Real People Profiles: Beth Wells

Tue, 09 Dec 2014 08:57:00 -0500
real-people-profiles

We're asking some of the people you might encounter on the UMBC campus, including students, faculty, staff and alumni, to answer a few questions about themselves and their experiences. These are their responses.

Name: Beth Wells

Hometown: Baltimore

Q: How long have you been at UMBC?

A: I am an alumna - class of 1974 and I am in my 15th year of work in the Office of the Provost.

Q: What is your current title (job or student organization position)?

A: Assistant Vice Provost for Academic Affairs.

Q: In 12 words or less, what role(s) do you play on campus?

A: I work closely with faculty and department chairs in the development of new academic programs and the review every seven years of each UMBC academic program. As an ex-officio member, I coordinate the work of the Valedictorian Selection Committee. I work closely with the Provost and with members of the Council of Deans and the Council of Vice Presidents and Deans in planning meeting their agendas.

Q: What aspect of your UMBC role(s) do you enjoy most?

A: I thoroughly enjoy coordinating annually the work of the Staff Awards Committee in recommending winners of the UMBC Presidential, Jakubik, and Wensch awards, and in recommending nominees for the USM Board of Regents Awards and preparing their nomination packets. This work gives me the opportunity every year to help shine a light on the many contributions of staff to UMBC's mission and to learn in depth about many of the UMBC staff who are doing really outstanding work.

Q: What is the most important or memorable thing you learned in college/have learned at UMBC?

A: UMBC is a remarkable place to work. It is not perfect, but it is the healthiest, most vibrant, mission-driven, collaborative, "can-do!" work environment I have experienced in my career. We are blessed to work in this environment.

Q: What is one way you have worked with others to make a positive difference at UMBC or in another community?

A: It's been my pleasure this past year to help initiate an early childhood literacy project in the Park Heights community of Baltimore, through our Chapter 22 UM-UMBC of The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi. Working in collaboration with the Dollywood Foundation, we have raised funds for and are launching soon the first project of Dolly's Parton's Imagination Library (DPIL) in Baltimore, in partnership with the Family and Children's Services Early Head Start program. In the DPIL model, each child registered for the program receives one book per month at home from birth to five years of age. The evidence on DPIL indicates when children receive books at home, their parents spend more time reading to them; the children eagerly anticipate receiving the book each month; and the children are better prepared for kindergarten. Remembering vividly how blessed I was to have books at home when I was a child, and what that love of books and learning has made possible in my life, it is very gratifying to be part of a program that puts books into the hands of children and their parents who might not otherwise have them, with all the pleasure, enrichment and possibilities they can bring.

Q: Complete this sentence: "I am a big fan of __________"

A: The Big Bang Theory.

Q: Do you have any UMBC stories, little-known facts about UMBC, favorite spots on campus, or anything else you’d like to share?

A: When I was studying psychology at UMBC in the 1970's, there was a two-course series required that included statistics and research design. We used key-punch machines (available now only in museums) to key in our programs on punch cards (also available only in museums); then we took the pack of cards for our assignment up to the Hillcrest Building (gone now, I believe) which housed UMBC's mainframe computers (and a Rathskeller in the basement). The computers were busy all day running the jobs required to process data for UMBC's administration, so the students could run our jobs only late at night. There was nothing more disappointing than seeing one's pack of punch cards tumble down the shoot after processing (usually around midnight) with only a page of print out with it, as that meant that some period or comma on one of the punch cards had been mistyped, causing the whole job to fail. Many a night did we students spend hunting for misplaced punctuation marks and scurrying around to re-punch cards, resubmit the job, and wait again hopefully to see if the job had run successfully so we could take our assignment to the morning class just a few hours later. On nights like this sleeping was just a dream.

Co-Create UMBC is a blog for and about UMBC, written by David Hoffman and Craig Berger from the Office of Student Life. Join the Co-Create UMBC group on MyUMBC. Like Co-Create UMBC on Facebook. And follow David and Craig on Twitter.