Bart Lytel
Music drifts from deep in the Central Receiving warehouse off Northtown Road. Past the aisles of wooden card catalogs and metal filing cabinets still carrying the faded labels of contents held long ago, a chain link fence wraps around the back corner of the vast room.
Inside the corner sits a desk surrounded by an array of computers and parts of various sizes. Working intently at his desk is Bart Lytel.
“I know it sounds a bit campy, but this job is really the chance to give back to the University,” he said, hitting pause on the quiet music rolling out of his computer. And Lytel’s area does give back.
His title is eRecycling supervisor in Administrative Technologies, but what he does is give computers a new lease on life, and the University the chance to save money. Lytel and his team of students take in older computers from campus and turn them around, often with an upgrade, so they can be reused.
“It’s about security more than anything,” said Lytel, motioning to the pallets of computers outside the fence. “We get computers that are filled with data, whether social security numbers or information on students or finances. We need to wipe that information clean.”
Drives waiting to be disposed of securely.
The old way of wiping information consisted of removing the computer’s hard drive and drilling holes into it. “Not only was that labor intensive, it was wasteful,” said Lytel, who now uses a kill drive to wipe drives clean. He can get through 90 drives a day. “The time we save adds up.”
The clean computers can be reused, and even improved. “We can add RAM or tailor the computers to what departments need,” he said.
For years, the computers that went to Central Receiving were all headed to Springfield for the state’s auction. Lytel wondered why the University couldn’t dedicate a person to recycling computer parts. He pitched the idea of reusing computers to his bosses.
Administrative Technologies moved Lytel from Julian Hall to the Central Receiving location last July. Since then, he and his team have helped ready 572 pieces of computer equipment to be sent back to campus. “We figured out that is a savings of $469,917 for the University, and about 7,530 pounds of equipment that did not go into a landfill,” he said. “That’s what I mean about giving back.”
The idea of giving back is an important one to Lytel, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1976 to 1988. “Once you are used to helping people, it’s not like you can turn that off,” he said, with the hint of a Marines tattoo peeking out from under his shirt sleeve.
A Bellflower native, Lytel and his wife moved their family back to the Midwest when he retired from the Marines. Taking a job in computer systems support at the University of Illinois, he also took on volunteer work as a 911 dispatcher, a paramedic and president of the area school board.
“What’s important in life is the connections you make with people. That’s why I love ISU,” said Lytel, who joined the Illinois State staff in 1999. “It’s a place where you can make real connections. The people are real.”
Lytel’s latest project is creating a station at the warehouse where IT people from across campus can come to test computers in a live environment. “We have everything we need right here in-house,” he said, motioning to the rows of shelves. “We have a treasure trove they can raid, and then see right away if it works.”
When talking about his job, Lytel holds the same sense of wonder he does when relaying a story about standing in the middle of the Northern Lights in the Arctic Circle when stationed with the Marines, or having one of his four children race to meet him at the airport. “You have to see the joy in the every day,” said Lytel. “It makes it all worth it.”
