Elizabeth “Betsy” Edwards retires on June 30 after more than 40 years of professional service to Kansas State University.
Throughout her career, Betsy has served as a friend and colleague to many K-Staters, including IT and communications staff. All are invited to a reception honoring her career 3:30-5 p.m. Wednesday, June 19, in 146 Unger Complex (rooms G & H). Cards can be sent to the OME office, 146 Unger Complex.
From 1977 to 1985, Edwards served as the GMRT (general maintenance and repair technician) in the K-State Police Department, where she updated all traffic and parking signs on the Manhattan campus to conform to the Kansas Association for Uniform Traffic Control (KAUTC) regulations; supervised a student crew to annually paint all university parking lots; coordinated with the City of Manhattan on traffic control; interfaced with Facilities Planning on traffic-control plans and maps; worked with then-named Disabled Student Services to implement “handicapped parking” as it was known at the time; and installed signage for the first emergency phones at K-State.
In 1986, Edwards began working on a master’s degree and joined Computing and Network Services (CNS) as a student employee before going to full time. With Neil Erdwien, she co-developed K-State’s first official online presence, named UNICORN for “UNIversity Central Online Resource Network”.
She continued to work in computing and telecommunications activities as a staff assistant for technical publications. Over the years, she has served as assistant specialist, publications specialist, communications coordinator, senior web specialist, senior web content developer, and more. In these capacities, she created and managed websites and webpages for central IT; created the CNS intranet; and planned and coordinated computing communications for campus in the form of Computing and Network News, InfoTech Tuesday, and the IT News blog.
In fall 2006, she joined the Information Technology Assistance Center with responsibilities that evolved from serving as communications liaison and web specialist, editing webpages, and writing IT-related articles, to consulting support for students submitting their theses and dissertations electronically. From 2014 on, she has provided full-time support for electronic theses, dissertations and reports.
Edwards has played a key role in providing the campus with computing news, which morphed from a CNS newsletter into campuswide news about IT happenings. In these capacities, she wrote many of the articles and edited all the submissions. For the K-State sesquicentennial (150 years) and in conjunction with the university archivist, she developed the History of IT at K-State, which is available online. She is known for her excellent editing skills and her exemplary customer service. The latter is evidenced by accolades she still receives from graduate students and faculty.
