It’s only 7:15, doors open at 8 so surely I will get a good spot in line; or so I thought. You can imagine my dismay to find that the line into the RAC Arena stretched all the way past the Biology Building and was wrapping back around; I got comfortable in front of the Meyerhoff Chemistry Building. The line continued to grow and eventually went far up the steps between Sherman Hall and the University Center. The line that wrapped around our UMBC campus – and somehow managed to fit inside the RAC – was for none other than… Continue Reading Reflections on Trevor Noah at UMBC
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.
Today’s control booth (below) in the Black Box theatre of UMBC’s Performing Arts & Humanities Building is filled with sleek, cutting-edge equipment, like a Yamaha digital mixer, and used as much as a teaching lab as the nerve center for lighting and sound. While the technology may be eons ahead of that found in the control room of the past, though, nothing could ever replace the heart of shows past, as evidenced by (above) the underside of this plywood board used in the old theatre both as a makeshift tech table and a Sharpie-tastic yearbook of productions from as far… Continue Reading Spring 2017: Preserving the Old Theatre
UMBC’s athletics department has grown with the rising profile of the university, and the retirement of athletic director Charles Brown this month after 24 years at the helm of the program is an opportunity to reflect on UMBC’s winning tradition (50 conference championships over the past two decades) and its burgeoning club sports program (25 sports) – all of it accomplished with a proven commitment to the university’s high academic standards.
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.
Want to get a sense of the changes at UMBC over its four decades of existence? Map it out. In 2010, the firm Ayers Saint Gross created a brand new map of the UMBC campus (right) that will replace the university’s current maps over the next few months. The creation of a new campus map is a good occasion to take a look back at how UMBC mapped itself out in its earliest days. The campus map below was created in 1970, when UMBC had a total of 13 buildings and a half-finished loop. We’ve also noted a few other… Continue Reading Summer 2010: Mapping Out UMBC
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
Whether it’s 1967 or 2011, the arrival of a new set of freshmen at UMBC is always a headline event. (Especially when you move in during Hurricane Irene!) And now that the university has cemented its transition from a primarily commuter campus to a residential campus, move-in day becomes a bigger event each year. In 2010, 74% of incoming UMBC freshmen lived on campus! Let the invasion begin!
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.
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.
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.
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.
