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.
A sense of reverence filled the virtual air as panelists for a UMBC event commemorating the 20th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attack shared their stories with participants. Some speakers stumbled over the emotional burden of their memories, while some were more analytical and overarching. Others still were descriptive and chronological. Despite the individual ways of processing that collective trauma, along with the fallout of the war that followed, UMBC participants gave the space needed to handle the difficult and nuanced responses. UMBC leans into having difficult conversations, especially ones built around inspiring future change and community-building—asking collectively “What… Continue Reading Braving Difficult Discussions
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.
After years of strife, fortunes have changed for this West Baltimore native with a college degree in hand, and a new life on the horizon. Donovin Acaro Smith ’21, geography and environmental studies, was 11 years old when he did something bold. It was a sunny day. His school was taking a class trip to the local swimming pool, and parents were welcome to join. Smith’s mother, a honey-voiced woman named Sonia, thought there was a problem. As far as she knew, her son didn’t know how to swim; he however, disagreed. Along with some buddies, he sprinted and leaped… Continue Reading Persevering Through Turbulence
The opening of The Commons (above) in 2002 was a landmark in UMBC’s history. Not only did the state-of-the-art student center become a magnet for campus dining, meeting and games, but its central location has reshaped and reoriented the entire landscape of the campus. But what made way for The Commons? UMBC alumni of the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s have fond memories of Gym 1 (bottom left), which was razed to make way for the new student center. For a largely-commuter campus, such as UMBC was in the first 25 years of its history, Gym 1 provided a memorable campus… Continue Reading Fall 2009: UMBC Life Before the Commons
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.
