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Vol. 38, No. 18
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3-4-2009
By: Top 3 on 2, 3/5/09
 Why did you choose to work at Ohio State?
As many great staff members of this university have, I worked my way up from the ranks of student employment to working full-time. The university has a wonderful combination of international points of view, freedom of thought and green spaces that make it an ideal place for me to work. It also pays to work for an organization that has its own hospital.
What do you like about your job?
First of all, I enjoy helping people with their technology needs, which is good as I am a computer geek. I also love the opportunities to grow in service to the university and to work with diverse groups of people and views from various parts of campus. From these people I have learned a great deal.
What would you improve at Ohio State?
In my capacity on a couple different staff advisory committees, I have observed staff often feel like second-class citizens. I would like for staff to feel entitled to engagement and a sense that their participation will be welcome and meaningful at all levels of the organization.
If you weren’t working at Ohio State, what would you be doing?
I have two projects each that could be full-time occupations. I am a part owner of a small winery dedicated entirely to mead (aka, honey wine). The mead industry is growing quickly right now, and we make a wonderful variety of meads for both the refined and the indiscriminate palate (brothersdrake.com). Secondly, I have a novel idea that could potentially generate hundreds of megawatts of electricity from a completely green source. If I were not working at OSU, I would pursue the implementation of this idea more fervently. Right now I am trying to find a way of funding a scale model and proof of concept. I’m hoping the green energy provisions of the stimulus package might be able to help with that.
What advice would you give a new employee?
Engage! Don’t just keep your nose to the grindstone ignoring all that is going on around you. Stand up and participate in your units and colleges. It is the only way to have an impact on your environment and truly your opportunity to make things better no matter how good they currently are.
What is your favorite activity outside of work?
Spending time with my 5-year-old. I cannot explain the joy children can bring to one’s life. Either you get it, or you don’t. I feel I am developing into a more complete person because I am growing through his childhood with him.
What are you going to do when you retire?
Right now I think I might run for the US House or Senate. No, really! Stop laughing!
If you were the university president for a day, what would you do?
I would place staff on the University Senate. We work on some senate subcommittees, but there is no staff representation on the body itself. I fail to see why undergraduate and graduate students are represented and staff are not.
To nominate a staff member for an upcoming issue, e-mail oncampus@osu.edu.
Through sponsorship of the Office of the CIO and Facilities Operations and Development, Ohio State is a founding member of Power Down for the Planet, a challenge program from the Climate Savers Computing Initiative.
The program, which officially will launch March 23, is designed to encourage universities and their campus communities to reduce their own IT power consumption and get students, faculty and staff involved in the fight against climate change.
One goal of the program is to reduce the amount of power used by workstations and related OSU equipment by 30 percent within the next year.
The challenge includes a month-long competition to see which university can recruit the largest percentage of its campus community to pledge support to Climate Savers Computing. The challenge winner and the collective results of all participants will be announced on Earth Day, April 22.
Participating universities will be featured on the powerdownfortheplanet.org Web site, where they will be able to see in real time how many of their students, faculty and staff have committed to using power management tools and the overall collective impact of the Power Down for the Planet challenge.
Participants who commit to the Pledge for Power Down for the Planet agree to enable the hibernation function for their Macintosh or Windows OSU workstation.
One caveat: Hibernation can inhibit the use of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) or Remote Desktop, so potential pledgers should check with their individual IT departments for policies regarding hibernation.
Other founding universities are the University of Michigan, Purdue University, the University of Iowa, Penn State University and the University of California-San Diego.
 The Ohio Union continues to take shape as the new limestone reliefs that depict the state of Ohio’s history were placed on the facade facing North High Street in mid-February. These are the newly cast reliefs that will join the ones preserved from the old Ohio Union, which was torn down in February 2007 and is slated to be completed on time and on budget in 2010. |
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