Photo by Jessica D'Avanza

When your drain is plugged up and overflowing or your hairdryer blew a fuse, who do you call? Dawn Duffy, Facilities Support Dispatch. Dawn, along with several other facilities support dispatchers, serves as the calm voice on the other end of the phone line when things are just not going your way.

I found the maintenance office tucked away behind Human Resources on Leavitt Lane. After asking two men where I could find Dawn's office I was led down the hallway to a smiling face. Dawn was beginning to tell me all about the world of Facilities when the phone started to ring. "Maintenance, Dawn," she said. I had no idea what type of phone calls Dawn receives here at Facilities, but, as more and more calls came in, I soon found out. There was a call from Scott hall; a student had ants in her room; a shade in McConnell was broken, and some equipment was broken over at the horse barns. Dawn and the other dispatchers received a total of 3,000 calls for the month of January. But they had to call out about 4,000. The dispatchers' calls come in via email, phone, Nextel and a 2-way radio, often all at the same time!

"Once I answer a call, it can turn into seven more calls." Dawn explains. She has list after list of phone numbers decorating her wall. She will make phone calls to housing, plumbing, utilities, water, energy, general mechanics, grounds, lock, carpentry, boilers and electricians throughout the week. Patience is one virtue, which must be well noted, for all of the dispatchers. "There's always something different every five minutes," she says. "You don't get bored."

I even got to get in on the action as Martha Mower, another Facilities Support Dispatcher, handed me a bright green piece of paper. "Can you hand that to Dawn?" she asked. And Dawn began to call all the necessary people to unplug a toilet in Christensen. "Calls go back and forth between the dispatchers," Dawn said. When I asked Dawn what some of the weirdest calls she's received have been, she said she couldn't tell me. "I've gotten some real oddball stuff, not fit for printing in an article," she said. "But the campus operator does send some of her questions our way."

As new buildings are constructed and old ones renovated, Dawn notices the changes in her office at the other end of campus. "The newer buildings have air conditioning and computerized systems. They're more work than the old ones because of all the new technical advances." This increases the amount of calls Dawn and the other dispatchers receive daily. "You start to know the buildings after a while and what common problems they generally have." Dawn notes that the busiest time during the school year for calls to come in is in the morning, especially on Mondays. "When kids move out we get a lot of maintenance calls and then over the summer from contractors with projects around campus." Dawn says.

Dawn lives not too far away in Dover. She spends most of her free time at St. Mary's Academy, as her youngest son plays basketball there. Her husband Dennis is the Athletic Director. Dawn has another child at UNH, an English major, and at Keene State College. "I worked in Dining while my kids were in school, the hours worked out well," she said. Dawn has been employed by UNH since 1980 when she worked in Accounts Payable. Several years later she moved to Stillings' Wildcatessen, the MUB Coffee Office and then to her present job at Facilities.

With glasses atop her head and green pen in hand, Dawn bounces back and forth between answering phone calls and the 2-way radio. "This is a fun job." Dawn says. "That's all I can really say about it, it's just a fun job."