Never Really a Contingency Plan
Air Date: October 12, 2020
Episode Notes
#6 Never Really a Contingency Plan
Oct. 13, 2020
0:00 Interview with Lamine Diallo, Associate Professor, Leadership and EDI faculty colleague
13.02 Interview with Vanessa Brown, OCAA Female Champion Cross-country Champion
20:08 Interview with Julie Topic, Director, ICT Support
One Market is hosted by Associate Professor Bruce Gillespie, Program Coordinator of Digital Media and Journalism.
Thank you to Serena Austin, One Market Research Assistant, Melissa Weaver for graphics, and Nicole Morgan for campus promotion. Music by Scott Holmes.
Transcript
Bruce Gillespie 0:03
Welcome to One Market, keeping the Laurier Brantford community connected. I’m Bruce Gillespie. This week we learn about some of the efforts underway to make our campus a more diverse, equitable and inclusive place. Then we hear from a student athlete about what it feels like not to be competing this year with so many varsity sports being cancelled. Plus, we get a behind the scenes look at how the ICT team has worked to ensure that students, staff and faculty have all the technology and support we need to work and study from home. All that and more coming up on this episode of One Market.
Our first guest is Lamine Diallo, who is an associate professor in the Leadership program, as well as the faculty colleague for EDI. He’s been busy this past year working on a variety of projects to make our campus a more diverse, equitable and inclusive place. I started off by asking him what attracted him to this sort of work?
Lamine Diallo 1:03
It’s difficult to answer the question for me. I will say that I have been, as a visible minority, I left Africa 35 years ago. And I’ve always been in a situation of minority and my job, I thought my job was to make sure that wherever I go, if there’s anything I can do to to give a voice to those minority groups. And I was involved in things like that, even just having a family, having your son growing up in a system where the school is not inclusive. All of those concerns had driven me to be interested in diversity and inclusion. I started some groups in Waterloo, when I joined Laurier I moved to Waterloo. And at Laurier, I have been also trying to work informally, I would say, to always attract diverse faculty members, support students, when I started at Laurier, I was one of the first visible minority on campus, I would say, Black anyway. And students were happy to see me around and I coached some of them and supported them. And how, that’s how it started, in fact, and it’s personal interest. And last September, I was officially appointed to be the faculty colleague on equity, diversity and inclusion.
Bruce Gillespie 2:26
I think for those of us who know you, it’s no surprise to know you’ve been doing all this work in the background for all these years, you know, without this official title, but now you’ve got the official title, which is great. And certainly the position comes at a really important time, right? We just spent five or six months with a really heightened level of discussion around the world about racism and violence against Black and Indigenous folks of colour. So, what are you doing in your role these days? Like, what’s your, what’s the work involved?
Lamine Diallo 2:54
Yes, you’re absolutely right. I think that when I started, it was last September, it was a quiet time. My objective was to work slowly through the process here at Laurier, to help the university think about how do we create a space that is more inclusive, welcoming, and inclusive, and also pay attention to attract more a diverse faculty community. And six months later, you know, we saw the killing of George Floyd and some of the tension, the pandemic, all of that. So, you know, heighten the whole idea of paying attention to diversity, inclusion with the protests around the world. And I believe that the timing also was positive in a way that it did call instituitions, not only universities, but the states, social services, the police, all those institution to start paying more attention to diversity inclusion.
My work is mostly to support initiatives of Laurier Brantford campus that promote or push for a more diverse and inclusive institution. And a lot of things are happening and my job is mostly to facilitate the processes. What I have noticed recently also is that there are a lot of initiatives but there is a lack of coordination, a lot of groups doing their little things. In fact, one of the things that I would like to continue doing is to try to coordinate a little bit, some of those activities, activities, just at least recording, so that people know that exactly these are things that are happening in our campus, and also identifying some initiatives that I can also provide support to, in fact, the job is mostly as a promoter, someone who supports, who pushes, will coordinate, will listen to mostly focus on faculties.
