It may be coincidental that UMBC was founded in the midst of rock n’ roll’s most revolutionary years, but early Retrievers certainly made sure to create spaces to bring live music to the campus, in intimate settings and on much bigger stages.

Since then, iconic bands and artists such as Frank Zappa, the Goo Goo Dolls, Alanis Morissette, All-American Rejects, the Strokes, Brand New, Foo Fighters, Yellowcard, All Time Low, My Chemical Romance, and more, have all played shows for UMBC’s students. But while UMBC has a rich history of hosting renowned artists, they have always had a soft spot for local music and student artists too.

On September 21, 1968, the Collage, an on-campus weekend coffee house, was first opened. The Collage was one of the first notable instances of live music on campus, often drawing in a large crowd, especially on Saturday nights, and was the go-to place to check out the best student performers, as well as local performers from the surrounding Baltimore area. With music, poetry readings, and films, it was a perfect social and artistic atmosphere for its students.

Although the Collage is no more, today, UMBC still supports its local and student musicians with the many events held on and off campus, and through the creative spaces it provides. The Students Events Board (seb) frequently hosts open mic nights where students can sing, play an instrument, and present poetry or spoken word. In recent years, (seb) seems to have drawn on a similar ethos to the Collage, with its Coffee House: Open Mic Night Edition.

Audience members at the Collage in 1969. Two performers, Lewis and Dolgoff, on stage at
the Collage in 1969.

Yearly events like Quadmania and campus radio station WMBC’s and the Retriever Music Society’s (RMS) music festival often provide a chance for student artists to play for an audience, and the support and turnout for these events shows how tuned in Retrievers still are to good music.

WMBC’s recent revitalization has played a big role in organizing live music events and booking student and local bands for on-campus shows. ​​WMBC’s station manager Sean Jilek ’25, computer science, says, “We have so much great music being made on campus and we really want to highlight that when we can. This year we made it a goal to have a UMBC band headline the festival, which is why we had Fly By the Seat. The station has been blown away with the turnout for the concerts we have hosted on campus.” 

Additionally, off-campus, OCA Mocha, the UMBC student-founded coffee shop, provides a venue for UMBC’s student musicians, including jam sessions hosted by RMS, classical music from UMBC’s Cello Group, and performances by UMBC’s jazz groups. 

While the Collage may now be gone, after all these years it is apparent that UMBC has expanded its creative spaces, and is still passionate about fostering these venues for its students. Jilek says, “I think this last semester has shown that small shows are something that people are interested in seeing on campus.”

UMBC’s graduating Class of 2024 knows a thing or two about resilience. Many of this year’s 1,900-plus graduates began their collegiate journey at the onset of a global pandemic. 

This week, as they walked across the Commencement stage adorned in black and gold regalia and mortarboards elaborately decorated with sayings such as “The tassel was worth the hassle,” “I did it,” and “The end is here,” the Class of 2024 reveled in the celebratory moment of reaching this milestone in the face of much adversity. 

“Resilience is a dynamic process. It’s a journey that we embark on in the face of challenges. Resilience is not just bouncing back or being able to recover—It’s the ability to bounce forward,” said graduate student speaker Grace De Oro, M.P.P. ’19, a Ph.D. candidate in public policy and president of the Graduate Student Association. 

“We’ve all bounced forward to get here, right now, in this moment. This journey of resilience has not only brought us here, but it’s transformed us into stronger and more capable individuals.”

Service as a Retriever

During Thursday morning’s undergraduate ceremony for students in the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences; School of Social Work; and Erickson School of Aging Studies, co-valedictorian Nyla Howell ’24, geography and environmental systems and sociology, spoke to the value of service and how the graduating class will “serve with more than our degrees.”

“We all serve those around us daily by using our time and talent to encourage each other, give advice to each other, and take care of one another,” Howell said. “I believe that if we approach this next phase of life, despite all its uncertainty, with the intention of genuinely caring for others and living out our personal understandings of service, we will have the launch pads we need to do more than we ever believed we could.”

Howell, who is the first McNair Scholar to be a valedictorian at UMBC, has dedicated much of her time as an undergraduate in service to local communities and engaged in research examining how vulnerable and underrepresented communities can be better protected when disasters strike. Since 2021, Howell has worked as the food pantry manager of Retriever Essentials helping to combat food insecurity at UMBC. Howell’s leadership and public service efforts earned her scholarships from the France and Merrick Scholars Endowment and the Jacqueline C. Hrabowski Endowment. 

She will continue her studies in geography as a Ph.D. student at Rutgers University as a fellow of the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship Program. 

A dedication to STEM and the arts

During the afternoon ceremony for the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences; College of Engineering and Information Technology; and Division of Undergraduate Academic Affairs, co-valedictorian D’Juan Moreland ’24, biological sciences and music, shared with his fellow graduates the lessons he has learned, particularly ones imparted to him by his mother.

Congratulations to our Engineering and Computing students #UMBCgrad @UMBC #UMBCengineering #UMBCComputing pic.twitter.com/M3gk0HkFLu

— Jamie Gurganus, PhD (@JamieRGurganus) May 23, 2024

“The first [lesson] is to celebrate yourself even in the little victories. The secondis to recognize who supported you. The lastis to set a good example because other people are watching your every move,” said Moreland. “Part of our achievement today is to set a strong example for those who are watching us right now. They don’t just see our success, but also our perseverance, as encouragement and inspiration for themselves.”

