Compass Designs .net

After 10 years of teaching at Marlboro College Graduate School, I've "retired" so I can spend more time on 4Web and making videos for lynda.com.

When I departed, they gave me this plaque.

It looks beat up, because it is. They had to take it off one of the doors at the school, and it was glued down quite tightly.

What's the story behind this sign, and why am I so thrilled to get it?

During one of the name changes for the Grad School (it was called by 4 different names in my time there), the school would be called the Marlboro College Graduate Center, and the building in which it was housed would be renamed the Marlboro College Technology Center. The building is 5 stories tall, so most of the space was rented out to small businesses in the area, thus the two separate names.

They wanted to put in a gym on the 3rd floor, accessible by the building's tenants. The gym was placed in the Marlboro College Technology Center. They wanted to get a nice sign for the door.

Somehow, a miscommunication occurred between the staff and the sign maker. The sign should have read something like "Marlboro College Technology Center Fitness Room", or perhaps, "Marlboro College Technology Center Fitness Center".

The signmaker made a new sign for the gym door, but then there was this sign, which reads "Marlboro College Technology Fitness Center," which was incorrect. What was to be done with that?

Fortunately, Mark Francillon, the Master's of Science in Internet Engineering program director, snatched it up. He hung it on the door to the student server room. After all, what better defines a technology fitness center than a hot room, filled with all kinds of servers and students slaving away over them?

The servers left the program in 2004 or so, but the sign was so tightly stuck to the door that it remained, even as the room became storage, and then a library, and then a lounge.

Earlier this year, the sign was going to be removed from the door, and I asked to get it. What better place to hang the "Marlboro College Technology Fitness Center" sign than in the offices of 4Web? We have 4 program graduates working there. Indeed, 4Web would not exist without the graduate school, where we all met and became friends.

So when I retired on Saturday, I was given the sign to hang on the wall.

Thank you, Marlboro College Graduate School, for a life-changing experience as a student, and for all of your support through the years!