Bruce Gillespie 4:51
Sure. I think that’s a really important role to have here, though. I mean, at a time when, you know, a lot of, a lot of us are probably thinking I mean certain a lot of white faculty are probably thinking about these issues in a more concrete way than we have in the past, I think it’s useful to know that there’s someone like you out there doing this work and sort of, like you said, trying to coordinate all these little efforts and activities so that they actually come to fruition because it seems to me that one of the, one of the frustrating things about this kind of work must be the length of time it actually takes to see progress often, right? It’s not that you can sort of have a meeting today, solve it, and then you know, announce 10 new initiatives tomorrow that are, are coming into being it seems like it’s a much more involved process. By the time you sort of look at what’s happening, listen to people, facilitate discussions, and then sort of come to, to an understanding of what you want to do.
Lamine Diallo 5:39
That’s right, I completely agree, I think that’s, I see it for myself as a journey. I think that it’s, we’re just at the early stage of the process. The good thing we have at Laurier is that at least we have an administration that is also willing to pay attention to the changes that are needed. And just by reinforcing the staffing, hiring recently, an associate VP on Diversity and Inclusion, creating positions, such as mine, for example, faculty colleagues, having too faculty colleagues also have been hired a couple of years ago, hired, but at least appointed, and also for giving our AVP more resources, so that this work can happen. But, as you said, I think that this is going to be taking years, but it has to start somewhere. And my belief is that just listening to what is happening at Laurier, I see that the faculty members themselves are starting to think about, “Okay, maybe I should review my course content to pay attention to the more different literature from a group such as the Black community, the Indigenous community, so that student can see the diversity of content.” We have people that are meeting to discuss reviewing the content of the Brantford Foundation courses.
We have recently, in fact, I had a first meeting with a group of faculty, Black faculty members that are starting to get organized as a caucus, so that also they can have a greater voice. I have another colleague that is thinking about starting a center for pluralism here at Laurier, who also I’m working with slowly. So, it’s a lot of demand on time. But, I think that these are things that need to happen. And I do it in a way that is genuine, my personal agenda is to just create a space where people are welcomed, a stronger university, and also the way we provide education to our students, so that we give them a greater worldview, so that they can be citizens that are looking at the world as a unit where people are involved, listened to and paying attention. And I think we have a young generation of students who are capable of that. Our job as faculty members, is mostly also how can we make sure that we contribute to that process? Yes, it’s a, it’s long-term work.
Bruce Gillespie 8:08
Absolutely. I love hearing that there are all these different projects on the go right now. And you know, from the very highest levels to you know, sort of grassroots communities that are faculty to faculty levels as well. That makes me hopeful thinking that some of this will actually happen because it’s being worked on in so many different places at the same time. And certainly Brantford we’re, we’re lucky because we have some history of this kind of work through that Being Raced report that a number of students worked on as a student research project a few years ago. So, we have some really solid data to start this journey with as opposed to starting from scratch.
Lamine Diallo 8:44
That’s right. In Brantford we have advantages, the fact that first we have a little bit more information. You know, when you interview 30 students and they all relate to an incident of discrimination that happened to them of racism, I think that is a good starting point, as a matter of how the report was or how the report was written. At the end of the day, I think we have something to work from, and also the fact that it’s a smaller campus, people tend to know each other. For me, it was easy for me to connect with some of my colleagues. I have some that contacted me themselves, “Okay Lamine, I’m thinking about doing this. It is something that is under your responsibility as an EDI? Can we meet? Can we talk?” and you know, that type of interaction is a little bit easier. And as you said, also we have a history, we are located in the downtown, it’s a campus that is open. You know, we not only deal with students, but we deal also with a community, people who have stores downtown. And it’s, they tend to be, we have a history as a campus to pay attention to how to include members of a larger community and also other stakeholders.
