What area do you work in within the VPFA portfolio? What is your current position, and what are your job responsibilities?

Hello! I am the newest member of Information Services’ Enterprise Systems team. We work to maintain the UOCloud computer environment, which hosts a variety of services for the University of Oregon, including our websites, email systems, and many other high-profile programs. I’m responsible for maintaining and automating the environment to protect us against cyberattacks, glitches, and crashes, to bring a seamless experience to the faculty, staff, and students of the University of Oregon.

What has been your career path; how did you end up in your current position?

I’ve had a variety of jobs at the University of Oregon since I came here in 2017 to pursue a career in piano performance. One of the first things I did when I moved into my dorm was head to the Computing Center to apply for a job with the Technology Service Desk. I had worked as a computer repair technician at Staples in my hometown of Redmond, Washington, and the skills I learned there allowed me to succeed as a student technician at the university.

Shortly after, I changed my degree to Computer and Information Science. It was incredibly rewarding to help faculty and staff solve their computer problems, and I wanted to do it professionally. Around 2019, I had the opportunity to work further inside Information Services as a support technician for the staff of Information Services – I supported the IT support people! That role was similar to what the tech desk does, except the set of users I supported was exclusively staff members of IS. I was responsible for providing hardware and software support to IT folk; I made sure that they could focus on their managerial / technical responsibilities by providing working computers and fixing anything that wasn’t functioning. This involved me working a lot one-on-one with IT managers and technicians, which really helped me learn more about how the UO IT structure functions.

Learning more about the inner workings of our computer systems gave me the motivation to apply for a role with Classroom Technology Support, and in late 2020 I started my first full-time job as a Classroom Technology Specialist. In this role, I had the opportunity to craft new support plans for our return to campus after COVID and build an incredible team of students that solve technology issues for instructors in real time.

Once I finished my Computer Science degree in late 2020, I focused on my hands-on systems knowledge. In my free time, I enjoy building my own server rack and hosting my own networking infrastructure. In early 2022, I had the opportunity to start work with Enterprise Systems and put my server knowledge to good use. I am excited to be a part of this team and I’m looking forward to what the future brings!

What do you like about your current position?

I love that every day is a new puzzle to solve. Part of working on the automation team is continually asking myself, “Does this need to be done by a human? Is there a way I can make the computer do this for me?” It is a huge sense of accomplishment when I can save my team time and energy by scripting a process to run automatically.

A little about me:

• Family: I grew up in Redmond, Washington with my parents, Howard and Jodi, and my brother, Alex. Our family loves racing cars, breaking cars on the racetrack, and then fixing cars! I married my wonderful wife, Rachel, in July of 2021.
• Food: My favorite food is any kind of pasta. Rachel and I make our noodles fresh – it makes for an incredible carbonara.
• Movie: The best movie I’ve seen is Knives Out. You can watch it a dozen times in a row and still pick up on new details.

(November 2022)