Drew Burgering: A Deep Dive Into Printing

Drew Burgering

When he graduated from high school, Drew Burgering had no idea he was destined to manage the in-plants of three different Southern universities.

“My love at that time was to go into veterinary medicine,” reflects the manager of Columbus State University Printing Solutions, in Columbus, Georgia.

Though he has spent his four-decade career in Alabama and Georgia, Burgering got his start much farther north.

“I’m a Yankee by birth, born in Lansing, Michigan,” he admits, though his accent hints at decades lived below the Mason Dixon line.

A state champion diver in high school, Burgering earned a scholarship to Auburn University, in Auburn, Alabama, where he eagerly enrolled in its veterinary program.

Drew Burgering

“Until I had to take organic chemistry,” he says. “That’s where they separate the men from the boys.”

With a busy swim team practice schedule intruding on his study time, he eventually realized a career in medicine might not be for him after all.

“I was a good math person, and so I ended up going with a general math degree,” he says.

In-plant Introduction

His graduation in 1981 coincided with an economic downturn, so he took graduate courses for a while, until an interesting job turned up at Auburn University as a systems analyst. He started there in 1984 and two years later moved to a systems analyst job at the university’s print shop, where he ran the Covalent print management system. The shop had about 15 employees and five offset presses, printing mostly one-and two-color jobs.

“The bread and butter at the time was the extension services of the university,” he says, which ordered numerous handouts describing its programs.

Back then, digital technologies were just beginning to make an appearance, so Burgering helped the in-plant incorporate Macintosh computers to do layouts and he learned how to do digital typesetting.

When the art supervisor retired, he took over that job, overseeing prepress, typesetting, and layout. He met with customers as they brought in their jobs and checked that signatures were laid out correctly.

In 1995, as the in-plant began going direct to film, Burgering became assistant director, where he oversaw all production and press schedules. Five years later, he was promoted to director.

Though Burgering did his best to promote the in-plant internally, it was difficult to show savings without a chargeback system. Within a few years, the university decided to close the offset operation. He convinced the university to keep him on as a print buyer, which he did for several years.

“I didn’t enjoy that,” he says. He missed the creativity of helping customers with their projects.

In 2006, he was asked to come over to Auburn’s CopyCat operation, a separate copy center, where he helped bring about a revenue surplus. But he was only given an 18-month contract, and when it expired he was eligible for retirement, so the school didn’t renew it. He used that time to set up his next job at Valdosta State University, about 210 miles southeast in Valdosta, Georgia.

Big Improvements

“I finished that Friday at Auburn, and the next Monday I was working in Valdosta,” he says. “It was just a little old copy center that was just putting along doing black and white.”

As print manager of the three-employee in-plant, he made quite an impact over the next 12 years. He upgraded digital printing equipment to handle more color printing, built up the shop’s wide-format capabilities, added tabbing and addressing equipment to start handling bulk mail, and even moved the shop into garment printing with a Brother GT-381 printer. In 2015, the in-plant installed a four-color Presstek 34DI direct imaging press.

“So we started doing a lot of Admissions’ post cards and recruitment material,” he says. The in-plant eventually doubled its revenue under his leadership. His efforts earned him Valdosta’s “I Caught You Caring” award several times, he says.

After 12 years at Valdosta, Burgering was offered a retirement package in May 2020. Not ready to leave the printing industry, he worked briefly for Office Depot and at a sign shop, where he occasionally found himself out in the field, digging post holes.

Industry Contacts Pay Off

Throughout his years as an in-plant manager, Burgering frequently attended the Southeastern University Printing and Digital Managers Conference (SUPDMC), where he made friends with numerous fellow managers and enjoyed learning from them.

“I felt like I had been accepted into the industry by going to it,” he says of the conference.

He eventually became the association’s de facto president, taking the lead in organizing its annual conferences. It was through SUPDMC that he met Randall Bramlett, director of Printing and Mailing Services at Columbus State University. After Bramlett retired, and his successor followed suit, he told Burgering about the job opening.

In October 2021, Burgering took over as manager of Columbus State University Printing Solutions and the Cougar Copy Center. Since then he has upgraded the shop’s wide-format printer with a Mutoh hybrid device, added a Graphic Wizard UV coater to handle business card coating, and installed an Epson dye-sublimation printer to produce color name tags. He’s also worked to better utilize the job pricing features of the in-plant’s PrintShop Pro management software.

Drew Burgering.

Burgering plans to get a new addressing machine to improve bulk mail services, along with a mug press, and he wants to expand the amount of insourcing the in-plant does. He’s proud of the positive impact the in-plant has made at the university.

“We’re appreciated on campus,” he says.

Beyond improving the shop’s hardware and processes, Burgering enjoys just helping customers.

“Being a math person, I like to solve problems,” he says. “You give me your problem that has to do with ink on a substrate, and I’ll solve it for you.”

Employee Support

Despite his management role, Burgering enjoys being part of a team, a holdover from his diving team days. His job, he says, is to support his five employees and two student workers, and he tries to impress on them the importance of the work they do.

“I’m here to help them do their job the best they can,” he says. “If you need something, I’ll get it for you.”

Having spent his career in higher-ed, Burgering has grown fond of the university atmosphere.

“Your student clients are always the same age, so you’re not aging either,” he laughs.

Looking back at his time as an in-plant manager, he has no regrets.

“I’ve enjoyed it,” he says. “Not very many days are alike.”

Burgering is making plans to hold the next SUPDMC conference in Atlanta in conjunction with PRINTING United Expo, taking place Oct. 18-20 at the Georgia World Congress Center. He looks forward to meeting again with his many in-plant friends from around the country.

Living now less than an hour away from his beloved Auburn University, where he has season football tickets and enjoys tailgating before games, Burgering also likes to spend time at his lake house near Auburn, going out in his pontoon boat with his wife Linda. The couple has two children and two grandchildren — and, of course, a cat and a chocolate labrador retriever, a nod to his lifelong fondness for animals.

“We’re an animal-loving family,” he says.