with Becky Middleton
Born:
West Point, N.Y.
Raised:
New York, Massachusetts, Virginia and Germany
Resides:
Glen Ridge
Education:
B.S., landscape architecture, Rutgers University
Family:
Husband, Dave, of five years.
Pets:
Two dogs: Woody, a German short-haired pointer, and Mowgli, a beagle.
Hobby:
Bikram yoga (a "hot" form of yoga done for 90 minutes in 95
to 100 degree heat) "A friend of mine was visiting from Hawaii and
said, 'Try this you'll love it,' and I've been doing it for two years.
It's more invigorating than relaxing."
Favorite sport to watch:
Big East basketball
Favorite Pastime:
Cooking.
As Montclair State's landscape architect, Becky Middleton spends a lot
of time walking around construction sites in all kinds of weather, climbing
over holes and walking through mud. She also wears out a lot of shoes.
But she'll gladly sacrifice fashion for adventure.
"It's definitely not just a desk job," she said. "I never
have a boring day. It's always something completely different. I come
in at eight o'clock, hit the ground running and see what's in store."
Becky joined Montclair State three years ago as a CAD (Computer Aided
Design) operator for Architectural and Engineering Services. She soon
began helping manage small projects and within a few months became project
manager of landscape architecture.
Her first major project was the redesign of the new softball stadium.
"Designing the field and meeting with Holly Gera (director of Intercollegiate
Athletics) to make sure the team's needs were being met was a yearlong
process," she explained. "I act as the liaison between the user,
the architect and the contractor."
According to Becky, the field will be ready this week and the stadium
part of the project is expected to be completed in December. "It's
exciting watching a project go from conception to the drawing board to
reality," she said.
Another project Becky was happy to see completed was the parking lot resurfacing,
which she worked on most of the summer and, she adds, prompted plenty
of e-mails from the campus community. Becky said she doesn't mind the
feedback, even if it is not positive, and does her best to make sure ideas
are heard.
"In the end, the campus will be beautiful," she said. "One
of the things about construction is that after you see the final product
you don't remember all the painstaking details that you had to go through,
so I think people will be excited once everything pulls together."
In the meantime, Becky and her colleagues, Semmy Ju, associate vice president
for Facilities Management, and Sharon Balkom, assistant director of Physical
Plant-grounds, have been taking measures to improve the quality of the
campus. They take weekly walking tours to identify areas of the campus
that need improvement. They're working to enhance the entrances and other
major visible points on campus. "We're also trying to keep trucks
out of the interior, especially the grassy areas, of campus," said
Becky. "That is a new initiative President [Susan A.] Cole requested,
so we're going to have processes and standards in place as to their access."
On a much larger scale is a campus-wide landscape plan. "As you look
around campus you can see that a lot of it was piecemeal. We acquired
land so we put a building here and there but it was never really planned
out, like the walkways and the traffic patterns," she explained "You
can tell that for awhile it was just one building at a time and you can
see different decades with different styles. But the landscaping is our
chance to lock it all in and make it cohesive. It's going to be a difficult
but fun challenge."
Not everything about Becky's job focuses on appearance. Sometimes there
are environmental issues. "We have wetlands behind the new dorms,
so we do have some environmentally sensitive areas," she said. Becky
is enrolled in Montclair State's master's degree program in environmental
management, and says she is looking forward to applying her new knowledge.
"For future projects, we're talking about using native material,
drought-tolerant material and materials that are low-maintenance and do
well in this area."
A self-proclaimed Army brat (her father was an engineer), Becky earned
an undergraduate degree in landscape architecture, but she began learning
at a much younger age. "I learned CAD when I was 10 or 11 years old.
My father thought it would be fun as a drawing program."
Although Becky spent most of her life thinking she'd have a career in
building architecture, she fell into the field of landscape by accident.
"I stumbled into the wrong meeting one day when I was in college,"
she said. "I caught a presentation on landscape architecture and
thought it was really cool so I switched over."
The rest, as they say, is history and Becky has no regrets. Even if she's
out of nice shoes, she can certainly boast a wide collection of hard hats.
Is there a colleague you'd like to nominate for "On the Job?" If so, e-mail his/her name along with a brief description of how he/she contributes to the campus community, to Jennifer Fusco at fuscoj@mail.montclair.edu.