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UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III takes your questions.

Q. Innovation is something that you talk about in many venues across the country, and you’ve been acknowledged as an innovator in higher education. How do you view the overall importance of innovation in the university and the nation as a whole? How does UMBC instill a desire to innovate in students, faculty and staff?

— Richard Byrne ’86, English
Editor, UMBC Magazine

A. I talk a lot about Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind and the need to have a balanced approach to solving problems. His new book is titled Drive and it’s a book about how true motivation – the motivation that creates sustained change – occurs not simply because of extrinsic rewards, but because people really believe that it is important to do something.

What’s interesting about UMBC is that people here are investing in creative initiatives not because people told them to do something different, but because they really believe – and they know – that they are empowered to think broadly and differently about the possibilities for the campus.

How does that fit in with innovation? Well it seems to me that to create a climate of innovation, leaders need to say to the community that thinking matters. And they also need to worry less about failure and focus more on a vision of who we want to be. And to do that people need to feel comfortable coming up with ideas that sometimes seem to be kooky. Things that we haven’t really tried before. Whether it’s talking about how we market ourselves, or how we teach and learn, or how we use innovation in research, the fact is that UMBC encourages people to think broadly and differently and creatively.

I would agree with Pink that the secret to high achievement is that people really want to direct their own lives. They want to be able to learn and create new things. And they want to feel empowered to make decisions about the future of the institution and the work that they do here.

That’s what we’re working to do at UMBC. Get away from telling people what to do, and at all levels – students, faculty, staff and alumni – ask everyone to help us think differently about the institution.

I know that I am using students and colleagues to inspire me to think differently. I am constantly listening to their ideas about changes we need to make at the university. The inspiration comes from all around me.

Q. Taking into account UMBC’s overwhelming growth during your tenure, the distinguished honors you have received, and UMBC’s #1 rating as an up and coming university two years in a row, what are your long and short-term goals – both for the university and for yourself?

— Katie Locke ’06, psychology

A. I think the goal is just to continue building quality here at UMBC. Building on the success that we’ve had. Getting the word out about just how excited we are about the work that we do here. The more that people come to our campus and talk to our students and faculty and staff, the more impressed they are.

I just celebrated my 40th wedding anniversary. So I’m a strong believer in stability and building on that stability. My marriage is better than ever and what I see at UMBC is more impressive than ever.

People are always asking: “What else do we need to do?” I say: Keep doing what we’re doing. Focus on the work and the excitement and substance of this work. Emphasize the use of technology and collaboration across disciplines. Find new ways to bring the campus to people.

There’s something very exciting about not knowing how far we can go. We’re constantly evolving.

Have a question for Dr. Hrabowski? Please visit retrievernet.umbc.edu/askthepresident

A modern university such as UMBC thrives on excellence in teaching and innovation in research.

We all know good teaching when it touches our lives and the lives of those close to us. But research poses difficulties in definition and assessment. The work done in UMBC’s laboratories and libraries often takes years to touch the lives of everyday citizens. How do we approach it?

As the UMBC Magazine team applied the finishing touches to this issue, I noticed that all three of our main features in the Winter 2011 edition touch on the role of research in the university.

Our story by Anthony Lane on Yonathan Zohar and his research on fish farming at the Columbus Center in downtown Baltimore is the sort of effort that most readily comes to mind when we think of academic work’s intersection with the larger world. Zohar and his colleagues in UMBC’s Department of Marine Biotechnology are confronting the global problem of depleted oceans with a combination of biological research and the development of new technologies that reproduce breeding environments. It’s research that may reshape our future.

Research can also bring the past much closer to our present. Scott McLemee’s article on associate professor of history Anne Rubin not only lays out the scholarly excellence of her research on the Civil War, but also her position as one of the pioneers in what’s now known as the “digital humanities.” Rubin’s work uses many of the possibilities of the Internet – including videos and interactive maps – to not only make her research on America’s greatest calamity more vivid, but also bring it to a new generation of scholars and students.

Our cover story for this issue examines dance at UMBC, and some might wonder just how dance is research. But at UMBC, there’s already an event each year that explicitly links academic research to creative endeavors such as choreography and performance. Known as the Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day (or URCAD), it celebrates undergraduate research (the best of which is published in the annual UMBC Review) and the work of students who pursue the arts with rigor and talent.

This year’s URCAD is Wednesday, April 27, 2011. UMBC’s president Freeman A. Hrabowski, III says that it “is one of the best academic events of the UMBC year because it reflects the strength of our academic program, including the strong relationships between faculty and students, the rigor of research here, and the broad enthusiasm for, and talent in, the creative arts on our campus.” Check out the schedule of events at www.umbc.edu/undergrad_ed/research/URCAD/index.html.

— Richard Byrne ’86

SUPER CAMPAIGN

The high achievement and affordability of UMBC makes the university an attractive option for high school students. But a university built on innovation is always looking to do the job better.

