Colorado State University Libraries Archives & Special Collections University Archive
Transcription of Allen Sneesby Interview, 2019 May 3
Item Metadata
Collection: CSU Sesquicentennial Collection (USES)
Creator: Sneesby, Allen, interviewee; Boring, Frank (Documentary film producer), interviewer Title: Allen Sneesby interview
Date: 2019 May 3
File Name: USES_002_Sneesby_Allen_access.mp4 Date Transcribed: April 2021
Editor: Helen Baer
Transcription Platform: Rev.com
BEGIN TRANSCRIPTION Allen:
How's that sound, Brian? Brian:
Good. I'm already rolling, so that you guys [inaudible 00:00:05]. Allen:
Okay. Brian:
Give somebody a B roll. [inaudible 00:00:09]. Or maybe unless they're just ... There's no sound. Male:
No. [inaudible 00:00:20]. Allen:
Testing, one, two, three, check, check, check. Male:
[inaudible 00:00:23] backup on the output input. Brian:
Male:
That's just the [inaudible 00:00:29]. It's just not giving me a [inaudible 00:00:31]. Brian:
Okay. Male:
We're going to talk a little over here. Allen:
Check, one, two, three, four, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday. Here we go again. Male:
[crosstalk 00:00:40]. Frank:
Friday [inaudible 00:00:41] is Friday [crosstalk 00:00:42], but that's okay. Allen:
That was fast. Brian:
I'd rather be too quiet than [inaudible 00:00:49] the story. Give me a testing here. Allen:
Check, one, two, three, four. Brian:
That's a little better. Allen:
Hello. Check. Testing, one, two, check. Male:
[crosstalk 00:01:00]. It wasn't 20 before. This one's overloaded, so with two decibels down [inaudible 00:01:04].
Male: Yeah. Brian:
Male: Okay. Brian:
Let's do [inaudible 00:01:09]. Okay. Okay, Allen, real quick. Allen:
Yes, sir. Brian:
Talk like the loudest or like laugh or something. Allen:
Ha ha ha. Check, one, two, three, four. Brian:
There [inaudible 00:01:24]. Allen:
That would be louder than I anticipate being. Brian:
Just make sure [inaudible 00:01:29]. Frank:
[inaudible 00:01:32] That was a stupid question, Frank. Allen:
With an emphasis on stupid? Frank:
Stupid, there you go. Allen:
I would ... Brian:
What do you mean? Take her own lesson? Male:
Yeah. Brian:
Yeah. [crosstalk 00:01:45]. Male:
Roll some of this, will you? Is that in there? Brian:
Up a little bit. Good. Rolling. Male:
Okay. You can let it keep rolling if you want. Male:
Nope. I just cut it off. Sorry. Male:
Why don't you let it roll again? Male:
Yeah. I think you need a [inaudible 00:02:11] Male:
Yeah. Is it okay? Male:
Yeah, it's rolling. Male:
Okay. Wait a second. Brian:
Can you see it? Male:
Yeah. Up a little bit. Good. Male: Okay. Brian: All right. Frank: All set?
Male: Yeah. Frank:
Hey. This is Frank Boring. And I'm doing an interview for the 150th anniversary documentary film for Colorado State University. Now, if we could begin with your full name and when were you born. Allen:
My name is Douglas Allen [Sneesby 00:02:50]. I was born in Casper, Wyoming, 1965, and lived there until I was about 18-and-a-half, and moved to Colorado.
Frank:
And what did you know about CSU growing up? Did you know anything at all? Allen:
Yeah, little bit. Being in Wyoming, we only had University there. And any chance we could with anybody's parents or friends, we would go to Laramie Wyoming, watch football games, basketball games. And a direct competitor with Wyoming was always CSU. So, there was a couple of occasions when we were teenagers when we actually made it to Fort Collins to become spectators on those sporting events. And my friends and I just loved it down here, and we always wanted to come back. Right at the end of the game, we always said, next chance we get we're coming back. So, that was my first early introduction to CSU.
Frank:
What did you first hear about the opportunity that you could actually get a job here? Allen:
It was in the newspaper back in the old days before Craigslist or anything like that. I had just relocated to northern Colorado from Breckenridge, and was in the job market, and actually saw an ad in the
newspaper. And I thought I might have a one in a hundred chance on that. I think I'll give it a shot. Frank:
What was the ad? Allen:
Well, they were looking for a media specialist. It was kind of vague on the duties, because it was back in the print ad, so they weren't real detailed. But I don't remember it word-for-word, but it had a few key words that interested me. So, I thought, hey, I've to give this a shot.
Frank:
Why did you think you had a chance at it? Allen:
Well, again, those keywords worth a few things that I thought I was good at. There were also some keywords in there that I knew I wasn't good at and things I had almost never even heard of. Like,
networking was one of them, and I had no experience in that. But I thought I'm going to give it a run and see what happens.
Frank:
So, you had some background in what? Allen:
Electronics, and IT, and audiovisual, more specifically sound and projection. And I got that from working in hotels up in the mountains setting up big conventions for medical groups, and legal groups, and others that came. And they would go on their big ski vacations and write the whole thing off as we've seen done before. And they would sometimes have some pretty elaborate electronic setups for presentations and whatnot. I did that for a good 10 years, so I was pretty well-versed in that by the time I landed here. Frank:
Why would you want to move to [Siesh 00:05:22] or to Colorado from [inaudible 00:05:24]? Why did you want to move?
Allen:
We had three kids up in the mountains living at 10,000 feet, three little kids, and it got difficult. The cost of living was higher. The doctor's 30 miles away. School was always away. We had some family down here at that time, and we thought we just want to try to find something a little easier, a better way to raise our kids. And the other fact is at 10,000 feet, your summers are pretty short, winters are pretty long. And that's fun for a while, but after 17 years, I was ready for a change in climate, as well as some other things.
