UMBC Parent Preview

One university is putting diversity front and center and helping to ensure that the next generation of bioethicists is more culturally and ethnically diverse than ones gone by. UMBC students have recently started a Bioethics Student Association.

This year, the UMBC Bioethics Student Association (BSA) will be sending seven students to the 12th Annual National Undergraduate Bioethics Conference at Harvard University. BSA now boasts 70+ members and had only 2 members attend attended NUBC last year, but this year has a proud troop of 7 marching their way to Boston.
Why is THIS undergraduate bioethics group, in particular, an important harbinger for the future of diversity of bioethics writ large?

The Princeton Review ranked UMBC one of the 20 most diverse universities in the nation, and the membership of the BSA reflects this diversity.

BSA Vice President Batsheva Melissa Chapman comments, "Although we all come from different races and religions, we have one goal in mind: to bring about the awareness of the different ethical issues that society faces in the world of science."

Students with majors as diverse as philosophy, bioinformatics and computational biology, biochemistry, molecular biology, public health, and statistics will attend NUBC from UMBC this year. One student, Richard Blissett said, "Once I got to college, I suddenly started wondering about many of the ethical issues in my field." He will present on the ethics of marketing preimplantion genetic screening to infertile couples.

The UMBC men’s lacrosse team, winners of two of the last three America East men’s lacrosse titles, is the preseason choice of the coaches to again claim the crown in 2009. The Retrievers received a total of 24 points and four first-place votes (coaches were not permitted to vote for their team), just ahead of University at Albany, the 2007 champion, which received 22 points and a pair of first-place votes.

Stony Brook University was chosen third with 16 points, while Binghamton University was tabbed fourth with 14. University of Vermont and University of Hartford rounded out the six-team poll with nine and five points, respectively.

The top four teams in the conference will qualify for the America East Championship with the winner of the tournament receiving an automatic bid to the NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Championship.

The Princeton Review has included UMBC in its “Best Value Colleges for 2009” list. UMBC is one of 50 public institutions in the United States recognized for offering a combination of educational excellence and affordability.

The honor is the second major national distinction UMBC has received from leading higher-education rankings publications this academic year. UMBC is among the Top 5 national universities recognized as innovators by U.S.News & World Report Best Colleges Guide, along with George Mason, Clemson, University of Southern California and Arizona State University. Other schools on the list include Drexel, Northeastern, University of California – Irvine and Ohio State.