The YSU Tech Desk: Solving Computer Related Issues on Campus

By Tanner Mondok

Kristen Graul, a sophomore psychology major, was having trouble obtaining a new Microsoft Office subscription when hers expired and needed help getting it renewed. She took her computer to the Youngstown State University Tech Desk and now has a new subscription to Microsoft Office.

Becky Moore, an information literacy librarian at the Maag Library, works in the same building as the Tech Desk so she is familiar with their work.

“From the library’s perspective, we use the Tech Desk a lot for support and they’ve been very helpful in the building,” she said. “When people come to us with tech related questions we send them up there and they’re always very helpful.”

Moore also added that she paid the Tech Desk a visit for an issue of her own one time as well.

“I had an issue once with an iPad that the university had purchased and it needed to be updated or something so I went up there and handed it to them and five minutes later they figured it out,” she said.

Randy Ziobert, associate director and network administrator at the Tech Desk and YSU graduate, said the Tech Desk has received great reviews from people all over campus.

“We’ve received great marks from students, faculty and staff,” Ziobert said. “Without the students none of us would have a job. We’re here to resolve problems.”

The Tech Desk specializes in mainly software issues. There are some hardware issues they can resolve, such as hard drive problems, but things like a cracked screen can’t be fixed by them.

Their service can be reached by phone, email and walk-up requests and handle around 30,000 requests per year.

Ziobert said that the Tech Desk resolves 75 percent of the problems they receive. According to their page on YSU’s website, their resolution rate is 10 percent above the industry average.

Students have plenty of information they can access on their page in the form of self-help documents. Ziobert encourages more students to take advantage of the self-help documents because in some cases their issues can be easily resolved after reading one of the documents.

He said that the thing he is proudest of when it comes to the Tech Desk is that every student employee who has graduated left with full time job offers. Some of the companies that have offered former employees jobs are Amazon and Progressive.

The Tech Desk is located on the fourth floor of Maag Library and can be reached at 330-941-1595. Operation hours are 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday. From noon to 1 p.m. they close for lunch.