Frank:
So, walk us through your process of getting the interview and eventually getting hired. Allen:
Okay. Well, it's been almost 20 years, so I'll do my best. I believe I got a phone call. My wife got a phone call because I was out of town. And she called me immediately and said, "Hey, you need to call Gary. Gary called and he's interested in talking to you." I said, "Okay, great." So, as soon as I got home, I called Gary. And it turned out Gary was just a great guy. He was later on in his career at that point. And his uncle happened to be Chet Atkins, a guitar picker who was one of my grandma's favorite. She had a stack of 8-track tapes from Chet Atkins. And I've realized that guy I'm talking to on the phone is his nephew, so I was pretty blown away by that. That was fun.
Allen:
So, I arranged time to come in and meet Gary. I believe it was three or four days later. And unbeknownst to me, I was about to meet 20 other people and be in the hot seat of a U-shaped table surrounded by Gary's peers, all the people I would in the future be working with. And they all shot questions at me. And I wasn't quite prepared. I was thinking I'd meet two or three people all of a sudden. I'm looking at 20 people who I'd never worked at a university before. So, there was some intimidation, no doubt. But I
think I did pretty well. I walked out of there thinking, not that I nailed it, but I felt pretty confident in my answers. But I figured I was at 50/50 at that point.
Allen:
And then three or four days later, I got the call and said they were offering me the position. Frank:
Do you know what you were going to be doing? Allen:
Yeah, maybe 50%, 60% of it. They told me, "You're going to be in the first line of defense in a classroom calls. Or anything that goes wrong in a classroom, you're going to show up and help them fix it." And the goal was to lose as little classroom time as possible. They were all talking about fixing things on the fly, doing what you can just to get them through that next hour. Just no downtime is what they're looking for, was a big part of it. Then the other part of it was it was networking, getting things ... all talking on the internet.
Allen:
It was pretty early on at that point, there wasn't a lot of people using computers. But the office of instructional services was on the edge of that as far as trying to get computers more involved in the classroom, and get more people exposed to it, because it was such a great tool and so many people at that point weren't using it to its full benefit, or not using it at all.
Frank:
So, let's go back to your arrival at CSU. What was the campus like? What was your ... You've been here for football games [inaudible 00:09:02].
Allen: Yeah. Frank:
But what was your impression of the place? Allen:
It was pretty nice. I remember my first day, I felt funny walking around as an adult with all these kids around me. And I didn't think that I would feel like that. But I remember looking at hundreds and hundreds of kids from 18 to 22 and looking at myself going, "Gosh, I probably don't fit in really well here." But then the more I looked around, I saw more adults and more people my age and more people that were older than me. And then I started feeling like I was starting to fit in pretty quickly, actually. But it was a big campus then, much larger now even for me, because I had no experience at a campus this large.
Allen:
So, it was vast. It was big. And I had my territory. And it could take you 15 minutes to walk from one end of that territory to the other. So, if you got a call and you were on the north end of campus and you
needed to be on the south end of campus as fast as you could, you had to hustle. And then you'd get to the south end, you'd get another call to the east end, and you're moving.
Allen:
But the impression overall was good. I mean, the buildings were pretty well kept up. Back then, there was some construction going on, but it wasn't like it has been in the last 5 or 10 years. It was more of a subdued pace. There would be one project going on here and maybe a little something over here. Or as now, we've got five and 10 projects going on simultaneously. So, it was growing much slower at that point.
Frank:
Where was home base? Allen:
Home base has always been in the Clarke building for me, which is centrally located on campus, which is good for me geographically, because it's easier for me to get to most of my territory pretty quickly that way. And the Clark building has been there since the mid 60's, and we've always called it home.
Frank:
Give us an idea of what your territory look like. Allen:
We were responsible for the upkeep of, back then, 150 classrooms. Those classrooms are scattered around in about 25 different buildings. That's all within about probably a 10 to 12-acre, maybe 15 acre-square, if you can imagine that size. But these classrooms are speckled around in that area. Some buildings had more of the classrooms. Some buildings only had one classroom. But they did it in a sense to keep most of the general assignment classrooms on the beaten path, per se, so it's easier for most people to find them. And they're mostly all the bigger classrooms or general assignment classrooms. So, we did all the big lecture halls, all the auditoriums in addition to many, many small classrooms.
Frank:
When you first walk into a particular classroom, what were some of the challenges that you look for? You got a call, right? Somebody called you and said, "Something's not working."
Allen:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Frank:
How did that work? Allen:
Funny you should ask that, because you would never know what you're walking into. It could be some professor who's really laid back and just wants a little advice on how to do something better. Or it could be someone who is just really upset. And some people don't do well under pressure when they have 100 or 200 people waiting for them to be what could be perceived as their mistake, their fault in the way
they've hooked something up, or the way they're not presenting something. So, you never know. It was wild.
Allen:
You could walk into some really interesting situations. And we enjoyed; coworker and I. We had fun with it. And people we liked, we would, obviously, very graciously helped them. And even if they were making a really stupid mistake, like they had forgotten to plug their laptop in. If we liked them, we would hit some extra buttons and take a little extra time, and then plug it in real slick, and say, "Okay. Yeah, there was a problem. I think I've got it corrected now." And then people would clap. Yay.
Allen:
Other people weren't that nice. There were very few of them. But I do remember a couple of times when people, as soon as you walked in the room, they looked at you and they knew it was your fault that their classroom wasn't working. Now, if that same guy had forgotten to plug his computer and I would take a different approach at that point, I'd say, "Oh, look. You forgot to plug this in. Hey. Look, it works now." So, that was kind of fun early on just using that strategy. But like I said, 98% of the people that I helped and these rooms are really good to me and very grateful for the help.
Frank:
Were you part of a team? Allen:
Absolutely. We had eight of us, and we were broken up into three categories. I know only eight, and the three doesn't ... The math doesn't work, but two or three guys were in charge at the technical aspect. And those were the guys that would fix the more complex problems when the classes were over say, after 3:00 or 4:00 p.m. Their shifts would start at maybe 2:00 p.m., and they'd work till 10:00. There was one group of two guys, and they just did the media end of it. Their responsibility was delivering media to the classroom. We did that with stacks of VCRs and DVD players in our office in Clark, and that we could pipe those programs out to the various classrooms around campus. We even had a system where a professor could push the play button in his classroom, and it would activate the VCR in our building, and it would play over the RF signal to that classroom. And it could play to other classrooms as well,
depending on how we routed it. Allen:
So, back in that time, it was pretty, pretty amazing. It was complex. There were some really smart people that put that together. I just helped keep it run. I didn't help build it, per se.
