Profile: Steve Levering

Profile: Steve Levering, Communication graphics instructor, IT guy, general geek/’whiz kid’

Steve Levering sits in his small, currently dark office (the lights are not turned on) joking about the disheveled state of his Star Wars memorabilia and general clutter-filled work space. Levering sports a pink Polo shirt paired with green camouflage shorts and gray Converse Chuck Taylors.
“Yeah, this pair is only about one or two years old, but I have another pair that are plaid that I bought back in 1992 that have been through great times.”
An example?
“They’ve been to many great concerts and many great shows. They went to Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson at the Bomb Factory in Dallas in ’94. And okay, I’m not a small guy and the crowd was carrying me around! It was intense.”
The self-professed geek had a hard time growing up as a bigger guy in small town Alabama. Where Levering was expected to participate in sports of all kind, especially football, he was much more interested in choir and being a band kid. He played both trombone and tuba and has since learned and developed a love of the bass guitar.
“I’m a geek,” Levering says, “And not just a computer geek, but a music geek, a cooking geek and whatever…They are just certain things that catch my interest and I just kind of follow them.”
He says he likes different kinds of music, across the board, but his favorite bands normally fall under the category of alternative or classic rock. He currently finds himself listening to a now defunct Austin band called Seven percent solution.
“They were great, very sort of Pink Floyd-ish kind of that psych-rock sounding thing the buried vocals and stuff; they had a really sweet light show, too.”
Levering says his wife, Pam, shares his same music interests. Both are in the teaching profession, although Pam’s students are in the first grade.
“Yeah, I don’t envy her,” Levering says with a smile, “College kids can be a handful, but at least they don’t wet their pants.”
Levering says he had what he calls a ‘mini freak out moment’ when attending frog camp a few years ago.
“Pam and I were married in 1990 and I suddenly realized that the incoming freshmen were born the same year I got married!”
He has no qualms about age, however. He’s a pretty happy-go-lucky kind of guy, he says. And he doesn’t see himself leaving TCU anytime soon. He’s having too much fun and he truly enjoys his colleagues, especially Dr. Punch Shaw, whom he teaches a mass communication class with.
“Whenever Dr. Shaw and I get together for breakfast or whatever, our wives just sit there and laugh at us because we both follow these really random conversational threads and everything. Where other people might not see anything tying them together, we both see the logic in going from here to here, so it’s just funny.”
Funny describes not only Levering’s conversational tone and attitude, but his office, his outfit and his outlook.
“I’m just an all-around geek, you know? What else is there?”