Charles Street Chats: Q&A with Anthony Butler
"I hope, for students who want to get involved, the goal is to learn something meaningful, do something extraordinary and leave UBalt a better place than it was when you arrived."
Behind the Chat
Order: lavender lemonade snowball
Location: Kona Ice truck, Morton Avenue
Distance from Campus: 0.0 (part of Rock the Block celebration)
Anthony Butler first came to The University of Baltimore in 2000 as a graduate student looking to gain skills through the Publications Design master’s program. He loved the community and higher education so much he stayed.
Butler’s first job at UBalt was with admission staff. Then he moved through more student-facing offices until he landed his current role as director of the Rosenberg Center for Student Engagement and Inclusion. Over the course of the academic year, Butler oversees and supports student organizations and student life initiatives, but as director of both orientation and commencement, he also welcomes students at the beginning and end of their UBalt experience.
In his 20th year at UBalt, he won praise of his colleagues when he received a Lifetime Achievement Award during the 2024 Eubie Awards.
Q: This is your 20th year at The University of Baltimore, first as a student and then as an alum and staff member. What drew you here in the first place and what made you stay?
A: I am a really good example for why a gap year is a great thing to have. I originally wanted to be an M.F.A. student, and I applied to a few M.F.A. programs right out of college, and unfortunately, didn’t get accepted. And I said, well, let me think about this and see if there’s something else I want to do.
At the time, I was really passionate about working in nonprofits. I saw myself going into PR/marketing for nonprofits. That was my original career goal. UBalt was actually suggested to me by my career counselor at Salisbury University. They emailed me and said UBalt’s Publications Design [now Integrated Design] program sounds perfect for you. I looked into it; I really liked the blend of design and writing. A lot of pub design students are designers who also write; I would consider myself more a writer who also designs. I’m much more comfortable writing than I am designing. So, I came into that program looking to not necessarily become a designer, but to be able to speak the language of design and understand how design works. Come to find out, all of those skills that I learned in the pub design program were transferable to the work I do today, because so much of design and building design projects and publications is project management, including how to manage a project from beginning to end, and how to leverage teams to pull a project off together.
WATCH: Student life carries high value on all college campuses
Q: As you touched on, you studied English at Salisbury University and Publication Design at UBalt. What made you pivot into your career in student life?
A: My first job out of college was a nonprofit that worked on low-cost housing solutions to bring more homeownership back into communities. After grad school, I went back into nonprofits and worked at a community action agency, which had a number of programs: Headstart, adult day services, housing and development services. I had about 26 different community-based projects. While I loved that experience, what I found was that I was missing higher ed.
After about another year working in nonprofits, I felt like I was called back to working in higher ed. As much as I enjoyed working in nonprofits, it was time for a change. I found that throughout my undergrad and grad, my most engaging experiences, my most rewarding experiences were the ones that were related to student life and college life.
So, I knew this was what I wanted to get back into. Fortunately, I found a position here with admission. Admission, for many, opens the door to career in higher ed. So I did that for two years until coming over to an assistant director position in what was then the Center for Student Involvement and have had a number of roles since then in various student affairs capacities. I’m also fortunate that in the work I do today, because I get to work with nonprofit community-based organizations, just from a different lens.
Q: How has student life in college changed over the course of your career and how have you adapted how you oversee it?
A: While we think about UBalt as having a very different and unique kind of student, and we do, I think that the national landscape of higher ed is changing to where more students showing up across the country are like UBalt students. I think, because of the student loan crisis, a lot more students are waiting before jumping into higher ed, and so you’re seeing students coming into their college life already having that work experience, some students already have a wife or husband or partner, children, families that they’re taking care of. So, I think this is actually an opportunity to look around and acknowledge we have become really good at meeting the needs of what is the evolving and emerging student. And that is someone with a busy, often complex life that needs a lot of support.
One of the things I’m most proud of that has taken off here at UBalt is the basic needs effort, which includes the Campus Pantry out of our office, and also the Career Closet out of the Career and Internship Center, student emergency loan programs, and other supportive programs that help students fulfill their educational mission. There are things we can do to make it a little bit easier to persist and thrive and succeed while you’re here. That’s incredibly important to us.
Q: How have you adapted how you oversee student life as it has evolved?
A: I think it’s all about taking a ‘Yes and…’ approach. I think we have to be flexible. I am often asked, what is the ideal time to have an event? That ideal time does not exist. It is an imperfect science. What works one semester might not work the other. We have to be very nimble and very flexible, to allow for what what the variety of students might need. There are some students who only have time on the weekends, some who might only have time on evenings, there’s really not one best fit solution.
The other thing is looking at how we deploy our events. We might do fewer speaker events or lectures or workshops or sort of long-form events, and more drop-in events where you could stop by and get information on a flexible schedule. So, you don’t have to commit to being somewhere for two hours; you might be able to just stop by for 15 minutes and still get a lot of value out of that experience. We have to think about the world of hybrid that we all are experiencing now, and how that fits in. Are some events better in the hybrid space, the virtual space or in person? So, we take all that into account, too.
…
Legacy building on campus is important. A lot of our students are only here for a short time, and they only have so much time to commit to their experiences. So, we spend a lot of time talking about transition. Do you have a good transition in place, so that you can see the work you’re doing this year continue to build and pay off in the future years?
I hope, for students who want to get involved, the goal is to learn something meaningful, do something extraordinary and leave UBalt a better place than it was when you arrived.
What Charms Us
We end all our Charles Street Chats with the same question: What do you love most about Baltimore? Here’s Anthony’s answer.
I have always been struck by the fact that Baltimore can be a place where people can find a sense of belonging. Like UBalt, it’s a unique and special place that you can’t find anywhere else on Earth.