I’m 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: William Joyner

Hometown: Waldorf, MD

Q: How long have you been at UMBC? 

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

 A: Involvement in leadership roles on campus has granted me intimate access to two opportunities that no purely academic class ever has:

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

 A:  Most important lessons:  How to ask questions, how to express my feelings with words, and how to conjugate irregular verbs like “to wake” in English.  I am actually still working on all of these lessons.

Most memorable lessons:  When I was a sophomore I took a class called “Foundations of Leadership,” where we played a game called “Win as Much as You Can.”  The lessons that I learned from that game hit me like a speeding bus when class ended.  My brain had that feeling my mouth has after I eat a mint.  Just in case someone may read this and then get the opportunity to play it, I will not divulge the lesson in full.  However, I will say that if you understand it the way I understood it, you’ll never look at student organizations, bureaucracies, school cliques, international politics or any other group scenarios the same way again.  It also changed the way I interact with friends that belong to organizations to which I do not.

 A:  Controversial books, movies, ideas and personalities.  Besides providing content to fill awkward silences with people I don’t know, I believe that you can tell a lot about a couple, a group of friends, neighbors and even a country by the way it resolves conflicts of ideas.  I am also a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell’s books, Il Divo’s music and Oprah’s existence. 

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

I assumed that I’d be taking a bus with a big group of students to a gleaming new age medical facility in semi-rural West Virginia.  I’d paint murals on recovery room walls and garden tomatoes or lettuce to supplement the cafeteria’s offerings.  There was movie about these people, so I knew it was a pretty upscale and high-profile place, and I knew my family would approve of helping out in such an institution.   Well, due to some miscommunication with a list-proc, I was not notified about a change to the departure date from UMBC, so I missed the bus.  I told my mother what had happened, so we got directions and set out to drive the 7+ hours to Hillsboro, WV.  Toward the end of the directions we began getting confused.  For at least 30 minutes we’d been on meandering mountain roads with hairpin turns and narrow lanes that were difficult to pass, even with a Honda Civic.  I thought, how on Earth does an ambulance make it to this hospital, especially during the harsh, icy Shenandoah winters?  Then, at the last turn on the directions we entered a gravel road in the middle of a field.  

What?!  I drove all the way out here to volunteer at a hospital that doesn’t exist?

We all did maintenance on the Gesundheit grounds, performed hard labor setting up an enrichment/empowerment camp for academically talented girls, performed as clowns in a parade through a small town, and maintained an organic vegan diet (except for the day we ate fish that group mates had caught themselves and burgers made with buffalo meat). We met a man who refines his own bio-diesel, attended a concert by a classically trained piano/fiddle duo at the home of famous author Pearl Buck, and traveled to the palatial lodge of a former NIH scientist who abandoned his life in Maryland to travel around North America and create a nature education site that can only be reached by crossing a river in a high-mounted pick-up truck or a boat.  Along the way we learned about the disparities between the urban/suburban and rural areas, the rich and the poor, the powerful and the repressed and the genders.  Teamwork, collectivism, sacrifice, creativity, ethics and justice were all stressed and I discovered that everything we learned there applies to health care!

The video was right.  I left West Virginia with perspectives that radically changed the way I see society and my place in it.  I didn’t join a cult, but I did join a group of friends and mentors that challenged me to touch live worms (yuck!) so that I could go fishing, to learn to drive a stick-shift truck so that I could transport lumber from the chopping site to the firewood stacks, and to hug a live, territorial turkey because it could be done.

No standard volunteer shift at a high-end hospital in up-scale suburbs could have provided those opportunities, and because of that experience last summer, I joined the ASB planning team in the Fall so that I could do my part to ensure that more students get to experience the fulfillment that service has given me for the past 3 years.

I’m 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. 

NOTE:  This is the first Real People Profile of a UMBC alumnus who is not also a UMBC employee.  Andrew Gordon graduated from UMBC in 2008 with a degree in English.  He is a Social Media Administrator for a Baltimore nonprofit organization.

Name: Andrew Gordon

Hometown: Middletown, MD

Q: When did you attend UMBC? 

A: From Fall of 2004 to Spring of 2008. 

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

A: I tried to make things better, sometimes publicly, sometimes anonymously.

