All posts by: Allison Cruz '18

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.

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.

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

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 Mama’s Boys celebrated a decade of rockin’ it a cappella with an anniversary concert at the University Center Ballroom campus on May 2, 2014. Formed in 2003 as a merger between two separate groups and officially recognized a year later, Mama’s Boys figure to be a pitch perfect expression of UMBC pride for decades to come.

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.