Lookin’ at U: Geoff Gloeb

Each Thursday, we randomly feature a medical center employee.

This week, we learn more about Geoff Gloeb, senior software engineer in the UNMC Department of IT and Development Operations.

• Name: Geoff Gloeb
• Hometown: Omaha (but been living in Fremont for the last 27 years)
• No. of years at UNMC: 21

Tell us about what you do at UNMC.
I have worn many hats over the years in IT. I started in administrative computing as a workstation support tech. I supported PCs in biomedical communications and the administration building and maintained custom-developed software installed on computers across campus. Back in those days the software was manually updated, which meant I did a lot of walking, and that gave me the opportunity to meet a lot of people on campus.

Today, I manage the infrastructure and framework for DevOps web and client applications and the administration of Shibboleth authentication services used in applications such as RSS, Canvas, Apollo and TrueYou. I also participate in various OneIT workgroups.

Teamwork is one of UNMC’s iTEACH values. Tell us of a time you witnessed teamwork at UNMC.
You see teamwork every day in IT. We may be in different departments but we all rely on each other’s talents. Our applications cannot run without the support of network engineers, server engineers, and workstation and data techs.

I recall one particular project in which we were looking for a method to make a service highly available to users. The network group jumped right in and came up with a quick solution. The server team spun up some quick virtual servers, and in a matter of hours the service was up and running in a high available environment, allowing users the ability to access it during both scheduled and unscheduled downtimes.

What is your favorite summer activity?
When the weather is nice, I enjoy paddleboarding, cycling and, if it’s not too hot, cruising around in my old VW bus listening to music.

Three things you may not know about me:

• I’m a very proud father of two sons who I love spending time with. One is in graduate school at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and one is working on his undergraduate degree at Wyoming.
• In the 1980s, I lived in a camper in Alaska and worked in a fish processing facility. Afterward, I bounced around for three years throughout Montana and Colorado.
• My mom, Helen Gloeb, is an artist and worked at UNMC in the 1980s and 1990s. She did many watercolor and pen-and-ink medical illustrations and marketing campaigns over her years at UNMC. Growing up in a house of artists (dad also) and surrounded by art of all kinds was both inspirational and fun.