While attending MSUM full-time, I was hired onto the university’s student-run Mac Technician team. I held this position from my sophomore year through graduation, balancing coursework and another part-time retail job. We were a small team—typically three or four students—managed by a full-time Apple systems lead.
We maintained Apple infrastructure campus-wide: imaging and deploying lab computers, offering help desk support for students and faculty, managing server racks, and collaborating directly with Apple’s regional support staff.
• Lab Deployments & System Imaging
Deployed 5+ full labs during my time, setting up iMac G4s and later Intel iMacs. This involved physical installs, disk imaging, and configuring lab environments to university standards.
• Device Repair & Recovery
Serviced hundreds of faculty and student MacBooks and iMacs—including drive recovery from severely damaged laptops, one of which had been driven over.
• Executive & Faculty Support
Provided direct IT support for MSUM staff, including in-office repairs for the university president and senior faculty members.
• Server Rack Management
Rewired 5 Apple server racks supporting G5/G4 tower servers and RAID setups. These racks powered the university’s public website, student file submissions, and professor-specific platforms.
• Surplus & Lifecycle Management
Participated in the phase-out of legacy equipment, including selling G4/G5 towers and recycling over 100 iMac G3s during modernization efforts.
• Community Engagement & Mac Club
Helped organize and eventually co-lead the university’s “Mac Club”—a weekly meetup for Apple users to explore new tech and tools. I also designed and launched a blog website for the group to stay connected between meetings.
• Apple Liaison Collaboration
Regularly worked with Apple’s regional reps who visited MSUM to advise our team on upcoming tech and platform changes.
A few photos from our on-campus auction and surplus events, featuring dozens of legacy iMac G3s, G4 towers that we prepped for decommission or donation.
(Yes, I helped save some of these from the dumpster. You’re welcome.)
This was one of the most rewarding and formative positions of my early tech career. It gave me hands-on experience with enterprise Apple environments and taught me the value of resourcefulness, technical stewardship, and community engagement. Had a post-graduation opportunity existed, I likely would have stayed on.