Not everyone has been working at home since March. Some staff have been spending a lot of time on campus. They are often the only people around as they keep equipment operational, get devices into the hands of students and faculty, and perform other essential services.
This is a glimpse into how a few of them are fulfilling their responsibilities to support the University.
“We had a job to do’
Gary Barb said less traffic makes driving from his home in Mount Joy to the Harrisburg campus a “dream commute,” but he also recognizes the seriousness of the COVID-19 pandemic when he is on campus.
“I have a wife, five children, and an 89-year-old mother-in-law living with us, so I was concerned. But we saw our OPP (Office of Physical Plant) staff cleaning everything and wiping things down almost every other hour, so we felt good about it,” said Barb, associate director of Information Technology Services. “We knew that we did have a job to do and we had to do it right.”
Joining him on campus each day are Toni Chainey, IT operations specialist, and Dave Schwenk, IT support specialist.
For Chainey, there was no question that she would be there every day.
“I volunteered to come in because I live the closest. And while we might have been the ones here on site, we couldn’t do it without the rest of our team who are working remotely. If there’s something that any of us here can’t do or we need assistance, our team is there to support us,” she said.
Along with helping get equipment out the door and troubleshooting when people were trying to connect devices at home, they also had to track down equipment for students. In one case, they reached out to colleagues at the Scranton campus to secure a replacement device for a student who lived nearby after his laptop broke the week before finals. Barb said it saved the student a two-hour drive southwest to Harrisburg.
“Everybody realizes the importance of the students’ education. And we’re working hard to support that in any way that we can,” Barb said.
In it together
John Ilie and Jim Strickland have a lot in common. They both work in the Business Operations’ facilities management team at University Park, and their wives both work in the healthcare field on the administrative side.
“With our wives working where they do and being a part of the healthcare community, we get a lot of information from them that is helpful for us as to how we conduct ourselves, so we’re staying as safe as possible,” Strickland said. “As long as I am able to provide a service and support people to do their jobs from home, I have no qualms whatsoever with coming here every day.”
The primary goal of their team is to make sure facilities operations continue without issue. That includes accepting deliveries, making sure mail is still delivered, and checking for any problems in the buildings. Strickland does a walkthrough of the entire Technology Support Building (TSB) each Monday morning to check that there has been no equipment malfunction in the HVAC system, water lines, and appliances. When either goes to another building on campus where Penn State IT has staff, they do the same thing.
“We work in close coordination with OPP, and if we see something has broken we report it to them so it can be repaired,” Ilie said.
A lot of energy is also being devoted to preparations to make sure when staff return to campus it will go smoothly. Ilie said they will follow the same process that they did before the opening of USB III and the Computer Building. That involves working with OPP to get approval for specific building opening dates, dropping off personal protective equipment including masks and hand sanitizer, coordinating cleaning and display of necessary signage, and making sure existing facilities footprints meet Environmental Health and Safety guidelines for social distancing requirements.
In March, they also assisted with the effort to get students the necessary equipment for remote learning.
“Everyone on our team has the same work ethic. We all want to do everything we can for those who are a part of Penn State IT and beyond. That includes Julie (Waite) who isn’t here all the time but will come in if we have to be in other buildings. We’re all just trying to do our best and make this work for everybody,” Ilie said.
Keeping operations going
For network field technicians, there is no such thing as remote work. Vaughn Flood is part of a small team that works in Infrastructure’s Data Center, installing equipment and doing break-fix in multiple buildings on the University Park campus and often on multiple campuses.
“We’re hands-on with equipment, so we pretty much have to be on campus. We did have to make a trip to Hazleton one day a few weeks ago. When there is an incident we are allowed to go as essential workers,” Flood said. “It was really weird when we first were on campus because there was hardly anyone around, but now that they allowed construction to resume we are seeing more people.”
His team assisted with some of the construction work by providing information on cable locations to prevent damage.
Although a few team members were furloughed, they have all since returned to work.
Quiet with good Internet
Paul Anderson found himself on campus a few days recently for a short-term project. Although he works in Business Operations as a contracts manager, he was leading end-user SIMBA training sessions online when his home Internet connection got a little spotty.
“Every now and then, a couple of times a day maybe, my router was dropping Internet. Each course is three two-hour sessions, so just losing five or 10 minutes in a session is a lot,” he said. “There’s so much material to try and cram in to make sure everyone is comfortable with the new system.”
