For Medical and Dental School Applicants, the UMBC Health Professions Evaluation Committee's (HPEC) Cohort process - which begins with exercises to help applicants prepare the materials they need to complete their professional school application, and results in a Committee Letter from the HPEC to accompany an applicant's other Letters of Recommendation - is set in motion nearly a year and half before an applicant plans to enter Medical or Dental School. 

The next HPEC Cohort, supporting applicants planning to enter Medical or Dental School in Fall 2025, is about to begin!

11:59 pm on February 15, 2024

"How do you ground the American experience in something you can get your hands around?" asks Orser. "I always thought it was helpful to bring things down to a certain scale. Maybe because that's as much as I could try to get my mind around, but also it is because in some ways, that's where we live our lives."

- W. Ed Orser, quoted in Locale Hero, UMBC Review, by Richard Byrne

It is with great sadness that we share the news that W. Edward (Ed) Orser passed away on Monday, January 8, 2024. Ed was a beloved professor and researcher in the Department of American Studies at UMBC for over forty years. Upon his retirement in 2010, and in his honor, the Orser Center for the Study of Community, Place, and Culture was established at UMBC to foster innovative collaborations among scholars, students, and local community organizations across the disciplines whose research and teaching explore place-based study, especially focused on the Baltimore region. 

Ed Orser earned a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of New Mexico and came to UMBC in 1969, just four years after the university was formed, as one of the founding faculty members of the Department of American Studies. He served numerous terms as chair of the department and developed foundational courses still taught today. 

Ed's teaching and research interests were always closely connected. His courses on "Community in American Culture" and "American Environments: Landscape and Culture" not only became central parts of the American Studies curriculum, but led to a variety of research projects with students and to themes that became the focus of his own scholarship. Ed's work as a publicly-engaged scholar in the local community was an inspiration for the Minor in Public Humanities for the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (CAHSS), which is fittingly located in the Orser Center in American Studies.

Ed's publications explore the social and cultural dynamics of the Baltimore region. His examination of the phenomenon of massive racial change in West Baltimore during the 1950s and 1960s led to the first book-length study of blockbusting and its consequences in post-World War II cities: Blockbusting in Baltimore: The Edmondson Village Story (University Press of Kentucky, 1994, 1997). Blockbusting in Baltimore was an influential, and widely imitated, text that is still cited in emerging scholarship on Baltimore and cities like it.

A collaborative research and teaching project with Professor Joseph Arnold of the History Department, resulted in an on-campus exhibition and the co-authored publication of From Village to Suburb: Catonsville, 1880-1940 (Donning Publishing Company, 1989). His first book, Searching for a Viable Alternative: The Macedonia Cooperative Community, 1937-1958 (Burt Franklin, 1981) explored the effort by a group of pacifists to establish an alternative community in North Georgia during and following World War II. 

Articles on related topics have appeared in such journals as American Studies, Church History, the Maryland Historical Magazine, the International Journal of Oral History, the Public Historian, and the Journal of Urban History. Ed's interest in environmental history in the Baltimore area resulted in publication of The Gwynns Falls: Baltimore Greenway to the Chesapeake Bay (The History Press, 2008) and the article, "A Tale of Two Park Plans: The Olmsted's Vision for Baltimore and Seattle, 1903" (Maryland Historical Magazine, Winter 2003). His public history activity included co-authorship of The Gwynns Falls Trail Master Plan (with Diana Balmori, et al., 1995).

Ed received the UMBC Presidential Teaching Award in 1999 and the University System of Maryland Regents Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2003. The Baltimore Historical Society conferred Historian Honors recognition upon him in 2007.

Though deeply committed to Baltimore and UMBC, Ed also taught American Studies in a variety of international settings. In 1990-1991 he served as Senior Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Zagreb in Yugoslavia. In 2007, he taught in the American Studies Department at the University of Swansea in Wales. Prior to coming to UMBC, Ed served as a United States Peace Corps Volunteer teacher in Ethiopia. In his substantial service role at UMBC he was President of the Faculty Senate (1996-8) and a member of numerous university committees. 

