UMBC had yearbooks in 1968, 1969, 1970, and 1986 – and they remain an invaluable source of information about the early history of the university. What about those other years? We need your help. So we’ve created a new digital space (‘Retriever Stories’) so alumni and others in the UMBC community can share their experiences of UMBC. Read more about it on page 6 of this issue – then dig out your old photos and memories and join us at retrieverstories.umbc.edu.
The rise of chess as a symbol of UMBC’s aspirations as an honors university coincided with the appointment of UMBC professor of computer science Alan Sherman as the faculty advisor of the UMBC chess club in 1991. Sherman was committed to renovating the university’s chess identity, and the program he led steadily shot up the national rankings between 1991 and 1996. He helped pioneer innovations now considered essential in the world of college chess: scholarships, use of technology, and a recruitment of young chess superstars (including a number from Central and Eastern Europe). UMBC’s team has worked hard to maintain… Continue Reading Fall 2015: UMBC’s Elite Chess Team
The arts and humanities have always been central to the UMBC experience. Professors who taught here in the university’s earliest days (pictured above, leading a class in the late 1960’s), established the university’s reputation as a center of excellence for the arts and humanities that has lured successive generations of talented students and faculty to UMBC.
UMBC’s Quad has been filled with the sound of music in every era, from today’s Quadmania (above) to a student music performance (inset) in the university’s earliest days.
September 20, 1969 – The Velvet Underground “I was just a couple of weeks into freshman year, straight out of Loyola High School, and still struggling to get the hang of the looser, hippier culture that was UMBC at the time, when the Velvet Underground played a concert there. “I confess my memories of it are vague. Partly that’s because we were all then experimenting with consciousness-altering substances of one sort or another. But mostly it’s because I was with a girl I must have met just a week or so before. I think I remember the concert was in… Continue Reading Fall 2010: Past vs. Present Quadmania
You’ve come a long way, UMBC Police. Back at the founding of the campus, officers tooled around campus in a station wagon (inset) that likely wouldn’t have kept pace in a high speed chase. But today’s UMBC officers have two new top-of-the-line Ford Interceptors at their disposal; the utility model (pictured here) and a classic sedan. Both Interceptors have all-wheel drive (to make snow days safer) and boast enhanced officer protection. Campus already feels safer.
UMBC’s first Earth Day, on April 20, 1970, was not a success. UMBC students occupied the Hillcrest Building and classrooms to protest the university’s refusal to renew the contracts of two professors, leading John Adams, the editor of The Retriever, to question what he saw as the protestors’ narrow priorities. Adams would likely be happy that today’s UMBC students have made Earth Day a campus-wide celebration of the planet.
Ancient studies at UMBC has always meant to travel, as we discovered when Phyllis Hicks Clark ‘70, history, shared her photos with UMBC Magazine of a 1969 ancient studies trip to Greece. Forty years later, UMBC students went back to Greece on an ancient studies-organized trip. Here are some photographic relics of both journeys. Picture Captions: The amphitheatre at Epidauros (330 BCE), shot in 2009. 1969 UMBC sojourners caught Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis on film at an Athens market. Larry Wilder ‘70, biological sciences, at Olympos. Billy Johnson, a current student in Ancient studies, at the Temple of Athena Aphaea on… Continue Reading Winter 2010: Traveling the World with UMBC’s Ancient Studies
UMBC is known as a hale and hearty campus that rarely closes its doors because of winter weather. But the great ‘Snowpocalypse’ of 2011 closed down the campus for almost a week. Fortunately, no cars skidded down into the Library Pond – an event caught on film by The Retriever’s William Morgenstern and featured on the front page of the newspaper’s February 10, 1970 edition.
Back in 1992, Tim Ford – who is manager of illustrative services for UMBC’s department of biological sciences – snapped a photograph of the university’s interim president Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, surrounded by members of the UMBC community. To celebrate the 20th anniversary of Hrabowski’s presidency, UMBC Magazine recreated that photograph after the university’s August retreat.
On April 28, the lights went down on Michael Hollinger’s play Incorruptible (above) – the last UMBC Theatre Department production in the campus theatre which opened in 1968. A production of Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible (right) was one of the first performances in that space. The department’s productions will begin in the new Performing Arts and Humanities Building beginning in late Fall 2012.
Dance has always been an integral part of UMBC campus life – especially its social life. Look back through old yearbooks and university archives and there are plenty of photos of the mixers and formals of that era. Today, dance on campus not only knits together members of the university community, but it also helps charitable causes. The UMBC 2010 Dance-a-Thon, sponsored by Sigma Alpha Epsilon & Phi Beta Sigma, was just such an occasion, with its proceeds benefiting The Matthews Foundation – which provides financial aid and support to children of Maryland diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
