Arkansas Business

Jonathan Barket

Most people who can say they've imparted knowledge to Harvard students have years of teaching experience and probably an advanced degree or two. Jonathan Barket is an exception.
Barket is pursuing an undergraduate engineering degree at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, but in 2009, he went to Boston and gave a presentation on the programming framework Ruby on Rails. He made an impression on John Norman, a computer science lecturer at Harvard. Norman asked Barket to be a teaching fellow for one of his courses and demonstrate the programming methods in a lab component.
Barket originally enrolled at UA in Fayetteville in 2000 but left after a semester to take a Web development job in Little Rock. Since then, Barket has "worked at pretty much every major Web development firm in Arkansas at this point," he said.
Most of his freelance work nowadays is for the Little Rock Web design firm Aristotle Inc.
Barket and some friends started the nonprofit Peace.Love.Human, also known as the Smile Church. The group's goal is to improve the world by making people smile, often by giving a smile, a hug and a free Popsicle, he said.