What area do you work in within the VPFA portfolio?
I work in FASS IT within the Administrative Services unit.

What is your current position, and what are your job responsibilities?
I am a Systems Administrator and lead for our systems administration team in FASS IT. I consider myself a jack of all trades. My responsibilities cover just about the entire IT spectrum when it comes to supporting our partners on campus with user support, systems administration, system integrations/automation, and beyond! 

We support more systems and services than I can list here, but some of the main ones my team are responsible for include the card access systems for buildings on campus, security alarm panels, and security cameras you may have seen around campus. Fun fact: There were less than 100 card readers and cameras on campus when I started and now there are over 1,700 readers and 1,600 cameras! We also support separate infrastructure and systems for the UO Police Department (UOPD) and Utilities & Energy, which have specific requirements for the services they provide campus.

In addition to supporting the systems above I’m also the LASO (Local Agency Security Officer) for UOPD, which means I’m responsible for UOPD’s compliance with FBI CJIS (Criminal Justice Information Systems) policy. We are audited at a minimum every three years by Oregon State Police and as technology and cybersecurity challenges evolve, so do the policy requirements.

What has been your career path; how did you end up in your current position?
I started my UO career at the Department of Public Safety (UODPS) as an Alarm and Access Control Coordinator (Information Technology Consultant 2) in 2007. In 2012, as my duties expanded, UODPS evolved into UOPD. I was reclassified as an Operating System/Network Analyst 2 with the title of Systems Administrator. In 2016, I was absorbed into a newly created department (Finance and Admin Shared Services—FASS) and joined my IT colleagues from CPFM on a shared services IT team. No longer was I the sole IT person supporting UOPD! In 2018, I was reclassified to an Operating Systems Network Analyst 3 and promoted to the lead of the systems administration team in FASS IT; I have been doing that ever since.

What is your work history and education that enabled you to attain your current position?
I started my IT career path in high school by taking an elective class my sophomore year which focused on doing tech support for classrooms and teachers. I ended up taking the same elective every term after that as there was always more to learn. During my senior year I got a part-time job in the Corvallis school district supporting a computer lab at one of the elementary schools helping students and teachers.

That job ended when I graduated and right after that I got another part-time job at a local Internet service provider providing support for dialup customers (56k modems were the new thing at the time, does that date me?) I started classes at Oregon State University that fall, but was offered the opportunity to go full-time at that job so I put college aside to see where this job would take me. As the company grew, and my job duties expanded over the next year, I ended up relocating to the Portland area where I maintained our largest data center in downtown Portland. I was responsible for providing card and key access to customers for their colocation spaces along with running all of the network wiring. When I wasn’t working in the data center, I set up T1 (a high-speed digital data transmission line), frame relay, and wireless backhaul connections at customer sites that connected back to our data centers around the area.

After working at that job for nearly 8 years a mutual friend introduced me to my wife who lived and worked in Eugene. I found a job posting on UO’s website for an IT position with the UO Department of Public Safety involving card access control and general IT support. I applied for it and was hired in March 2007.

How has working at UO enabled your professional goals and interests?
I’ve been into technology and learning how things work from as young as I can remember. Being responsible for a wide variety of systems in my job allows me to continually develop my skills as technology is always evolving.

What do you like about your current position?
I like the fact that every day is different and there is always something new to challenge me. Whether it’s an issue a customer brings to me, upgrading an existing service, implementing a new system, or finding ways to make existing systems and services more efficient and/or automating them. 

I also must give a shout out to everyone in FASS IT. It takes a team to do everything we do, and we all support each other in our varying roles. 

Please share some insight into what your job involves.
One of the most recent projects I worked on was an integration between the campus card access system (AMAG) and UO Housing’s room reservation system (StarRez). In prior years, Housing would supply FASS IT with a list of thousands of students and what residence halls they needed card access to, and we would manually import that list into the card access system. This list could change several times, especially at the beginning of terms, and importing it took a little bit of time.

Neither software has a built-in or 3rd-party integration available to link with each other, so I wrote our own. Now when a student has an active reservation in StarRez they automatically get card access for their respective residence hall added to their card in AMAG when they check in. When they move out, access is removed as soon as they check out of their room. This makes for a much smoother check-in and check-out process for students and better overall experience for everyone involved.

What advice do you have for someone thinking of applying to the UO?
Do it! I look back on when I applied and it’s one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life.

Share a little about yourself personally:

• Family: My wife and I have been married since 2008. We have one son who will be 3 in June and he’s quite the daredevil right now which keeps us on our toes! We also have one very lazy dog, Moose, and 3 cats, Kiwi, Reach, and Hemi.
• A little bit about me
  • I’m a DIYer and I joke that my hobby is finding new hobbies. I enjoy woodworking and am an amateur luthier. I’ve built an electric guitar and bass from scratch and am working on another guitar and bass right now. I got into building guitars because after I taught myself how to play, I figured the next step would be to teach myself how to make one!
  • When not doing DIY things, I enjoy video games, and we like to take our truck and trailer to go camping.

(May 2025)