Frank:
We're talking about the year around 2000? Allen:
Yeah. From 2001 until 2004 or '05 was what I call my early years here. Frank:
Allen: Okay. Frank:
So, what was an average ... Well, average. I love saying that to you. What was a workday like in the early days?
Allen:
Back before 2005, there are still a lot of people using ways to teach that didn't involve computers; so, overhead projectors, now the glass head over the transparency. There were teachers that would have two or three of those lined up side-by-side, and that's all they would do is swap transparencies. One of the things we would do is clean them and adjust, and then make the focus works, which is kind of mundane. But the students and I would do that. And slide projectors were big back then, too. We'd have dual slide projectors in the back of the room hitting two screens in the front of the room. And some of these guys were just in love with their slides.
Allen:
They had so much joy and love for these pictures that they had taken or gotten from friends and colleagues that they really want them to look perfect. And there are a lot of those people that would never consider digitizing that slide, because the resolution might lose a little bit of its oomph and not look as good. So, they kept with their slides for years and years. And I've still got a couple of guys to this day that insist on using a slide projector for their material, even though we've got HD in every classroom. Allen:
I was working on the older technology. And part of that was the time when computers were still in their infancy here. I'd say maybe 10% of the people would bring a laptop to class. Of that 10%, 5% of them really knew what they were doing, and they did it well. The other 5%, not so much. Those were the people that really needed their handheld. But as years went by, more and more computers started showing up in the classrooms, and more and more people got good at it.
Frank:
How did you adapt to computers? Allen:
Well, a lot of it was self-taught. When I started here, I really wasn't too proficient on that, but this job made me become more proficient on it. I went to some training classes, quite a few right here on campus, and that helped a lot. Just working with my coworkers helped a lot, too. There's a couple people in my group of eight that we're really good at, and they were patient enough to teach me some of the tricks that I didn't know before I got here.
Frank:
In terms of communication, eight people and possibly more throughout a large campus without the use of cellphones, how did you communicate with each other?
We had pagers back then. So, pagers were the little thing that you'd put on your belt that would vibrate and say, "Hey. Find a phone and call this number." Or we had codes. We would have "27 men; come back to home base," "99 men; you got an emergency somewhere," and figure how to call us right away. So, we had workarounds, but we were just in the beginning of wireless back then with our pagers. And then we probably got phones around 2005 or 2006, something like that, the old flip phone, so we could communicate then.
Frank:
In the earlier days, how did you get your assignments? What time did you come to work? Allen:
We'd come in about 7:30, and classes would start at 8:00. And the phone would start ringing about 10:00 till 8:00, people having problems in classrooms, lamps burn out, piece of equipment missing. A lot of times, people would go to classroom A and borrow something and put it in classroom B for the night class. And then, of course, classroom A has no projector that next morning. And so, you'd get a lot of that. The phone would ring quite a bit before 8:00 o'clock, and you'd do as much as you could to get all those 8:00 o'clock classes going. And then, again, at 9:00, it would start over, and you'd have all these hourly classes. So, then it really started finishing up the day around 3:00 o'clock was when our workload went way down, and then we could start thinking about the next day. So, we're pretty much just dealing with phone calls, and emails, and requests from faculty most of the time.
Frank:
Were up up ... The work and the crew here work with the only classroom support? Allen:
Yeah. Classroom support had the three divisions I was talking about earlier; classroom equipment services, which is what I did, classroom media services, which is what the two guys did with the video delivery, and then classroom technical services. And those were the guys that fixed the bigger problems that took more than 10 minutes. And they were at the night shift. So, that was our group of eight. Frank:
So, what is a bigger problem? Allen:
Well, some of these rooms are really complex. They can have tons and tons of gear tucked away in different areas of the room; amplifiers, huge sound systems, video processing equipment, digital, this, that and the other. A big auditorium that holds 300 people that's used to present 10 different sources throughout every day requires a ton of gear. When you have a problem and you can't find it quickly, it could take you quite a while to troubleshoot that. I'm always trying to narrow it down.
Allen:
When I have a problem, first thing I want to do is narrow it down, so I can point the finger at one thing and know that that's the problem. That takes time. The technical services guys would work on that kind of thing. And we would get called in from time to time, the day crew to work at night. It's because if we
had too much to repair for those two or three guys that night, we knew everything had to be working the next morning, so we would team up and knock it out the night before.
Frank:
Can you give me an example of a really easy day? And then I want to know about a really, really happy day. Give me an easy day.
Allen:
Well, an easy day, the phone doesn't ring. Everything goes well. Everybody's happy. You see people in the hallway and they wave and smile, and "Thanks for everything." That's the easy day. We're still doing equipment management. We have so much equipment out there. We went from 150 rooms to now we have a 180 some rooms. Every one of those rooms has 15 to 40 pieces of equipment in them. You do the math on that, there's a ton of stuff out there. So, we did a lot of equipment inventory.
Allen:
We aged equipment, determine how old each piece of equipment was, put it on a life cycle, so we knew when it had to be replaced according to our methodology. And we had a menu, a way of replacing stuff that we thought was the best to not have failure, basically. So, we do a lot of inventory, equipment tracking, getting rid of the old stuff, surplussing it, buying new stuff, getting it ready to put in the classroom at the turn of the next summer or the next winter break. So that's what we do on a slow day. Frank:
I want to get back to two things. One is the bad day, but also you were saying the equipment replacement and whatnot. So, let's start with the bad day. Tell me about the worst days. [inaudible 00:22:03] the 2000, the early days.
Allen:
It really does. Frank:
[crosstalk 00:22:05] worst ones you ever ran into. Allen:
There's some people that weren't comfortable in front of a classroom when their equipment wasn't working, and they would take that out on the poor soul that got sent to help them, me. So, that could be ... I was belittled a few times. They tried to make it look like it was all my fault in front of a couple hundred people. And that's discouraging. When you walk into that, it hurts your feelings, to be honest, it's because you have pride in what you do. And then all of a sudden, that's thrown in your face in the wrong way.
