Hard work helpsAcademic Showcase

Bohler Gym will shine on March 28. Research presented during the Academic Showcase poster session will represent the talent and diversity of WSU, and visitors will marvel.
 
What will go unseen, however, is the hours of preparatory physical work spent behind the scenes.
Eric Slocum, heavy equipment operator supervisor with Facilities Operations, Plant Services, Heavy Equipment, represents these many unseen workers.
 
(Eric Slocum is one of many WSU employees working hard behind the scenes to make the Academic Showcase the success that it is. Photo by Jordy Byrd, WSU Today intern)
 
For the past three years, a team including Slocum and four others has assembled and taken down the display boards used at the showcase.
 
“Someone has to do it, and we’re here to help,” he said. “As long as the showcase coordinators turn in a work request, we’ll take care of the rest.”
 
Technical Services provides the approximately 100 boards that are assembled into six-foot-high panels to display the showcase presentations. Heavy Equipment uses moving vans and transport carts to get the boards in and out of Bohler Gym.
 
From assembly to take-down, the crew works about seven hours.
 
“We just do our best to show up on time and set up the way they like it,” Slocum said. “We really try to get in and out of there.”
 
Slocum’s crew works alongside Custodial Services. Tom Parrish, director of Facilities Operations Custodial Services, said the event requires approximately 75 chairs, 47 tables and at least two to three hours of cleaning that is completed the night before the event.
 
“We’re kind of working on the same thing at the same time,” Slocum said. “This leaves our teams holding doors open for each other and working along to get through.”
 
Tena Old, director of Marketing and Communications Strategic Initiatives, said the laborers deserve utmost recognition and appreciation.
 
“We couldn’t do the showcase without them,” she said. “They are just fabulous to work with, every one of them.”

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