People Who Keep Collegis Running: Scott Traczyk

Let us introduce you!

Marketers, designers, software engineers … but a few of the people who dive into each of our partners’ missions, goals and values in order to create custom revenue and enrollment solutions. Every single person at Collegis is integral to our ability to deliver for our partners. We sat down with Senior Manager of Software Development Scott Traczyk to find out who he is and what he does.

How do you describe your job to people outside of your field?

I provide technical support to the teams that manage marketing tools and campaigns for our college partners. I also create and maintain our partners’ websites and manage the Collegis team of software developers.

This often involves starting with abstract ideas about what our partners would like to see on their websites. I work with our partners and our designers, user-experience staff, and data analytics staff to bring their concepts to life in the form of a website. It might involve creating a form for prospective students to fill in, or we might focus on how data is captured on the backend. (And anything else that moves, clicks or captures on a site!) We want the college’s marketing and admissions team to have easy access to any information that gets entered, so we’re always thinking about that, too.

How is your role key to supporting our partners?

I provide functionality to our college partners’ websites and ensure that they work as intended. Whether there’s a link, a document to download, or a form to complete, we want the user to have a smooth, seamless experience.

What are some typical questions you get from either co-workers or partners?

(Traczyk’s choices of words and phrasing reveal how his mind works.)

How long will it take to do <task>? How could we do <item>? Can you push these changes to prod?

Translation: How long will it take to complete this software update? How could we ensure the website works as intended? Now that we’ve tested these website functions in a view is that not available to the public, can we apply them to the live website?

What skills do you need to do your job?

Knowledge about software such as Internet Information Services (IIS), Umbraco and Sitecore; as well as programming languages like C Sharp (C#), Javascript and HTML.

It’s also important to have a good understanding of how the different browsers, like Chrome, Firefox or Safari, impact the user’s experience and how software functions on each site. Additionally, it’s important to be able to break down technical explanations so that our stakeholders can follow along whether they have a background in software or not. Communication and interpretation skills also go a long way toward helping each project stay on track.

What do you most enjoy about your job?       

Seeing our college partners’ websites up and functioning as they should! Depending on the project, a website redesign or added features can take several months to complete. It might involve getting insight from our partner’s developers, marketing team, designers, writers and more. So, to see something come together that involves so many moving parts, not to mention constantly changing technology, is exciting for our whole team.

Why were you drawn to working in higher ed?

I believe it’s an important part of preparing for many jobs – even those that have yet to be invented. It can teach important skills, such as critical thinking and analysis, that can transform a person’s life.

What do you most value today from the college experience you had as a student?

That it provided some frameworks for learning and completing tasks, rather than just how to do the task.

Snapshot

Three words that describe Scott’s role: technical, reliable, interruptible

Qualities sought in new hires: resourceful, collaborative, personable, capable

College: Winona State University (Minnesota)

Degree: Bachelor of Science in Computer Science with a minor in Business Administration

What is the last app you downloaded to your mobile phone and/or tech tool you purchased for yourself:

I recently got a small oscilloscope, which I use occasionally in my Raspberry Pi development.

Translation: “An oscilloscope is a laboratory instrument commonly used to display and analyze the waveform of electronic signals. In effect, the device draws a graph of the instantaneous signal voltage as a function of time,” according to Whatis.TechTarget.com.  

Raspberry Pi is a “small development board minicomputer that runs the Linux operating system,” according to OpenSourceforU.com. It was developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation to promote the teaching of basic computer science in schools in the UK and in developing countries.