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Employee spotlight: Sami Snelling
 Sami Snelling estimates she’s printed the
majority of business cards sitting in the wallets and purses of
the thousands of staff and faculty members who are employed at
the University of Houston.
That’s because since 1999, she has worked in the UH print shop
as an offset press operator, coming in every morning at 7:30
a.m. to work on the never-ending printing jobs that the various
departments across the university need done.
“The majority of time I am usually running letterheads, business
cards, envelopes, stuff like that,” she said.
When Snelling was hired nearly 14 years ago, she was a two-color
pressman. She went from doing two-color work and running two
presses to now where she can operate four presses and handle
four-color printing jobs. On Mondays, she runs the four-color
press.
“I set it up, load the plates, load the paper, put ink in it,
set the job up, and align it to where it comes out correctly,”
she said.
Snelling grew up in Galena Park. It was when she was a sophomore
at Galena Park High School that she was first introduced to the
world of printing.
“I took the printing class in high school on purpose because it
was two credits. They shipped us from one high school to the
other, so I got out of class for three hours,” she said. “I
didn’t do it on purpose to learn printing, but I ended up liking
the class. It was something that was interesting.”
After high school, she landed a job with the Port of Houston,
where much of her job duties involved running the Xerox machine.
The job didn’t pay much, so she ended up looking for employment
elsewhere, eventually landing a copy clerk position with a local
company. When the company’s pressman quit, Snelling filled in.
Ever since then, she’s been doing printing work as a career.
Snelling has two grown children: daughter Rhiana is 24 and son
Samuel is 23. Her daughter is two hours away from getting her
associate’s degree and then may transfer to UH.
When not at work, Snelling likes to cook, watch movies and put
puzzles together as a way for her to relax. But, she said, she
often turns to work as a way to relieve stress.
“Printing for me, since I have done it for so long, is a way for
me to relax. It allows me to do something where I’m not just
sitting in a chair,” she said. “I just can’t sit there. I have
to be doing something.”
She loves working for the University of Houston.
“I bleed Cougar red. I don’t plan on leaving until I have to
retire,” she said.
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