In Pam’s 35 years of service to the University, she has consistently shown dedication, hard work, loyalty, good humour and a huge amount of knowledge and skill. Pam will be hugely missed by her IT Services colleagues and the wider University community she has supported. She leaves behind a Campus Cards team which is well known and envied across the UK HE sector, for having the latest technologies and a reputation for excellent customer service.
We all wish you a wonderful and happy retirement. Pauline Brown, Associate Chief Information Officer (Service Delivery)
Detailed Description
Pam joined the University of St Andrews as a trainee Computer Operator in the John Honey Building in 1989. Pam was quickly promoted Computer Operator (and later Computer Technician) and for the next ten years had responsibility for system backups (Vax & Sun IT systems), managing print queues, working on the IT help point, and the then stand alone access control system with 10 doors!
In 2000 a new access control system was introduced to the university and mag stripe readers were introduced across more buildings. There was a lot of change between 2000-2010 with the introduction of new systems, the CCTV system upgraded to online, changes in teams and Pam being introduced to matriculation for the first time
In 2011, Pam (and her then colleague June Syme) were changed to Access Control Supervisors, under the Information Assurance & Governance team in IT Services. They managed the day-to-day operations of the central access control system (ARX) and the production of ID cards for staff, students and visitors.
From 2012-2017 the card reader estate grew from 148 to 547 and in 2017 Pam co-orindated the replacement of all swipe readers with prox readers (tap).
In 2018 Pam was promoted to Campus Card Services Supervisor (as part of the Service Delivery team), taking sole responsibility for the running of the team, managing contractors and be specialist contact for access control in capital projects. Pam was keen that all incidents and service requests started being logged in Unidesk, given the growth and complexity in this area. The small Campus Card Services team now manage over 18,000 unidesk calls each year!
The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in great change to how access to spaces were managed and there’s been significant growth in our reader estate, with over 3500 readers now.