And for me, it’s something that a little bit, is easy to do in a way that I am part of a smaller community. I was at Laurier, I joined Laurier Brantford in 2003, which was five years after the campus opened. And I’ve had a chance to know a lot of people. And I think that we have great support. Of course, discrimination does happen. Sometimes, it is surprising, in fact, how having information is important in this area, it is, example is that we don’t have much information about faculty members, but recently I was talking to just any colleague, any racialized colleagues that you talk to a Laurier, can give you examples of a situation where they felt discriminated against, they felt like they were not being listened to. But, this is not captured, that information, or one of the goals, sort of, of the work that I’m doing is to think about how do we make sure that we create a space where we can continue to collect this type of information, discrimination, racism on campus, it’s not only waiting every five years, six years to, kind of, research, to collect that information, it’s also about ongoing collection of incidents that are happening on campus, so that we can also argue for stronger intervention and try to do something about it.
Bruce Gillespie 11:21
I think that makes sense, because certainly the power of individual stories is important. But, I think especially when we’re trying to create larger institutional change, having that pool of data to draw from that is, like you said, consistent as opposed to, sort of, just dipping in every once in a while, is probably going to prove really important.
Lamine Diallo 11:38
That’s right. We have to do that it seems like because, you know, people can question where did you get the information? Or we don’t have any proof. And I said, like, even to my racialized colleague, the last time we had a meeting is that yes, I, I was listening to people just complaining and around the table. And a lot of people were just venting with the anger that they have inside because of things that happened and that were not resolved. Nobody would seem to be listening. And I said, yeah, maybe we should think about how do we articulate all of these complaints, so that also the university can have access to this information to know that this is not, this is not fake. This is not just, you know, there is no racism here, there is no institutional racism. People can say that, but at the end of the day, those were a victim market, if you listen to them, and if you hear them, they will tell you multiple examples of how sometimes the processes that are used sometimes the design of the system itself that doesn’t allow for certain groups to benefit from the way the system is designed. Those are big questions. And I believe that the good thing is that it seems like, at Laurier at least, there is a good intent to try to listen and to try to do something about it, which is good.
Bruce Gillespie 12:54
That’s great. Lamine, thank you so much for doing this work. And thank you for joining us today to tell us about it.
Lamine Diallo 13:00
Thank you very much.
Bruce Gillespie 13:02
Our next guest is Vanessa Brown, who is a Criminology student, but also the female champion in cross-country last year. She was also the first to capture an OCAA provincial title for Brantford, which she was looking forward to defending this fall before the pandemic. Here’s our conversation. Hi, Vanessa, and thanks for joining us today on One Market.
Vanessa Brown 13:23
Hi, Bruce. And it’s my pleasure.
Bruce Gillespie 13:26
So you are Laurier Brantford’s first female champion in cross-country and you won that title almost a year ago, I guess.
Vanessa Brown 13:33
Yes.
Bruce Gillespie 13:35
So, tell me a little bit about that. I don’t know a lot about cross-country. So, how far were you running? What was your time?
Vanessa Brown 13:42
Last year, it was six kilometers and 22 minutes and 45 seconds.
Bruce Gillespie 13:47
Wow, that that sounds very quick.
Vanessa Brown 13:50
Thank you.
Bruce Gillespie 13:53
So, is that the, was at the end of your season then? Or did you go on to do more after that?
Vanessa Brown 13:57
So, that was provincials, our second last race. After that it was nationals. My time was definitely not as good at nationals. But, that’s because it was, it was around negative 30 with the real feel that day.
Bruce Gillespie 14:10
Oh, no.
Vanessa Brown 14:11
Yeah.
Bruce Gillespie 14:12
Where were you?
Vanessa Brown 14:13
We were in Alberta.
Bruce Gillespie 14:15
Mmm.
Vanessa Brown 14:16
Yeah.
Bruce Gillespie 14:16
That would do it.
Vanessa Brown 14:17
Yeah. Very snowy.
Bruce Gillespie 14:21
That’s still, I mean, I mean, certainly for the Laurier Brantford cross-country team, that’s still a huge achievement to place that, you know, to become the champion at provincial levels. That’s amazing.
