As an undergraduate student at Duke University, Marita O’Brien took only one psychology course. Though she enjoyed the class, she didn’t feel especially drawn to the field. She was a math and economics major with an interest in technology. Her future was in IT, not psychology. Or so it seemed.
After graduating from Duke, O’Brien worked in IT for an investment bank in New York City for four years, then moved to Colorado to get a master’s degree in telecom engineering. She spent the next nine years as a management consultant for Deloitte, helping clients develop technological interfaces for their customers. That’s when she first encountered the field of engineering psychology.
“I realized that a lot of the questions we were asking ourselves in the design were about who was the customer, how did they think, what kind of information was relevant for their decision-making,” O’Brien explains.
In her research, she discovered a branch of psychology that gathers information about exactly these types of questions. The branch was called engineering psychology, and O’Brien found it so compelling she decided to pursue a doctoral degree in it.
After earning her doctorate from Georgia Tech, she taught psychology at the University of Alabama in Huntsville before joining Franciscan’s faculty in 2014.
At Franciscan, O’Brien’s unique professional background has enabled her to co-lead a project called Engineering Virtue, which she developed with Deacon Dr. Stephen Frezza, professor of software engineering, to help students in the Engineering Program build virtue in tandem with their technical skills.
O’Brien is also devoted to mentoring students as a coach with the Leadership Institute Student Fellows program.
“It’s such a gift to be here, to see the students grow, to challenge them a little bit and love them, and also to continue to follow them in what they’re doing later on, after they graduate,” says O’Brien, who sees her relationship with her students as part of her vocation to spiritual motherhood.
An avid traveler who has been to all 50 states and all seven continents, O’Brien hopes someday to teach at one of the University’s partner sites in Gaming, Austria, or Erbil, Iraq. Born in Germany, she grew up stateside and always loved to travel. Every year, she takes a trip with one of her sisters; one year, they even went to Antarctica.
Whether she’s riding in a rocky boat through rough waters in the Antarctic Circle or attending book clubs and Communion and Liberation meetings back home in Steubenville, O’Brien sees the adventures in life as gifts to be experienced and shared, in the classroom and beyond.
“It is a gift to be able to bring my whole self and all of my experiences into the classroom,” she says. “And I want my students to know they have gifts, too. I want to see those gifts emerge.”
Maura Roan McKeegan writes from Wintersville, Ohio.
