As part of our employee feature series, we spoke with WOU System Administrator Brittany Franklin about her current position and her time at the university, both as a student and as an employee.
Brittany began her college journey as a student at Chemeketa Community College, and then transferred to WOU to finish her degree. In 2016, she graduated with a degree in Information Systems. As a student, she was originally placed with University Computing Solutions (UCS) as part of the Service Learning and Career Development’s internship program, and then was hired as a student employee. After graduation, she was offered her current position, where she has been employed for the last four years.
Brittany calls her position as a System Administrator a “jack of all trades” job. She completes a lot of behind the scenes work for the university,“making sure that all the systems that everyone uses stay up and alive, 24/7.” A typical day at work for her includes completing daily tasks (which includes server maintenance and configuration, as well as Sophos antivirus maintenance and Duo tasks), fulfilling access requests, and then working on bigger UCS projects.
WOU holds close ties to her family, as her mother also went to the university. She is very proud of how long WOU has been around, and she mentioned that it’s very exciting being able to be employed where she went to school.
As for what Brittany’s looking forward to in her future here at WOU, she’s excited about getting more into computer security. In fact, she’s already gotten involved in one very important aspect of WOU security: she runs Duo Authentication! She also wants to advocate for UCS and ensure that the campus community is aware of what the department does.
When asked about her favorite annual event on campus, she was quick to answer with the Summer Concert series, which happens once a week during the summer months. She mentioned that it’s “a fun way to get out and enjoy the sunshine during lunch.”
To learn more about University Computing Solutions, you can check out their website.
Keep an eye out for more employee profiles on Today at WOU!