Allen:
There was a couple times when I walked into classrooms and really did not feel comfortable trying to help. Actually, walked out of a couple classrooms, because I wasn't treated well. And I didn't care. I didn't care. I walked out, and said, "Well, that person's going to have to fend for themselves." So, that can turn your whole day. Like I said before, it was very rare that that happen. And as I got better at dealing with it,
I think, a lot of those people faded away. I think that kind of mentality wasn't welcome here. And CSU as a whole, it didn't fly here. And I think those people were either asked to leave or realize that they didn't fit in. So, thank goodness, that didn't last long.
Frank:
You and I have known each other for about a year now. And I've been able to observe through the work that I do here that all the equipment need to be replaced or repaired and whatnot. So, in the early days, you were actually part of a speeding up of the technology. So, whereas, the people that came before you pretty much had that equipment they work with. And, yes, maybe that's a new camera that came out of something. But you were part of when things really started to increase, the speed of the change.
Allen: Absolutely. Frank:
So, let's try to get into from the very beginning. You said there's still people using slides and whatnot. There's very few computers. How did you go about convincing people that the equipment that you have here that's being used really needs to be upgraded to something new?
Allen:
Part of it was just the technology was really on fire at that point and things were getting better quickly, for instance, video projectors or computer projectors that we would hang in the classrooms. Early on in my career here in the early 2000s, they were fairly dim, low resolution, unreliable. It didn't look good, but it was the best you had. They were expensive, too. And it's a lot of money to pay for something that really wasn't that great. But that's all we had. We didn't know any better at that point.
Allen:
So, as the years went by, those projectors kept getting better. They got brighter, higher resolution, crisper just a more sharp focus. So, once we got a couple of those newer better ones and hung them in
classrooms, it made all our other classrooms look worse, because we had the comparison then. So, every year, we would ask for more money to upgrade more projectors in more rooms. I think when I started, we had about 35 or 40 rooms with computer projection in them. And like I said, they were not good, but it worked.
Allen:
The year after, we got another 10. And then the year after, we got another 10. And then the year after, we got another 20. And at that point, we even went back and started replacing some of the oldest worst ones with the best. And that was a really cool thing to watch. You watch the worst projector on campus disappear and be replaced by something state-of-the-art, cutting-edge, newer, brighter, looked great. It was such a transition.
Frank:
How difficult was that process getting ... Who got to convincing you need to have something new? Allen:
Well, it wasn't me back then, but there was always funding. We had residential instruction funding for new equipment and classrooms every year. It was a certain amount. Then they came up through the years with some other different pockets of funding that we were able to tap into, most recently, was the Classroom Review Board. And that's been in place for a good 10 or 12 years now. And they had their own funding. And that was what we use for spare equipment sometimes. If we had 30 pieces of equipment out there and we had no spares on the shelf, we knew that wasn't good business. We had to have one or two sitting on the shelf ready to go. Because at some point, one of those 30s is going to give up.
Allen:
And then the students were asked to start funding some of the equipment themselves through a
university technology fee advisory board. I believe that's been in place for a little over 10 years now, too. So, they would get together and vote on how much they wanted to put into the kitty, per se, every year. And we would use part of that funding to buy new equipment for classrooms. And that's still going on today.
Frank:
But in the early days, you didn't make those kind of decisions [crosstalk 00:27:05]. Allen:
I didn't. I didn't. I got to help spend the money once it was there, and that was good. So, we would do research, and we thought we knew the best stuff to buy. And I think we did a really good job with that. Frank:
How did you do research, Allen? How did you keep up on the technology? Allen:
Well, we did have some training options. We traveled out of state a couple times to big giant trade shows. Then there's one in Colorado every summer, in Denver that we went every year. And that's when all the the vendors would show up and show off their latest greatest stuff and try to convince us theirs was the best. So, we did that.
Allen:
And obviously, research online. There were some websites that would really go in deep on what the guts of a product looks like and how it's going to work for you or how it might not work for you. And then forums. Look at what other people are doing with that equipment, and how they're using it, what they like about it, what they don't like about it. So, we did a lot of research.
Frank:
In terms of transition from the new dye, there's something on their classroom, go find out it's a plug. What was the transition to the next phase of what you were doing?
Allen:
I guess, one of the big transitions was from analog to digital. Analog was what we called VGA, a 15-pin connector that would fit into every laptop that was ever made for several years. Then all of a sudden, we started getting into high-definition. And that was a keyword. One of the neatest things about CSU, I
thought, back in around 2006 and 2007, we actually started making high-definition rooms before any other colleges were doing it, as far as I know. We did it in about five classrooms, and we had HDMI cables coming out of the podiums. A lot of people had never even seen an HDMI cable, didn't really know what it did at that point.
Allen:
But there was a few people that were right on the edge, on that cutting edge, and they wanted to use that technology. So, we had five HD classrooms before anybody else in Colorado did, maybe even in that the Rocky Mountain region did, I'm not quite sure. But then once we saw some success in those five classrooms, we were full-bore going ahead with all of our other classrooms. We had every classroom upgraded to high-definition, I think, by 2011, maybe 2010. And that includes even the little bitty rooms that were kind of low priority.
Allen:
So, that was the huge, and is still a transition. We still got people who will show up with analog equipment, and we'll adapt it to HD, and make it look as best we can. But there's still people bringing that stuff in. And there's still people that want to use an overhead projector, too. So, it's a transition that's still going on, but most of the people are there.
Frank:
In 2003, I understand that you got an extra job. There was somebody who went ... You know [crosstalk 00:30:11].
Allen:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah. The sound guy from instructional services, his name was "Adrian Lawson," great guy. He was heavily involved in sound. He had these giant mixing boards, and he could make him sing. And it was impressive to watch that guy work. It turns out, he is also the guy that did all the recording for the Board of Governors every time they met, which is about five to six times a year. So, Adrian wanted to retire in 2003, and I was selected to replace him. And I don't know if I did just drawn the short straw at that point. It wasn't something anybody else wanted to do, but I thought, "Hey, I know how to do this. I can do it. Maybe I'll get to travel a little bit."
