Meet some of the all-star students optimizing End User Computing services

With more than 300 student staff across multiple locations, the UW–Madison Libraries ecosystem relies on the dedication and diligence of our undergrad and graduate employees. Student staff are both the front line and the backbone of Libraries: They provide patron support at the circulation desks, but they also work behind the scenes to manage or maintain equipment for Libraries employees and the greater campus. 

Because our students give so much to Libraries, we wanted to give a little back with some regular kudos. These stories aren’t just celebrations of the ways our student staff keep the Libraries ship on course; they’re also glimpses into the ways our students leave their Libraries tenure with career-ready skills, no matter their chosen profession.  

This month, we’re spotlighting some of the many talented student staff who support End User Computing (EUC) needs at College and Memorial libraries. The EUC team does it all: They circulate computers, troubleshoot software and issues on equipment and devices, manage printing services, and more. That is, if you use a piece of Libraries-issued technology, the students at EUC have a hand in making it run.

While there are scores of talented student staff at EUC, these four high-flying team members — some long-term staff, but all equally dedicated — are set to graduate from UW-Madison in May. Before they begin their next chapter, learn about them, their roles, and the paths their Libraries-honed skills will take them down next.

Megan Walters 

Hometown: Wauzeka, WI
Year: Second-year graduate student
Major/academic area: Library and information science

It’s all about access for Megan Walters, a second-year graduate student in the UW–Madison Information School. Splitting her time between campus libraries and the Middleton Shelving Facility, the patron-facing communications lead helps library visitors navigate issues with their accounts or equipment.

“Every time I connect a student with a resource that’s available to them that they didn’t previously know about, even if it’s just the Nintendo Switches …. Or, you know, somebody’s broken their computer mid-semester and can’t afford to fix it … I get so excited about it,” Walters says. “It’s the best part of my day.”

Before joining UW–Madison Libraries in August 2024, Walters worked in accounting at UW-Green Bay, managing the budget for the campus’s IT department and watching how technology circulated through the institution. Now she’s getting an even closer view of those processes at Memorial and College libraries, absorbing information about campus technology demand, library infrastructure, and policy development. 

After Walters graduates in May, she hopes to extend those learnings into a career as a public librarian, where she’ll continue to work on policy, provide reference support, and manage equipment. 

“I have a passion for connecting people and resources,” Walters says.

Ryan Ross 

Hometown: Duluth, MN
Year: Senior
Major/academic area: Computer science and English

Ryan Ross’s work in libraries started even before he reached the UW–Madison campus. 

“I was good friends with the librarian [in high school],” he says, “and she would let me sit behind the desk and check things out to people just for fun.”

An innate love for libraries led Ross to a role with College and Memorial libraries in September 2022, where he focused on responsibilities like technology management and poster printing. Now a supervisor, he also works on scheduling, policy development, and hiring, all of which come with the agency to engage with systems-based thinking and side projects.

That includes writing scripts that issue emails to students when they’ve reached their late or absence limits, as well as creating templates to organize and screen student applicants. They’re all things, he says, he hopes “makes my supervisors’ lives easier.”

While Ross is targeting a career in computer engineering or cybersecurity, he’s gotten certified as a firefighter and licensed as an emergency medical technician. The logic skills he’s honed at Libraries, he says, apply to any of those career paths.

“In the EMT world, they have this term called pertinent negative. If a patient gives you certain information, you can rule out certain things, and that’s very close to troubleshooting,” Ross says. “You take the information you’re given and you rule out certain things, and then you keep narrowing down the issue.”

Sofia Weaver 

Hometown: Neenah, WI
Year: Senior
Major/academic area: Personal finance

When Sofia Weaver received the College Library Excellence in Service Award in 2025, it was the culmination of three years of dedicated work with UW–Madison Libraries. 

“Earning that award really felt like people appreciate what I do here and what I am doing here matters to the people around me,” Weaver says. “So that’s definitely a moment where I kind of feel like, Okay, I love this job, and this job is starting to love me back.’”

Now in her fourth and final year at Libraries, the student supervisor focuses on scheduling and policy development in addition to regular customer service responsibilities. But Weaver says the position expanded her understanding of how to examine issues to produce the most effective solutions.  

“This environment has helped me to be less solution-focused and more problem-focused in a way where it’s like, I’m not looking for a solution, I’m looking at what is the problem exactly and how to be collaborative with my staff members to find the solution,” she says. 

Together, all of those skills helped prepare Weaver for her post-graduation position at a financial planning and wealth management firm.

“This is the job that anytime that I’m interviewed, just from my experiences here, this is what has really helped me to get my job that I now have,” Weaver says.

Vinith Ramaswamy 

Hometown: “That’s a complicated question for me!”
Year: Junior
Major/academic area: Computer science and data science

Vinith Ramaswamy began his Libraries journey in January 2024, viewing a part-time job with the EUC team at Memorial and College libraries as a learning opportunity that aligned with his scholarly pursuits. While key job functions include patron services and policy oversight, he says the role also invites students to engage with nuanced systems thinking and troubleshooting fundamentals.

“It’s more about finding problems and not just Band-Aid solutions, but coming up with systems and systemic approaches to make sure that our computers keep working,” Ramaswamy says

Now a student lead, he focuses his time on operational maintenance, which largely includes making sure computers work properly. That sounds simple, says Ramaswamy, but “it’s a bigger challenge than you think.” Take, for example, an ongoing issue with Mac Minis that were afflicted with the dreaded spinning “beachball” after too many user logins. The solution, says Ramaswamy, relied on diligent maintenance and collaboration to produce more working computers.

“[What I] like doing is comparing what it looked like before I started taking this on as a focus versus now and just seeing the progress we’ve made,” he says.

After graduation his graduation from UW–Madison, Ramaswamy will explore entrepreneurship, hoping to dedicate more time to develop a white-labeled software-as-a-service (SaaS) booking product.