Loken
Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): The Voice Magazine (Unpublished)
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2017/09/11
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What is your brief personal background; educational, etc.?
Loken: I grew up in Athabasca originally and I went away to school and completed a masters of History. Towards the end of that, I started doing IT work. I picked up a job of… in Edmonton and got into IT there as I completed my masters of history. That was right before I joined AU.
Jacobsen: How did you find AU?
Loken: I grew up in Athabasca, right? So, my father worked at AU since it moved to Athabasca. We moved out when I was one or so we moved out to Athabasca for the job. So, I was always aware of it and I knew people there and they told me that there was a job in IT and I should consider as I was completing my masters and looking for work.
Jacobsen: Of the institutions that you considered; why did you choose AU?
Loken: I was working and completing my school at the time. So, I wasn’t urgently looking for work but it was a really good opportunity. It offered stable good work and I was aware of AU and what they did and I like the institution and the people there. So, I wanted to be part of that community.
Jacobsen: Now, what is your current role and what are your tasks and responsibilities?
Loken: I’m a quality assurance coordinator within AU IT. I run the quality assurance unit which is two people under me but we bring out more people for projects. So, basically in practice that means we do all of the testing for new software development that we bring in and I set up the strategy and the methodologies for how we do that and supervise the work.
Jacobsen: What are some of the concerns that come up from students and what are some of the compliments that come up from students?
Loken: I’m not really student facing. I don’t directly deal with students much but we deal with the quality of the products before they go to the students. So, I do try to anticipate issues. A couple times we’ve brought products to AUSU or AUGSA to try and get some input ahead of time but really, we don’t deal directly with students as much. We ideally, head off some of the problems before they get to you.
Jacobsen: What do you anticipate usually as some of the issues students may face in terms of quality assurance?
Loken: The same things anyone else would; you’re going to care about security, accessibility, about usability, all of the same factors that everybody else cares about. You want a usable and stable product that does whatever it is you need it to do.
Jacobsen: What is your general sense of the community and culture of AU now?
Loken: It probably depends where you are especially with so many staff working from home or from all the different campuses. AU, Athabasca, I think is unique and special in that there’s second generation staff like me there now who grew up watching our parents work there and now we work there and you’ve seen a lot of my parents’ generation retiring now but you’ve got a lot of people like me that are five or ten years into our career and still with AU. I think that creates a really unique culture in the Athabasca campus.
Jacobsen: Looking forward now for the future of AU, what do you see as some of the positives that are coming down the pipe for IT and what are your hopes for the next 5 years?
Loken: We are the core of the service. It’s all offered through IT in one way or another and we’ve got some really smart people that really care about AU, I mean care about doing good work and I think that’s amazing. You can talk about issues all you want but I think that’s a really good place to start and with a new leadership across the institution, we’re well positioned to start doing exciting work. All it’s going to take now is some direction.
Jacobsen: Any final thoughts?
Loken: I don’t know, it’s been a fun few years at AU and I’m looking forward to whatever happens next.
Jacobsen: Thank you very much for your time.
Loken: Thank you.
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In-Sight Publishing by Scott Douglas Jacobsen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Based on a work at www.in-sightpublishing.com.
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