Stories

senior theatre design and production major Isabelle Tabet  https://umbc.box.com/s/1qcqhedad61wwmjh8rxsku2iqp0zkvts

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.

What to do when you achieve a dream job before 30? Brigitte Pribnow Moore ’05, theatre, says you should expand the scope and ambition of that dream. Moore is the executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Young Playwrights’ Theater (YPT), a group that fosters arts education in area schools via playwriting and allows highschool writers to collaborate with professional theatre makers to see their own work on the stage. The 2013 recipient of the UMBC Outstanding Alumni of the Year Award in the Visual and Performing Arts has big plans. Over the next three years, Moore aims to expand her… Continue Reading Young and Hungry

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.

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.

“Years may pass, but commencement – whether it is in 1979 (above left) or in 2008 (inset) – brings with it the same mixture of accomplishment, optimism and a bittersweet feeling of departure.”                  

When we asked alumni who’d fallen in love at UMBC to share their photographs, we received a tremendous response across the generations. Whether you met at a coffeehouse in Gym 1 or at an open mic night at The Commons, we hope you find yourself (and some memories) in these photos.