Customer Spotlight: Karin Pekarchik

College/Unit: College of Agriculture, Food, & Science

Department: Biosystems & Agricultural Engineering

Describe what you and/or your team does at UK.

The Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering educates engineers who ensure that the world has clean water systems, adequate food production, and sustainable energy sources. We use a systems approach to problem-solving, and our students have the opportunity to learn in hands-on environments, applying engineering theory to real-world problems. Our extensive laboratory (wet, dry, welding, machinery, etc.) and field capacity enables us to provide both field experience and bench experience to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as to manufacture anything from one-off pieces to full-scale prototypes. We remain true to our land-grant roots, translating our research into actionable resources for Kentucky's farmers and ag industry producers. I am not an engineer, but I love being part of a team that tackles important issues through high-quality academics and research.

Talk about the ways you’ve collaborated with ITS and how it impacted your work.

Because my work connects me to all three pillars of the land grant university mission (academics, research, and extension), I was aware that we, as a department, were not communicating our incredibly varied projects well to each other, and that we had gaps in our institutional knowledge, which were exacerbated by the pandemic. My colleague, BAE Facilities Manager Stephanie Kesner, and I thought we could address weaknesses in our internal communications by adopting SharePoint and Teams, but the learning curve was daunting. After we reached out to ITS, we had several touchpoints with different experts and each conversation helped us navigate the learning process. Our site has developed quickly into an incredibly robust, easy to use tool, and at the department level, it is changing the way we work and share information. Because the SharePoint project has been so well received, we are ramping up plans and hope to be automating administrative processes soon.  As a communications person, I find it really satisfying to have tools that allow us to share information well.