Allen:
So, I did my first meeting, and it happened to be in Pueblo Colorado. It was just shortly after the
University of Southern Colorado then became part of our system. And I showed up and saw the meeting happen and set up all the equipment, and did it really well. Met all the people. It was kind of cool sitting in the same room with two other university presidents for two days solid. I really didn't expect to be in that position, especially so early on in my career here at CSU. So, that was fun. Sometimes, the meetings were pretty boring, but sometimes, they were exciting, too.
Frank:
What was the actual setup? What were you ... I know what you mean when you say you're recording it. But does it mean?
The board always sits at a U-shape. And it started out with about 14 people around this U-shape, and a podium exposed to the open end of the U, so they could interact that way. So, I'd put microphones all the way around the U-shape, one for every two people, and one microphone at the podium. And then the tech table would be off to the side. And I'd have everything wired up to that tech table. So, I had full control at all times, even though I was kind of off to the side, which is where I wanted to be anyway. So, we drove it that way, and we were able to do everything we needed to do.
Frank:
So, you're recording the actual Board of Governors making decisions about CSU and what as the other one? Allen: CSU Pueblo. Frank: Pueblo. Allen: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Frank:
So, what were some of the initial problems that you ran into when you first got here? Allen:
The first recording medium I was using were cassettes. If you remember about cassettes, they were recordable on each side. And we had 90-minute cassettes back then. So, you'd record for 45 minutes, and then you'd have to try to find a good opportunity to eject, flip it, insert, push, play and record at the same time in the shortest amount of time possible, so you didn't miss anything.
Allen:
So, at the end of the meeting, I'd have a stack of cassettes all labeled exactly when and where and who was on it. And we put these cassettes in a box at the end of every meeting. After a few years, we had quite a pile of cassettes and public records. I think they want to keep that stuff on file for several years in case there's a dispute later on and they need to listen to that, we'll have a record of it.
Allen:
Now, we do the same thing now, but we do it on a tiny little microchip. We can put many many hours on a very small piece of recording medium.
Frank:
According to the information you provided to me, they was a ... You said, "I slowly replaced the recording equipment." So, what were some of the improvements that you brought to the table that perhaps were not in place before you started doing these recordings?
Sure. All the equipment was really well-dated when I started doing it, and I recognized it right away, old microphones, the cassette deck we talked about. There's some speakers that must have been from the '80s, and so a good 25 years old at that point. So, I slowly started buying new stuff, and I did that only when I would get some funding. So, first thing I do was ask, "Hey, I need 500 bucks or something like that to upgrade this piece of equipment." And then the next year, I'd ask for something else.
Allen:
And then around 2010, one of the gentlemen that was kind of overseeing the operation of the board, he's kind of the administrator. He retired. And at that point, I said, "I'd really like $7000, because I want to really get us up-to-date. We need to go full-on digital. We could really do well with that." And he said, "Let me see what I can do for you." And a couple weeks later, he called me and he said, "It's time for you to go shopping." I was happy. So, boy, I did go shopping. In that next meeting, man, I was smiling. It was fun.
Frank:
So, how has your group evolved? You used that word "evolve." So, were the 2003, 2004, 2005, how has this evolved?
Allen:
Well, classroom support. The group of eight of us were part of a larger group known as instructional services. That was about 40 folks. And that included photography, video, instructional design, graphics. About 40 people altogether. That whole group was dissolved in 2007 or 2008, I believe. And some of those people actually were laid off. Some of them moved to different departments, and some of them, like me, a classroom support services, and photography, and video stayed together in the basement, although we weren't known as instructional services anymore.
Frank:
Can you comment? If you can't, don't worry about it. Can you comment on why that was done? Allen:
We had a new president. Dr. Penn Lee became President in '03 through '08. And he didn't like the layout of it for some reason. I'm not quite sure why. But it was basically him that decided that office of
instructional services wasn't doing what he thought it ought to be doing. And he thought it could be done better a different way. So, at that point, we were ... The writing was on the wall. We knew he wanted to go a different way, and we just held on. Most of us held on.
Frank:
If you don't mind, Allen, what was that process like this breaking of this? I mean, what-Allen:
Yeah. It was uncomfortable. As I said, there were a few people that got laid off, and those were people that we had been working with for years. And some are more blindsided by it, and that was kind of hard to watch. So, you never knew who was going to be next there for a short time. It was a little
uncomfortable. No question. I felt that I was pretty important, because I build out a lot of people, and I kept the classrooms running.
Allen:
So, I thought, my golly, if they get rid of me, they're going to be in trouble. Of course, I know a lot of people think that about their job. But I thought I had a pretty good position where I was in my responsibilities and how I handled them. So, I was pretty confident I was going to be okay, but I didn't know about the rest of the people. So, it was a little uneasy. No question.
Frank:
What was your position during that period? You graduated from I graduated. Your position's got more important in the sense that you were no longer the one just going into the classrooms, right? By the time [inaudible 00:37:35], what was your position?
Allen:
I was still doing that most of the time during that term. During that five-year term, things hadn't really changed. We're just continually making the classrooms better. The next real shift in responsibilities and duties didn't come, till about 2015.
Allen:
And that's when we decided to take what we call "tier one support" and transfer it to the library. So, that means all the telephones in the classrooms when a professor had a problem, they pick up the phone and call for help. All of a sudden, that phone would ring in the library to a group of students just downstairs from us now would answer the phone, and they would run to the classroom, and take care of the easy stuff; plugging in the computer when they forgot to plug it in, or teaching somebody how to use a certain piece of equipment.
Allen:
So, once that tier one support moved away from my office and into their office, that really changed the dynamic of my workload, because then all of a sudden, I was tier two and tier three only. So, when the library folks couldn't figure something out, they would let us know and then we would go in during the next class break and do our best to fix it.
