Each plant, whether a small wild buttercup or a massive oak tree, starts out as seed—packed with potential to grow well beyond its original size. By this logic, The Garden’s new Little Seed Library—co-sponsored by Retriever Essentials and the Office of Sustainability and installed by Facilities Management—is seeded with infinite potential. 

Based on the now-familiar concept of Little Free Libraries that spread access to the love of reading, the Little Seed Library, down the sidewalk from UMBC Police, is set up for people to donate seeds (perhaps harvested from the adjacent garden) and those who want to put their green thumb to the test can take what they need to get started.

The idea stemmed from conversations Michael Berardi, assistant director of Retriever Essentials, was having with folks on campus about tangible ways to grow interest in the community garden while wanting to grow awareness of where our food actually comes from. “We want to help campus engage with our food in a more deep and meaningful way,” says Berardi ’19, M.P.S. ’25, who was also a co-founder of the campus-adjacent coffee shop, OCA Mocha. 

Andrew Eisenhardt ’21 was one of the people talking to Berardi. He remembers: “We were hiking in the woods of Patapsco State Park brainstorming some ideas for Retriever Essentials. I had recently seen a YouTube video where a community put up seed libraries and people could go to get new seeds and donate their excess. I figured it could be cool to have something like that at UMBC.” Eisenhardt, who already graduated with a double major in geography and environmental systems and media and communication studies and is currently pursuing another bachelor’s in computer engineering, started working in The Garden during his first time at UMBC when he needed a break from doing homework and wanted to see what opportunities were on-campus to get outside and work with nature. “The Little Seed Library serves as a great starting point for community members to participate in and learn about this work,” he says. “Just get a seed, throw it in some soil and see what happens! Worst case scenario, your seed never germinates. Either way you’ll learn something about plants and you might even make some friends along the way who are trying to grow a better future.”

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Jessica Graziano, who has been tending a plot in The Garden for several years, only foresees fruitful outcomes for the Little Seed Library. Eventually, in addition to seeds and instructions for planting, Graziano would like to see folks donate gardening tools and horticultural resources. Graziano, the current president of The Garden club, says her favorite thing to grow is perennials. “My current favorite is False Indigo, which I’ve had growing in my plot at The Garden for about two and a half years,” she shares. Recently recognized with a UMBC Community Impact award at SGA’s 2025 – 2026 CelebratingOrgs event, The Garden is lush with promise. 

Nicole Wolf, UMBC’s sustainability coordinator, says that the Office of Sustainability has some nutrient rich ideas coming up in connection with the other organizations that help support The Garden. But in the meantime, “access to free seeds and gardening space removes the barrier of not knowing where to start, or even having to leave campus if they choose to use the community plots,” says Wolf. “We will continue to foster this culture by hosting regular ‘seed save collection’ events on our campus to keep the library stocked while teaching attendees about native plants and how to harvest ethically as we go.” 

In a sparsely wooded expanse just off Hilltop Circle, engines rev and dirt flies. Drivers whoop as they steer through trees, clear rocks, traverse ditches, and accelerate down steep hills. You might expect UMBC Police would be handing out tickets for such shenanigans—but this is officially sanctioned fun. It’s all part of the annual Faculty and Staff Drive Day, hosted by UMBC’s Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Baja racing team on Halloween this year.

On the grass, an array of single-seat, off-road vehicles sit parked, showcasing the skills of the UMBC team, whose 20 or so student members pull together to design, build, and race a new car each year. On Drive Day, adventurous UMBC community members and industry sponsors are invited to feel the thrill of hopping behind the wheel. 

The club takes safety seriously. Drivers don a neck restraint, helmet, goggles, and gloves. They are buckled in with a 5-point harness and slip their hands through wrist restraints that will keep their arms inside the vehicle at all times. If things get really hairy, there’s a kill switch that shuts off the engine. 

Plenty of team volunteers are on hand to calm nerves, free stuck vehicles, and fill empty gas tanks. When a suspension arm on one of the cars gets bent in a run-in with a tree, the team grabs tools, lifts up the vehicle, and swaps in a new arm. 

“I want two things: for people to be safe and for them to have fun,” says Shawn Pourifarsi, a junior computer engineering major and co-vice president of the club. 

For two Residential Life staffers who stopped by for the first time, the event was a great success on both counts. “It was terrifyingly fun,” says Marnea Shamblen, an administrative assistant. “What a rush,” agrees her colleague Grace Collins, the residential education and leadership coordinator, still savoring the adrenaline kick. “I give it a 10 out of 10.”

