Staff Spotlight: Clinton McKay

This month’s staff member in the spotlight is Clinton McKay, OVPUE IT’s Associate Director. We asked him a series of questions (plus a bonus question!), and here’s what he had to say:

What is your name and what do you do; how long have you worked here in OVPUE?

I’m Clinton McKay, I would like to say I come up with creative solutions to people’s problems but usually what I do is make/update websites and web applications.  I’m the associate director of IT and I lead the Applications & Web Communications team.

I’ve been at OVPUE since 2013, first as a graduate assistant for Judy Ouimet, then as an application developer for Michael Lundell and the GenEd program, and I’ve been part of OVPUE IT since 2015.

What three traits define you?

Outgoing, Creative, and Nerdy. Probably also a little overwhelming, sometimes.

What would you do (for a career) if you weren’t doing this?

I love collaboration and leadership, I think an ideal career for me might be helping a big organization build collaboration and develop/take good care of their IT staff. Ideally I would love to do that at a big university, because I love working in higher ed.

If you could learn to do anything, what would it be?

I’ve always wanted to learn how to paint. I’m very colorblind so it’ll probably never happen. I would also love to learn a few new languages.

What challenging thing has happened (to) for you, and what did you gain from it?

Last year my team was involved in a data incident that was really difficult for me personally. In retrospect, we learned a lot from the experience and the improvements we made as a result have been transformational for us. In IT, people often say that you should expect that something will always go wrong and you need to be prepared to deal with it when that happens and learn from it. There’s a lot of truth to that.

How do you define success?

I think success is about building strong relationships with people and making a difference for them.

What do you do in your spare time?

I like to listen to very nerdy podcasts and walk my dog Zoey. I try to cook a new recipe for dinner each week. I also recently started doing some volunteer web development work for a local non-profit, which has been a super rewarding experience so far.

What’s the coolest (or most important) trend you see today?

I’m just really fascinated with the permanent ways the pandemic will change so many aspects of how we work and connect with each other (technologically, personally in relation to our families, etc.). I’m also really interested to see how machine learning and artificial intelligence will free people up to be more creative or tackle their projects in new ways.

What is your favorite thing about working at OVPUE?

I’ve had a lot of freedom to find interesting new things to try and a lot of room to experiment with new approaches/technologies. I hope it’s been to the benefit of others, but it’s definitely helped keep me fascinated with my work! I’ve also come to really enjoy working with some incredibly smart and caring people across OVPUE.

Bonus: What is a question you wish more people would ask you, and what’s the answer?

Q: What is your favorite Kurt Vonnegut novel?

A: Great question! The Sirens of Titan would be my favorite because it introduced me to science fiction and is one of the weirdest, wildest rides of a book I’ve ever encountered. I would also highly recommend Breakfast of Champions, Cat’s Cradle, Timequake, Galapagos, Bluebeard, Mother Night, and Deadeye Dick. If you’ve only read Slaughterhouse Five and didn’t love it, give Breakfast of Champions a try and I bet you’ll get hooked!