Rebecca and Michael VanHook leave IT Systems

8th May | No Comments | posted by vegger | in About IT Staff and Student Workers

Photo courtesy of Nate Tucker

Assistant to the director of IT Systems Rebecca VanHook and husband Michael, a report writer/analyst for IT Systems, strolled into the Systems office to work for the last time yesterday, May 7.

Rebecca and Michael left after two and a half years of working for IT at Lee to move to Birmingham, Ala.

Michael recently got a job there in the IT Department at the corporate offices of Regions Bank.

The couple will be missed by their supervisor and fellow staff.

“Rebecca came at the perfect time and was the perfect fit,” Nate Tucker, director of IT Systems, said of his assistant.

Michael and Rebecca are Lee alumni with many relationships at Lee and in the Cleveland area. Michael is a Cleveland native, and Rebecca was a student worker while she was working on her bachelor’s degree at Lee.

The entire IT Department, both Systems and Operations, as well as several other friends, faculty and staff from the university,  came to say goodbye to the pair at their in-office going away party on May 6.

Programmer analyst II Pam Fromm was teary-eyed as she said her goodbyes to the VanHooks, but expressed her enthusiasm about their futures. It’s a sentiment that the couple shares.

“It’s sad,” Michael said. “There really isn’t another community like Lee. . .But we will adjust.”

“I’m sad, but I’m more excited,” Rebecca said.

IT Systems is currently in the interviewing process to fill the now vacant assistant to the director position.

 

 

McKay from IT Systems is Student Worker of the Year

16th April | No Comments | posted by vegger | in About IT Staff and Student Workers

On Thurs., April 11^th, Human Resources gave senior Lucas McKay of IT Systems the Student Worker of the Year award.

All departments who employ student workers on campus have the opportunity to submit a nomination for the award, along with a document stating why they believe that employee should win. Human Resources examines all the nominations and selects the best one.

Rebecca VanHook, assistant to the director of IT Systems, receives all the department’s emails from Human Resources. She said that when she found out about the award, she immediately thought of nominating McKay and suggested it to his supervisor.

“Lucas was here before I started, and I have seen him grow and develop so much,” VanHook said.

McKay works under the supervision of Project Manager Morgan Adams.

In the report Adams wrote about McKay, he said, “I consider Lucas a co-worker, not a student worker, because of the value he adds to our department.”

The feeling is mutual for McKay.

“I feel very valued as a team member,” McKay said. “I enjoy the level of shared responsibility with Morgan.”

This is McKay’s fourth year of working with IT. He is a first-generation college student, which made him eligible when he came to Lee for the First-Generation program. Along with giving students the chance to meet other first-generation classmates and providing them with mentors, this program guarantees its students an on-campus job opportunity.

For McKay, that first job was in the web development section of Information Technology. He worked there for two years, and then moved to project management.

McKay said his job in project management consists mainly of helping coordinate projects with different IT teams, including the Help Desk.  He is also part of the creation of process maps.

Process maps, according to McKay, essentially draw out a game plan for upcoming projects.

“They outline what to expect so that we can avoid mistakes,” he said.

Adams said in his report that McKay’s role also includes constantly working with full-time faculty and staff.

“These situations could easily become frustrating, but Lucas seems to handle them with great empathy,” Adams said. “He is consistently professional and always courteous in his interactions with university employees.”

The entire department, Adams said, agreed that McKay is someone Lee can be proud of.

McKay, again, feels similarly.

“Two thumbs up,” he said of the department.

McKay said that there has always been student worker appreciation in the past, but that this is the first time that it has been so personal for him.

“In all honesty, and I’m not trying to sound corny, I feel very much appreciated,” he said.

Staff moves in IT Operations

11th April | No Comments | posted by vegger | in About IT Staff and Student Workers

IT Operations is playing musical chairs this year after John White, formerly systems administrator, transferred to another company.  Operations moved two current staff members to different positions and hired two new employees.

Steven Falls, previously computer lab manager, took White’s position, while former support analyst Justin McElhaney replaced Falls.

“The jobs are kind of along the same level, but with different sets of responsibilities,”

McElhaney said of the switch.

As a support analyst, McElhaney received calls or emails about specific technical issues, but as computer lab manager he won’t have that luxury.

“I won’t always get notified about problems,” he said.

“A lot of people don’t know who to talk to about technology.”

Instead, McElhaney will have to anticipate what problems might occur, and be ready to respond quickly and efficiently when they do.

With McElhaney’s relocation, two out of three support analyst spots at the Help Desk were left empty, as one position was vacated a year earlier but never filled. Operations took the opportunity created by White’s departure to hire Ayodeji Olukoya and Nathan Higgins as support analysts to fill the void at the Help Desk.

For Olukoya, the move was simply a step up in the same office. Before he graduated from Lee last year, he was a student worker at the Help Desk.

“As support analysts, we work on things that the student workers don’t have the knowledge or the legal rights to do,” Olukoya said.

Remember who’s in charge next time you have a technical problem. IT Operations will be there.

Wireless becoming less of an issue on campus

2nd April | No Comments | posted by vegger | in For Students, Faculty and Staff

Wireless. It’s been a huge issue for years. But it isn’t for lack of work from the IT Department, and they aren’t giving up any time soon.

“We are constantly trying to make it better,” said Chris Golden, director of IT Operations.

According to Golden, some of IT’s biggest investments in wireless have been an increase in bandwidth from 400 to 600 mbps (megabits per second), and the combination of the bandwidth into one “pipe” instead of two.
A system’s bandwidth is how much information can be transmitted over a connection. Increasing it from 400 to 600 mbps means more of that data can be transferred every second, making every click that much more effective.
Golden said this change was necessary for Lee’s wireless system because people use the school’s Wi-Fi to access huge stores of information, taking up over four terabytes a week.
The number one program taking up the bandwidth? Netflix.
That didn’t catch Golden off guard. However, the fact that thousands of movies are being watched via Netflix every week on campus did.

“The sheer amount of data surprised me,” he said.

The runner-up for program consuming the largest amount of bandwidth is YouTube, followed by web browsing and then Facebook. Golden said that typically, when there are complaints about the Wi-Fi, it is because there are problems with these programs.
But the bandwidth increase wasn’t the only change made to improve wireless performance. The combination of all that bandwidth into one pipe (the vehicle through which information is transferred) instead of two has helped as well.
Golden said that in the past, when Lee had only 400 mbps of bandwidth, the bandwidth was split into two pipes with 200 mbps flowing through each one. One pipe was for administrators, while the other was for students.
This was inefficient because the administrators’ half of the bandwidth went untouched in the evening hours, while students on campus battled slow internet throughout the night and the very early morning.

“We used to have people waking up at 3 a.m. to reboot the system,” Golden said of the Operations staff.

The combination of the pipes allows administrators and students to access the bandwidth that they need when they need it.
Be on the lookout for continued wireless improvements from the Operations team.