Stories

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.

Over the course of nine years, UMBC’s Exceptional by Example Campaign raised money to invest in a community without boundaries, made up of teachers, students and researchers who come from every imaginable background and share a commitment to academic excellence and innovative thinking. More than $115 million was raised to provide resources that advance th

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.

It sometimes feels impossible to make an individual mark on a problem as widespread as hunger. But, as part of the “One Million Acts of Good” program sponsored by Cheerios and Ellen Degeneres, UMBC students worked together this week to contribute to a nationwide effort to feed those in need. Twenty-four students worked in shifts to stuff 300 boxes full of cereal, applesauce, and other food, as well as information and encouraging notes. Chartwells, which runs UMBC Dining Services and True Grits dining hall, said that five local organizations will receive the boxes, including  Southwest Emergency Services, Elkridge Food Pantry,… Continue Reading One Million Acts of Good

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.

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.