In retirement Ed served as president of the Friends of Maryland's Olmsted Parks & Landscapes, a preservation and advocacy organization, and as Coordinator of the Urban Resources Initiative Internship program, which places interns with projects in Baltimore's Department of Recreation and Parks and the Parks & People Foundation. 

Ed and his wife Jo lived for many years in the Hunting Ridge neighborhood of Baltimore and he was known to bike to the UMBC campus. Ed and Jo recently moved to Charlestown Senior Living in Catonsville, where Ed continued to enjoy connecting with UMBC alumni and faculty.

Ed will be remembered for his contributions to how we understand cities, especially Baltimore, and issues of environmental justice. He influenced generations of students and mentored many faculty members. His kindness, humility, and generosity will be greatly missed in the Department of American Studies, the Orser Center, and across the UMBC campus.

We send our sincere condolences to Ed's beloved family and invite the UMBC community to attend a memorial service celebrating Ed's long and rich life at 11 a.m. on Saturday, January 20, at Salem Lutheran Church, 905 Frederick Road in Catonsville. All who knew and loved him are invited to attend. In lieu of flowers, the family requests contributions be made to Salem Lutheran Church (www.Salem-Catonsville.org/) or the Charlestown Scholars' Fund (www.ccicharlestown.org/giving/scholars-fund).

In honor of Ed's long contributions to the fields of urban and American studies, the Department of American Studies and the Orser Center are co-sponsoring a Humanities Forum lecture by noted urban historian Davarian Baldwin on May 1, 2024. American Studies & the Orser Center will continue to find ways to recognize the work of Ed Orser and his engagement with the study of place and community in the Baltimore region. A donation can be made to support that work in Ed's name on the Department's Giving Page.

You can read Ed's obituary here.

UMBC President Valerie Sheares Ashby has announced that Manfred H. M. van Dulmen will join the university in July as provost and senior vice president. He will succeed interim provost David Dauwalder.

 “From the first time I met him, Manfred’s commitment to students, his care for people with whom he worked, his humility, and his drive for mission-driven excellence were clear, as was his desire to be at UMBC,” says President Sheares Ashby. “I could not be more thrilled about this appointment.”

Van Dulmen says UMBC’s values of inclusive excellence and history of innovation attracted him to the role, and he is excited to work with the UMBC community to articulate strategic priorities and chart a course to the future.

“It is a tremendous opportunity and privilege to be chosen to serve in this role, to build on the incredible history and legacy of the institution to further its excellence and its role as a national leader in higher education,” he said.

A record of success in academic leadership

Van Dulmen comes to UMBC from Kent State University in Ohio, where he is currently serving as senior associate provost and dean of the Graduate College. He started at Kent State as a faculty member in the Department of Psychological Sciences in 2004, and since then served in numerous academic leadership positions at the university, including as interim department chair and associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. He led Kent State through the COVID-19 pandemic and developed strategies for enhancing graduate education and for supporting student mental health. He also led strategic planning in academic affairs, helped to enhance and promote research strength across all disciplines, and led efforts resulting in new collaborative degree programs in data science and cybersecurity, as well as in innovative micro-credential programs at Kent State.

“As a first-generation college student and a first-generation immigrant to the U.S. who attended graduate school in America, Manfred is passionate about the transformative power of higher education and about its public mission in service of students and society broadly,” says President Sheares Ashby.

Van Dulmen is an award-winning scholar with a Ph.D. in family social science from the University of Minnesota. He has received millions of dollars in research funding, published more than 100 articles and book chapters, and edited or co-edited three books. He also founded and served as editor-in-chief of the Sage Publications journal Emerging Adulthood. His research interests include adolescent and young adult relationships and experiences, externalizing behavior problems and aggression, and measurement and methodology.