What waves atop bridges or runs across the hall? What plays inside classrooms and hangs on the wall? Shown in conference and classrooms, recycling galore, on websites and treadmills, in research and more?
The answer: the products of WSU’s Biomedical Communication Unit (BCU).
BCU is a self-sustaining service unit integrated with the College of Veterinary Medicine’s Instructional Technology division. Its roots in the college go back to the early 1970s. With an emphasis in medical andscientific communications, BCU provides photographic and multimedia imaging services to faculty, staff and students across WSU.
Tucked inside the mix of paper, videotapes, cameras, computers, printers and posters is manager Rich Scott.
“We strive to be on the cutting edge of communication technology, providing faculty, staff and students with cost-effective services utilizing state of the art technology,” he said.
“We fill a unique niche on campus,” Scott said, “especially when it comes to the unique needs of veterinary medical research and teaching.”
Employees
BCU has four full-time employees and 10 time-slip student employees.
Chuck Royce is BCU’s large-format inkjet printing specialist. Royce’s prints travel throughout the world to national and international conferences presenting leading WSU research. Other examples you’ve probably seen include posters and banners featuring CUB reconstruction, WSU Recycling, WSU Dining Services, Education Abroad, Career Services or University Recreation, to mention a few.
Photographer Henry Moore Jr. provides a full spectrum of photo services for people throughout the veterinary college, the veterinary hospital and other WSU departments and colleges.
“You never know what’s going to be in our photography studio,” Scott said. “One day a skeleton of a lizard, the next day a tobacco plant, or a diseased heart.”
Bob Mitchell, multimedia coordinator, regularly produces new veterinary instructional videos for online learning or to add to the more than 1,400 veterinary tutorial videos hosted in BCU’s media library. He creates videos for university-sponsored programs such as Alive! and the Harold Frank Engineering Entrepreneurship Institute.
Scott is really the glue that holds it all together. At any given time he can be found printing banners, designing posters, taping lectures or taking portraits. He’s both the middle- and go-to man.
Operations
Scott said every day is different, as job descriptions change with new clients, technologies and software. But one thing always holds true — BCU’s top priority is always the satisfaction of our customers, he said.
“We are here to make our customers look the very best they can,” he said. “Every product we produce in some way represents the world-class image of WSU.”
“I’m very grateful for the work the BCU team produces not only for our college but for the university community as well,” said Dean Warwick Bayly. “The BCU staff provides a very unique and valuable service to this college that would be very difficult and costly to replace. Our faculty, staff and students do the work and BCU makes it shine.”
