On a windy April day, President Valerie Sheares Ashby arrived at UMBC at the Universities at Shady Grove (USG) for her regular student office hours on the Rockville, Maryland, campus. Established in 2000, USG unites nine public universities in one convenient location, creating Retriever degree pathways for folks who might not otherwise be able to make it around the beltway for classes in Catonsville. James “Jimmy” Seavey, Jr. sits across from the president today. Seavey is a second-generation firefighter in the D.C. area in his first semester at UMBC-Shady Grove studying political science. Seavey, who comes from a long line of public servants, discusses the growing importance of public service and education with President Sheares Ashby.
James Seavey: So, like I said, my name’s Jimmy.
President Valerie Sheares Ashby: By the way, Jimmy. My dad was James. My brother is James. My nephew is James. My son is James. And Jimmy is what my oldest brother goes by. So, the name means something to me.
Seavey: That hits right at home because I’m a junior, my father and I were named after my great uncle. James goes back seven generations in my family.
Sheares Ashby: I love it, and I will take it one step further. My mother’s maiden name was James. So she was Shirley James and my dad was James Sheares. So it just goes on and on. Tell me about yourself.
Seavey: I’m an adult full-time student, and I work as a lieutenant for a fire department in the D.C. Metropolitan area. Outside of that, I have volunteered locally for over twenty years. I have found sincere passion in advocacy work, primarily on occupational cancer death benefits and basically expanding rightful benefits for public safety officials overall.
I came to UMBC from Montgomery College. I’m on a little more of a slow roll than a conventional student because of my full-time job. In public safety and sometimes in academia too, I feel the weight of assumptions about who we are and why we do things. Do you feel that as president?
Sheares Ashby: I really consider this role to be two things—which may seem like opposites but are not really. One: It is a privilege, because for me, leadership is service. What you do, that service—it is a privilege to serve a community. The second thing, I keep telling people, “I just have a job, like you do.” Those things are both true. It is a privilege to lead, and it’s just a job.
Seavey: I can certainly understand the weight of that privilege. Outside of my profession, there’s not many times that people will open their door and blindly tell you, “Please come in and help me.” When an Amazon package comes to your house, they leave it outside. When you order delivery, it gets left outside. But if there’s a problem in your home—electrical fire or medical issue with a family member or yourself—immediately you’re encouraging someone like me to come inside. There’s a large amount of responsibility not readily visible.
Sheares Ashby: They are trusting you. They are trusting that you are going to be what the role says. You’re going to be respectful, caring, a person of integrity, somebody with some professional expertise.
Seavey: My father always felt like he had something to prove, because he went into public safety rather than alternatively higher paying careers. But as a junior to his senior going into work in the same vocation, I definitely knew that I needed to work harder and make sure that my name separates in a good way. But losing my dad, unfortunately, six years ago was a key change in my life to say, “You know what? The money in my current career provides for me, but it isn’t everything which I find currency in.” And that’s when I started looking into what else brings joy to my life and found advocacy, which led me back to education.
Can I ask, what does public service mean to you as the university president?
Sheares Ashby: It literally means that we serve the people. It means when I wake up every day, I have to be asking: How are we serving the people of Maryland? And here is the key, not the people who are my students, but the whole state of Maryland. Because the people of Maryland actually pay for the university—we get state dollars. We are serving the people of our state and the nation, whether they ever come to UMBC or not. The research we do should make the lives of people in the state better. The students we send out into your communities, who are going to be the lieutenant of the fire department, those students should go in there and be extraordinary for that community. I literally work for everybody in Maryland. And by the way, everybody in Maryland thinks I work for them too. And that feels good to me, because you actually feel like it is the people’s university.
I particularly love that UMBC has a home here in Shady Grove. We are in a place where students do not have to pay room and board, because we are embedded in the community. That is cutting the cost of education in half already. Think about people who have full lives, full families, full jobs—it is hard to make education happen on top of that. And then I think about the composition of the student body here—it is a reflection of the composition of this community and the surrounding counties.
The other piece is that because of proximity to D.C., a lot of students are attracted to this location. So many Marylanders have lost their jobs in the federal government—these changes have definitely had the greatest impact on the state of Maryland. One of the things I am proud of that UMBC is doing is we have launched something called Paws and Pivot through the Division of Professional Studies and our Career Center, providing resources for all these folks, particularly our alums, who are needing to actually pause and pivot. Some of these people have not interviewed in decades, so we are thinking about resume assistance, job opportunities, and certificate programs. I am really proud that we were able to be responsive to that. There is so much that a university does beyond just the four-year degree.
Seavey: Arguably, I would not be a student at all, much less potentially re-endeavoring to complete another degree if I had to pick a university with a traditional location outside of my community. I really wanted to continue studying political science. But I kept asking myself, “Well, am I going to be able to do that at rush hour? Am I going to be able to do that on my days off? What sacrifice will my family need to endure? Is the faculty going to be understanding of an adult student?” So having the flexible schedule we have here, and plainly, the school being exactly where it is, afforded me that opportunity.
As a Marylander, and as a public servant myself, it was about it being realistic and available. So the availability here made it realistic. Imagine the people that have the fire inside them right now that want to do it. Then they say, “But I can’t get there.”
Sheares Ashby: That is the work that we have to continue to do—to take away the financial barriers, the geographic barriers, whatever it may be—to take that barrier down.
Tags: Office Hours, Political Science, president, shady grove, Spring 2025, USG