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

A: I liked helping others. I liked feeling like I was inspiring others to find their own ways to help others, to improve their surroundings. 

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

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

A: My wife.

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 started at UMBC, I used to go to what's now the student orgs space to write because it was one of the quietest places on campus, almost always completely deserted.

For most of my time at UMBC and for years before, the first floor of the UC was locked and inaccessible to students. In 2006, the SGA made a major push and unlocked this prime real estate, turning it into the Study Place. Now I hear it houses Starbucks and Chick-fil-a, which is pretty funny to me.

I have a vivid memory of walking from Harbor to the UC late one Spring night during my Freshman year with Jordan Hadfield. We went to visit and bring water to Eric Jonathan Smith, a candidate for SGA President that year, who slept outside the UC and fasted to show his dedication to the position. He didn't win.

I spent a lot of the last few weeks before my graduation up on that terrace thing attached to the Biology building - although once I almost got locked in when the security guards were going around to chain closed the main doors to each of the buildings. I spent a lot of my first year walking the loop of the CERA - this was back before they built that research park and water something something a little further back from the road, back when the rugby team played on the "driving range" over there.

I always wanted to have secret meetings or something in the space behind LH2. Never did. I always wanted to have a secret meeting in the Fireside Lounge. That did happen, though not until I was an alum.

It wasn't that long ago that Quadmania was actually held on the Quad. It wasn't that long ago that the sidewalk going through the Quad didn't exist and in the winter, the dirt path would become a solid sheet of ice. The Commons parking garage offers a longer ride, but using the bottom, gated floor of the Library Deck to longboard down is a much better, safer bet. Fun fact: UMBC Underground (or The Underground as I hear it's called now) was started in the basement of Potomac, Room 060.

When I first started at UMBC, I was kinda miserable. By the end, UMBC had become a home for me. While you (the current student reading this) may not find that to be the case for you, I will guarantee you that each year will go by faster than the last, and before you know it, you're packing up your stuff and heading to the First Mariner Arena, wondering how you got where you are. Make it count. Get outside of your room often, remember this is probably going to be the least stressful part of your life, and just enjoy your time to the fullest.

Name: Joel DeWyer

Hometown: Ocala, Florida by way of Delphos, Ohio

Q: How long have you been at UMBC? 

A: Gosh, I think this is year #7. 

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

A: I oversee The Commons Information Center, The Gameroom, Flat Tuesdays Pub, & the Event Admissions crew.

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

A: Participating in policy discussions & developments while still maintaining direct contact with the student body and our student employees. 

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

A: Sometimes being right isn’t nearly as important as admitting when you’re wrong.  Listening has gotten me much further than I think talking ever could have.

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

A: Chess . . . seriously, I am--”.

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:   I have written in the little yellow book . . .  have you?

Name: Janet McGlynn

Hometown: Baltimore

Q: How long have you been at UMBC? 

A: Nine years. 

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

A: Facilitate undergraduate research programs and other work for the Office of Undergraduate Education.

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

A: Helping students to find opportunities they didn't know about at UMBC. One of these is the chance to pursue independent research, scholarship, and creative work. 

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

A: Talk with your professors. Seek their advice about your future plans. Tell the professor (right away!) when you start to have a problem in a course.

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

A: The classes designed for students in their first year at UMBC: First-Year Seminars (FYSs) and the Introduction to an Honors University courses (IHUs, the "Y" classes). Students who take any of these classes get so much information about making the most of their time at UMBC.

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:  I love the Fireside Lounge. I am amazed by the number of paid summer research fellowships available for undergraduates, mostly in the sciences, but some for students in other fields. The Career Services Center and Shriver Center staff are fabulously helpful to students who bring in their resumes for review.

From an upstairs window.

 

My car.  Compare with the final photo, below.

 

Barrington Road (my street).

  

The trench I helped to dig across said street.  When my neighbor started to dig in my direction, I found that I couldn't say 'no.'  (Or, 'what's the point exactly?').

The same intersection on Sunday (trench is at right).

My wife Sharon walking our dog Bucky.  Well . . . carrying.

 

Indeed, the cars should go slowly to avoid the playing children.

 

Another neighborhood intersection, with evidence that some fool brave soul has managed to drive through it.

Explanation for my aching shoulders and back (and goofy sense of accomplishment).