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21 Computing Support Technicians: Yours, Mine or Ours
Betty
Tucker, Weber State University
The dream of every university department/division is
to have their own computer support technician who provides support solely to
them according to the desires of the department head or college dean.
The dream of every university network systems
department is to have technicians providing computer support centrally located
where standardized training is available, where technician skills,
dependability and trustworthiness can be evaluated, where technicians are known
to the systems administrators.
The reality at Weber State University (WSU) was that
computer support technicians were either paid by the individual university
department with little or no connection to the systems team. Or technicians were employees paid from a
general fund and centralized in Computing Support Services (CSS) who is
organizationally and physically located with the network systems group.
The WSU Computing Support Services has recently
instituted a model where CSS pays for a boot camp and weekly training, and one
helpdesk shift per week answering phones.
This is generally 25% of the 20 hours per week a student worker usually
works. Individual departments pay for
actual technical support hours.
Technicians hired solely by departments are invited to attend training
but are not required to perform the helpdesk phone shift. Extra hours for campus-wide projects
(generally paid from central funds) requiring hands on technical support (i.e.
network client upgrade) are offered to shared technicians who participate as
they are able.
Early results are quite positive. Department heads may set their own response priorities; technicians are included in computer related department decisions; and technicians and department staff get to know each other. At the same time, helpdesk phones are staffed by technicians who understand the central network systems and specific department needs; technicians get to know each other and share information and provide back up support for each other; and the network systems staff gets to know the support technicians and evaluate their integrity and technical skills.