Iowa State has a new Department of Public Safety officer to call on for help, but this person may not fit stereotypical descriptions of DPS officers.

Elizabeth Gries, 21, senior in English from Albert City, is the latest addition to the DPS team. She graduated from the Iowa Law Enforcement Academy on Nov. 20 and began working with the department shortly after.

“I’m excited to be here and to work with all the students,” Gries said.

Though she will not officially patrol the streets until spring, she said so far she loves her job and plans on a long career.

“I’ll stay with DPS,” Gries said. “That’s my plan so far.”

She said she currently is going through her field training program, where she rides along with another DPS officer to get accustomed to the job.

“My FTO should probably be done sometime in the spring,” she said.

Gries has not always wanted to be a patrol officer. She said the idea “came together” in recent months.

“It’s just kind of something I decided to do this summer,” she said.

Part of her inspiration came from working with DPS officers last spring.

“I was on a Veishea risk management committee last year,” she said. “It kind of helped me decide.”

Gries took the fall semester off for the 12-week basic training course at Camp Dodge military base in Des Moines.

“It was kind of like an internship,” she said.

At the academy, Gries learned about all the aspects of being a police officer, such as firearms training, defensive driving, defense tactics, physical training, criminal law, patrol techniques, investigation, law and court procedures, and human relations.

“[I learned about] anything a police officer might use,” she said.

Only seven of her 37 academy classmates were females, but Gries said she thinks law enforcement is an up-and-coming field for women.

“So far I’ve been treated with the same respect all of the male officers have received,” she said.

Gries plans to graduate from ISU in December 1999, and said her English degree will be useful as a police officer.

“DPS has done a lot of work with programming on campus,” she said. “Hopefully my degree will come in handy there. And there’s always a lot of report writing that needs to be done.”

Gries said she will resume classes part time in January while she works full time for DPS.

“I love it so far,” she said. “The department’s wonderful, and the people I work with are great.”

She said the people are her favorite part of the job.

“I think we’re really lucky; we have a lot of really good people in the department here,” she said. “I get to spend a lot of time with the students, too, so that’s fun.”

Gries said it is important that students know she and the other DPS officers are real police officers who are on the campus to help and to look out for everyone’s best interests.

“It’s our job to let them know we’re here to help them,” she said. “If they’re not living on campus, they’re not seeing a lot of us in the police mode.”

Gries said she is excited about her new job and is looking forward to being around for a while but added, “I have a lot to learn.”