Dear UMBC Community,
Please join me in congratulating Vice Provost and Dean for Undergraduate Academic Affairs Katharine Cole, who will be retiring effective January 1, 2025. Cole retires after seven years in the role and 12 years with the University System of Maryland.
Since 2017, Cole has had many accomplishments as vice provost and dean in the Division of Undergraduate Academic Affairs. Cole envisioned and established the university’s Academic Success Center, a one-stop center for student academic support services. The Academic Success Center currently houses all university-wide tutoring, the Writing Center, Academic Alerts, the Office of Academic Advocacy, and in collaboration with the College of Engineering and Information Technology, a Computing Success Center serving all majors.
In collaboration with Enrollment Management, Cole wrote and received funding for a two-year grant from the University Innovation Alliance to create the UMBC Students Transferring and Redefining Success (STARS) program. A combined effort among the University Innovation Alliance, Undergraduate Academic Affairs, Enrollment Management, and Student Affairs, this program provides scholarships, academic support, a sense of community and belonging, and major exploration for UMBC STARS.
Working with the Council of Deans, Undergraduate Program Directors, and Faculty Senate, some of Cole’s additional meaningful accomplishments include the establishment and co-leadership of a university-wide Transfer Student Success committee; major revisions to the academic policy for Arbitrary and Capricious Grading; changes to the university’s Latin Honors policy; the acceptance of military coursework for veterans; the implementation of mandatory incomplete grade contracts between students and faculty; the elimination of the university’s requirement mandating non-academic credits for physical education courses; and the development and implementation of a 90-credit degree audit graduation check for all students.
We are grateful to Cole for her many years of service to UMBC and the Division of Undergraduate Academic Affairs. Please join me in expressing our deepest thanks and congratulations to Cole on a wonderful career and best wishes for a happy retirement!
I am also pleased to announce that effective September 1, 2024, Stephen Freeland will be serving as interim vice provost and dean for Undergraduate Academic Affairs.
Freeland joined UMBC in 2001 and is a professor in biological sciences. He left UMBC for a brief time in 2009, when he joined the NASA Astrobiology Institute at the University of Hawaii. He returned to UMBC in 2013 as director of the Individualized Study Program, where he has served ever since. In 2021, Freeland also became associate dean for Undergraduate Academic Affairs.
Freeland holds a Ph.D. in genetics from Cambridge University. Prior to his Ph.D., he received a M.S. in biological computation at the University of York and a B.A. in zoology at Oxford University. In recent years, Freeland’s research into life’s origins and early evolution has been completed by increasingly working with federal and philanthropic funding agencies to form and develop interdisciplinary teams of scientists in the United States and around the world. Freeland has received multiple honors, including the Trotter Prize in 2019 for “pioneering contributions to the understanding of the role of information, complexity and interference in illuminating the mechanisms and wonder of nature.” He was also elected a fellow of the American Scientific Affiliation in 2021.
Please join me in congratulating Freeland on his new appointment. We look forward to having him serve UMBC in his new role and join the Academic Leadership Team.
Sincerely,
Manfred H. M. van Dulmen
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs