When did you work in IT support at the Department of Chemistry?
What were your main duties?
My main role was working at the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) as their onsite Computer Officer. Although the Institute technically belongs to Geography, proximity meant that it would receive more immediate support from the Chemistry department for its networking and general support needs.
What did you most enjoy when you worked in the IT team?
This is very difficult to answer as I would say it was one of my most favourite roles. From an IT perspective, I loved the diversity and autonomy of the role. With the amazing support from the Chemistry IT Team, I was involved with very basic tasks such as computer rollout, to more complex tasks of writing wpkg packages for software upgrades. I also enjoyed the project management of the AV refit in the lecture theatre that our users were delighted with when finished.
What did you find the greatest challenge?
What did you learn working in the IT team?
The biggest benefit for me was the huge level of knowledge from the Chemistry IT Team. Many processes are automated, but knowledge was still required to feed processes into that automation. Had I been on my own, I would have struggled, but the IT team have experience and knowledge from general advice on IT support, through to more complex infrastructure issues such as networking, software rollout and Windows Profile issues. It was a huge learning curve, and it has been useful to promote these ideas and strategies in other departments when I moved on.
