AV/IT Team Class of 2026: Fox Valley Technical College

AV/IT TEAM:

Brandon Landwehr, AV services manager

GOALS: Appleton, Wisconsin’s Fox Valley Technical College (FVTC) is a two-year public college, established in 1911 as the nation’s first vocational and adult education system. FVTC offers high-tech occupational training for today’s workplace, featuring specialized centers that replicate real-world scenarios to prepare students and refine their skills across 70 associate degree offerings.

Spanning 12 campuses, FVTC comprises nearly 400 classrooms, meeting rooms, executive offices, and conference centers equipped with state-of-the-art technology. These areas are all managed by a three-person AV team, which means efficient technology management is essential. FVTC’s AV services manager, Brandon Landwehr, and his team recently partnered with Automation Arts to implement new classroom standards.

CHALLENGES: This new effort needed solutions that would benefit the faculty and students in the classrooms today, while also evolving with them over time. All classrooms are standardized in terms of technology and layout, ensuring consistent experiences for faculty, especially adjunct professors.

FINAL INSTALL/USER BENEFITS: The Crestron ecosystem was the perfect fit for these needs; FVTC relied on the Crestron DM NVX AV-over-IP platform, AirMedia wireless presentation systems, Crestron intelligent video solutions, and the XiO Cloud management platform.

“Crestron’s ecosystem empowers us to tailor technology for specialized spaces while maintaining consistency across our campuses,” Landwehr said. “It simplifies support and streamlines inventory management, which is critical for a small IT team like ours.”

Standard classrooms rely on the DM Essentials product lineup and Crestron control to provide streamlined point-to-point connectivity for classroom materials to be shared. Faculty know what to expect when they enter these spaces, so connecting to the system is seamless—no matter which campus they might be teaching on that day. FVTC is in the process of adding more multi-purpose rooms to the campus to maximize space. Designed with longevity in mind and to support evolving learning environments, DM NVX technology was selected as the backbone for these divisible classroom setups due to its flexibility and reliability.

Specialized learning environments, such as culinary classrooms, baking labs, and dental hygiene labs, outfitted with state-of-the-art equipment, deliver a hands-on and experiential approach for practical training. AirMedia wireless presentation systems are paired with PTZ cameras to provide connectivity to the in-room monitors, offering additional views of demonstrations. For example, in the kitchens, each culinary workstation features a display that utilizes AirMedia technology to provide students with a personalized view of the lesson or lecture notes. Adaptable to future instructional needs, the content can be modified for every lesson, allowing students to view the materials that best suit their class needs for that day.

To support administration, the boardroom adopted the same approach, emphasizing ease of use and best-in-class reliability. The Crestron intelligent video portfolio provides a multi-camera system that makes hybrid meetings effortless. The Automate VX system is paired with eight 1 Beyond p-Series cameras to show in-room participants from every angle. Multiple displays around the room ensure that content is always within view. The environment is fully automated, empowering administrators to focus on their goals without worrying about the technology supporting them.

“Our intelligent video system lets us focus on the meeting—not the technology,” Landwehr said. “Our users value how the automated environment simply works, allowing them to concentrate on their goals while remote participants feel genuinely included.”

While embracing technology solutions has created learning environments that are ready to grow with faculty and students, the classroom workflows have tasked the AV team with even more to manage. The XiO Cloud platform has been instrumental in maintaining smooth operations across the college, as Landwehr and his team can mitigate issues before they impact faculty or students. The platform is heavily utilized to proactively monitor device uptimes. This approach to AV support frees the team to focus on planning future deployments and skill development rather than on reactive troubleshooting.

With the Crestron solutions portfolio, FVTC was able to maintain technology standards across a plethora of environments. The consistent approach delivered top-tier solutions that have modernized learning environments and helped them remain manageable for the IT team despite the scale and scope of their room portfolio.