Nearly 30 years ago, just approaching his graduation date, Mark Wilding prepared to leave campus ‘having spent three good years in Amherst trying to scale (not figure out) the maze,’ said Wilding in one of his humor columns for The Daily Collegian. ‘But the place still has questions, which to [his] mind, will never be answered.’

‘

In the time Wilding has spent achieving success in Hollywood as a lead writer and executive producer of ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ the very questions he posed in one of his final humor columns in The Daily Collegian remain unanswered.

‘

Why do they charge a dime (now a quarter) for hot water at the coffee shops around campus? Why don’t they paint the two Whitmore flagpoles? Why don’t the windows in Herter open? Why doesn’t the Campus Center Hotel offer Friday Night specials? And why do classrooms in Bartlett and Machmer have blackboards on the side-walls?

‘

The campus was undoubtedly a much different place at the time: Jimmy Carter had just taken office, the legal drinking age was 18, the Blue Wall was a bar and bricks were falling from the W.E.B. Du Bois Library, but some things remain the same. For instance, Wilding seemed surprised to learn that the library still stands, exclaiming, ‘Wait it’s the same one!’

‘

Though Wilding admits, ‘I was a terrible economics major,’ he indulged his long-standing interest in writing by taking English classes at Smith College and writing his weekly column in The Collegian. Even then, through his column, Wilding said, ‘I was always trying to entertain.’

‘

Today he remains true to the same sense of entertaining, working 12-hour days to maintain the popularity of ‘Grey’s Anatomy,’ for which he has received multiple Emmy nominations, won a Writer’s Guild of America Award and was nominated for another, and won a Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation award, in addition to gaining an enormous fan following for the show.

‘

Following his graduation, Wilding dreamed of going into journalism with a focus in economics writing.

‘

‘That was my first big mistake on my career path to being a TV writer, studying Econ.,’ he joked. When he first entered the real world, Wilding briefly explored jobs ranging from a Stop & Shop clerk, to sports editor for a small Atlanta newspaper.

‘

Wilding said that when he was 27 he was still working as a sports editor and ‘wasn’t getting paid very much money and I was stuck in the middle of Georgia and I had always liked movies, so I moved out to Los Angeles.’ When he arrived in L.A. he took a job as a buyer for a department store but admits he ‘really, really hated it.’

‘

All the while he continued to write.

‘

‘I wrote a bunch of bad screenplays that never got made and never even sold,’ he said. But Wilding kept at it. ‘You’ve got to be pretty thick-skinned [ in this business.] There’s a lot of rejection.’

‘

In his early 30s he submitted a play he wrote based on the Bhopal gas leak in India to a playwright’s festival called ‘The Company Man,’ in Santa Rosa, Calif. After winning a festival award, the show was performed in Los Angeles, where Disney executives saw it and approached Wilding to see how he would like to write for television. Though it wasn’t until Wilding turned 35 that he got his first paid TV writing job, he’s been at it ever since, having authored a number of plays, TV pilots and full-length feature film scripts.

‘

Throughout the 17 years he’s been writing for the screen he has worked on such well-known shows as ‘Charmed,’ ‘Ellen,’ ‘Caroline in the City,’ ‘Dave’s World,’ ‘Becker,’ ‘The Naked Truth,’ ‘The Tony Danza Show,’ ‘Working,’ ‘Jesse,’ and ‘Jake 2.0.’ He has also written two feature films, called ‘Party Boys’ and ‘Family Time,’ and a sitcom pilot called ‘The Cell’ that was rumored to have been picked up by Sacha Baron Cohen and adapted into a feature film. The New York Times lauds Wilding’s‘ ‘The Cell’ as ‘the funniest unproduced script in Hollywood.’

‘

Perhaps what is most appealing about Wilding is his easy manner and humble attitude.

‘

‘My mom is proud,’ said Wilding when reflecting on his career. When asked if he ever dreamed of returning to campus to speak with and inspiring young undergraduates, he confessed that he never imagined he would have much to offer.

‘

But the exceedingly warm welcome he has received so far by administrators and students in classes has proven him wrong on that count. Already the venue for his lecture has been moved to the Campus Center Auditorium, due to a high volume of anticipated attendees.

‘

When asked about words of wisdom he might offer students, he cautions against listening to one’s elders.

‘

‘Don’t go looking for advice in the sense that I’m a TV writer now and most of the TV writers I know didn’t start out wanting to be TV writers … as long as you find something you love to do then that sort of becomes your touchstone in a way. For me, it’s writing. Even if I were to never make a penny at it I would still do it. I would still do that no matter what.’

‘

Mark Wilding will be speaking as the Eleanor Bateman Alumni Scholar in Residence

today at 4 p.m. in the Campus Center Auditorium.

‘

Caroline Scannell can be reached at ccscanne@student.umass.edu.