Like most dads, Chris Burk immediately told his 10-year-old daughter that the object she was trying to fish out of Pig Pen Pond was probably trash. Emily was not to be deterred, and Burk said he “had egg on his face” when lo and behold, the piece of trash was actually a ring. A West Point class ring from 101 years ago. And wait, was that a name inscribed?

The Burks live a few miles from UMBC and occasionally use it as a place to take a family stroll. When they visited last summer, Burk noticed the water level was a little lower than usual in the body of water formally known as CERA Pond, which sits between the bwtech@UMBC Research and Technology Park and the loop across from Admin Garage. That’s when Emily got a stick to try to snag a shiny tab settled at the bottom of the shallow embankment.

The name on the ring—Santiago G. Guevara—led Burk, who is a land surveyor and well acquainted with historical research, on an internet crusade to 1) reunite the ring with the owner’s descendants and 2) figure out how in tarnation the ring got there in the first place. So far he’s only been able to check off the first item.

Enter Nick Guevara, a U.S. Navy veteran, dedicated family historian, avid blogger, and most importantly, Santiago Guevara’s grandson. Nick also has no clue how the family heirloom ended up in UMBC’s pond. (Although he does have a nephew, Quintin Simmons, who graduated in 2020 with a degree in geography and environmental systems. Simmons, who coincidentally has swum in Pig Pen Pond, didn’t know his great granddad went to West Point, much less had a class ring from 1923. In another twist of coincidence, Simmons works at a company housed in bwtech and can see the pond from his office.)

“I’m so flabbergasted that these things can still happen,” says Nick. “It makes the world feel small in a good way. We need more stories to bring people together.”

Do you have any clues about how Santiago Guevara’s West Point ring ended up in CERA Pond? What’s the best thing you’ve found on campus? Email us at magazine@umbc.edu.

On a sunny October afternoon, a faint melody emerges from a stand of trees just beyond the Fine Arts Building and within hearing distance of the Performing Arts and Humanities Building. We leave the paved pathway and follow our ears up the hill to find first-year music education student Luke Heichlinger leaning into the keys of a lone piano, playing what turns out to be “Ein Heldenleben” (“A Hero’s Life”) by Richard Strauss.

“I always look for a practice room with a window, but sometimes I can’t get one,” he says, explaining that he and his friend, Hannah, originally joked that the piano in the woods might be a hallucination. Thankfully, it wasn’t—so they came back the next day prepared with sheet music. 

Installed just days before, “Piano Garden” is the latest “performance” of New Zealand-born composer Annea Lockwood’s ever-growing outdoor series of “Piano Transplants” compositions in which, since 1969, defunct pianos are burned, submerged in water, or—as is the case at UMBC— left to be taken over by trees and plant life. In the days and weeks following the installation at UMBC, the unofficial path to the piano became well-worn as students like Heichlinger brought their best tunes, additional instruments, and voices, and performed—very often—just for themselves. 

Lockwood, later, visited campus as part of the annual Livewire music festival and listened while Linehan Artist Scholar and piano performance major Ida Dierker improvised in the woods for all to enjoy.

“UMBC has all these beautiful outdoor spaces,” says Linda Dusman, Livewire director, professor, and longtime Lockwood fan. “Stumbling upon a piano in the woods…kind of wakes you up to the experience of your environment. And also helps you remember what a piano does: that music can wake you up to the moment, even if you’re not   directly hearing it.”

On the day we found Heichlinger, we learn he purposefully chose a romantic era composition that might fit in well with his surroundings. The dappled shadows flitted across the keyboard as he played.

“This is a really nice setting,” he said. “Nature and music go together so well, and this is the perfect example of that.”

Beware of crushes. Especially as a 10-year-old in 1995. They might lead to a lifelong hobby, rooms of your house dedicated to your collection, a quirky and supportive community, and even a spot in an Emmy-winning documentary. Katie Chrzanowski, however, has no regrets.

After a brief crush on someone who collected PEZ, and thinking that starting her own collection would be a fun competition, she’s now the proud owner of more than several thousand PEZ dispensers, the host of the Maryland PEZ Gathering, and an extra on the set of The Pez Outlaw. But Chrzanowski ’07, visual arts, doesn’t just collect PEZ paraphernalia for the fame and glory.

