UWF Software Engineering Alumni Spotlight
Steve Dwire - Class of 1999

Steve received his Masters Degree in Software Engineering from the University of West Florida in 1999. Since then, he has led efforts for software focusing on the healthcare industry. He currently works from his home near Atlanta, where he manages a cross-functional development team based in Salt Lake City and Chicago. The analysts, engineers, and testers on his team are now expanding a system they developed to support the sharing of secured medical records across regional and state health information networks. When he is not at work, Steve enjoys spending time with his wife Lana and three children, Joshua, Nathan, and Charis. Steve says, "I'm so grateful for the opportunity to work from home. Atlanta traffic is legendary, so it's truly a blessing to avoid the commute time." Lana, who holds her bachelor's degree in education, home schools their three children, so Steve comments that he usually gets to eat all three meals together with his family. What drew Steve and his family to the Atlanta area in 2006 was a church they discovered there. It's hard to find a church like ours anywhere in the country," Steve says, "so when we came across this church with both solid teaching and such concrete opportunities to grow more like Christ, to serve Him, and to change into His image, it was an easy decision for us to move the family from Chicago to Atlanta." Steve sings in the choir and is also active in the deaf ministry, frequently interpreting the services into sign language. He and his wife also work together in some of the children's ministries. Besides their many church activities, Steve and his family enjoy another hobby known as letterboxing. Under the trail name "Noteworthy," they hunt for hidden letterboxes containing a log book and a rubber stamp, based on clues they find online at atlasquest.com. When they find a box, they stamp the rubber stamp from the box into their trail log book, and stamp their "signature stamp" (a music note) into the log book from the box to keep a record of the find. Letterboxing has been a fun way for the family to spend time together outdoors. Steve recalls with fondness many of the Software Engineering concepts and phrases from his studies at UWF, including the Spaghetti Dinner, the Dining Philosophers, and "Software is a wicked problem." "I often find myself pondering a challenge," Steve remarks, "when I notice that my thought processes are being guided by some of those old classroom exercises. It's refreshing to realize that the time I spent banging my head against a problem in class so many years ago can still help me today."