Here in the Office of Alumni Relations, we spend a lot of time telling stories about and talking with our wonderfully supportive alums. However, we’ve decided to turn the tables and take time to get to know the people behind the scenes — the  advancement and alumni relations staff members who are hard at work on behalf of our alumni. Today we’ll be hearing from Stanyell Bruce, the Director of Alumni Relations.

Name: Stanyell Bruce
Job Title:  Director of Alumni Relations
Focus Area: I oversee the day-to-day operations of the alumni relations office and, along with my team, come up with various ways to engage and connect with UMBC’s over 62,000 amazing alumni.
Years at UMBC: 7.5 years

Q: Where are you from originally?

A: Bronx, NY

Q: What do you love most about UMBC?

A: I love the UMBC story (the little engine that could except on a much grander scale).

Q: What’s your favorite thing about your job?

A: I love meeting alumni and hearing their stories. Depending on when an alum attended UMBC, they have a totally different experience or lens that they look through; no matter the experience, alums are proud to be part of the UMBC story. As a relationship builder and connector, I feel like the work I do has real meaning and will make an impact for years to come.

Q: What do you like most about yourself?

A: That I can adapt to pretty much any situation. Of course there have been a few times when I was like a deer in headlights, but overall I like the fact that I adapt pretty easily.

Q: If you could be another staff member for a day, who would it be and why?

A: Jim Lord! I would love to know what it feels like to be a design director and 1 – have such creative genes and 2 – get to see my work (and the work of my team) all over this campus.

Q: What is one word you would use to describe your job?

A: Challenging!

The UMBC community honored faculty and staff who were instrumental in the lives of UMBC’s African-American and Latino students at a Legends of Excellence Brunch and Awards ceremony held on Saturday, March 31, 2012. Congratulations to the award recipients:

• Ramona Arthur, Former Director of Off-Campus Student Services
• Norma Green, Former Coordinator of Student Activities
• Bonny Tighe, Senior Lecturer of Mathematics and Statistics
• LaMont Toliver, Director of the Meyerhoff Scholars Program and Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Education (awarded posthumously)

“It was wonderful to see so many alumni, faculty, staff and friends come out to celebrate and honor members of the UMBC community who are considered to be trailblazers, mentors, role models and friends to thousands of our alumni,” said Stanyell Bruce, director of Alumni Relations. “The event is a great opportunity for alumni to pay homage to those people who’ve inspired true excellence in their lives.”

The Legends event is held once every five years. The first event, held in 2007, honored Betty Glascoe of Career Services; Dr. Daphne Harrison of Africana Studies; Cynthia Hill of Student Support Services; Dr. Acklyn Lynch of Africana Studies; and Dr. Ana Maria Schwartz of Modern Languages and Linguistics.

To read more about the 2012 award winners, click here.
To see more photos from the event, visit our Flickr page.

UMBC Homecoming has undergone major changes over the past three years, and a trio of dedicated staffers who lead the university’s Homecoming Committee – Kevin Gibbons O’Neill ’86, economics, assistant athletic director, Jen Dress, coordinator of major events in the Office of Student Life and Stanyell Bruce, associate director of alumni relations – have spearheaded the makeover. We got them together to talk about why the university has spent so much time and energy improving the Homecoming experience – and just what’s in store when you visit us over the weekend of October 12 through 15!

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Why did UMBC decide to shift more emphasis to celebrating Homecoming as an event for students and alumni? And what’s changed as the university has done so?

Jen Dress: I think about the student who’s been here for four years. Our focus has been building an experience that students will think about when they are here – and that makes them want to come back as alumni. Four years ago, we had a lot of the same events, but they felt isolated from each other. Now we’re connecting them and increasing them in size and scope.

Take the Wednesday night bonfire. We now need an agricultural permit for the bonfire – which means a bigger, better, blazing fire. Students had skepticism about it: Will this really be cool? But you look at pictures and see how students are real close at the beginning and then have to move back as the bonfire ramps up. They see it’s a much bigger thing.

Kevin Gibbons-O’Neill: We in the athletics department have become better partners. For instance, we moved the soccer game to Friday night under the lights, and that’s created an amazing atmosphere. From Midnight Madness on Wednesday through the 5K Dawg Chase and club sport games on Saturday, we’re trying to make the experience fun. If students don’t have fun as freshmen and sophomores, they won’t come when they’re juniors or seniors – or when they are 40 years old.

What recent changes do you think will attract alumni – who are, after all, the traditional audience for Homecoming?

Stanyell Bruce: The alumni piece is challenging. But we’re getting better at it. We’ve only been doing Homecoming for 11 years, so alumni who graduated before 1999 really don’t identify with the event as much.

So we’re trying to let alumni know that there are a lot of options for them – and many events on the calendar are designed to appeal to different audiences. We have a community picnic on Saturday because we know that a lot of our alumni have families – and we wanted to have an event with an atmosphere that makes them comfortable bringing the entire family. But we’re also having a number of more grown-up events in the afternoon and evening, including a Taste of UMBC with live music from alumni bands. There is something for everyone.

Dress: Last year, the community picnic was a real gamble. We didn’t know what it was going to look like. But it was cool, because the event really does epitomize what sort of community we have at UMBC. There were athletics alumni coming over after a club game in the morning, or alumni coming for afternoon events stopping to eat first.

Bruce: We’ve put a lot of the day’s activities under the umbrella of “UMBC Festival” – the community picnic, carnival attractions, the Taste of UMBC. For me, it’s going to be exciting to see what the Quad looks like from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Homecoming Saturday.

Gibbons-O’Neill: Stanyell mentioned that we’ve only been doing Homecoming for 11 years. And as a university, we’re only 45 years old. You have to wonder what Homecoming was like at Harvard in 1681. Right now, we’re still the founders of what the tradition of Homecoming will be at UMBC.

— Richard Byrne ’86