She started her collection with a pumpkin head and a snowman, gifts she held onto before knowing they would snowball into a collection requiring dozens of professional plexiglass PEZ dispenser displays. (“Otherwise, they just fall over like dominos.”) Chrzanowski, who is a senior web experience/digital designer for commonvision, UMBC’s student-facing print and design shop, attributes her long connection with the fanciful candy company to the community.

When she began collecting, PEZheads (as they call themselves) were already active on the nascent internet. In addition to being active on the online forum, in the mid-1990s she signed up for a monthly print newsletter, which she still receives. “Everyone was so welcoming and engaging. It’s been amazing to be a part of for so many years.”

Like the animation major she was, Chrzanowski has a sweet system for organizing her collection, starting with the studio the licensed dispenser is from—Pixar, Disney, Blue Sky, and so on. “Then I organize it by franchise release date and then oldest on the left and newer on the right.” The result is a meticulous, museum-worthy, 360-degree PEZ accumulation that lets Chrzanowski show off her almost 30-year hobby.

For anyone interested in joining Chrzanowski, she says, “Start with what you love. Whatever makes you happy—there’s no right or wrong way to collect.”  

It makes sense that in a space on campus intentionally left green, wooded, and, well sacred, there would be someplace to sit, and under that bench there would be a notebook waiting for you, along with a writing implement. Your thoughts are the last ingredient for the moment.

Since the founding of the Joseph Beuys Sculpture Park on the Knoll in the southwest corner of the Loop in 2001, UMBC community members have been writing in journals tucked under benches from Nature Sacred—an organization that hopes to promote a connection to nature through journaling and contemplation spaces throughout America.

Sandra Abbott, curator of collections and outreach at the Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture (CADVC), has collected and replaced many dozens of the journals as part of her role at UMBC. “Journaling is a very intimate medium. People pour their hearts out in them here just like they would a personal diary tucked under their pillow,” says Abbott, who shares the journals with Nature Sacred and also uploads the texts to CADVC’s website.

“After reading 15 years of journal entries from our site, I can say a significant number of these entries are rife with emotion— whether a writer is waxing on about their newfound love or heartfully responding to someone else’s heartbreak—the moment spent physically writing in a book and in one’s own hand is powerful.”

Maybe you confessed a budding romance in those pages yourself. Maybe you questioned your major, or just drew a funny picture. The filled and empty journals alike call to Retrievers to make their mark on the pages, and in the world.

At UMBC, we welcome Retrievers of all stripes… and feathers. Spotted on campus recently enjoying student life is an 87-year-old yellow crowned amazon parrot named Chicken. Yes, you read that right, Chicken. 

Elle Kreiner ’20, anthropology, a current master’s student in applied sociology, rescued the bird in 2017 after his long-term caretaker passed away and the family wasn’t able to keep him. Despite coming to campus to spread his wings (metaphorically—Chicken doesn’t enjoy flying), Kreiner doesn’t believe their parrot would make a great student, although he does speak three languages. 

Prior to his time with Kreiner, Chicken lived in pre–World War II Germany and then spent most of his years in Florida. As a result, he is prone to colorful language in German, Spanish, and English, says Kreiner, but his favorite word? “Definitely ‘cracker.’” 

“If I had to personify him, he’d be a really old crotchety professor, who should have retired 20 years ago but is still here because everyone likes him,” says Kreiner. Like many octogenarians, Chicken doesn’t enjoy the cold, so if you see him on campus on a sunny day, be sure to say Guten Tag!

There are three things we find endlessly amusing: throwbacks to childhood, cutting things up, and attempting to predict the future. And there is one thing that magically combines it all: a paper prognosticator like the one we’ve specially fashioned below. We hope this will give you the chance both to joyfully create a fun thing to share with friends and family and choose your own UMBC adventure! Watch our how to video to refresh your memory and then cut, fold, and share the joy with your favorite #FutureRetriever!

When Andrew Beck ’21, individualized studies, was a kid playing his first Game Boy Advance puzzle platform game, Mario vs. Donkey Kong, he didn’t know that video game design was a career option. After his freshman year living with the Individualized Studies Living and Learning Community, Beck caught a glimpse of a future he could look forward to—creating immersive game experiences. Although Beck is drawing on computerized games for his capstone project, his affinity for sudoku and crossword puzzles has grown as his trivia knowledge has flourished at UMBC. Get out your pencil—or pen, if you’re really feeling confident—and give his latest game a go.

