From Papergirl to Printer

Laura Sicklesteel, manager of Printing Services at California State University in San Bernardino, Calif.

Laura Sicklesteel likes to say her career in printing began at age 12, when she started slinging newspapers from her blue Schwinn bicycle for her hometown paper, the Arizona Republic.

But it might have actually been one year later, when her accuracy on the job won her a tour of the paper’s press floor. As the machines churned, she saw the towering rolls of blank newspaper at one end of the room and the finished product, the ink still warm from the press, at the other.

“Hearing the presses run and the smells in the room and the energy, that was the big thing that got me,” she says. “Just the energy of everything happening all at once.”

Four decades later, Sicklesteel still feels the same rush working in the field she fell in love with in middle school. As the manager of Printing Services at California State University in San Bernardino, she oversees a staff that has doubled in size under her watch and a print shop that serves a bustling 19,000-student campus.

“I love the in-plant environment,” Sicklesteel, 54, says. “It’s so different than the commercial environment. It’s more rewarding. You see the fruits of your labors every day.”

From left, Laura Sicklesteel discusses a project deadline with John Phipps, as he mounts a parking sign to Coroplast.

Sicklesteel says she never wavered in her commitment to the industry from that first day on the Arizona Republic’s press floor. During her junior year at West Phoenix High School, she enrolled in the district’s vocational program. As students in other rooms took classes in commercial baking, nursing and automotive repair, she learned the basics of offset printing.

One teacher saw her talent early on.

“He grabbed me the first day of my senior year and he said, ‘You don’t need to be here. You need to be working. We’re going to find you a job.’”

He did, at a small family-owned shop in Phoenix where Sicklesteel started off doing deliveries and working in the bindery. By her Christmas break, she was itching to run the business’s one press, a single-color Davidson 500. She offered to do it for free, and after the New Year, they kept her on as the press operator.

The staff of California State University, San Bernardino Printing Services in front of its four-color Heidelberg Printmaster PM-52. First row, from left: Huan Tran, Michelle Hernandez, Tina Tello and Laura Sicklesteel. Back row, from left: Michael Guillory, Emily Jurilla, Ernesto Delgado and John Phipps.

Sicklesteel would stay there for two years, then move to two other print shops in Phoenix before heading to California, where her husband’s work had taken him. (The couple has two children.) She says she arrived in Los Angeles without a job, picked up the day’s newspaper and had been offered a position in a large color plant by the end of the following day.

A Quarter Century at Cal State

Sicklesteel worked there for 10 years before moving to the in-plant at California State University, San Bernardino, where she has been for 25 years. She came in as a supervisor and 12 years ago was promoted to be the shop’s manager. A team of four when she arrived, Sicklesteel’s staff is now twice the size.

The shop itself has also grown, from an 800 sq. ft. “little cubby hole in the basement of the biological sciences building,” as she describes it, to a more than 10,000 sq. ft. facility. A portion of that space is dedicated to a shredding facility that opened about five years ago, after Sicklesteel learned the university was outsourcing approximately $40,000 in shredding services annually and decided her team could do it more cost effectively.

CSUSB Printing Services employees stand with their new shredder. From left: Huan Tran, Laura Sicklesteel, Ernie Delgado, Emanuel Ortega, John Phipps, Cristina Tello and Emily Carnehl.

Today, the campus’s documents are disposed of on an MBM Destroyit 5009 shredder that only select employees have access to. She expects to see a return on the $80,000 spent to open the shredding facility within five years.

“We have a lot more control over our sensitive data and data security, and we can do it much more cost effectively,” she adds.

The larger facility also has ample space for machines large enough to handle all of the campus’s printing needs, including a four-color Heidelberg Printmaster PM 52-4 and a Xerox DocuColor 252. Recently, the shop purchased a 60˝ Mimaki CJV 300-160 Eco Solvent Printer, and soon, Sicklesteel says, it will be adding a five-color Ricoh Pro C7110x digital press.

Manager Laura Sicklesteel (far left) and her staff at CSU San Bernardino Printing Services show off their new Standard Horizon stitching, folding and collating system, one of several new pieces of equipment the in-plant added recently.

Sicklesteel says she’s able to stay on top of new technology in part because the print shop is a chargeback facility. Under the model, the university pays the majority of the staff’s salaries and benefits as well as utilities. The shop then charges the individual campus departments for print jobs, and any revenue goes into a trust fund that can be used for new equipment.

Connected to Her Work

One of the most rewarding parts of the job, Sicklesteel says, is working with various departments to ensure the university’s branding is cohesive, with unified color schemes and messages. She says that commitment to the campus brand allows her to feel more connected to her work than she ever could have in the commercial print world, where every client was unique from the one before.

Molly the Clown

“There’s a sense of ownership on everything you touch,” she explains.

Sicklesteel’s passion for printing has also helped fuel one of her hobbies. Using her shop’s printers, she has produced larger-than-life props she uses when she dons white face paint, a pink wig and a red nose as Molly the Clown.

Sicklesteel calls it “clown ministry,” because her goal is not to “be a buffoon, the bozo bouncing around” (though she has gone to clown camp several times to learn the tricks of the trade, from magic tricks to balloon art). She says she dresses as Molly the Clown to bring people happiness in trying times. She has brought out her decks of cards, balloons and props beside hospital beds, in nursing homes and at church.

“I want to reach out and touch people when they’re in need and give people a little joy in a troubled situation,” she says. “And bring joy and laughter to the world.”