Allen:
So, that was a big transition. Frank:
Initially, before Penn Lee broke up instructionals, who did you report to? Allen:
Well, I told you about Gary Atkins who hired me. He had retired about 2003 or 2004. He was replaced by a guy named Andre Smith who is a great guy and a good sound engineer. He was our supervisor for about five years after that. So, our whole group reported to Andre. And he is key in getting our first room's high-definition as well, which was kind of neat. He had a vision for it.
Allen:
Some people said, "Why would a classroom need to be high-def? Why do you need to see a PowerPoint in high-def?" But he knew what was coming more than the rest of us did. So, Andre was our supervisor,
until about 2008, then he retired. And then Doug Satterfield was our supervisor after that, until about 2015 or '16.
Frank:
But in terms of reporting directly, but then you were part of instructional services. But then when instructor services broke up [crosstalk
00:39:59]-Allen:
I see. So, who did the whole department report to? Frank:
[crosstalk 00:40:03]. Allen:
So, when instructional services broke up, we were relocated under academic computing and network services, a CNS who drives the telecommunications, as well as all the networking on campus. We were a subgroup under that umbrella, and we still are today. So, that was ... I forgotten to mention that.
Frank:
When the reorganization happened and the downsizing of personnel, you had eight people. What happened?
Allen:
Some of the workload started shifting to facilities, was one of the things. They would build the
classrooms, install some of the equipment. There was never a real solid line on where that border was. They started doing some more some years, and we started doing some less and some more other years. So, a couple of guys transitioned into facilities and worked for them building some of the new
classrooms. And then they also took on other responsibilities; low voltage wiring, lighting, screens, some of the things that we don't typically do in a classroom support.
Allen:
One of the guys migrated to the library when that tier one support moved over, but then he retired, so now we're down to five. One other guy, he just ended up quitting, just couldn't deal with it. And then we didn't replace him. So, then we're down to four. And then Doug transitioned to halftime after his
retirement. So, now we're at three and a half people down from eight. Frank:
And how many classrooms you're responsible for? Allen:
186 right now, but that doesn't mention the 200 plus non-GA classrooms, that means non-general assignment, that are controlled by departments throughout the campus. So, different colleges and departments will ask us to repair their equipment along with all the 186 that we deal with normally. Frank:
Can you give me a better idea of the complexity of that? I mean, you and I talked about this not on camera. But even at the time you explained it to me, I didn't quite craft it. So, before, you were only responsible for a certain number of classrooms. And now, you're saying you're also in charge, involved in classrooms that you have previously not had to deal with?
Allen: Yeah. Frank:
Try to give me an idea of what that means. Allen:
That's kind of a gray area. When people got great support in the classrooms we control, they thought, "Well, these people know what they're doing. We should get them over into our classroom, the one that's not their responsibility and have them install equipment similar to what's in this classroom, because we really like how it works." So, they would gather up some funding. They would ask us to make their classroom work just like our classroom does. And then we would do it during the summer or winter break. So, that kept happening year after year. And we had done work in 20 to 30 to 40 rooms per year for several, maybe 10 or 12 years. You add that up, we've got our finger prints on a lot of different classrooms that aren't controlled by us.
Allen:
Now, once we did the install, say, in 2006 or '07, 10 years later, that stuff's all way outdated, they're calling us back, "We'd like to update this classroom. We've got more funding. We'd like you to tell us what we need to make it look good. And then once the stuff is here, we want you to install it and then train us how to work it.
Frank:
If they're asking you to do that, who was supposed to be doing that? Allen:
Well, there really was nobody that were supposed to be doing that. We were the resource on campus for everyone that wanted AV installed in their room. Like I said, facilities did a little bit here, little niches. And they've probably done a little bit more just recently in the last two to three to four years. But before that, our group did pretty much all of it, unless it was done by subcontractors who were hired to install some of the more complex setups in the brand new buildings. Some of those rooms were so elaborate, and we're talking hundreds of thousands of dollars, just an audiovisual gear. And with our limited personnel and our existing responsibilities, there was no way we could do that.
Allen:
So, subcontractors would come and build some of those rooms. As soon as they walked out, all of a sudden, that equipment was our responsibility. So, that just kept growing and growing. And when we went from 150 to 186 rooms, that 36 room difference, almost all those rooms are big and complex. They're not the little ones. So, it added quite a chore.
Frank:
What buildings or what rooms were the most complex as things developed? Allen:
So, in 2009 and '10, the behavioral sciences building was built, one huge auditorium with two projectors, all kinds of different sound equipment. It was just really elaborate and fancy stuff. It had a theatrical server, so we could actually play movies from anywhere in the world. If somebody wanted to pay for that movie, we would get it on a hard drive, play it once, and then send it back. That didn't last very long, but it was something we had never seen or done before. So, that was a really complex build for the time. Allen:
And then after that, we had some other buildings built. We have chemistry and biology, a lot of room additions; natural resources, anatomy, zoology. Things have just really mushroomed. And every new building, almost every new building on campus has at least one or two general assignment classrooms in it. And again, those are the ones that are the most on the beaten path, the easiest ones to find, and typically the biggest rooms that serve the most students.
Frank:
Who get ... And I don't mean personal people. I mean, in terms of the technology, who gives you the biggest problems?
Allen:
Who gives me the biggest problem? Frank:
Not people, but I mean it is like vet med, they have more problems and business. Allen:
Yeah. Well, that's a good question. I couldn't really point the finger at any one, particular one. I think vet med is a challenge. They have a lot of stuff. They do not have their own group of people that does what we do. So, they don't have another resource, so they call us quite a bit. No question. And since they are kind of off main campus, that takes us a little bit longer to deal with, because you got to jump in the van, make sure you bring all the right tools and all the right equipment, or you're running back and forth. So, that is a challenge. I can't really pinpoint one that's really that difficult for us. Everybody uses us. And I think everybody likes us.
Frank:
From your perspective, how did the raise in use of computers, how is that had the greatest effect on our job?
