Dear UMBC Community,

Last week the University System of Maryland and UMBC announced that COVID-19 vaccinations are required for all students, faculty, and staff who will be on a USM campus in Fall 2021. A process for medical and religious exemptions is in development and will be announced soon.

We are encouraged to learn that many in our community have already been vaccinated, and  we have launched a system to collect vaccination information from students, faculty, and staff. There are several ways to submit your information. 

In addition, we are pleased to share that we can now offer on-campus vaccination for community members. We will be scheduling a series of clinics for specific groups, beginning with current students, in May and extending throughout the summer. You will receive additional information as we develop our schedule. Current students will have the opportunity to be vaccinated on campus before the end of the semester and will also have additional opportunities throughout the summer. 

Thank you for your patience as we work to design the policies and systems necessary to support the vaccination process. Please share any questions you may have with us at covid19@umbc.edu.

Provost Philip Rous
Vice President for Administration and Finance Lynne Schaefer
COVID-19 Planning Coordinating Committee Co-Chairs

We are deeply saddened to share that Dr. Thomas “Tom” Roth passed away on Sunday, April 18, at the age of 89. Tom devoted his career to UMBC students for over 25 years, first as a biological sciences professor, and later as Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, before retiring in 1998 and transitioning to the role of emeritus professor. 

Tom joined the UMBC community in 1972 and made significant contributions to building the university from the ground up. His creative approach to teaching cell biology and dedicated mentorship touched the lives of countless students and faculty members.  

According to biological sciences chair, Phil Farabaugh, “He was a great colleague and a passionate teacher. He influenced generations of UMBC biology graduates and produced some terrific Ph.D. scientists as well.”

His most recognized research contribution was identifying coated pits as involved in receptor-mediated endocytosis during his doctoral work with Keith Porter, who later became chair of the biological sciences department and for whom the Keith Porter Imaging Facility is named. Tom’s pioneering doctoral work will ensure his name is known long into the future. 

As one of the early biological sciences faculty members at UMBC, Tom helped build the department into a collegial community that persists today. 

“Tom contributed significantly to the foundation of academic excellence at UMBC. He was brilliant, kind, and dignified,” President Hrabowski says. “Most important, he was always authentic in his interactions with both colleagues and students.” He will truly be missed.

Service arrangements will be made at a later time. His obituary can be read here. In lieu of flowers, please consider donating to the Candlelight Concert Society (where Tom was very active, serving as a past board member and sponsoring various events), or a charity of your choice. 

Dear Community Members,

As remote work and the pandemic continues, unfortunately the nation is seeing an increase in internet and phone scams and attacks. These attacks and scams take many forms. For example, recently we have managed fake job offers, fake checks, fake charities, and unemployment fraud.

We need you to be aware of this problem, vigilant with your personal information, and help us all work together to make sure scammers and hackers are not successful. Stay updated on individual situations and scams by subscribing to the Division of Information Technology’s (DoIT) security feed. 

Protecting Yourself

• If an offer seems too good to be true, it likely is. 

• Scammers often impersonate someone when making fake offers. When you receive an offer, verify it is legitimate by directly contacting the person. For example, call a company with contact information from their website. Do not reply directly to emails.

• For offers that appear to come from members of the UMBC community, directly call or email the person making the offer after looking them up in the UMBC Directory.  

• UMBC sends many official messages through myUMBC Personal Posts, which are more secure than email. You can authenticate a myUMBC Personal Post by checking to see if you have a corresponding myUMBC notification. 

• Please forward any suspicious messages to security@umbc.edu and ask for verification. We will verify any offer for you.  

• Never provide your confidential information (credit card number, social security number, driver’s license number, passport number, etc.) to anyone via email, text message, or a web page. 

• No legitimate job offer will ever require you to send money or to buy things with your own money.

• If you receive a check you were not expecting, be suspicious, especially if the sender asks you to deposit a check and then send money or purchase items. Also, UMBC will never email you a check.  For additional information, please review the Federal Trade Commission’s website on fake check scams.

• Human Resources is responding to a state-wide increase in fraudulent unemployment claims. Learn more here.

