Happy Wednesday, Deac families! Time for another round of Meet a Deac. Full disclosure: today’s Meet a Deac was my WFU grad school roommate and [still] dear friend, Roz Tedford of the ZSR Library.

I hope many of your students have felt the ‘family’ atmosphere at Wake Forest. Much of that comes from faculty and staff who take students under their wing for mentorship, and Roz’s father, Emeritus Professor of Theatre Harold Tedford, had done that with me (and scores of others) long ago.  Roz’s love and care for students shows through in everything she does. She’s carrying on a great Tedford tradition of being present, accessible, and supportive of Wake students.

Now I am pleased to [virtually] let you meet Roz.

rosalind-tedfordOK Roz, so pretend I know none of this and let’s try to act official.
Fire away.

In what year did you graduate and what was your major?
I majored in Psychology and English and graduated in 1991, then got my MA in English with you in 1994.  [Roz did Shakespeare as her area of focus.]

What is your title?
I am Director for Research and Instruction, Z. Smith Reynolds Library.

How did you come to work at Wake?
I guess my first job at Wake was in the summers growing up working for my dad in the University Theatre, but I officially started as a full-timer in July 1994 as Government Documents and Microtext Assistant at ZSR.  That year, Wake signed the deal with IBM for the ThinkPad project and my career went off in the computer training direction. Then I moved to Reference and Instruction, eventually becoming the Assistant Director and then Director.

Libraries have changed so much when we were in college.  What does it mean to be Director for Research and Instruction?
I guess if I had to sum up my job I’d say that I work with students and faculty to ensure they have the skills and resources they need to do good research efficiently and effectively. This means teaching for-credit Information Literacy classes, working with classes in Political Science and other departments on research projects, placing orders for books, working one-on-one with faculty on their research, etc.

I also oversee the folks at ZSR that do our outreach to the WFU campus community and beyond. So the Humans vs Zombies events, Writer’s Camp and other fun programming ideas often come from my amazing team of library faculty and staff. I also serve as an academic advisor, on the Faculty Senate and on the Committee on Academic Planning.

What is your favorite course to teach?
I teach both the intro LIB100 class and the LIB210 – social science research class and love them both. But there is something about working with social science majors and minors and seeing the research process finally ‘click’ for them that I really love. 

How would you characterize Wake Forest students?  Have they changed from our student days, in your opinion?
They are far more driven and more competitive but also more tolerant and altruistic I think. I have loved seeing the increasing number of international students and students of color over the last decade. It provides such an exciting depth of experiences and worldviews to our campus that was severely lacking when you and I were students. Our students will be going out to work all over the world and with all kinds of people and the experiences living, studying and working with diverse students will serve them so well going forward.

What advice would you give to students?
Take it slow. Enjoy the ride. BREATHE. High school was an intense pathway to college; don’t make college a pathway, make it your destination. You picked a Liberal Arts school for a reason – to explore the world from as many perspectives as possible – so go do that. Take an archaeology class, a sculpture class, a Greek Mythology class. Major in something you LOVE. The value of the liberal arts is not measured in salary earned upon graduation, but in gaining the skills to go out and shape the world and make it better. 

What do you like best about working at Wake Forest?
The single minded goal we all have to teach, help, love and nurture our students while they are here so they can go out and change the world. 

What are some of your favorite memories as a student?
I loved rolling the Quad, camping out for basketball tickets [you know I have fond memories of that too!], the Lovefeast, the old Snack Pit with the best grilled cheese and french fries ever! [YES!!]

And now for the fun stuff:

Book you’re reading now: I just finished The Millionaire and the Bard about Henry Folger and the development of his collection that eventually became the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington DC. It was brilliant. I’m also reading The Girl in the Spider’s Web because I was a huge fan of Larsson’s books and wanted one more dip into that amazing world of characters. I’m really loving it!

beatlesWhat music are you listening to these days: I admit to streaming A LOT of The Beatles on Spotify and Prime Music. LOVE Adele’s new album as well. 

Favorite movie: Hard to pick but if I could only have one movie with me on a desert island I’d probably pick A Room With a View [love, love, love it – did my Masters thesis on it], or Zoolander or Spinal Tap or Princess Bride…..do I have to just pick one????? Can I bring a TV show instead?? Then it would be Sherlock, sherlock__steven_moffat_interviews_benedict_cumberbatch-2140489hands down.  

Website you frequent: In election years I spend a lot of time on sites like Pew Research and fivethirtyeight.com because I’m a bit of a political junkie. For fun I love sporcle.com and The Onion.

squidGuilty pleasure: So many – but documentaries about Giant Squid head the list. Cheezy 80s movies like Dirty Dancing, Top Gun and Footloose are hard for me to turn off if they are on.

Favorite place to be on campus: Outside on a beautiful fall day with the band practicing and leaves on fire!

What most people don’t know about you: If I won the lottery, I’d go to cooking school.  [You are already a superb cook. I cannot imagine it being improved upon, but OK.]

— by Betsy Chapman

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