1. How do I know the Purdue IT staff are who they say they are?
Check https://engineering.purdue.edu/ECN/People and see if we have a photo there. We fully expect you to do this, and won’t feel offended or put out by this. In fact, it’ll probably make us feel good that you are being proactively safe against social engineering.
2. How do you support this large a group with this few people?
Two thoughts come to mind: One is that our infrastructure groups make it very straightforward to implement and deliver resources to our end users. The vastly more important one is that our constituents and we share a mutual respect. Our constituents trust our assessments and our work ethic, and we trust the requests that people bring to us.
3. Where are the staff members located?
Our group is scattered across campus, in multiple locations. However, the workload is balanced based on the kind of task at hand. For example, a software install might be done by someone physically across campus.
4. Why do group members change so much?
Our primary directive is that no school or department should lose institutional knowledge if the IT staffer leaves for another job. Given the vastness of ENGR, EVPRP, and the Polytechnic’s collective needs, we’ve taken the tack of rapid rotation to make sure everybody knows the unique things about each group. We put a lot of behind-the-scenes communication in place to adjust for varying experience levels, as well as varying specialties in the field.
5. What is the preferred method of contacting us?
Our preferred method of contacting us is definitely our webpage: https://engineering.purdue.edu/support
6. I really liked working with Maria, and now she’s moving to another queue. Why can’t I have Maria work with me all the time?
See Answer #4. Also, we promise that the person who follows Maria will be just as good, if not better. If that’s not the case, let the Site Managers know, and we’ll fix the problem. The way we’ve set things up is that we have about a thousand active tickets at any given time, and we have to apportion them fairly across the staff, taking into account vacations and other absences.