Why I'm an Educator: Matt Weber, Ed.M.'11

Wading in three feet of rancid, mucky water, I was gripping a bor­rowed $800 video camera and dressed business casual. The Caño de Martín Peña, a small community in San Juan, Puerto Rico, had al­ways flooded, and I had applied to help document the story of this neighborhood and the social and environmental challenges it faced. It was part of a J-Term course while I was a student at HGSE getting my Ed.M., and during my 10 days in Puerto Rico, I felt like some com­bination of James Bond, Ken Burns, and Mr. Bean. 

While trudging through these flooded streets, yet clearly not from these streets, residents looked at me quizzically and with well-earned skepticism. I was speaking very broken Spanish to them, using words mostly rooted in memorized prayers I learned from Sr. Catherine Jo­seph in eighth grade Spanish class at Holy Cross Grammar School, but there was one word that I found had changed the tenor of these fleeting interactions: Harvard. 

“Soy de Harvard. I want to help.” Doors opened, I was let inside their homes, and the still preserved, never-got-wet footage of that after­noon is part of Case #2082.0 in the Harvard Kennedy School Case Program, available for $6.95. The abstract even refers to the footage as “compelling,” which just begins to describe the plight and needs of these dear people I ephemerally encountered that day in 2010. 

It is a cliché to say that education opens doors. For me, it literally did that day on a flooded street in a land unknown to me. But I have been the undeserved beneficiary of countless open doors from these hallowed institutions I can call my own, more than 20 years learning and working in higher education. There is something magical that happens at colleges and universities, and I have decided that pursuit of such magic — and subsequent attempts to add to its alchemy — is how I want to spend my life. 

This has taken the form of projection mapping a giant rotating pumpkin on the face of the University of Virginia’s famous Rotunda — and making an annual event out of it, called of course, The Great Rotumpkin. This magic lies in teaching a class on Zoom during the pandemic, hating Zoom, then appreciating Zoom, and subsequent­ly giving a public lecture to the UVA Club of Charlottesville called “Zoom: A Love Story in Three Acts.” There is magic in the symmetry and pageantry and rhythm of the perennial starts and stops, open­ings and closings, breaks of all types, late night sub-par pizza ubiquity, chicken tender sauce obsessing, convocating, valedicting, commenc­ing, cramming, crying, cheering, jeering, and then doing it all again, and again, and it still has not decayed. I love it all, and like the chang­ing leaves or first snowfall of the season, I relish each new familiar. 

What do I do “still in college” my mother may ask? The profes­sion I have chosen makes me a bit of an oddity of sorts in academia, with the ignoble bona fides as UVA’s chief creative officer, senior ad­ viser to the president, undergraduate instructor, first-year adviser, former mascot, and long suffering part-time doctoral student. I am staff, faculty, and student — and yet, in a word, my vocation is sim­ply one of a storyteller. 

As an undergraduate, my senior thesis as an American studies major and film concentration was about wieners. (Please keep reading!) In­stead of a term paper, I wrote, shot, and edited a short film on the local hallowed hot dog establishment “New York System Hot Wieners.” What I thought was a creative way to avoid writing the 159th paper of my college career actually lit a fire inside me. From there, whether through writing or filmmaking, I felt an obligation to capture, preserve, and spotlight the people and places I was part of, and ending up cut­ting my teeth at Harvard for 10 years, working with truly remarkable filmmakers, podcasters, digital producers, and writers during my time. (Including this editor, who I demand leaves in this line!) I got to inter­view Oprah and Elmo, casually helped Lady Gaga get to the wom­en’s room in Longfellow Hall, did push-ups with Colin Powell in the dean’s conference room, and made countless short films about the people and places of Harvard: My two favorites being about a lap­top bag and a monkey who stole a student’s dissertation data. After Harvard, I had the privilege to join the truly special Jim Ryan (former HGSE dean and current UVA president) on his team in the president’s office, where I learn from him every day the importance of stories and the impact they have on communities. 

And now, in this full circle moment, I am sharing with you my story about my love for stories and how the profession of higher educa­tion is both where I tell stories and how I learned storytelling. (Un­pack that sentence!) I’m going to bed now, as this 800+ word story is being written at 1:49 a.m., when my three kids and wife are sleeping, emails are still, and my dream profession in higher education is not the aspiring stuff of my near slumber, but rather the wide-open door life I am profoundly blessed to be living.

Matt Weber, Ed.M.'11, is the chief creative officer and special adviser to the president at UVA, plus much more (and a newly minted UVA Ed.D.).