Anderson filled out the request to work on campus and with no one else in his work area in TSB, he was able to work at his own desk. He wore a mask and gloves when entering and exiting the building but didn’t have to at his desk.
“The office was really clean, and I think they are keeping it in a really good shape. I think that’s really good, because when we all do decide to come back in, we’ll know it’s been kept clean and sanitized,” Anderson said.
Taking care of business
Christine Sneath and Kev Cramer of the Penn State User Success desktop team have been working on campus since the beginning; she is helping to support the device loaner program and he has been handling special projects.
Sneath helped on the same project as Ilie and Strickland to get devices imaged and mailed out to students at the start of the remote learning period. A lot of the devices are now being returned, which triggers a process to log in, disinfect, and reimage them and in some cases, send them back out to students taking summer classes.
“As soon as a piece of equipment comes back, the first thing we do is sanitize it. I don’t want to touch it without gloves and a mask, and I certainly don’t want to send it out to someone unless it’s been sanitized,” Sneath said.
She said shipments are still going out three days a week.
Cramer has been working on projects, such as one to deploy new software for the GlobalProtect VPN, in a large enclosed office area in the basement of TSB.
“I push (the software) out at night, and then I talk with them when I get in around 6:30 in the morning to make sure everything is OK. It is going pretty much flawlessly,” Cramer said.
He said he has taken a lot of safety precautions, including washing his hands before leaving the building and when he gets home, so he can help to keep his family safe. He also has his mask ready to pull up over his nose and mouth if he sees anyone approaching his work area. Although he hasn’t dealt with a steady stream of staff in person, there have been a number of people coming to him for help with their computers. When that happens, they maintain physical distance in his workspace.
“When Penn State bought Office 365, I’d say it was the best purchase since the Louisiana Purchase,” he laughed. “We’ve been able to interact and communicate so much easier.”
Responding to the need
At Penn State York, IT director Loren Brewster and three members of his staff are on campus, simply because it makes the most sense.
“We knew we had to fulfill a significant number of technology requests from people who did not have what they needed to work remotely. If we stayed at home, we would have had to come in to get this or to get that. It would have been three times a day,” Brewster said. “So we said we would be here because it would be faster and more efficient.”
The first three weeks were especially intense, with them working “pretty much continuously” to get equipment to people, set up remote desktop connections, and answer questions about software or devices that weren’t functioning correctly. They also provided technology assistance to faculty who used their on-campus offices for their classes in Zoom.
As people began to realize the remote work was going to extend longer than first thought, Brewster and his team helped with requests to shift home set-ups from “good enough in the short term” to be more conducive for the long term.
For students, the biggest need was providing mobile hotspots so they could access their courses.
Enabling service anywhere
Missy Young knows all about the importance of hotspots. As an IT consultant in Business Operations, she is the single point of contact at Penn State for cellular devices and is used to working with the carriers. She said wireless hotspots were a hot commodity, particularly for students who did not have reliable Internet.
“Verizon was out of hotspot devices, and I had several at my desk that were going to salvage. So I said I would go in and get them and see if we could get them working,” Young said. “I went in late at night to get them, trying to make sure no one was there.”
Once she got them connected and up and running at home, she took them back to campus so Tim Arnold in User Success could distribute them. She also did the same with a FedEx delivery to her home of SIM cards for various devices and helped with ordering iPhones that were set up as hotspots for students when the mobile hotspots were on backorder.
“We worked with the students to see which carrier (Verizon or AT&T) provided more reliable service where they were living, and then gave them instructions on how to set the phones up so they could use them as a hotspot. Most of them were direct-shipped to the students from the carrier so they got them faster,” Young said.
Stepping up
Bobby Stephens didn’t think twice when Outreach and Online Education put out a call for volunteers to work on campus.
“They were looking for someone to provide assistance and I volunteered because it was something that I could do,” said Stephens, an IT support specialist. “I don’t really like to work from home all the time, so this meant I could get out of the house and help.”
Like Sneath, he has been working with Penn State IT on the device distribution that has been going on since March. He has also supported Outreach staff and faculty with equipment and printer issues, primarily in Innovation Park. He schedules times for people to drop off their computers that aren’t functioning properly and pick up a loaner device, along with fixing printers, providing hotspots, and more.
“I feel like I played a bigger role than I would have if I would have just been working from home all that time, and I was happy to do it,” Stephens said. “People have been thankful for what we help with.”