Years of Service: David Sowder Has Figured It Out

Author: Kelli Sederavicius

In 1980, David Sowder’s dad bought an Apple computer and showed him BASIC.  But when David had questions, his dad simply told him, “Look it up.” That began David’s interest in computers, and it was his first experience in figuring things out. 

UTA 

A former SAC member, David started at UTA 22 years ago in the Language Acquisition Center in Modern Languages, a job which he applied for even though “it didn’t sound like a computer job.” In that role, he supervised and maintained the lab computers and developed an application for their lending library. 

He left that role to join OIT where he managed the servers and applications the main UTA websites ran on, continuing to grow his skills in figuring things out. The role and the department have changed in his time there.  

“In the beginning, we’d build the servers, install the operating system and applications, and maybe configure the hardware, if needed.” David said he grew as a jack-of-all-trades by having such broad responsibilities. Now, he says, people work on more specific things. 

A Family Mentor 

David says he considers his father his mentor, who influenced him from purchasing that first Apple computer through to his college studies and his first job.  David double-minored in math and physics. “I realized that my dad had double majored in the same fields.”  

Later, he was a student at the same university where his dad worked. His dad helped him get a student job working on a system similar to UTA’s MyMav. “There was a whole wall of bookshelves with operation manuals.” There were two manuals that had nothing but information about various error messages. When there was an error, David would look it up in one of the manuals and follow the instructions.  One day, he says, the error manual just said, “See system administrator.” He realized that HE was the system administrator, and he'd just have to figure it out. 

Video Games and Cats 

David’s interest in computers continues outside of work. He likes to write programs, and he likes video games. His favorite is Factorio because it’s so complicated. “It’s a lot like programming—you need to have the big picture in mind. You need to make it be more efficient, and there's always one more little tweak you can do.” 

He and his wife also share their home with two cats, having had, at one time, six cats, adopted from family or from the neighborhood. It’s a challenge to introduce new cats to the home group; sometimes it doesn’t work out, but David says they’re getting better at it. They have two cats now, Jessie and Sweet Pi. “I work so my cats can have better lives.” 

Advice for New Employees 

For new employees, or anyone really, David says asking questions is always a good thing. People shouldn’t be concerned about not knowing something because “everything was unknown until you know it. In the worst-case scenario, the person you ask doesn’t know either, and then you figure it out together.” Figuring things out is not just an important skill for life and work, but it also adds to what you already know, growing your knowledge base. David has been doing that since he had to figure things out with his first Apple computer. 

When people greet David with, “so, what do you know?”  He likes to answer, “How much time do you have?”