From Theology to Technology

AS MANAGER of UCSD Imprints, the 14-employee in-plant for the University of California-San Diego, Larry Fox has spent the past 12 years expanding and digitizing his operation to better serve the university’s 21,000 students and 20,000 faculty and staff. The university has taken notice. For the past five years, the in-plant has been awarded the Business Affairs Customer Satisfaction award for its copier management and printing services.

Born and raised in eastern Colorado, Fox attended Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla. He earned a degree in Theology with a Biblical Studies major and a minor in German. After college, he spent a couple of years in Germany working with a small organization that printed its own literature. The job gave him his first taste of the printing industry.

Fox ended up in California, his wife’s home state, and began a 15-year career in office equipment service management, working as a service manager and a customer relations manager for two companies in the Los Angeles and San Diego areas. He then interviewed for the UC-San Diego in-plant manager position. Having closed its offset plant, the university wanted Fox to focus on the copier program, which included about 700 copiers throughout campus, serviced and supported by staff technicians.

“I was selected primarily on the basis of continuing management of the campus copier program,” Fox explains. “Afterward I was given responsibility for management of the three quick copy centers.”

The operation printed primarily black-and-white copies, and most of its equipment was analog and aging. In the 12 years since then, Fox has overseen the in-plant’s transition into broader, well-integrated services to the campus. While Xerox DocuTechs and DocuColor 6060 units complete most of the digital work, the in-plant also offers high-resolution scanning, CD/DVD duplication, document capture services and large-format printing, all supported by a full off­line bindery. Offset services are mediated for customers through contracts with local commercial printers.

In 2001, the in-plant opened a retail student services center for copying, printing and faxing. Imprints also manages the copiers, printers and card-based charge system in UCSD’s five libraries.

A non-mandated operation, the in-plant creates its own customer loyalty by marketing itself, being involved in campus events and assisting student associations with course reserves and lecture notes. Imprints also reaches faculty and staff through presentations, surveys, discounted services and its Web site.

Dedicated Staff

Fox credits his dedicated staff for Imprints’ success.

“The secret to my success as a manager is selecting and retaining staff that are really driven by a desire to do their best here,” he says. “There is a great staff behind our services.”

Fox is passionate about continuously building Imprints’ services. The in-plant is currently focused on expanding its document capture and variable data printing capabilities, opening an expanded service center and entering into book publishing for the campus’ faculty authors. At the same time, digital multifunctional devices are being rolled out in the copier program area.

“I want to be able to implement those services in a viable manner that contributes both to the university and to the strength and growth of this organization,” explains Fox.

As one of the hosts of this year’s Association of College and University Printers (ACUP ) conference—taking place next month in San Francisco—Fox values the networking opportunities that await him there.

“I learn a lot about the traditional aspects of printing along with the new approaches to digital work that folks are doing,” he says. “I value that enormously.”

Fox and his wife, Donna, have been married for 34 years and have a daughter, Loren, who is an elementary school teacher in North Carolina, and a son, Max, a student at Brooks Institute of Photography in Ventura, Calif. Fox’s interests include serving at his church, backpacking, fishing, automotive repair, woodworking and landscaping.IPG