Allen:
It's had a tremendous effect on my job. When I started, I said, it was in the infancy as far as being used in the classroom, and now, it's really being embraced. We have desktop units installed in classrooms, so anybody can come in and log on, use their own user profile, get to their own network drives. Instead of hauling a computer around with you from classroom to classroom, now you can put everything you need
on a thumb drive or access it through the network and present it. So, it makes it really convenient. And everybody's gotten better at it, too; PowerPoint, whatever medium they choose to present with. It's really gotten mainstream. And I watched it all happen, and it's been pretty cool.
Frank:
Was there any kind of problem between walking into a classroom and it's setup for PC or you're walking into a classroom that's setup for a Mac?
Allen:
Sure, there's different tricks to getting them both running. Absolutely. You got to know what to look for. But after you master them both, and then you're good.
Frank:
From your perspective, how is the way we build and maintain classrooms changed? Allen:
The way we build and maintain classrooms changed. Gosh, obviously, we're always looking for the most updated equipment we can get. A lot of times, we'll have to spec equipment two years before it actually gets hung in a classroom and being used, so that makes it difficult. You want to wait until the day before it's being used to spec a piece of equipment, because that technology is changing that whole time. That kind of makes it different, difficult.
Allen:
Things, how has it changed? We look at each individual room differently based on its size, its layout, its shape, what it's going to be used for the most. For instance, if it's a first preference biology room versus an engineering room, that would require some different pieces of equipment. Some colleges and departments rely more heavily on media, for instance, the DVD players, things, movies you can watch in class. Others would never use that during a classroom lecture. So, we base it on shape, size, location, departmental use, that kind of thing. And every room is different, so we don't follow up a real strict menu. It's custom.
Frank:
This is going to sound like an off-the-wall, kind of stupid question, but has your job gotten easier? Allen:
I think I've gotten better at my job, and that makes it easier for me. But I'm doing different things all the time, too. So, you got to stay on that cutting edge. You got to keep learning, so you don't get left behind. But easier or harder? That's a good question. I want to say the same.
Frank:
What about the university itself? How was, from your perspective, the university has been growing? You've already mentioned about new buildings and whatnot.
Allen:
Frank:
So, from your perspective, what do you think about all that? I mean, you were here when a building was built over here. And now, all this stuff is happening.
Allen:
Yeah. It's a little overwhelming. It really is. So many new spaces to see and deal with, not all of them. I'm not involved in all of them, so that helps. But the ones that are being used for general assignment classrooms, we do get involved with. It's a little overwhelming. And I wonder how long that growth at this pace can last, honestly. Eventually, we're going to run out of real-estate for one thing, but there's still some space out there. So, yeah, it's overwhelming. I don't how to describe it, but it's crazy how much it's grown.
Frank:
In terms of the work that you do now, do you feel that you have this ... Actually, yes. Anybody, they're still going to have the same answer, and I'm probably going to get the same from you. Do you have enough people, do you have enough resources to do what we think? Because we are growing at that quick pace.
Allen:
No, we do not. And I imagine you're expecting that answer. We're constantly asking for more help, and so far, it hasn't gotten there yet. But we have a phrase and that is, "Just keep the trains running. If you just keep the trains running, everybody's happy with status quo." If everybody's happy with the status quo, I guess, we'll be okay. There's a lot of people that think we ought to be heading in a certain
direction looking at certain goals and accomplishments. And those probably aren't going to happen with the status quo.
Allen:
So, there are a couple different ways to think about it. Yeah, we can probably keep the trains running right now, although, the increased demand for equipment in different classrooms and departments we're more often telling those people, "Sorry, we don't have the resources to do it." There's three and a half of us, we've already got X amount to do. We can't do your room until maybe winter of next year, 18 months out. You have the option of calling us a subcontract, have them take care of the job for you. They could probably get it done in two to three months. Sometimes they do that, sometimes they don't. Allen:
Yeah, it's growing so fast, and I don't know how we will continue to maintain even the status quo at some point.
Frank:
I'm going to ask you so much for individual comments about the next question. But was there a big difference or any kind of difference in the change over from one president to another in terms of your job?
In terms of my job, not so much. In terms of the the feeling on the campus, absolutely. When Tony Frank came on, it was a whole new world. There was an excitement around the campus. There were people dancing around singing "Dingdong. The witch is dead." That's a little mean to say, but there were some pretty hard feelings when the prior president stepped down or was asked to leave, and Tony was unanimously selected. I don't even believe there was a real strong search at that point. He just fell into that position, and everybody was so happy about it. The feeling on campus was great.
Allen:
That was that time we were coming out of a pretty good depression at that point, too, and we felt like the worst days were behind us. So, all of a sudden, we had a new president. Things are on the uptick economically speaking. So, it was a good feeling around campus at that point.
Frank:
As the Board of Governors, he was there. From your perspective, once again, you observed him. What does it make him special?
Allen:
Wow. The guy's got so much charisma. He's so well-spoken, thoughtful in every response he makes. And he almost always adds a little humor to it, and he does it really well. You package all those things together, that's a fun person to watch work. I've seen him deal with so many different situations, and I can't think of one of them he didn't deal with well. He just really knocks it out of the park. It's so fun to watch him converse. I've seen a couple times where there were some tense situations, people asked him questions that he didn't really like, and very diplomatically answered them to the best of his ability. And some of those people are absolutely shut down. They had nowhere else to run. They were cornered by his intelligence, and that's so fun to watch.
Allen:
And then having lunch with him that day and dinner with him that night, it's really cool. You talk about the whole day, how it went down after it went down, and his thoughts and our thoughts. And he would even ask us, "What did you think of that guy? Was that a legit question?" And we could all express our opinions. And that was really cool being involved at that level.
Frank:
If I ask the person who's the head of facilities or if I ask the person who was in charge of whatever, how important is your department? How do you fit into this whole place called CSU? How important is this? Allen:
I think if the three and a half of us disappeared tomorrow, there would be problems tomorrow. But next week, there'd be serious problems. And next month, I don't know if there'd be a whole lot of teaching going on at all. I mean, that's how involved we are, how much we do to keep things up-to-date, and keep the trains running. So, it would be substantial.
