songwriter and musician. He sings and plays the mandolin and accordion in an Irish folk-rock-punk band, “The Hit The Bottle Boys.” The band formed three years ago when a friend of Docktor’s from Ireland needed some bandmates to play at his brother’s wedding in Limerick. Docktor also plays the guitar, bass, drums, and piano and has fronted his own band.
Special thanks: “In my department we’re always helping each other. If one person needs help the others always pitch in. So I’d like to thank Scott Kuhnel, Roman Volkovich, Richard Buonpastore, and my manager Harold Winshel.”