Volume 25 · Number 3 · Spring 2008
Dirty Work and Dream Jobs: Brian Bentson
(Photo: Karin Higgins/UC Davis)
Junior in mathematics from Belmont
Job: a member of the Classroom Tech Team
Overhead transparencies may have been replaced by document cameras in the classroom and analog equipment may have gone digital, but some things never change. Like chalkboards and chalk and chalk dust. Just ask Brian Bentson and the nine other members of the Classroom Tech Team. The team, which includes both student and career employees, installs and maintains all the media equipment in 120 classrooms on campus and visits each of those classrooms once a week to test and clean the VCRs, DVD players, document cameras, mics, Internet connectivity and other audio-visual equipment. Their biggest challenge: fighting the chalk dust that falls like snow on every surface, drifts in piles in media cabinets and clogs the projector filters, causing the machines to overheat and smoke.
The worst part of the job: “Chalk dust! It’s horrible,” says Bentson, whose tool kit includes a laptop, tools, battery testers, etc., but most importantly premoistened antistatic wipes he uses to clean the equipment and cords. Once a year, power spray washers are used on the equipment carts and an air compressor blows out the inside of cabinets, raising so much dust that “people thought we were smoking in the rooms. We wear masks — it’s that bad.”
Best part of the job: His coworkers. “You learn so much from the full-time guys — they know it all. And the students are my best friends.” Bentson came to the job with a good amount of technical know-how, having built computers since he was 12, but he’s learned a lot more about electronics, he says. And though he plans a career in Web site graphic design one day, he adds that after graduation he just might hire on full time with the tech team.
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