The three men who work in the Kosciusko County Systems Administration enjoy the problem-solving aspect of their IT jobs, as well as helping people.
“I think, for me, it is helping people. I think of this as a service-oriented job where if I can help them do their job better, then I’ve done my job, right?” said Garrit Winans, technology assistant. “Even if it’s not gratitude but seeing somebody’s relief a lot of time - if they’re prevented from doing their job because technology is down and we help with that, just that sense of relief or sometimes it is gratitude, it just really helps me make it through the day.”
Director of Technology Eric Sorensen, said, “I think you hit it right on the head. I think, for me, there is something very gratifying about solving a problem that’s hindering someone.”
“That’s the other aspect of it, the problem solving,” agreed Scott Van Westen, assistant technology director. “Sometimes it’s frustrating when you can’t figure it out, but then when you do - especially when you solve a problem for somebody else - that’s really cool.”
Sorensen has been a county employee since October 2022. He was brought in to lead the county’s IT department once System Administrators Bob Momeyer and Paul Henning retired, which they did at the end of 2024.
Van Westen joined the department March 6, 2023, with Winans jumping on board three weeks ago.
Explaining their jobs and responsibilities, Sorensen summed it up by saying, “Kind of take care of all the technology needs of the county. So we’ll help out the sheriff’s office with all the tablets they have and the CAD software. We also do stuff with courts, help keep the court computers running.”
Van Westen said they also take care of all the infrastructure that goes with that such as the network and fiber.
“One of the things that I’ve been doing since the beginning of the year is getting what we call redundancy in our fiber network to make sure that if - we’ve never really had anything go down - but if something were, say a switch or something, everybody else wouldn’t know that anything went down, just we would. And that’s the thing. There’s a lot of stuff with IT that goes on in the background that we may know about that, that may be an issue, but if we’ve done everything right and crossed our t’s and dotted our i’s, nobody else knows because there’s some redundancy built in that makes it so we can fix it without, hopefully, there ever being a hiccup,” Van Westen explained.
There are 450 technology users from the county that the systems administration may assist. That doesn’t include the mobile units from the cities and towns in the county, not including the city of Warsaw which has its own technology staff.
“All of the mobile units that are in the county, other than Warsaw, are also part of our responsibility, so that’s another couple hundred devices that aren’t officially in our user count, but we at least help configure and keep (them) up,” Van Westen said.
Before joining the county, each of the three guys had backgrounds in technology.
Sorensen was involved in education technology for about 10 years, at Warsaw Community Schools for seven years and Tippecanoe Valley for three. He started off as an entry-level tech, working in a computer lab. He worked his way up, learning more along the way, until he got to his current position.
Winans got his start at Huntington University while a student. He began as a lab tech. He then found a job at Huntington School Corporation, taking in as much knowledge as he could from the people who had been there longer than he was.
“Just through implementing changes at that school corporation, it allowed me to see how I could better things in any place that I go. So just working innovations and making sure that technology is being utilized to actually make things more efficient rather than just using technology to use technology,” he said.
Kosciusko County felt like a “really cool place” to work, he liked all the people that were here during the interview process and the environment. During Winans’ second interview, the county had Christmas decorations up that made him think the county was a welcoming and home-like type of environment.
Referring to his background, Van Westen said he “kind of comes from a weird place within technology.”
Previously, he worked for EMC for 12 years. EMC “is the largest data storage company,” Van Westen said, but they were bought out by Dell.
“That’s where I really did a lot of stuff. I kind of covered the northern third of Indiana and a little into Michigan, quite a ways into Ohio at different times. So deep into the storage side of things, and then that really encompasses networking and stuff,” he said. “Previously, at different times, very short times, I had worked in help desk and stuff early in my career. But early on, I got in with EMC and just kind of was a field service engineer for them for a long time.”
Finding himself on call every other week and being away from home sometimes almost 20 hours a day, Van Westen wanted something a little more 9 to 5 to be around his kids and see some daylight.
“There were times when I would go into a data center at 4 in the morning and not get out until 11 or 12 at night. It was like, ‘Did the sun actually even rise?’” he said, adding that he often wouldn’t even see other people unless it was an attendant at a gas station.
Working in the county’s IT department, Sorensen said they have a help desk ticketing system where people can submit tickets for technology issues they’re experiencing. The three men may work on something together, or may tackle a problem that comes in individually.
“We’re trying to streamline things, try to make things simpler. Just trying to help people use the technology where, we’re not using technology just to use technology. It’s actually a benefit,” Sorensen said.
Van Westen said their department is pretty collaborative and receptive to working together and bouncing ideas off of each other.
Asked about misconceptions about the IT department, Winans said, “Just because things are working doesn’t mean that we aren’t working. If things are working perfectly it’s because we are working extremely hard to make sure they’re not breaking and things are being continously updated.”
With that, he said, if something has to be brought down for five minutes, that’s to prevent something in the future from breaking.
“Five minutes now means we’re not down for a day sometime in the future,” Winans stated.
When they’re not on the job, they keep busy in other ways.
Winans plays a lot of video games. “I like computers. It’s kind of a hobby as much as it is a job as well,” he said.
Sorensen has four kids, so he doesn’t have a lot of hobbies. He does enjoy playing pickleball and biking.
Van Westen only has two kids, but still doesn’t get to game as much as he used to. He does enjoy hunting, fishing and being outdoors.