Vanessa Brown 14:29
Yeah, I definitely didn’t expect it. I was aiming for a medal, but I did not think first was attainable at the time.
Bruce Gillespie 14:36
Oh, that’s funny.
Vanessa Brown 14:37
Yeah.
Bruce Gillespie 14:38
How long have you been on the team?
Vanessa Brown 14:40
Since first year, so this would have been my third year on the team.
Bruce Gillespie 14:44
Okay. And how much in a regular season, obviously, this season is different, which we’ll talk about in a moment, but in a regular season, how much time do you spend training on a regular basis?
Vanessa Brown 14:54
Well, we train every day except for Friday, so I’d say around, like, 12-15 hours at least.
Bruce Gillespie 15:02
Wow. So, that’s like a part-time job.
Vanessa Brown 15:03
Yeah, but a fun one.
Bruce Gillespie 15:06
Well, that’s good. Presumably you have to enjoy it otherwise why would you do it, right?
Vanessa Brown 15:11
Exactly.
Bruce Gillespie 15:12
That’s amazing. So, what does, I mean, we sort of have this question for all student athletes, I guess, I mean, given that a lot of the events that would normally be happening to see are not happening. What is that, like, what does that mean for you? Do you, do you, sort of, get to defend your title again, like, next year, or like, after you’re off? Like, what, how does this all work?
Vanessa Brown 15:32
Well, we don’t know everything yet. But, I will say I was very sad in June when they announced that all the sports were canceled. They said there’s a possibility that they could do a spring season, but highly unlikely with the second wave. So, yeah, it looks like we’re looking at next year.
Bruce Gillespie 15:51
That’s too bad.
Vanessa Brown 15:52
Yeah.
Bruce Gillespie 15:53
So, are you training in the interim, you may be not training as much as he would have been normally. But, are you still trying to keep up so that you can, sort of, come back in top form.
Vanessa Brown 16:02
Oh, yeah. I’m still training pretty much to the level I would have last year. But, more so just for my mental state, because I feel like I’d be slacking if I didn’t.
Bruce Gillespie 16:12
Right after putting all this time and effort into it over the years.
Vanessa Brown 16:15
Exactly. I don’t want to lose my, you know, my training over the years to Coronavirus.
Bruce Gillespie 16:21
So, what does your training schedule look like on a regular basis? What do you, what are you doing?
Vanessa Brown 16:26
So, typically we do a hard workout Monday. And then Tuesday would be a little bit of cross training and a little bit of running, Wednesday would be another like speed or hill tempo kind of workout. Thursday would be an easy day, Friday off, Saturday another workout, and then Sunday would be our long run, or Saturdays would also be our races.
Bruce Gillespie 16:46
Right.
Vanessa Brown 16:47
Yeah.
Bruce Gillespie 16:48
That’s, that’s super busy.
Vanessa Brown 16:50
I definitely like the easy days the best.
Bruce Gillespie 16:53
Yeah, no kidding. I can see why that would be.
Vanessa Brown 16:56
Yeah.
Bruce Gillespie 16:57
So, what’s it like not having all your regular meets and, sort of, regular team trainings and stuff this fall? What’s it been like so far?
Vanessa Brown 17:04
Honestly, it’s depressing. Like, the dates keep going by and I keep remembering, “Oh, this week, we would have had a race. This week, we would’ve had a workout, but here I am in Kitchener training alone.”
Bruce Gillespie 17:16
It must be hard to get used to, because especially if you’re used to training with a team of folks, it must be weird to sort of do that stuff on your own, as opposed to having it be the group event that it normally is.
Vanessa Brown 17:26
Yeah, I definitely miss them. And I miss, I miss the drive, and the competition. Because when you’re just racing your own watch all the time it can get a little bit boring.
Bruce Gillespie 17:36
Right. And so, are you keeping in touch with your team and your coaches virtually?