**A New York Times-worthy 14-letter word for “crossword puzzle genius” is “cruciverbalist.”

    ======REPLACE WITH YOUR PUZZLE BELOW======

    exolve-begin

    exolve-id: andrew-beck-crossword-puzzle-genius-spring-2021

    exolve-width: 15

    exolve-height: 15

    exolve-grid:

      FOOD.CRETE.BAJA

      ARNO.LONAS.ATON

      RETRIEVERS.STUT

      MOO.OVERT..MILE

      …RUE.GAS.ACE.

      POGO..MINUET…

      TRUEGRIT.SPIRIT

      ANA.LOA.CHI.IDA

      POMPEY.ERICKSON

      …REALLY..EELS

      .EMO.LAE.PAY…

      SNAP..SMIRR.SOL

      ASIA.CHESAPEAKE

      KILN.HENRY.AURA

      ESSE.ASTER.TRAP

    exolve-across:

      1 Energy provider (4)

      5 Minoan land (5)

      10 Mexican peninsula (4)

      14 Italian river in Florence (4)

      15 Chamomile genus (5)

      16 “This is so heavy, it must weigh __!” (4)

      17 Dog breed and team name? (10)

      19 Trip over words (4)

      20 Cow speak (3)

      21 In the open (5)

      22 A few thousand feet (4)

      23 To regret (3)

      24 Fuel, or excrement (3)

      26 Highest or lowest card (3)

      27 Hopping device (4)

      30 Slow dance (6)

      32 Dining hall and mascot? (8)

      35 Being from beyond the grave (6)

      39 Quote collection (3)

      40 Half a volcano (3)

      41 Greek letter X (3)

      42 Zeus’ mountain (3)

      43 Roman general, Caesar rival (6)

      45 Hall, field, and school? (8)

      47 Emphasis (6)

      49 Snake-like fishes (4)

      50 Emotional punk music (3)

      52 WWII supply base for Japan (3)

      53 Give money (3)

      55 Finger click (4)

      56 Drizzle (5)

      58 Relating to the Sun (3)

      61 Substantial continent (4)

      62 Residence hall and bay? (10)

      64 Clay baker (4)

      65 Eight kings (5)

      66 Energy field (4)

      67 Philosophical essence (4)

      68 Daisy type (5)

      69 Admiral Ackbar finding (4)

    exolve-down:

      1 Animal and crop home (4)

      2 Milk’s favorite (4)

      3 Get on (4)

      4 Buzzing bug (3)

      5 One’s house, for some (5)

      6 Move without purpose (4)

      7 Czech jazz fusion band (7)

      8 Scots’ design (6)

      9 Feminine ending (3)

      10 Long grain Indian rice (7)

      11 Upper storage (5)

      12 Energy measurement (5)

      13 Place a bet (4)

      18 Debt agreement (3)

      23 Inner fish eggs (3)

      25 Japanese cuisine (5)

      27 Slang for UMBC bldg. (4)

      28 “Is that a yes __” (4)

      29 U.S. Territory (4)

      30 Whereabouts unknown (3)

      31 Homer’s poems (4)

      33 Joy and excitement (4)

      34 The highest nobility (5)

      36 Proving dough causes this (4)

      37 Adored one (4)

      38 Takes in the rays (4)

      41 Shout out (3)

      44 Grill requirement (7)

      45 Periodic table unit (7)

      46 Essential (3)

      48 Eye hair, real or otherwise (6)

      50 Old and wise (5)

      51 Sends in postage (5)

      53 Speak with a god, shorter (5)

      54 French artist Jean (3)

      55 Hot rice alcohol (4)

      57 River in SE France (4)

      58 Jurassic suffix (4)

      59 Podded veggie (4)

      60 Spring up (4)

      62 Half of a dance (3)

      63 Consume (3)

    exolve-end
    
======REPLACE WITH YOUR PUZZLE ABOVE======
    

If you find yourself wanting a few answers, look no further.

We knew this before 2020, but can see even more clearly now, that Retrievers don’t shy away from hard tasks—we’re a community defined by grit. Students continue to redefine success, through scholarships and research. Faculty and staff prove again and again how adept they are when needing to navigate new online norms. Alumni give generously to students in need while many also volunteer time and resources to assist those on the front lines of the pandemic with food or PPE.

We asked the UMBC community to tell us what they wished for the coming year. We look forward to 2021 and beyond, we share a common hope, to once again be in community with one another. 

Designed by Jim Lord ’99.

*****

Header image by Marlayna Demond ’11, taken in 2019.