Professional Documents
Culture Documents
CSIS 469
Internship Paper
Professor Dan Brekke
MSUM IT Department
Lab Support Technician
Content
I. Introduction
IV. Experience
V. Conclusion
i. Introduction
For my internship this fall, I have been given the opportunity to work for the IT department in
MSUM. I have been serving the MSUM IT Department for over a year and a half now, and I have
The MSUM IT Department has been serving the college since the technology upgrade has been
implemented by the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MNSCU) across all public
universities in Minnesota. The IT department has always been essential for the university as it keeps
the campus network up and running, maintaining a high standard for all staff and administrators to
follow.
As the IT department has always been facing budget cuts year after year, they have come up
with a plan to continue to serve the university with excellence. The Technology Master Plan was
planned for the department, with the aim of moving towards the strategic goal of giving the best
The IT Department has five priorities that is part of the Technology Master Plan. The five are
Technologies/Development. Each of these priorities are crucial to the day to day activities that goes
through the department. As the IT Department, people are constantly searching for them for
guidance and support with their technological issues, therefore it is at utmost important that great
service should always be present.
Inside the IT Department, there are a few main departments that keep everything in
order. The main departments can be divided into 3 categories, the infrastructure department,
the instructional department, and the customer support department. Each department has
Each division also has its subdivisions, in this case, I am going to focus mainly on the
customer support department. In the customer support department, there are a few divisions
that keeps everything separated and organized. The few different divisions are the Help-Desk,
During my time serving as intern/worker in the IT Department, I have been placed under
the Lab support division. My supervisor, Jay Discher, has been really helpful and guiding
throughout my time here. My job primarily deals with managing and overseeing the computer
labs around campus, checking in the usage of computers in the lab, reimaging and deploying
computers across campus. My job also takes into consideration taking inventory of the lab
computers, setup and maintaining computer hardware, installation of various software on lab
In my time working there, I have been mostly been in charge of deploying and reimaging
computers across campus. The computers in campus are mainly Windows and Macs, so the
operating systems that I am familiar with are Microsoft Windows and Apple OSX. For each of the
For the Windows machine, my department primarily uses the System Center
Configuration Manager (SCCM), to capture images of the computer systems and apply them on
other machines for system consistency. In some cases, there are different configurations for
For the Mac machines, my department primarily uses the Deploy Studio software to
capture OSX images and deploys them when needed. If needed, configurations can be made so
As per my job, I do keep up with the usage and statistics of the computers being used
and to locate any computers that do not check in to the management server system. The
department primarily use Labstats as the lab report generator. By using Labstats, I am able to
There is also the use of active directory to domain computers into the campus network
so that students and faculty may login into them in any of the buildings with proper
authority are only allowed to install them. As a lab technician, I would be able to install software
IV) Experiences
department would send me to handle any problems or request that was requested. I do roam
around campus since there are request from different departments, and transporting
Other than the daily routine of doing tickets, I also go around campus checking
the conditions of the computers and fixing or repairing them. There are multiple issues that
arises when repairing computers, so sometimes it is an interesting challenge to face when try to
debug. However, if a computer can no longer be repaired, then it would be wiped and re-
time there, which is a big task as there are about 1300 computers across campus. While
managing the inventory, I had the opportunity to work with faculty and staff in maintaining a
software inventory database and also install updates that requires attention.
I also had the opportunity to work on a few events, the notables ones were
helping to set up for DragonDays and also preparing laptops for an IT conference in Brainerd. To
work on events such as this was a good experience as it shows me what others events are like
V) Conclusion
During the course of this internship, I have learned a lot during this time. I
learned to apply what I learn from classes and also applied what I learned from work to my
classes. Working in the IT department is truly a humbling experience and I am grateful for what I
had contributed and accomplished and this would definitely help me in my future career.