Vanessa Brown 17:41
Yeah, we have a group chat, and we still talk and try to motivate each other to the best that we can.
Bruce Gillespie 17:47
That’s good.
Vanessa Brown 17:48
Yeah.
Bruce Gillespie 17:50
So, when you’re not running, you’re a Criminology student. How is your semester starting so far?
Vanessa Brown 17:55
This semester is good. I’m a little bit confused with all the online stuff, but we’re getting there. It’s a little different.
Bruce Gillespie 18:03
Do you feel like you’re into a routine yet?
Vanessa Brown 18:05
Um, yeah, I’m trying my best because some of my classes are Zoom, some of them are e-learning. So, I’m kind of trying to make my own schedule, but it’s a little weird.
Bruce Gillespie 18:16
Yeah, and I think I can’t decide if it’s weirder for folks who have already had in-person classes. And so, this is completely different than we’re used to, or if it’s weirder for, first-year students who don’t know any better and don’t know what to expect, I can’t, sort of, I can’t, sort of, make up my mind.
Vanessa Brown 18:31
I would say for the first years it would be very awkward, just because it’s their first year of university. And now they just get all this online stuff.
Bruce Gillespie 18:40
Yeah, I think it’s challenging, right. And I mean, certainly, as a varsity athlete, you would know this, that, you know, that being on campus is, in many ways, an easy way to meet people, just because they’re all in the same classes together, in the same clubs together. And I know they’re replicating those kinds of things online, but it’s not quite the same thing.
Vanessa Brown 18:56
It’s not the same thing. And like, even when you do group work in class, you feel like you could go up to those people and say, “Hi, I know you.” But when it’s on Zoom, it just all seems so artificial and fake.
Bruce Gillespie 19:08
Yeah, I think it’s harder to make the, sort of, social connection that you would, like you say, in group work in a breakout room on Zoom or something, right? It’s just, like, “Oh, we’re here for five minutes, and then we’ll, sort of, be pulled back into the main class.” It’s funny that way, certainly.
Vanessa Brown 19:21
Yeah. You just feel like you’re not actually having real human interaction.
Bruce Gillespie 19:27
Yeah, I think you’re right. I think that’s something that we’re all trying to figure out how to, it’s something we all definitely want. But, to try to figure out how to do that the, the best way is still, I think we’re still trying to figure that out in many ways.
Vanessa Brown 19:40
I think so. But, it’s better than nothing.
Bruce Gillespie 19:42
Well, that’s great. Vanessa, thank you so much for talking to us today. It’s been great to hear about how you’ve been keeping active through all this and hopefully, fingers crossed, you’re able to defend your title next fall.
Vanessa Brown 19:54
No problem. I’m definitely, I’m definitely training for that.
Bruce Gillespie 19:59
Our final guest is Julie Topic, Director of ICT support at Laurier, who’s based in Brantford. As you might imagine, she and her team have had a really busy few months working behind the scenes to ensure the rest of us have the technology we need to work, study and teach from home successfully. Here’s our conversation.
So, I know that ICT does a lot of contingency planning, just given how reliant, and evermore reliant we all are on technology. But, if you think back to March, was, was part of your contingency plan ever, everyone in the whole university working from home and having to support them?
Julie Topic 20:38
No, that was never really a contingency plan at all. Although I have to tell you that we did an amazing job flipping that switch and moving all our faculty and staff to a remote work at home environment and providing the support that was required to help facilitate that.
Bruce Gillespie 20:59
I would agree at least on the faculty side, I mean, it seems so seamless that we, sort of, did wonder, like, oh, maybe they planned exactly for this very weird situation that most of us have never occurred to. So, what did those first couple months look like?
Julie Topic 21:12
So, it was quite challenging, the very first thing we had to do is to get our technical staff in the habit of providing remote support from their homes, as well as establishing our Service Desk. And we do not have the PBX telephone system working. So, we had to establish how was faculty, and staff and students going to contact us for remote support on the Service Desk. So, we quickly established the process, which has worked perfectly well. And then, we don’t have the typical 4357 extension. So, you can chat via Teams with the Service Desk personnel, you can enter your own ticket into the portal, or you can actually call a couple cell phone numbers and be able to get immediate person on the other end to provide support.
