INDUSTRY

If you visit the Mount Laguna Observatory, you are sure to be touched by the work of Jay C. Grover. From the road used to access the Observatory to its Internet connectivity, Grover, ensures things run smoothly at this facility, which is run jointly by San Diego State University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Currently a Supervising Instructional Support technician III, Grover started part time at the Observatory in 1967, having experience as a certified welder with many industrial design, welding and machine classes under his belt. He worked during the day and went to classes at night becoming a full-time employee in 1968. "Jay is one of the most resourceful and versatile employees at SDSU," says Paul Etzel chair of the Astronomy Department and director of the Observatory. "He accepts new challenges with aggressive joy. He is proud of his work and approaches every day as if it were his first one some 36 years ago." Grover’s education has come largely through hands-on experience and what Etzel refers to as "the qualification of more than 35 years of service at a 24-hour remote field station." His responsibilities range from equipment changes on the various telescopes, testing, designing, building, and debugging scientific equipment, telescope repair and mirror aluminizing systems, dome repair, building maintenance and contractor supervision, and lately, fiber-optics and wireless Internet connectivity. In 2001, Grover took up the challenge of building the Observatory’s Internet infrastructure from scratch in connection with the NSF-sponsored High Performance Wireless Remote Education and Research Network (HPWREN) administered by UCSD. HPWREN provides the Observatory with a 45 Mbit/second Internet connection to campus, however, without the universal networking of all the Observatory’s buildings, its use would have been very limited. Grover researched what was involved and signed up for training courses on the technical aspects of fiber optics communications, Ethernet hardware, and wireless Internet transmitters. "He pulled fiber optics between the various buildings in underground conduits to provide Gigabit/second connectivity," says Etzel. "Much of this work was done during the continuous snow coverage period of January 10 to March 14 while he still performed his regular duties, including an emergency water main repair from frozen pipes on Martin Luther King Day!" Astronomers now send their image files routinely over the Internet to the SDSU and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Illinois campuses and to their collaborators worldwide. Grover has lived on the Morris Ranch and in Mount Laguna, a community near the observatory, since 1971 when a full time employee was needed on the mountain to maintain and expand the facility. He rented an unfinished house, finished it, and in 1984 bought eight and a half acres on the Ranch. Wanting to build his own house, he made a deal with his wife. "I promised to finish the house in a year," says Grover. “I worked with my father, her grandfather and our two daughters, and we did it – we started in July 1985 and finished in July 1986." He may have finished the house, but he wasn’t done building. His home now includes a complete machine shop that rivals the observatory’s shop, and barns for the horses his wife raises. Their property is also home to occasional steers, a Border Collie, cats, and "many wild birds including wild turkey, blue jays, stellar jays and about 80 hummingbirds."