Dear Faculty,

Welcome to a new academic year! As we begin this journey together, I want to extend my sincere gratitude for your continued dedication to inclusive excellence and student success. Whether you are returning to campus or joining us for the first time, your passion and expertise are the foundation of UMBC.

As faculty, you play a central role in supporting our students. This is particularly important while our students continue to face a complex mix of academic, personal, and societal challenges. Your engagement, empathy, and mentorship can have a profound impact. In addition to supporting our students, I urge you to be proactive in recognizing when they may need support and to refer them to appropriate campus resources when necessary.

While lifting up our students is critical, I also know we need to support you in the classroom. At UMBC, we are committed to assisting you on your professional journey and helping you thrive in the classroom. I encourage you to explore the resources available through the Faculty Development Center, which provides services and resources to aid you in teaching at UMBC. 

I also want to remind you that starting this year, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is officially part of the holiday break. That means there will be one fewer Wednesday class session in the fall 2025 semester, something to keep in mind if you teach that day.

At UMBC, we are poised to transform higher education. This coming year we will do so in a variety of ways, but for now I want to highlight one in particular: Artificial Intelligence. AI is enabling universities to make transformational changes, and generative AI tools in particular are becoming increasingly integrated into academic work and student learning. 

The faculty senate produced a report that surveyed faculty on the use of AI last semester. I have heard directly from that group, and have tapped Vice Provost Anupam Joshi, a leader in the field of artificial intelligence, to lead UMBC’s AI strategy. Anupam will head a taskforce this fall that will explore the use and integration of AI across university operations, including academics. 

As that taskforce deliberates, we are moving forward. Based on the report from the Faculty Senate, we will support efforts spearheaded by Professor John Schumacher to deliver consistent, high quality faculty professional development experiences on generative AI. This will include direct instruction on using generative AI tools in teaching, and seminars with internal and external speakers who have expertise on this topic. We will also invite proposals from faculty to support graduate and undergraduate students as fellows to support their research in AI-related areas.

Additional news and details concerning this effort will be shared in the coming weeks and months.

I hope to see you at the campus events this month, including the Fall Opening Meeting on Thursday and Convocation on August 26. Following the Convocation ceremony, we will gather as a community for a cookout on The Quad. This is an opportunity to meet new students and catch up with colleagues. Please bring your campus ID.

Thank you for the work you do every day to inspire curiosity, foster critical thinking, and prepare our students to go out in the world and make a meaningful difference and be the best version of themselves. I look forward to a rewarding and successful academic year ahead.

Warm regards,

Dear Faculty and Staff,

We are pleased to invite you to participate in our 2025 Convocation ceremony on Tuesday, August 26, at the Chesapeake Employers Insurance Arena. We look forward to welcoming our incoming students to a new academic year and introducing them to UMBC’s traditions. We hope you will march in the procession, where some of our new students will see academic regalia for the first time.

Please join us for a Welcome Back Reception, hosted by President Sheares Ashby at 2:30 p.m. Those planning to march in the procession should arrive no later than 3 p.m. The ceremony will begin at 3:30 p.m. 

Faculty and staff who wish to march in the procession can register here and order their regalia by July 29 to avoid additional shipping fees. Those who wish to volunteer as event staff can register here.

Additionally, please save the date for UMBC’s Fall Opening Meeting on August 21 in the Retriever Activities Center. Doors open at 11 a.m. The program and lunch begin at 11:30 a.m. More information to come. 

Thank you, and we look forward to an exciting fall together.

The UMBC Events Team

Dear UMBC community,

I am excited to announce that Carlos Jensen and Sophia Sotilleo will join the provost leadership team this fall. Carlos will serve as vice provost for student success and dean for the division of undergraduate academic affairs, and Sophia will serve as vice provost and dean of the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery. Both Carlos and Sophia will join the UMBC community on August 1.

Carlos and Sophia fill out a provost leadership team that has been reimagined to meet UMBC’s unique needs in an evolving educational landscape. In his role, Carlos will oversee undergraduate academic programs and services while fostering an environment of inclusive excellence. Sophia will lead the library in its vital efforts to support the teaching and research needs of an R1 institution. 

Carlos comes to UMBC from the University of California, San Diego where he has served the last five years as the associate vice chancellor for educational innovation. Sophia joins us from our USM sister institution, Bowie State University, where she has served as the dean of the Thurgood Marshall Library since 2022.

Sophia’s academic interests center on embedded librarianship, particularly its intersections with access, advocacy, and leadership in higher education. At Bowie State, she led transformative initiatives in digital access, research support, and campus-wide library engagement. Sophia served as previous chair of the Council of Library Deans and Directors for the University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions, where she led efforts to improve system-wide digital access, research support, and inter-campus collaboration. She is a dedicated academic librarian and higher education leader with a career rooted in intellectual freedom, student-centered service, and inclusive access to information. Sophia brings a collaborative and visionary approach to librarianship, championing innovation, advocacy, and engagement across academic and community contexts.

While at UC San Diego, Carlos provided strategic leadership to advance education and innovation, including the implementation and improvement of curricular analytics to help departments close equity gaps and help all students progress toward their degrees. He oversaw instructional development for educators and comprehensive academic support for students and played a key leadership role in the academic affairs response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

To each community member who participated in the two searches as well as the search committee members who put in countless hours throughout the process, thank you for your time and dedication to making sure we got this right. I want to give a special thanks to Peggy Re and Kimberly Moffitt for their leadership in chairing the search committees. 

