Al Goranson: Bringing Passion and Innovation to In-plants

Al Goranson

Some people wind up in printing because they grew up with a family business or one day saw the inner workings of a print shop and fell in love. Al Goranson, director of Campus Printing and Mailing Services at Western Carolina University, wound up in print simply because he owned a computer back in the late 1980s.

“I was in college, and I was working part time at a color trade shop, and the minute they found out that I had a computer they wanted to hire me full time and pay me because nobody in the shop knew how to use a computer and they had several,” Goranson recalls. “So that’s how it all started for me.”

And from there, he never looked back. The more involved he got with the job, the more Goranson began really liking it. The Colorado native wound up managing the color trade shop for nine years.

Eventually, that shop was purchased by a large printing company, and then that company was absorbed by an even larger printer.

“So up until 2002, I was working for big printing companies like BEI Graphics and Johnson Printing, and then the big printing company that owned all of us shut down because it was part of Conde Nast, and they were doing work for publications that were getting smaller and smaller. And then, an opportunity came up with the University of Colorado,” Goranson explains.

Because the position with the University of Colorado Boulder was a state position, the hiring process was competitive, Goranson says. By the time he applied, there were already more than 100 applicants.

“But I knew all the answers to all the questions, and they ended up hiring me,” Goranson says.

For the next 15 years, Goranson worked for the University of Colorado Boulder, where he transitioned the shop from analog stripping and platemaking into a primarily digital workflow. He upgraded the equipment, replacing offset presses with an HP Indigo 3050 in 2006. As four-color work increased, he added a Presstek 34DI digital offset press in 2012. In the process, he retrained staff with new skills.

To tell the story of the in-plant to upper management, he used the reporting features of the shop’s MIS to generate quality data about the in-plant, then created reports to show the university how well the shop was performing.

“I was able to create infographics for on-time delivery and financial viability,” he says.

In 2017, though, looking to take his career in a new direction, Goranson became a nationwide in-plant consultant for Ricoh. He worked closely with the in-plant at CHRISTUS Health, informing Manager Del Shankle and his team about how they could improve their operation.

“I also enjoyed the opportunity to meet with so many in-plant managers throughout the country,” he reflects. “I learned a lot doing that job.”

Unfortunately, COVID-19 took its toll, and Goranson was laid off in 2020. During his ensuing job search, his industry connections paid off in a big way.

“I started looking [for work] and, really, I got the job here because my mentor — my evil mentor — Richard Beto, who was the director of University of Texas at Austin, reached out to me and said, ‘I understand you’re looking for a job, and Western Carolina University [WCU] is looking for a manager,’” Goranson says.

From Colorado to North Carolina

When Goranson was offered the position, his first thought was “what am I going to do?”

The job offer came in December of 2020. The university wanted him to start in January 2021. There was not much time to prepare his family for such a big move.

“I accepted the job, packed a car, and drove for two days from Colorado to here,” he says. “I spent the night in a hotel … and started my job January 2nd.”

The Western Carolina University in-plant team, shown left to right: Mike McKendrick, Terry Shular, Shay Gentry, Clint Harden, Emily Moss, Al Goranson, and Jenea Shuler.

He was barely at the Cullowhee, North Carolina, university for a month before he fell completely in love with the place. He sold his house in Colorado, bought a house in North Carolina, and moved his entire family to a new state.

Even though he called Colorado home for most of his life, Goranson says his new job and state are officially “home” now. He jokes that the weather down south is much milder than in Colorado.

The job was good for him, he says, because he was eager to be back managing an in-plant. In contrast to the rest of the print world, he notes, in-plants are a special kind of niche that he wouldn’t trade for the world.

“In-plants are really a very specific breed of print shop. They’re just a special kind of thing. And then in-plants in universities, you are this little tiny entity that’s trying to produce things and be productive and prove your value to this giant institution, but I love it,” Goranson says.

Working for the University and Beyond

Given his experience at the University of Colorado Boulder, Goranson understands the importance of making the in-plant valuable to the university — but he also sees the need for working for the surrounding community.

Currently, the in-plant is responsible for providing everything from stickers to directional signage for the university’s commencement ceremonies, which take place both in the fall and the spring. When Goranson first arrived at WCU, however, the in-plant was turning down a lot of opportunities for work outside of the university.

“When I first got here, we had been doing some outside work, but it had never been advertised. We weren’t aggressively pursuing it,” he says. “So now when opportunities come, we really investigate them to see if we want to do them instead of saying, ‘no, we work for the university.’”

One outside project of note was an opportunity with the Ashville Arboretum for a display that was going to be a collaboration between local producers and global designers. WCU’s chancellor recommended the in-plant after seeing its commencement work.

The job was a challenge, filled with tight deadlines, ever-changing requests, and required his team to cut everything by hand, but it was an opportunity the shop couldn’t overlook.

“The job had come through the chancellor’s office, and the chancellor was a friend of the director of the Arboretum. It was almost impossible to not take that job. We were in a position where you really have to take it if you have any chance of success. And so we took it, and we were successful,” Goranson says.
With projects like commencements and arboretum commissions, the in-plant’s eight employees have their hands full. But they approach it with the right attitude, he says.

“The secret to a good employee and a good environment is not the greatest equipment or the smartest people,” he says. “It’s people who get along and people who have a good attitude because … you can train anything technical. You can’t train attitude and good behavior and getting along with others.”

Goranson also encourages his staff to take the time off that’s available to them so they can get a well-deserved break.

In his own time off, Goranson says his favorite thing in the world to do is spend time with his kids who are 13 and 11 years old.

“As my kids get older, I enjoy more time just messing with them, because you can only mess with them until you can’t, until they’re busy with their lives, and so that’s all there is,” Goranson says.