This month for We Are IT, we meet Jenna Hall (McCown), a User Services Technician for Telecom at the University of Alabama. Hall has worked with the Office of Information Technology (OIT) since 2021. Hall discussed her journey as a student employee at the University of Alabama.
Hall is currently a student employee at The University of Alabama, where she balances her studies with a role in The University’s Office of Information Technology. She is working toward her bachelor’s in psychology and a minor in studio art.
“So I’m getting this degree in that, and then my brain is very weird, because it’s like, I can do art, but then I can also program stuff,” explained Hall when discussing how she manages her studies and job.
Hall started as a student worker at OIT in 2021. Originally, she worked at the Main Desk answering and directing phone calls. Since then, Hall has been promoted to her current position as User Services Technician for Telecom.
Now, when she is at work, Hall oversees and manages phones across campus. Hall’s role includes programming and troubleshooting phones on campus. This includes Blue phones, classroom phones, desk phones, and gateways for every building. Hall also reviews, processes, and orders faculty and staff requests for work phones. She interacts closely with Verizon to place these orders for the faculty and staff at The University of Alabama. In addition to handling phones across campus, she must also manage the accounting and billing for these phones.
Though Hall said she is not the biggest fan of accounting, one of the more interesting parts of her role is billing fraternity houses on campus.
“So for fraternity houses on campus, we bill back for all of their Wi-Fi, like all that stuff they have up there,” said Hall, elaborating on the various complexities of her role.
When she is not studying or working, Hall spends time with her husband. The two are currently renovating a house from the 1900s, which, according to Hall, takes a lot of time.
“It’s a lot. It’s no joke. Like people do not lie when they say renovating is a massive task because it is” said Hall. However, Hall stressed that she enjoyed the demolition part of renovating more than anything else so far.
Hall has spent almost four years with OIT, and she will graduate from The University of Alabama in December.