TECHNICAL MILESTONE ARCHIVE

Michael Draemel - 38

Director of Information Technology

Fort Hays Tech | North Central College

Beloit & Hays Kansas, USA draemeltech.com • michaeldraemel.com

Versatile and highly adaptive technology executive with a 20-year history of technical leadership, operational resilience, and strategic capital management. Proven track record driving large-scale infrastructure deployments, securing multi-campus enterprise footprints, and establishing the foundational fiscal frameworks, zero-trust perimeters, and service-desk metrics necessary to align organizational technology solutions with high-value institutional goals. This archive serves as a central historical record of institutional IT strategy and capital engineering project deployments.

Years of Information Technology (IT) Experience

Years of Website Development Experience

Years of DNS, Website & Virtual Host Experience

Technology Strategy

Institutional IT Governance & Strategy

Directing academic technology visions, overhauling multi-campus network topologies, and leading cross-functional infrastructure deployments that minimize processing constraints and support backhaul overloads.

Carrier-Grade & Virtualized Infrastructures

Extensive experience managing point-to-point links, directional trenching/boring for 144+ single-mode fiber overhauls, and carrier-grade protocols (BGP/OSPF). Transitioned on-prem physical WAMPP box legacy clusters into type-1 enterprise VMware ESXi virtualization ecosystems hosting high-availability virtual Ubuntu web nodes.

Zero-Trust Perimeter Engineering

Spearheading a multi-year road-mapped transition to an enterprise zero-trust environment since May 2024. Securing campus domains from brand exploitation by replicating strict SPF, DKIM, and 100% enforced DMARC quarantine authentication onto modern affiliation domains while upgrading threat visibility with Sophos XDR layers.

Tech Ecosystem

Capital Infrastructure Execution

Low-Voltage Blueprints & New Facility Scaling

Architect of the complete physical layer wire mappings for the 2026 two-story Hays facility. Governed exact drop distributions, endpoint camera coverage matrix zones, cloud-backed VoIP migrations, and centralized conference room deployment steps.

Emergency Continuity & Incident Remediation

Proven track record resolving critical multi-campus project emergencies, such as mobilizing academic telecommunications resources to execute immediate mechanical fusion fiber splicing on severed 144-strand dark fiber trunks during active construction constraints.

Service Desk System & Workflow Deployment

Engineered and deployed a unified institutional service tracking platform in under 30 days. Standardized the institution's service delivery framework from scratch, leveraging optimized open-source environments to systematically lower support ticket response times.

Executive Leadership Framework

Strategic Asset Management & Technical Planning

Governing complete technology hardware lifecycle management models, alignment of technology tracks with institutional goals, long-term resource definitions, and ongoing platform compliance systems.

Personnel Onboarding & Comprehensive Cross-Training

Deep foundational expertise in training teams across all internal operational roles. Proven record of structuring onboarding programs and cross-training frameworks to eliminate operational single-points-of-failure.

Vendor Procurement & Strategic Alliances

Managing high-leverage third-party telecom partnerships, hardware procurement life-cycles, and software contract compliance requirements to align technology investments directly with business goals.

Chronological Milestone Archive

MAY 2025 — PRESENT

Director of Information Technology

Fort Hays Tech | North Central College

Appointed to execute full multi-campus technology leadership and strategic governance. Coordinating active multi-site renovations, engineering scalable fiber backhauls, managing modern network layouts, and directing cloud-based VoIP phone system overhauls alongside campus-wide IP paging alert broadcasts.

AUGUST 2022 — MAY 2025

Assistant Director of Information Technology

Fort Hays Tech | North Central College

Established as the college's first Assistant IT Director to execute full multi-campus technology coordination. Directed zero-trust endpoint mitigations, standardized ITIL workflows, built a self-hosted central service helpdesk website, modernized intranets onto ESXi production web nodes, and coordinated complete 144+ strand single-mode fiber infrastructure layouts. Replicated domain security (SPF/DKIM/100% DMARC quarantine) onto new brand properties during active institutional affiliation transitions.

MARCH 2024 (CRITICAL REMEDIATION SPRINT)

Systems Administrator (Contract Interception)

Cloud County Community College

Interceded to stabilize an unmaintained system environment vacant for 18 months. Isolated and resolved critical Active Directory domain controller replication errors, audited high-risk server vulnerabilities, and deployed baseline security configurations, patches, and updates. Engineered bare-metal Hyper-V visualization layers inside a staging research lab footprint during this operational window.

APRIL 2019 — JULY 2022

Assistant Systems Administrator / Inside IT Plant Manager

NCKCN (North Central Kansas Community Network)

Oversaw infrastructure builds and wireless backhaul engineering across wide geographic regions. Implemented traffic management protocols and secured edge boundaries to ensure structural service availability matching strict SLA targets. Acted as direct technical partner to Cunningham Fiber and the North Central Regional Planning Commission (NCRPC) across public infrastructure operations.

MAY 2016 — APRIL 2019

Internet Application Technology Coordinator (IATC)

NCKCN (North Central Kansas Community Network)

Managed technical environments, server virtualization setups, automated storage backups, and continuous network hosting parameters to eliminate technical runtime latency across diverse multi-tenant user landscapes.

DIGITAL STRATEGY LIFECYCLE

Freelance Front-End Website Developer

Draemel Tech

Spent 15+ years developing highly responsive web interfaces. Combined structural styling tokens with optimized javascript runtimes to maximize cross-device consistency and layout speeds. Maintained an isolated basement homelab node with dual DNS blocks and Synology NFS storage arrays since 2016.

2002 — 2016 (FOUNDATIONAL OPERATIONAL PHASE)

Assistant General Manager / Personnel Trainer

LDF Food Group LLC (Wendy's)

Executed structural management and cross-functional personnel training operations. Orchestrated high-volume inventory control, location operational budgets, team cross-training matrices, and new hire onboarding workflows across assigned locations.

Academic & Technical Credentials

Fort Hays State University

Bachelor of Business Administration (B.B.A.)
2014: Business Administration in Management

Fort Hays State University

Bachelor of Science (B.S.)
2015: Information Networking & Telecommunications in Web Development

Certificate

2015: Web Development in Informatics

Honor Societies

Since 2015: Honor Society (honorsociety.org)

Since 2014: National Society of Leadership and Success (nsls.org)