Fabricae Vniuersitatis: Mark Eisenbraun

On those cold winter days, when you enter your warm and cozy campus building, thank Mark Eisenbraun.

As a boiler technician, Eisenbraun is tasked with keeping the three boilers at the central utility plant and the three at the E.J. Salata Complex up and running between 3:30 and 7:30 a.m.

“We also take care of all the distributions in the tunnels and the steam side inside the buildings,” he said.

A native of Youngstown, Eisenbraun joined the Navy right out of Boardman High School in 1983, starting at boot camp in San Diego that fall. In the Navy, he completed machinery repair school, firefighting school and was also a rifle spinner on the drill team in boot camp.

“I worked in the machine shop as the night shift leader,” he said. “I was also part of the Ship Board fire department, and I worked a little bit in master-at-arms.”

He left the Navy in 1987 and returned to Northeast Ohio, working at Southern Park Mall in Boardman, where he was in charge of all after-hours cleaning and maintenance. He came to YSU in 1997.

“Youngstown State was just always the place I wanted to be,” he said.

He has held several positions on campus, including maintenance repair worker in Bliss Hall, maintenance supervisor in the central utility plan, building maintenance in Tod Hall and then, last July, returned to overseeing the boilers.

“With some amazing help, we’ve kept a good portion of the campus in working order,” he said.

In his spare time, Eisenbraun enjoys gardening, grilling, fishing, spending time with his grandchildren, and building models of military planes and ships in honor of his son, who left the Navy in 2016 as a fire control technician. Some of his models are on display at the YSU Veterans Resource Center.