Along with that, working from home was a challenge, because a lot of people took their laptops home, but didn’t necessarily take their docking stations and their dual monitors. So, that was a bit of a challenge. And the desktops, of course, the folks that had desktop computers was a bit of a challenge. So, we were supporting faculty and staff with home computers, or desktops that were taken home, or laptops. So, it was quite challenging. And to help facilitate the work at home environment, we had to expand our licenses for the VPN connections, because anybody who needed to use Banner and other applications such as that, had to have VPN access. So, we had to quickly expand those licenses. We also had to implement Microsoft’s ATP, which is Advanced Threat Protection. Because as computers were at home, we had to ensure that the Windows updates for occurring regularly, the security updates were occurring. antivirus was being updated regularly. So, we had to implement that very quickly. And we’re still working on some of that ATP because a lot of the computers on campus in Brantford haven’t been turned on because some folks are using their own personal computers. So, that was some of the initial challenges. Course, there was more afterwards.
Bruce Gillespie 23:41
Yeah, when I was thinking, I mean, so many of us did Zoom training over the summer, and the Zoom training was fantastic. But again, every time I took one of those courses I thought, I’m sure that the people doing these courses are, this is probably not what they’re trained to do. This is probably not their number one job. It’s what they’re, they’ve become to do, because it was so important for all of us to learn how to use this. But, they did a really good job. But, again, it made me think about the fact that they had probably not done a lot of this before and were sort of learning on the fly.
Julie Topic 24:08
You’re absolutely correct, Bruce, we did not have a web conferencing solution at the university. So, we worked with Zoom, chose Zoom as the solution. And now the technical specialists are absolute experts in Zoom. And it’s interesting because tech support specialists are good at sort of technical training from a hardware perspective. But, they absolutely step up to the plate and now they’re experts in Zoom and in teaching Zoom, because we do have a number of sessions on polling and breakout rooms, creating video and the basics of Zoom. So, you’re right. This was something very new to them, and they’ve done an amazing job.
Bruce Gillespie 25:00
Yeah, I was really impressed again, they, by the time I took some the training in June, they seem like they were, you’d never guess they hadn’t been doing it for years and years and years, which I thought was really commendable.
Julie Topic 25:10
Yes.
Bruce Gillespie 25:12
What’s it like to, for folks on your team to provide the kind of tech support in a, in a completely remote environment to, sort of, deal with people who’ve got computers at home? And again, you say, that may not be updated, or maybe a home computer. What are some of the challenges of working like that? Because I’m thinking of, like, our faculty on campus, if we had a problem with our computer, we’d call, or we’d wander downstairs, and you know, Jason, or Paul would come and help us with something and they’d just come into it, but presumably there, it’s much more challenging to do remotely.
Julie Topic 25:41
Yes, it is much more challenging. We actually had to buy some additional licenses, so that we could sort of remote control into different computers. But, it is challenging, because, you know, as you say, the techs are used to being physically beside the client, to see with their own eyes, the experience that the client is having in terms of the issue. When it’s remote, it’s much more challenging, because as they go through the steps of saying, you know, click this or click that, we don’t see what the client is actually clicking. So, we’re not sure if they’re actually understanding what we’re trying to demonstrate, as well as, it’s much more difficult to provide remote support to faculty and staff who are using their own personal computers at home. Because often, we don’t know what the hardware is, we don’t know additional software they have on there. We don’t know all their different Wi-Fi networks at home. And so, it can be challenging. But again, I have to say that the techs have done an amazing job of getting through there. And they’ve, they’ve actually developed a lot of good patience, I have to say, you have to go through and step by step, one thing at a time. And I think they’ve done a really good job to do remote support. Although they do want to be back on campus.
Bruce Gillespie 27:04
No doubt, don’t we all right?
