Gwendolyn Matthews

PC Seniors was founded in 1990 to train senior citizens with no knowledge of how to use a personal computer. They were awarded, in 1994, the National Association for County Governments Achievement Award for outstanding service to the community.

Gwen joined the staff of instructors in 1996 and has made herself vitally important to their mission. She has helped expand their course offerings in quality and quantity. At the time of this writing Gwen teaches a major portion of the class instruction and through her efforts has taught over 525 senior citizens in Prince George’s and nearby counties.

Gwen has become lead instructor and has written the “Introduction to Computers”, “Word Processing I” and “Word Processing II” courses. In addition she saw the need for and wrote courses for computer workshops about Care and use of CDs, burning CDs and answers to students’ questions about PCs. She is constantly revising and updating her courses.

With her knowledge of computers and software she is often consulted, by other instructors and her students, about software problems. She uses her knowledge and expertise to keep the 6 classroom and one administration PCs up to date and problem free. These same skills have been applied to reviewing other instructors’ course material and suggesting improvements. Most recently she researched the problem of whether to update the classroom PCs to accommodate VISTA, the new operating system, or to buy new PCs with VISTA pre-installed.

Gwen suffers from Meniere’s disease which makes it hard to maintain her teaching schedule. However she has very rarely ever missed a class or a schedule to make software updates.

Gwen has been a member of the staff for 12 years and the group is very thankful for her volunteer service.