Senior reinvents the 'wheel' for Trek Bicycle's Web site
Released: October 25, 2007
David Knauf has always been an avid cyclist. He is a member of the UW-Whitewater cycling club and enjoys both road and mountain biking. So when it came time to find an internship, he and Trek were a match made in cycling heaven.
Knauf, a senior majoring in multimedia at UW-Whitewater, started interning in the IT department at Trek Bicycle Company headquarters in Waterloo, Wis. his sophomore year. His job mainly entailed processing warranty claims for the company, but it soon became much more. Upon scrolling through the company's intranet, he found that the information on it wasn't very accessible to Trek employees.
Everything was hidden in folders and required a lot of digging to find the needed information," Knauf said. So he did the digging for them. He went through all of the files and folders and created an easy way to navigate the company's internal technical documents. Now, employees can find the information they want on the website at the click of a button. Knauf's web format is now being used internally within the company and globally by treks subsidiaries and distributors.
Knauf got the foundation for his design talents in classes he took here at UW-Whitewater. Elena Bertozzi, assistant professor of multimedia, taught Knauf in her web design class.
"He was a very disciplined student, he took a lot of time to learn the assignments thoroughly and clearly apply that knowledge to his assignments," Bertozzi said.
Knauf enjoys working at Trek and plans on continuing to do so. "Trek is a super-fun work environment, and carries some huge perks for cycling enthusiasts like myself."
- Kyle Kopplin,kopplinka01@uww.edu
