Judy Smith fell in love with a big, blue box 26 years ago, beginning a relationship that today benefits Campus Partners and its customers. The big, blue box in question was an early IBM computer that Judy Smith learned to program as a student at ECPI, a computer training school in Greensboro, NC. "Early IBM computers were truly big, blue boxes with flashing lights. We had to program the computer by feeding card decks into it. The personal computer did not exist in those days." Despite the relative primitiveness of the process, Judy was hooked.

Judy decided to attend ECPI when she received a $100 scholarship from a business sorority as a high school senior. She wanted to use the money in some way so she decided to attend the school. "Although the tuition was far more than $100, I always say it was the best $100 I ever spent."

After receiving an associate’s degree in computer programming, Judy worked for several financial institutions, including one in Dallas, before going to work for Wachovia in 1983. At Wachovia she helped write programs for System IIISM, our company’s workhorse database, during its infancy. Although Judy stayed at Wachovia until 1999, when she was hired by Campus Partners as a programmer, she came with a full storehouse of knowledge about System III. She was promoted to Manager of Information Technologies later that year, and today is regarded as an expert in maintaining the system’s integrity as new features are added to it.

Judy is charged with the responsibility of keeping System III operating 24 hours a day. She supervises the programmers who are constantly enhancing the database to improve its functioning. She also serves as a liaison with the product development team. Programs must be written for every new enhancement to System III, and then those features must be tested and retested prior to release into production. Her department is continually on-call after normal business hours to address issues that may occur during the batch processing cycle. Each of her staff takes a week rotation on-call, but Judy is always their backup. As a testimony to her team’s expertise, they rarely have to come in to solve any after hours problems so Judy is seldom needed. "It’s a clean system, it runs clean."

One of her proudest accomplishments was her promotion to Information Systems Manager, after so many years in the business. She enjoys this role and is constantly interacting with her staff of programmers. "I want to help them in any way I can. We discuss problems and the best way to solve them. No one ever does anything in a vacuum. We are a team."

But even as a manager, she still loves programming and takes on many special projects. She took responsibility for the programming needed to implement the loan rehabilitation process, another one of her proudest accomplishments. When loan rehabilitation was authorized, she worked diligently to make sure System III was equipped to handle the processing by the July 1, 2000 implementation date. Because the process involved tracking consecutive loan payments, recording special billing transactions, setting rehabilitation flags, and notifying credit bureaus, Judy spent many hours programming and testing the new process.

In her personal life Judy loves to read and likes to watch reality TV shows. She and her family enjoy beach trips and cruises. She has been married to her husband, Doug, for over 20 years and has a son, Chris. Following in his mother’s footsteps, he attends a local technical college, where he studies Visual Basic programming language.

So even as a second generation of computer programmers emerges in her family, Judy is still at the top of her game and should be there for many more years to come.