Shannon Tyra, the director of operations at The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, knows a thing or two about running things. For 36 years she worked for UCLA Hospital, first as an administrative assistant in the radiation oncology department. But Shannon’s heart was in more hands-on work. Her father had been in construction, and she had grown up helping hang drywall, install flooring, patch paint, digging trenches for plumbing lines—the works. She switched to the facilities department at UCLA Hospital, where she worked for the last 25 years. In 2024, she became the director of operations at The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.
Her approach to operations is proactive and creative. Since arriving, she has identified resources and undertaken initiatives designed to help the growing school serve students better.
And she has plans for the school’s future.
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You worked at UCLA Hospital for many years. What inspired you to come and work for the school of music?
I’m the kind of person that wakes up, drinks coffee, answers emails and my first thoughts of the day are “what problem am I going to discover and solve today?” I look forward to coming in and conquering whatever challenge I find. And I was looking for a new challenge after working for hospital facilities for 25 years. I stumbled across this job listing, and just thought, “you know what? I’m going to interview for it and see what happens.” And I interviewed and everybody was wonderful. And they wanted me to start right away, so I did.
What was enticing about this job?
This is a new school—it’s only been in existence ten years. It’s a chance to start relatively fresh, from scratch, to develop the kinds of policies and processes that will have a lasting impact on students and faculty. That opportunity for new beginnings reignited my passion.
Granted, I’m in a department of two, so a lot of the work we are doing right now is transactional in nature—encoding cards, moving furniture, distributing keys. This past summer, we did a lot of things that we couldn’t do during the year, like cleanups and classroom resets. But I spoke with the dean about this the other day. I have ideas for this coming summer, where we can set up policies and procedures to create a more efficient and effective path for venue management, classroom use and rehearsal space moving forward. I’m excited to get to work on it.
Your first big project was opening Imagination Hall, the newly renovated practice rooms. What was it like working on that project?
I can’t take too much credit for the practice room renovation. When I was hired, we were working on the reopening and I oversaw the fit-up which included things like installing mirrors in each of the rooms, coordinating with Sean McLaughlin [piano technician] about moving pianos back in, and identifying any construction issues needing attention—things like touch-up paint, missing baseboards, gaps in flooring and so on.
It was fun working with Eshon Allen [associate director of stewardship] on Imagination Hall signage, which I think came out pretty cool! I also replaced the gray flooring with a warmer alternative and was able to be a part of our plan to swap out the old fluorescent light fixtures for new LED lighting as part of the ceiling replacement, so that was a big plus.
There has been some buzz at the school about your ability to procure furniture and find resources that we might not otherwise have. How have you done this?
I contacted project managers at UCLA Hospital who were decommissioning spaces and asked them to send me pictures of anything they no longer need. Then I got to the space and marked anything that I thought we could use, and we could get it delivered here for free. It was just a way for us to get some newer furniture for some of our spaces at no cost.
I also partner with faculty. They identify areas that need improvement, and I work when possible to make the improvements on my own rather than contracting it out. I built shelving for the drum studio. Speaking of which, I need to do some more work for the bass studio. I’m working on anchors on the wall to hook the double basses to. It’s a lot of construction-y stuff that we don’t have to pay for, and that’s my thing—if we can create these things without having to pay someone else to do it, we can put the money we save towards something else.
Is there one particular standout moment you’ve had with this kind of creative engineering, something that you are proud of?
You know, I think the thing I was able to do which had the biggest impact—and, it seems small, but I get a comment on it every week—is the student study area that I put together in that second-floor walkway between the north and south wings of Schoenberg Music Building.
There used to be just one bench there.
Yeah. What happened was I saw the students coming in and sitting in the corridors when it was raining. So, I was thinking to myself, we need to create an indoor study space because the music library just gets packed. And I saw that these indoor desks became available.
Where?
They were free, from another department. I just happened to see them online, grabbed them, brought them here, and installed them. I also found a small table. And I put in electrical strips so they could charge their computers or phones. So now, instead of just one bench, there’s a table and three desks for four different workstations. And pretty much all day long, they’re used.
This is The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music, so I have to ask—what’s on your playlist?
Oh, gosh. Everything from ABBA to Eminem. A lot of classic rock, although I don’t like that term. But consistently, it would be Pink Floyd. Pink Floyd is one of my favorite bands of all time.
What are you doing when you aren’t being a director of operations for the school of music?
I love dogs. I work with pit bull rescues.
You’re not partial to little dogs?
I love little dogs too! I love all dogs.
I’m also part of a Halloween group. It’s called CalHauntS. We get together every month and one person teaches the others how to build a specific prop. My specialty is carving and painting. Every year we participate in a huge Halloween convention—it’s called Midsummer Scream, and we help build sets for it. We start building sometime in February.
I don’t limit my prop building to Halloween. I build anything my sister wants for parties—Christmas, birthday parties, whatever, I’ll build it.
Last year, we had some set designs from Nightmare before Christmas up around the office at the school of music.
That was me! I built those for my sister, for her annual Christmas party, the year before, and I brought them to the school of music for our holiday party.
What will you be bringing this year?
I’ll never tell.