Drew MacGregor moves on from Engineering IT after fourteen years of service

After fourteen years of service in the Engineering IT department, Drew MacGregor is moving on to work with Campus Information Technologies and Educational Services (CITES) as manager of digital media.

After studying at both DePauw University and Miami, MacGregor was hired by the University of Illinois’ Computer Science department. He worked with video streaming and was hired to help transfer the department’s learning program online.

MacGregor set up lecture recording at the University of Illinois and transferred them to a school in India the department had a contract with online. In the course of his career with Engineering IT, MacGregor helped build the video streaming capture infrastructure, and eventually moved from recording 20 lectures per week to up to 140 per week.

This infrastructure was built alongside the online Computer Science program—a project aided by several departments. MacGregor called it a “triangle support” system, with help coming from academics, Engineering IT, and the Office of Online and Professional Engineering Programs.

Another major project MacGregor worked on was serving on the building committee for the new Siebel Center. He helped design the classrooms and studio.

Scott Cimarusti said he worked on the grand opening of the center with MacGregor, coordinating the audio and video support for the event while construction on the building was still being completed. Together they assembled equipment and created a makeshift functional system for the audience, which included high-ranking campus administration, local politicians, and Tom Siebel himself. In addition, they had to get the center’s video wall working just two days before the ceremony.

“To me, that experience working with Drew is representative of the kind of colleague and person he is,” Cimarusti said. “Dedicated, creative, personable, and generous with his time and knowledge.”

Moving on to CITES, MacGregor’s role as manager of digital media is less IT-focused, but the experience he accrued while working on the Computer Science’s online prorgram lends itself to his new, much bigger project.

“The main initiative is to get a new distribution system for the campus up and going that’s virtually findable and usable by people. It’s an extension, or the next step of what we were doing in Engineering IT, but just on a larger scale.”

Looking back on his stint at Engineering IT, both the experience of the job and the bond with his co-workers made it difficult to leave. In fourteen years, he joked that “there were only about five days” he didn’t want to come to work.

“Sometimes you leave a job because of the people you work with, and sometimes you stay at a job longer than you would have because of the people,” he said. “Because of the people I worked with and worked for, it made it really possible to avoid those bad days.”