During his time at UMBC, Moreland, a Meyherhoff Scholar, balanced and even found a way to intertwine his interests in biological sciences and music. He was a 2022 – 2023 recipient of a prestigious Goldwater Scholarship, for which he used his research on the song syllable use differences in female and male songbirds as the basis of his application. Moreland’s original composition “Ascension” won the inaugural UMBC Symphony Orchestra Composer Competition last year. 

Additionally, he is a recipient of the Thomas V. Marsho and Martin Schwartz Memorial Fund scholarship and a recipient of the Ronald and Kathryn Shapiro Meyerhoff Mentoring scholarship. Moreland has dedicated much of his time to mentoring younger students, a passion that inspired him to create a mentoring program at his church for young Black men in middle and high school. Following graduation, Moreland will pursue a Ph.D. in neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania. 

“The DNA of UMBC”

The lineup of this year’s Commencement speakers included Mina Cheon, M.F.A. ’02, imaging and digital arts, the dean of undergraduate studies at the Maryland Institute College of Art and a 2018 UMBC Alumni Award winner. Farah Helal ’24, political science and global studies, also delivered remarks as the University System of Maryland student regent representative. 

Sethuraman Panchanathan, director of the National Science Foundation, received an honorary doctor of science degree during the afternoon ceremony. He dazzled the crowd with an energetic speech advising new graduates to follow “the 10 C’s”—words like “commitment,” “courage,” “collaboration,” and “curiosity”—as they go on to the next chapter of their lives.

After grad, Chiad Onyeje, chem eng, will go to Johns Hopkins via the new Vivien Thomas Scholars Initiative program. His research will concentrate on the development of drug delivery biomaterials to open up new opportunities for disease & trauma treatment & prevention. #UMBCgrad pic.twitter.com/pVZ10ieEVs

— UMBC (@UMBC) May 17, 2024

“Retrievers, you have the DNA of UMBC,” Panchanathan said to the graduates. “That DNA is about lifting people up…and making sure people are given chances, making things accessible, and inspiring people.” 

Congratulations to the Class of 2024! Please continue to share your messages of congratulations on social media using #UMBCgrad. Read more about Class of 2024 graduates on the UMBC News Site. 

Image Note: In the left panel, Naomi Tack is defending her dissertation. In the right panel, Naomi stands with her iHARP mentors, (left to right: Dr. Becca Williams, Naomi Tack, and Dr. Don Engel).

Photo to the left: Pictured is Tolulope Ale defending his proposal.
Photo to the right: Pictured is Tolulope Ale standing with his committee. In the photo: Left of screen Left to Right: Dr. Vandana Janeja, Tolulope Ale
On Screen Top Right: Dr. Jianwu Wang, Bottom Left: Dr. Sudip Chakraborty, Bottom Right: Dr. Nicole-Jeanne Schegel
Right of Screen: Dr. Patti Ordóñez

Yehenew Kifle, assistant professor of statistics at UMBC, has been awarded a fellowship by the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program (CADFP). Kifle will travel to Addis Ababa University (AAU) in Ethiopia to work with the Department of Epidemiology and Biostatistics. There, he will work with colleagues to enhance teaching and mentoring and grow research collaborations to support Ph.D. training in biostatistics.

Kifle will spend three months in Ethiopia this summer, working with his African host, Zeytu Gashaw Asfaw, associate professor of biostatistics at AAU. In addition to producing collaborative research, during his stay Kifle plans to conduct short-term training sessions and workshops on advanced software-aided statistical techniques for junior statisticians, graduate students, and medical professionals within the school of public health at AAU. He will also assist in crafting grant proposals aimed at increasing research collaborations in biostatistics between UMBC and AAU.

The Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program, now in its 10th year, is designed to strengthen capacity for graduate education at host institutions and develop long-term, mutually beneficial collaborations between universities in Africa and the United States and Canada. It is funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York and managed by the Institute of International Education (IIE) in collaboration with the Association of African Universities. Nearly 650 fellowships have been awarded since the CADFP’s inception in 2013.

“I’m grateful for the opportunity to represent the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in its international outreach endeavors, highlighting the importance of CADFP,” Kifle says, adding, “I’m looking forward to sharing my expertise in teaching biostatistics graduate courses, offering mentorship, and supervising doctoral dissertations.” Additionally, Kifle plans to conduct seminars on his recent research findings and offer insights into improving graduate programs in biostatistics.

Building on international connections

Before arriving at UMBC, Kifle was a professor of statistics at the University of Limpopo in South Africa. UMBC signed a collaborative agreement with University of Limpopo in 2018, initiated by Kifle while he was a visiting faculty member from Limpopo at UMBC. Kifle first encountered UMBC’s strength in statistics at the 2015 African International Conference (AIC) on Statistics, a UMBC-led conference held in a different African country annually since 2014. 

Since then, Kifle has been a leader in organizing the AIC, which recently received a pledge for support from the American Statistical Association. The Carnegie fellowship builds further on Kifle’s commitment to forging partnerships with African universities for the mutual benefit of scholars at UMBC and in Africa.

Kifle’s work in Ethiopia is one of 60 new projects supported by the CADFP that pair African diaspora scholars with higher education institutions and collaborators in Africa to work together on curriculum development, research, graduate training, and mentoring activities in 2024.

“This is indeed exciting news for all of us in the department and at UMBC,” shared Bimal Sinha, professor of statistics at UMBC. “We are thrilled to know that Dr. Kifle will represent UMBC in this extraordinary outreach effort to offer seminars and training courses and possibly to jointly supervise doctoral dissertations. There is no doubt that many statistics departments in Ethiopia will benefit from Dr. Kifle’s vast teaching and research experiences.”