By Robby Wang
Sports Editor

Bill Freitas is the one and only Director of Academic Technology at Lawrenceville. Both students and faculty consult him whenever a computer question arises. Mr. Freitas, however, is mainly responsible for helping faculty use computers for research, classes, and course preparations. In addition to his aiding the faculty, Mr. Freitas teaches AP Computer Science and also teaches additional classes for various courses, including AP Environmental Science, American Dream, Twentieth Century Europe, and Humanities. Although Mr. Freitas does not coach any sports, he is an active duty master in the Woodhull House where he serves as an academic adviser to seven students.

Mr. Freitas's interest in computers began in high school. The history class in which he tried to enroll was booked, so he had to settle for the only other available course, a computer science program.

Mr. Freitas was raised in southern New Jersey and attended Rutgers University where he received his bachelor's degree in computer science. Mr. Freitas went on to graduate school at University of Delaware. He took a semester off, however, when one of his friends asked him to help write a programming textbook for a small company. This job, initially supposed to span six months, continued for ten years. In that time period, Mr. Freitas wrote an astounding 17 books, which sold over 600,000 copies.

His teaching career began at Saint Andrew's School in Boca Raton, Florida, where he taught for nine years. He then went on to teach at the Webb School in Claremont, California for three years. He was responsible for the school-wide network and also taught nine different computer courses.

Mr. Freitas has traveled all around the United States. He visited The University of California at Berkeley in the summer of 1997, where he was one of 30 high school computer science teachers to be selected to participate in an AP Computer Science workshop.

In 1998, Mr. Freitas was honored as a "Tandy Technology Scholar Outstanding Teacher / Champion of the Classroom."

He continues his travels around the country, giving presentations and speeches on merging technology into everyday curriculum.

Mr. Freitas has been at Lawrenceville for almost two years solving computer problems that plague the faculty and students. In his free time, he likes listening to music and spending time with Amy, his wife of twelve years, and with his two-year-old daughter. Next summer, Mr. Freitas will complete his master's degree at Columbia University.

Faculty and students are grateful that this computer expert is here to grace us with his intelligent humor, and that he is prepared to resolve any frustrating computer problems that plague students and faculty.