Would you say, given that you work with other people outside of your particular territory, so to speak, how important are all these pieces that are not the academic part, not the athletic part, not the part that gets a lot of the publicity? What is it about what you do and others do that keep this place running? Allen:
I think there's that human communication piece of the puzzle that's so very important. People just contacting us or me just asking questions, "How do we do this? Where do we go for that?" Just the human interaction of it and the harmonization of it all, how we all work together I think is really important. You can get a lot done when you put 10 people thinking on the same thought, a lot more than three people on that same thought, because you start getting more ideas that you can bounce off of each other and evolve to create a great brilliant answer to the original question. So, I think we do that with a lot of different departments and colleges.
Frank:
I got a couple more questions. We're already at 11:00 o'clock. From your perspective, Allen, what's the next step that CSU needs to take in terms of the technology of the work that you're doing right now? Allen:
One of the things that we've been seeing increasing in popularity is lecture capture. And that's the ability to record a classroom, keep it on a video server on the cloud or wherever it be, and then have it
accessible to a student who's in their dorm room or even in the different state, so they can review that material over and over again. If they don't get it the first time, they'll watch it again. And that seems to be pretty effective. I think, well, I know we're installing that in more and more classrooms every day. We're probably at about 30% of our classrooms could do lecture capture now. I think we're going to be at 80% before too long. You're going to see a lot more. And the ability for students to watch those lectures over again in a lot more classrooms, so I see that changing quite a bit.
Frank:
And lecture capture, the actual name didn't exist. But what was lecture capture before? How did you [crosstalk 00:58:38] get this stuff?
Allen:
Well, I guess, it all started with the online colleges that everybody's heard around going on, around the entire nation. CSU global started in 2010 or so, complete online classes for non-traditional students, typically. And then we started realizing, "Hey, maybe there's a market for that here, too. We could take what CSU global isn't doing, capturing, film those classes and offer it through a different resource." So, we started doing a little bit of that. Once those classrooms had that equipment, we thought, "Hey. Maybe the kids that aren't doing the online only, maybe they'd like to watch it as well." This is a trend that was going through the country at the time. We thought, "Hey. Let's try it, see what happens. Is it going to get used? Is it going to be popular?" Turns out it is, and it was.
Frank:
I asked this from everybody. And this may or may not resonate with you, but I'll just ask it anyways. Why would a student or why would a parent consider coming to CSU?
Well, I think, it's just the college experience. And that's a broad term, but there's so many different factors in that. I think CSU geographically is in a great place. You got four real distinct seasons. You've got the mountains. There's so much opportunity just in the mountains, the rivers, the streams. You've got the plains, the prairies, so much diversity out there. The size of it, it's not a huge city, but it's not a little town either. It can absorb 30,000 students coming and going pretty well. I think there's a lot to be said about just the college experience, geographically speaking.
Allen:
I think the fact that we have so much student housing on or near campus creates a different vibe for this campus. Because you've got students around Student Center all the time, there's always something to do. Some places, I think, kids get bored at college. I don't think very many kids get bored here. There's always something going on, and I think that makes it a special place.
Frank:
And then the final ... Is there anything that you want to say about the work you've done or the work that is being done? Any final comments that you can think of?
Allen:
I've loved my career here. It's been really enjoyable. I love working with the Board of Governors, and the president, and the provost, and legal counsel, and all the groups that are involved with that. That's been really eye-opening to see how it goes on behind the scenes, which most people don't see or really care to learn about, honestly. That's been just fabulous. And I love meeting new people all the time, new instructors, teaching people new equipment, new technology. That's fun. I enjoy that part. So-Frank:
And now, we have one last question. And it has to do with completely a personal question on my part. How do I phrase this properly? You're sitting in the basement of Clark. And for many years, there were several floors above you that contained film, tapes, whatnot. Did you ever, at any given time, sit there in your office and realize what was up there?
Allen:
Yeah. About once a year, we'd go through every closet and try to clean it up and organize it. Three to four closets were just packed full of film, and I knew that some of the people that helped create a lot of that media. I wanted to sit down and watch it all. I really did, but there's no way possible. I actually did pick out a few and watched some old reels, some 16-millimeter reels, and that's pretty eye-opening. But just the amount of stuff up there was overwhelming, just hundreds, and hundreds, and thousands of titles just stacks and stacks. It was an unreal amount of media sitting there. I always thought to myself, "Boy, I'd like to get rid of this, but I'm sure not going to throw it away. I just wish it lived somewhere else." Allen:
And then Frank Boring came along. It's been a gift. He helped me get those closets emptied out, relocate that stuff, and keep it alive, so it didn't get thrown in the dumpsters. I wonder what happened with other universities when they had that same accumulation, and the new guy comes along and says, "I have no use for this. This is garbage. Get it out of here." I'll bet that's happening. And it's sad. But we're losing our history a little bit. But I'm really glad to see that's not happening at CSU.
Allen:
How do we do? Frank:
Oh, yeah. You have a great tone. Allen:
Isn't that cool? Frank:
We have to put in a plug for the archive well. Allen:
Of course. Frank:
[inaudible 01:03:51] Brian:
Oh, man. I hope the stuff that PBS likes as we put together things like [inaudible 01:03:53]. Everyone right now is realizing the same thing we are. What do we do with all this?
Male:
Can you save it? Allen:
Can we save it? Brian:
How much time do we have to save it? Allen:
Yeah. Is it too brutal to play ever again? Male: [crosstalk 01:04:05] there. Male: Yeah. Male: Yeah.
Male: It is. Male: Yeah. Allen: Well, [crosstalk 01:04:05]. Frank:
Thank you so much, Allen. Allen:
Nice to meet you all. Male:
Thank you, Allen. Male:
Thank you. Nice to meet you. [inaudible 01:04:15]. Allen: Thank you. Male: We appreciate it. Male: [inaudible 01:04:16]. Male:
You did a good job. Thank you. Frank:
Thank you [crosstalk 01:04:20]. Male:
Stop by [inaudible 01:04:20]. Male:
Yeah, definitely. Allen:
I think I will. Male: I think so. Male: Oh, man. END TRANSCRIPTION