Working Together to Help UMBC

• Report suspicious activity to security@umbc.edu. Don’t assume that something is obvious or someone else will report it; always report anything suspicious. Forwarding the scam or attack to UMBC DoIT Security allows us to notify the rest of the community and track the trends of what is hitting our campus.

• Check http://itsecurity.umbc.edu for information about scams and to subscribe to the article feed. Once subscribed, you will receive articles in your inbox as they are published. Check out our FAQ: How to Subscribe to DoIT IT Security Notices and Articles

Thank you for helping our community fight back against the scammers and attackers.

Mark Cather, Chief Information Security Officer, Division of Information Technology

Dear UMBC Community,

Today the University System of Maryland announced that it will require COVID-19 vaccination for all eligible students, faculty, and staff who will be on a Maryland campus in Fall 2021.  

We are encouraged by this decision because we agree with Chancellor Perman that “Mandating a COVID vaccine is the most effective strategy we have” and that if we want to have students return to campus, “then we have to do everything we can to protect [our] safety.” 

We also understand that there are additional details related to this requirement that need to be determined and communicated, including how we will accommodate medical and religious exceptions. 

UMBC will host a virtual vaccine information session with medical experts and share suggestions on making vaccine appointments this afternoon, Friday, April 23 at 3 p.m. All are welcome to attend; login details are available here.

University Health Services has been approved to administer vaccines on campus for community members and is awaiting doses. We currently do not know when the doses will be available and  will notify our community when they are. In the meantime, as vaccine availability in Maryland has increased dramatically, we encourage each of you to seek vaccination. We are preparing to launch a system to collect and verify vaccine information from community members and hope to share this and a detailed timeline next week. We ask for your patience as we develop and test new systems.

Thank you for your continued commitment to keeping our community safe and healthy. If you have questions or concerns, please reach out to us at covid19@umbc.edu.

President Freeman Hrabowski and Provost Philip Rous

Dear Community Members,

Systemic racism, police violence, hate crimes against minority groups, and mass shootings continue to plague communities across the U.S. Against this backdrop, news reports are flooding Americans with words and images from the trial of the former police officer charged in the May 2020 murder of George Floyd, and we are now preparing to learn the verdict.

The social and political divisions of the past year, coupled with the stresses resulting from the ongoing pandemic, feel overwhelming for many of us.We recognize the myriad emotions that members of our community are experiencing, including worry, trauma, sadness, loss, confusion, anger, and fear. We are deeply saddened by reports that our students are afraid they could be victims of or witnesses to police violence. These emotions are valid, and we are committed to providing support and responding with compassion.

So many across our country have worked for years to bring true justice to our society and to find ways to come together, heal, create real change, and move forward as a more united nation. The events of the past year have resulted in a groundswell of support for decisive action to dismantle the structural racism, discrimination, and other forms of systematic oppression and marginalization in the wider world, and on our own campus. 

We encourage all members of our community to remain committed to hearing and understanding different perspectives as we seek to move forward together. UMBC is a community in which we inspire one another to be our authentic selves, reach our full potential, and make an impact. Our commitment to inclusive excellence and shared governance builds individual and collective capacity for listening to and learning from diverse perspectives—skills that are essential for addressing the disparities and differences that have persisted in our country for far too long.

We invite all members of our diverse UMBC family to connect with each other in the spirit of mutual respect, dignity, and understanding. Please consider these resources to support your conversations and share them with your fellow Retrievers:

• The Office of Equity and Inclusion’s cross-campus Support and Action Resources.

• When participating in online conversations, keep in mind UMBC Community Guidelines for Social Media.

Finally, we encourage all to bring compassion and flexibility to interactions with our students and colleagues, understanding that each of us may be responding to events through the lens of our individual experiences. Students in need of emotional support can contact the Counseling Center at (410) 455-2472 on weekdays, 8:30 a.m. – 5 p.m., or the after-hours support line at (410) 455-3230. Employees can access support through the Employee Assistance Program.  

President Freeman Hrabowski

Provost Philip Rous

Mehrshad Devin, President, Student Government Association

Samantha Fries, President, Graduate Student Association

Bobby Lubaszewski ‘10, President, Professional Staff Senate

Orianne Smith, President, Faculty Senate

Melody Wright ‘18, President, Non-Exempt Staff Senate