Julie Topic 27:06
Yeah.
Bruce Gillespie 27:08
So, if that was sort of what the spring looked like, when campus first shut down, how did the rest of summer go? Did things sort of ease off? Or did they sort of stay pretty busy as you started preparing for students to come back in high numbers in the fall?
Julie Topic 27:22
Yeah, we, we were challenged in the summertime, well, I guess towards the end of April and into May and June and into summer, because one of the other challenges I was posed to was that because of all the exams that went online, and not in person, ICT along with Teaching and Learning was asked to provide support for online exams. And you can appreciate the number of final exams in April, and then all the midterms and final exams in the spring and summer terms, where we had to provide level one support from an ICT perspective. You know, students would email an exam support email address, and we had a number of our techs online in the mailbox providing that support, things like, “My Wi-Fi isn’t working,” or, “I can’t get my web camera to work,” different things like that. And then after a particular amount of time, around five-seven minutes if our techs, we’re not able to help the student get in to write their online exam, we would pass them on to tier two, which was the Teaching and Learning group, the head tech group, and then they would then provide that level two support to the student. And then often work with the faculty to basically decide what the decisions would be for, you know, defer the exam or restart the exam.
Bruce Gillespie 28:58
And I hadn’t even thought about that. So, that’s a lot of people, sort of, on standby as all these exams are happening, because you need that real time support.
Julie Topic 29:05
Correct. And it’s a very, it takes a lot of resources from level one or level two perspective. So, we’re actually working on a new strategy for the fall midterms, which I know have already started. And for the final exams in fall, and for the winter semester, because they’ll all be online as well.
Bruce Gillespie 29:27
Yeah. Wow. So, on a personal level, what’s it been like for you to do your job, plus all this extra stuff from home? This must be as new for you as it is for the rest of us, I suspect.
Julie Topic 29:41
It is. It is. I do enjoy working at home. I have probably been working more on COVID type related issues and technology and software that has to be implemented because of the situation working at home, versus my own job. So, you know, almost every other week, there’s a new challenge that we have to address and put a solution into place. I do enjoy working at home, I would like to go back to campus from time to time. But, I do enjoy being at home and I don’t miss the drive since I do live far away from campus.
Bruce Gillespie 30:27
I suspect too that, knowing you a little bit, you seem like someone who enjoys new challenges. So, this must be, at least, keeping on your toes and always having something interesting and new to work on.
Julie Topic 30:37
Yes, Bruce, there’s never a dull moment. So, we do have a leadership ICT meeting every day. And as I say, almost every other week, there’s a new challenge and we have to jump on and often the the deadlines are, make it happen as soon as possible. So, we, I do like the challenge, and I have to say that the entire ICT support team is just an amazing group of people. We’re here to provide that service to the university.
Bruce Gillespie 31:06
Well, we certainly appreciate all the work you and your team have been putting in because like I said, from from my point of view, I’ve, it’s felt really seamless. And anytime, the many times I’ve put in tickets or called someone with a question, I’ve gotten responses so quickly, and just so, in such a helpful manner. So, you guys are doing a really great job. So, thank you for all of that. And thank you for joining us and telling us about it today.
Julie Topic 31:31
Great. Thank you so much, Bruce, and I do appreciate you inviting me to have a chat with you today. Thank you.
Bruce Gillespie 31:41
And that’s a wrap. Thanks for joining us. We hope it’s helped you feel a little more connected to the Laurier Brantford community. If you liked what you heard, tell your friends and colleagues. You can subscribe on Apple, Google, Stitcher or wherever you find your podcasts. Worried about missing an episode? Sign up for our newsletter. You can find a link on Twitter and Facebook @onemarketLB. We’ll be back with a new episode in two weeks. One Market was created and produced by Bruce Gillespie and Tarah Brookfield, music by Scott Holmes, graphics by Melissa Weaver. Our research assistant and intern is Serena Austin. Thanks for listening. Keep in touch!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai