Zakk Beckett working in Tech Support  for Audio Enhancement.

I came to UVU’s Digital Audio program to learn how to mix/record music I currently use in my freelance work. My biggest challenge as a student was networking and making friends with people in the program. When I started, I was more nervous and felt intimidated by people in my classes. Once I grew up a little and acquired better social skills from my job on a pizza truck, it became less of an issue. My most significant success was probably working with my team in Assistant Professor Owen Peterson’s Post-Production class during the program. We were responsible for replacing all of the sounds in a 15 min short animation. I am pretty satisfied with our work given the time constraint. While at UVU, I had the opportunity to complete an internship for Cold House Studio in Orem, which taught me a lot. And I also edited a few podcasts for the UVU Review. 

 

Where I work: Audio Enhancement
Position: Tech Support
Salary Range: $29,000 - $37,000 (entry-level)

 

The Digital Audio program at UVU gave me proper structure. I did not get enough of that in high school, and it was helpful to be required to finish assignments on time. It also prepared me for my career by teaching me the basics of audio, giving me a chance to work with audio equipment and learn about concepts such as signal flow, impedance matching, and the inverse square law. I currently work at Audio Enhancement on the Tech Support team. I work with schools that are having trouble with their audio system and troubleshoot with them. Audio Enhancement provides audio services in the classroom (mics for teachers/students, speakers in the room), bells/paging, and emergency alert systems. So while audio is a big part of the job, there is a lot of computer networking involved.

 

I just started recently, so I still have quite a bit of learning. Once I learn the system, I plan on transferring to the Field Engineer position. For that job, I would be traveling around the country to different schools networking the devices, making sure everything is communicating correctly, and fixing problems that tech support cannot resolve over the phone.