September 23, 2004

Staff profile: Mark Reynolds

Manager of Support Services, Technology Support Services, IT

Former Bell Labs software developer has a data networking patent. Plans to run fifth Chicago Marathon next month.

photo by Stephen Anzaldi

What do you do? I manage the centralized support of services that IT provides to faculty, staff and students, including computer network connectivity and software support. The support team consists of five full-time technical staff members and roughly 70 student employees. Our responsibilities include the Support Center, Residential Networking, software support and Web development.

What was the highlight of your work before Northwestern? I was a developer and manager of data networking and wireless software for Bell Labs, and a director at Tellabs. I have a patent for a software product I developed at Bell Labs. I created it at the time AT&T/Bell Labs ran the nation’s long distance phone network. The patent is for data networking software that is used primarily in the U.S. and Japan to connect regionally based operators to local databases throughout the country.

In your free time, you like to run? I’ve been running for more than 30 years. I started to do it for stress relief while in graduate school. I would go out in the mornings or at lunch for three miles a day. After a while I needed longer distances, so it kind of grew on me.

What’s your limit? Well, next month I’ll run my fifth Chicago Marathon in six years.

How did that come about? Some of my friends talked me into training with them. After a while I realized I was running just as fast and just as far as they were, so I decided to sign up for the marathon.

What’s the best part of race day? Just being in the middle of this huge crowd of 30,000 people and running through the Chicago streets and neighborhoods.

Do you think anyone can run the 26.2 miles? Virtually anyone can do it. But it takes persistence and a long-range plan, consistently running every day or every other day and just notching it up a little each week. It takes a fair amount of will-power too. It’s easy to drop out after 12 miles and say to yourself, “Why would I want to run any more than this?”

You have two college-age children. How does that experience help you in working with students? It keeps me current on what’s important to students and makes me feel comfortable talking to them one-on-one or even in groups.

What, do you find, is important to students? I know for a fact that being able to communicate all the time, being in constant contact, is important. The idea of teenagers working and communicating simultaneously is something I’ve become accustomed to. I never tried to change their study habits and say, “You can’t have IM going while you’re writing your term paper.”

— Stephen Anzaldi