Darrell Thompson retirement announcement

By Ann Swancer

Categories: Faculty   Staff  

June 26, 2020 - In a recent UNM IT Town Hall, I had the opportunity to congratulated Darrell Thompson on his 30 plus years of service to UNM and his contributions to the Gallup campus in the area of audio visual technology. He has supported the Gallup campus in navigating several major changes in audio visual technology over the decades.

Today, I share with you the news of his upcoming retirement on June 30. Darrell has decided to start a new chapter and spend more time with his family. I appreciate his contributions to the Gallup campus and ask that you join me in wishing him well as he drops his mic, projector, and speakers while leaving campus for the last time next week.

I am including below the information I shared with the IT team a month or two ago as an overview of Darrell’s contributions to the Gallup campus.

Darrell joined the Gallup Adult Basic Education (ABE) team in 1984 in the video productions area. He took a break in 1988 to further his education in video production. In 1989 he rejoined the ABE program working with faculty to produce videos for English, Math, Navajo and Zuni so video tapes could be sent to students in the program. My how times and technology have changed!!

In the 1990’s Darrell was a part-time instructor for the ESL program and moved to a position with the Zollinger Library to start the Audio Visual department on campus working with the Distance Education program. As AV services became more aligned with IT, his position was moved to the Gallup IT team in 2005. Darrell can be seen dashing around campus supporting faculty in the classroom, setting up audio visual services for events including guest speakers, community events, art exhibits in the gallery and the best event of the year, graduation.

He has supported the Gallup campus in navigating several major changes in audio visual technology and like many not to be named IT staff members, has samples of all those various devices squirreled away on campus as potential donations to UNM Defunct Technologies Museum.

A big thank you to Darrell for his 30 plus years of service to UNM and the Gallup campus.