As of the beginning of 2025, Isaac Bontrager, a senior music and biology major, has taken the position of AV Operations Manager at Goshen College while still completing his undergraduate degree.

Bontrager first got a taste of the AV world before college. “What kind of got me interested in that was when I was in high school, I played trombone in show choir and we needed someone to work with sound stuff … I knew nothing about it, but … I’ve always been interested in taking things apart and putting them together, seeing behind the scenes, that sort of stuff,” Bontrager said.

Since then, he has been working for several years as a student tech, a job which has gotten him involved with a variety of events around campus. He said, “I’ve gotten a lot of joy, and it’s a very rewarding job.”

Sage Sauder resigned from the position in October to pursue another opportunity in Fort Wayne. Prior to Bontrager being hired for the position, the responsibilities were handled mainly by Grant Bachman, AV/IT systems specialist, and Mike McHugh, assistant director of ITS and senior AV systems specialist.

“Grant and myself … we pretty much covered all that, basically took over the responsibilities and split it up as we needed to,” McHugh said.

Without somebody in the role of AV operations manager, they had to take on a much larger workload. Bachman said, “Trying to handle my normal set of responsibilities and half of another person’s job —  go figure, that was a ton of work because this is a full-time job.”

Bachman also pointed out the unusually large amount of turnover in the AV operations manager position, saying, “I’m in my fourth year on staff at Goshen College and Isaac will be our fourth AV operations manager … since I’ve been here.”

Several other positions related to the Production team have been filled with new hires in the past year, including Brenton Abram-Copenhaver as theater technical director and Don Hunter as interim performance venue production manager.

Regarding the responsibilities of the AV operations manager, Bachman explained that the specifics of the position include “scheduling, keeping track of the events, planning the events, doing the events, supervising, training all of your students to be able to do all of them and then some events you still need to be at.”

Bontrager took the position while still a student at GC, a situation that brought along its own unique dynamics. “I’m getting things switched over from student to employee,” Bontrager said, laughing as he added, “I even have a new ID card, they had to change it and I had to get the professional headshot.”

The AV and ITS team works on a wide array of events, including: “Kick-Off, we do all the video streaming and recording of athletic events, and then any events that happen at Sauder [Concert Hall], Rieth [Recital Hall], the music center in general, class recordings … and chapels and convos that happen every week,” McHugh said.

These events provide the opportunity for students who are interested in the AV world to get experience with that type of job. According to McHugh, there are currently about 15 student workers at ITS Media.

McHugh explained that it can often take some time for student workers to fully learn the skills required for the various types of events at GC. He said, “We do a lot of repeatable events here that maybe occur only once a year or twice a year, and so sometimes it can take a full year before somebody really is familiar with everything that we do.”

Speaking of Bontrager, Bachman said, “I personally noticed over this past year that before Sage left and before Isaac applied to this job, he was taking opportunities to learn a lot of skill sets that we weren’t asking him to learn. He was taking the initiative to go find new things that he was thinking were really neat and coming in early and checking on gear.”

Bachman said, “This job is a good one to train into. I think Isaac’s going to be great in it.”