When visitors attend the Illinois State Fair Aug. 12 — 21 in Springfield, they’ll likely see a booth for the College of Veterinary Medicine among the UI exhibits. One of the people who will have worked to create the booth is Beth Erwin, staff secretary for Vet Med’s development office. In addition to her secretarial duties, she also gets involved in the public affairs and events of the college, giving her an opportunity to do a variety of jobs. The development office publishes a quarterly newsletter for alumni, and just recently, the college celebrated its 50th anniversary. Erwin does what she can to help with all those challenges and projects.
Do you like what you do?
I love my job. It’s very diverse. Some days it’s the phone and typing and some days we’re doing alumni events so I get to go out and meet the alumni. We handle reunions too, so those are the kinds of things we do that are fun and make it so diverse.
And I love the College of Vet Med. I love animals. This is my 13th year here.
Are you married?
Yes, for nine years in October. My husband, Mike, and I just bought a house this past year in Tolono and we have a dog, Dakota. We’ve had him since he was 8 weeks old.
You two are dancers, right?
We enjoy country-western dancing. We’ve danced about 10 years. We met out at the old Lariat dance club in Champaign. We were just kind of friends but didn’t really go out or anything. And then my roommate and one of his friends had tickets to see the band Sawyer Brown in Tuscola, so she asked me and Mike’s friend asked him, so we all went together and we started dating from them on.
Now you both have an interest in rodeo?
I always kind of had an interest in rodeo, but when I met Mike he was very much a rodeo fan. It’s evolved to now we try to go to Las Vegas every year for the Professional Bull Riders Finals. We’ve been going the last couple years and we’re already planning for 2000. You get out there and the cowboys are so willing to talk with you and tell you their strategies for the bulls. It’s such a fun event that we really enjoy going. Last time we were able to get all their autographs.
What else do you do?
Mike is building a hot rod or drag car out in our back garage, so that keeps him kind of busy. He hopes to race it down in Charleston. We’ll see. I think it’ll be a while down the road, looking at what’s in the garage. [She laughed.] But that’s ultimately what he wants to do. And that’s something he can work on. When he’s had a tough day he can go out there and work on that car and he’s tickled.
He’s also a pretty good NASCAR fan. I’m just kind of getting into it. I’m just about to go to my very first NASCAR race.
I’m more rodeo still, he’s more NASCAR. But we’re meeting in the middle.
And this year because we have a house for the first time we have worked in our garden a lot. We didn’t think we’d enjoy that, but we’re having so much fun out there keeping it up and making sure it’s watered, and when you get that first little radish, it’s quite a deal.
So between rodeo, NASCAR, and the house, it’s been a busy year for us.
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