Enter a creative team led by UMBC associate director of marketing Erika Ferrin, Creative Services designer Erin Ouslander ’03 and marketing director Ed Neenan. Together, they created a new advertising campaign depicting high-flying UMBC students in the humanities and social sciences as superheroes using both their brainpower and their desire to enact positive changes in their own lives and the lives of others. The campaign used images and lettering familiar to fans of graphic novels to tell the stories of students including Naomi Jackson ’11, Curtis Schickner ’12, Stefanie Mavronis ’12 and Kimberly Browning ’13 (pictured, left to right, above).

Market research led Ferrin to narratives such as the Twilight and Harry Potter books and films where “smart was considered cool” and in which “normal kids use extraordinary powers to change the world.” The campaign appeals “to an upcoming generation of students coming to UMBC ready to change the world. We want them to know: We’re ready for you.”

The campaign is already helping to attract those super students to UMBC. And it’s also been recognized for its excellence by the university’s peers. The Superheroes campaign won the 2011 gold medal from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education’s Second District – which covers the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States.

— Richard Byrne ’86

R. SARGENT SHRIVER, 1915-2011

As UMBC Magazine was in its final stages of editing this issue, we received the sad news that R. Sargent Shriver had passed away.

Shriver’s career as an inspiring and innovative leader was a vibrant model of selfless public service. Many who do not follow politics know of his role – in collaboration with his late wife, Eunice Kennedy Shriver – in founding the Special Olympics. The list of his accomplishments as a politician and a diplomat is daunting and included key elements of the “War on Poverty”: the Peace Corps, Head Start, Job Corps, VISTA and Legal Services for the Poor. Shriver was also a vice-presidential candidate in 1972.

Shriver had a special connection with UMBC. UMBC’s Shriver Center, founded in 1993, is named after him and the late Mrs. Shriver. He helped craft the Center’s original mission statement and put together its first national advisory board. The Shriver Peaceworker Program and the Shriver Living Learning Community in Erickson Hall also loom large in Shriver’s campus legacy. In a joint statement, UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, and Shriver Center founder John Martello stated it simply on behalf of the UMBC community: “The Shrivers were our supporters and our friends.”

In his 2004 biography, Sarge, Scott Stossel observed a key similarity between Shriver and John F. Kennedy, the president with whom he achieved so much of note: “[T]he two men shared a great gift: the ability to expand the horizons of the possible, to change our sense of what we can accomplish as individuals and as a nation.”

— Richard Byrne ’86

BREAKING GROUND

The bright sunshine on Friday, September 17 perfectly reflected the mood on campus on a landmark day in UMBC’s history.

On that afternoon, elected officials, leaders of the University System of Maryland and key university philanthropists joined with a broad cross-section of the campus community to break ground on a much-anticipated $170 million Performing Arts and Humanities Building.

The ceremony demonstrated the strength of the bridges that the university has built with local and state government, which helped secure funding for the project. “I’ve never been as happy to see a giant hole in the ground, giant mounds of dirt, and big noisy machines as I have been this summer,” quipped John Jeffries, dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

But much of the ceremony was devoted to strong affirmations of the importance of arts and humanities on UMBC’s campus and in society at large.

University System of Maryland Chancellor William Kirwan observed that “we have an obligation to make sure our graduates have both the skill they need to compete in the workplace and the cultural and intellectual underpinning necessary for an enlightened and progressive society. This is an obligation UMBC has clearly embraced.”

The building will be constructed in two phases. The first phase – which will open in Fall 2012 – will include the departments of English and theatre, new offices for the James T. and Virginia M. Dresher Center for the Humanities, the Humanities Scholars Program and the Linehan Artist Scholars Program and two theaters: a 275-seat main theater and a 100-seat black box theater.

The second phase, which will break ground in the future, will include new dance and concert halls, and a new home for the departments of music, dance, philosophy and ancient studies. The building will be the second LEED Silver-certified building on campus, joining a new addition to the Patapsco Residence Hall.

“We’re celebrating the beginning of a new chapter for the University of Maryland, Baltimore County,” said Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley. “The new Performing Arts and Humanities Building is a true investment in the talents, skills, creativity, ingenuity and education of our people. Its ‘green’ design will help develop a more sustainable environment, and in these tough economic times, its construction will provide much-needed jobs for our hardworking families. Together, we can continue to nurture our students’ talents and gifts while providing them with the tools they need to build a better future.”

In concluding the ceremony, UMBC’s president Freeman A. Hrabowski, III observed that “the arts and humanities really are the soul of our society and the soul of this campus. We teach people how to live… and the values they need in a society – when it’s going well and when it’s not going well. The reason [our elected officials] can say let’s support this is that they understand that in the worst of times, we need to remember what it means to be human.”

— Richard Byrne ’86