I also want to take this opportunity to thank Stephen Freeland for serving as interim dean and vice provost for undergraduate academic affairs and Richard Darga for serving as the interim dean of the library. Their steadfast leadership has been invaluable during this time of transition.

Please join me in welcoming Carlos and Sophia to UMBC.

Sincerely,

Manfred H.M. van Dulmen

Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

Dear UMBC Community, 

I am delighted to announce the appointment of Michael Sarbanes as the inaugural executive director of the George and Betsy Sherman Center beginning June 23, 2025.

The George and Betsy Sherman Center furthers UMBC’s commitment to excellence in urban schools in Baltimore City and the region. Established by a visionary gift to UMBC from the Sherman Family Foundation, the center brings together initiatives to support transformational education in four connected areas:

Sherman Scholars: The Sherman Teacher Scholars Program develops STEM and early childhood educators who are skilled, passionate, and committed to an excellent education for all children.

School Community Partnerships: The Sherman School Partnerships program works with schools, families, and community groups to create innovative, responsive, and effective partnerships that help students thrive.

Early Childhood Learning: The Sherman Center engages parents, community groups, and schools to ensure that a child’s early years become the foundation for life-long learning.

Research: The Sherman Center supports applied research linking the insights of UMBC’s outstanding faculty with the daily educational experience of school communities.

The Sherman Center for Early Learning in Urban Communities served Baltimore City’s early childhood education field from 2017-2024. Several of the initiatives are being continued through the George and Betsy Sherman Center.

As the inaugural executive director of the Sherman Center, Michael brings to UMBC a unique range of leadership experiences in education, partnerships, and community engagement. As executive director of engagement for Baltimore City Schools, he led the city’s efforts to mobilize Baltimore’s institutions and communities around educational excellence. He brings to the Sherman Center a decade of experience and passion for excellent classroom teaching, as a physics teacher at Green Street Academy in the same Baltimore City neighborhood where he lives. His work has also involved leadership roles in community safety as the head of the Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention, and in transportation, and housing as executive director of the Citizens Planning and Housing Association.

Michael’s experience as a visionary community leader and educator in Baltimore City and Maryland uniquely qualifies him to lead the transformational work of the Sherman Center. Please join me in welcoming Michael to the Sherman Center and UMBC.  

Sincerely,

Manfred H.M. van Dulmen

Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

Dear UMBC community,

I am pleased to announce Anupam Joshi has been named vice provost and chief AI officer beginning July 1. Anupam brings almost three decades of experience at UMBC to the new role. For the last two years he has served as the interim dean of the College of Engineering and Information Technology in addition to his position as the Oros Family Professor and director of the UMBC Cybersecurity Institute.

While I had previously announced Anupam would be serving as a special assistant to the provost for AI and computing, I was continually impressed with his forward-thinking leadership as we worked to fill out the provost leadership team. In light of Anupam’s ongoing contributions to the leadership team, as well as budgetary considerations, I have made the decision to eliminate the open senior vice provost for academic affairs position and appoint Anupam as vice provost and chief AI officer.

In this newly created role, Anupam will oversee various areas previously managed by the vice provost for academic affairs (e.g., academic resource planning and management, space management), provide leadership to academic affairs strategic initiatives, and lead the university’s strategy for AI and computing. This includes coordinating and leveraging current efforts in AI and computing, leading the strategic planning for university goals in this area, and leveraging new resources and university partnerships.

A prolific scholar, Anupam obtained a B.Tech degree from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)  Delhi in 1989, and a master’s and Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1991 and 1993. His research interests are at the intersection of AI and systems. He is a pioneer in data management and security for mobile and ad-hoc networks using AI approaches.

Over the last decade, Anupam has explored this intersection to improve cybersecurity – using distributed AI approaches for attack detection and resilience in CPS/IoT systems that undergird critical infrastructure and policy-driven approaches to security and privacy. He has worked with scholars from areas as diverse as medicine, psychology, linguistics, gerontology, and public policy to explore AI-based approaches in those domains that have led to publications and extramural funding.

Anupam is an affiliate faculty in the School of Medicine at the University of Maryland, Baltimore and in UMBC’s Erickson School of Aging Studies. He is also an adjunct professor at IIT Delhi’s School of IT. He is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and serves on the Maryland Cybersecurity Council chartered by the Maryland legislature. Anupam has published more than 300 technical papers with an h-index of 97 and over 34,000 citations (per Google scholar), been granted nine patents, and has obtained research support totaling more than $22 million from the National Science Foundation, NASA, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, U.S. Dept of Defense, NIST, IBM, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin amongst others.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank Peggy Re who has served for the past year as interim vice provost for academic affairs. Peggy has been an incredible resource as I started my first year as provost and has been instrumental in academic affairs making significant progress this past year. I look forward to continuing to work with Peggy as she returns to her position as associate provost for academic affairs. 

Please join me in congratulating Anupam on his new role as vice provost and chief AI officer.

Sincerely,

Manfred H.M. van Dulmen

Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs