These are the principles that guide our work at UMBC Magazine and UMBC News. Questions? Contact us at magazine@umbc.edu.
- Develop engaging online and print content that strengthens the intellectual and emotional ties each UMBC community member has to the university (including students, alumni, faculty, staff, parents, and friends), encourages engagement, and reaches a wide campus audience and beyond.
- Hold ourselves accountable to reflect and affirm the diversity of identities, backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives represented in our Retriever community.
- Uplift the intentional cross-disciplinary collaboration that results in research breakthroughs and professional achievements of our students, faculty, staff, and alumni, reflecting UMBC’s strengths as a research and teaching university and as a diverse and global campus.
- Maintain the highest journalistic standards (accuracy, fairness, truthfulness, inclusivity) and recognize our need for ongoing self-examination. When we make mistakes, we’ll use them as learning opportunities to guide us toward better practices.
- Create a welcoming environment through inclusive, accessible storytelling. Our audiences should be able to easily engage with our user-friendly content through plain language, alt-text, closed captioning, type contrast, and other measures as a standard approach.
- Tell the ongoing stories of student achievement and activities that showcase the unique Retriever brand of student life at each UMBC location, including Catonsville, Shady Grove, Downtown, and virtually.
- Highlight the continuum, rather than the end goal, of the learning journey.
- Through our stories, encourage a culture of philanthropy at UMBC, especially in support of our current students, through mentorship, scholarships, and volunteer opportunities.
- Showcase the work of our community partners in Baltimore and beyond and strengthen both the regionaland national reputation of UMBC.
- Develop stories with visual examples of collaboration, accessibility, innovation, and creativity, using our photography and video resources to show the breadth of our campus community.
- Establish a sense of place. Help alumni from the founding class to the current cohort feel a connection to what UMBC is doing now and see their own experiences reflected in our stories.
- Enable alumni to stay connected or reconnect and discover ways to invest their time and resources alongside other alumni and the wider university community.