Verizon and UMUC Make a Very Smart Team

(Left to right) Jackie Bowen, Susan Butta, and UMUC President Gerald Heeger.

While the Verizon Foundation has traditionally promoted literacy initiatives to help children and adults learn to read and write, its mission has expanded over the years—right through the doors of UMUC. In fact, the foundation is evolving the whole notion of literacy, according to Susan Butta, vice president for public affairs at Verizon Maryland.

“The definition of literacy programs is morphing beyond just getting library books and textbooks into children’s and adult’s hands,” said Butta, who also heads the Verizon Foundation in Maryland. “There are other ways of learning, and e-learning has become a focus for us, merging technology with literacy.”

As a leader in global e-learning, UMUC offers the technology component that fits Verizon’s literacy vision. And given the University’s expertise both in teaching technology and in delivering curricula via technology, a partnership between UMUC and the Verizon Foundation evolved naturally over the past two decades.

“We’ve been pleased over the years to have such a good match between UMUC’s mission and Verizon’s goals for giving,” said Butta, pointing to the way UMUC has linked literacy and technology while serving a diverse student body.

Butta said that Verizon looks for three primary outcomes from its giving programs—helping students learn better by cultivating good readers with a passion for learning, providing companies such as Verizon with a highly educated workforce, and training customers in technology.

Verizon’s vision so closely aligns to UMUC’s mission that Butta recently joined UMUC’s Board of Visitors. “I think very highly of UMUC and its innovative programs,” she said. “UMUC is literally reaching people around the world, using technology to bring students together in virtual classrooms worldwide. The one word I can use to describe it: smart.”

On UMUC’s side of the partnership, Jackie Bowen, assistant vice president and executive director of institutional advancement, has had a long relationship with Verizon Maryland and its president, William R. Roberts.

“Verizon aims to communicate and provide communications options through technology,” Bowen said. “We offer education for everyone, often through technology. That’s a match. In their foundation, one of their key focuses is literacy, which is key in [UMUC’s] Better Opportunities Through Online Education program.”

A $30,000 gift from Verizon this year helped fund the Better Opportunities program, an initiative to help economically disadvantaged people—often single mothers—complete online career training and start on a path to a college degree. Since 2000, Verizon has given more than $80,000 to the project.

“Better Opportunities was a home run for us,” Butta said. “It helped with literacy and funded the technology [that students need to study online]. We’re always interested in people using technology better; that’s what we’re about. We help with tuition, a home computer, Internet access on broadband, books, and supplies. It was a perfect use of our resources.”

In the late 1990s, Verizon gave $25,000 to UMUC’s Virtual Resource Site for Teaching—which trains faculty in innovative uses of Web-based technology—along with $50,000 to Accessibility in Distance Education, UMUC’s initiative to make online education more accessible to the disabled. Since 1984, the foundation has also contributed periodically to the Bell Atlantic Endowed Scholarship for students of Northwestern High School in Hyattsville, Maryland, just down the street from UMUC’s Adelphi headquarters. All told, over the past two decades, Verizon of Maryland has given more than $150,000 to UMUC.

Fittingly, Butta’s personal interests mesh as completely as the interests of the foundation she heads. “I like to read and I’m very tech-savvy,” she said. Her passions include reading novels and collecting electronic gadgets, including her Blackberry, PDA, cell phone, laptop, and portable GPS in her car. “That’s why this job is perfect for me,” she said.