‘Being in the middle of things’

Rosemary Gliedt would have you believe that she’s a boring person. But it’s difficult to trust her evaluation, especially after hearing her talk about her travels, her family, her work and her studies.

She is a woman who has bitten off a lot of life to chew but doesn’t seem to have any problem swallowing it all.

Gliedt is manager of the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies, which is in the John M. Olin School of Business but serves students across the campus. Gliedt’s academic background is solidly liberal arts; she earned an undergraduate degree in English from Maryville University. So, she was a bit surprised to find herself working for Edward Jones straight out of college.

“It was never really a great fit for me,” Gliedt recalls. “It was all about business, and I had this liberal arts background. It just took me 13 years to figure that out.”

Despite her misgivings, those 13 years were hardly wasted. She rose from being a clerk to eventually supervising the margin department. When her daughter was born, she knew it was time to cut back her working hours and perhaps find a place that better suited her.

As it turned out, Gliedt fell into another business environment, but this time the fit was nearly perfect. Gliedt started working at the business school part time in the dean’s office. The situation was ideal because it allowed Gliedt to work in the mornings and spend time with her daughter in the afternoons.

When her daughter was older, Gliedt decided to look for a full-time position at the University. That’s when she landed a job in the Center for Experiential Learning (CEL), where part of her duties included working with the Skandalaris Entrepreneurship Program, as it was known at the time.

About a year after she joined the CEL, WUSTL was one of eight universities to receive grants totaling $25 million from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City, Mo.

The mandate: create a new model for entrepreneurial education that followed a multi-discipline, cross-campus theme to involve a diverse population of students and faculty.

The Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies was born, and Gliedt was on board from the start. As the center grew, so did Gliedt’s responsibilities. Between 2003-06, the center grew from two to nine people.

Gliedt’s role is to manage the activities in the Skandalaris Center.

“I enjoy being in the middle of things and knowing what’s going on in all our programs and activities. I like coordinating people, working with students, and seeing the growth in the ideas and projects in our competitions. I like knowing pretty much what’s going on everywhere — to have an overview of everything.”

Ken Harrington is the managing director of the Skandalaris Center and a senior lecturer in entrepreneurship. He has worked with Gliedt for the past six years and is quick to praise her work.

“The center does a lot of things, and it wouldn’t operate without everything Rosemary does,” Harrington says. “She really keeps things on the rails.”

Juggling events

In FY 2006, the Skandalaris Center averaged one event per week, which means the center is perpetually coordinating any one of a myriad of activities: the Olin Cup competition, an IdeaBounce event, Coffee With the Experts, a YouthBridge workshop or a Science Frontiers event. Even though there are eight other people working on the various components, Harrington says Gliedt can always be relied on to pull it all together.

“Last week was a good example of the volume of things going on,” Harrington recalls. “We had four of the sponsors and donors for the Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition (SEIC) in the office to go over the 24 SEIC submissions we had this year and select the semi-finalists.

“There are 12 people judging the competitors’ executive summaries. Each judge was asked to rate the summaries based on 18 criteria,” Harrington continues. “Rosemary captured all the data, generated the forms and had it all ready to go for the meeting. In two hours, we were able to select our semi-finalists. The meeting certainly would have lasted much longer without her working with the staff to organize and assemble the data from the evaluation forms. Not only that, but the feedback from all of the judges was given to each contestant within 48 hours. That’s unbelievable turnaround.”

Even 10 years ago when Gliedt was still working in the dean’s office, she displayed a talent for getting the job done. Elaine McClary, who is assistant to the current business school dean, Mahendra R. Gupta, Ph.D., recalls Gliedt’s diligence as well.

“There is so much detail in the information we have to manage here, and Rosemary never missed a thing. We never had to worry about getting something done because we knew Rosemary would help us handle it,” McClary says.

It was a sad day when Gliedt left the dean’s office, McClary says, “but we still get together for lunch and keep each other posted on whatever is going on. She’s been a great friend to have to this day.”

Gliedt’s ability to keep the train running at the Skandalaris Center is all the more impressive because she also has been pursuing a master’s degree in nonprofit management from University College in Arts & Sciences.

She had worked at the University for six years before she considered taking courses. Then Stacy Jackson, a former professor at the business school who directed the CEL, got her thinking about it.

“The nonprofit management program interested me the most,” Gliedt says. “At the time, I was working with a lot of the community programs in the CEL. I took a course in nonprofit management out of curiosity and really liked it. So, I kept going and expect to finish up this May. I’m looking forward to Commencement and ‘graduating’ with many of the students in the entrepreneurship program I’ve come to know.”

Her studies have helped her get to know a lot of people in St. Louis’ not-for-profit world, which has benefits for her current job. Some of the speakers and teachers from her courses have helped her establish contacts for the Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition.

A daughter’s inspiration

Although Gliedt’s diligence in her work and studies are admirable, she remarks that one of her greatest sources of inspiration is her daughter, Mary Kate, a sophomore at Cor Jesu Academy.

One of Mary Kate’s interests is a love of Irish music and culture. Gliedt grew up with an interest in her Irish heritage and is proud to have passed that along to her daughter, whose fascination with it has grown from the time Gliedt and her husband, Leo, took Mary Kate to Ireland for the first time about four years ago.

“It’s very cool,” Gliedt says. “She’s been to Ireland twice now, and she dances for the Clarkson School of Irish Dance. We’ve taken her up to Milwaukee several times for the Irish festival they have every August. We took her for the first time when she was about five, and her interest and enjoyment in the culture has really grown.

“She has a devotion to her interest that makes me very proud,” Gliedt adds. “Leo is the parade chairman for the Clarkson School, and this week our float received the award for best overall in the downtown St. Patrick’s Day parade.”

Gliedt enjoys bringing Mary Kate to campus. Like her mother, Mary Kate has developed a fondness for WUSTL. When she was younger, Mary Kate joined Gliedt for “Take Our Daughters to Work Day” and enjoyed basketball games or other campus events. Now, when Gliedt needs to come in to work on a weekend, her daughter enjoys tagging along and doing her own homework, wandering around campus or browsing in the bookstore.

Gliedt expresses great affection for the University — and not only because of her job.

“In the past five years, my mother and two of my sisters have faced serious health problems,” Gliedt says. “They’re all doing well now, but during the ordeal, I was grateful for my friends here and appreciated the medical treatment my family received and the research going on at the med school. I’m proud to be affiliated with the University and to be a part of the great work being done on campus and in the community.”