The Employee Benefits Division is excited to announce a series of Virtual Spring Wellness Fair Events from Monday, May 9th thru Friday, May 20th. 

During the Spring Wellness Virtual Fairs, each of our health plan vendors will share information about their no-cost wellness resources available to their members. You'll hear all about wellness coaching, weight management programs, behavioral health support, financial wellness, oral wellness, and more.

The sessions will not only be informative, they'll be FUN! Join us for games like wellness trivia, wellness wordle, and wellness jeopardy.

But wait...there's more...for each session that you attend, we will enter you into a raffle for one of our wellness prizes! Don't miss out on all the fun.  Please visit the Employee Benefits Website for more information and for the Spring Wellness Virtual fair schedule.

By Susan Thornton Hobby

The first question on the Jacqueline C. Hrabowski Endowment scholarship application is “How did you develop such a passion for service?”

Jackie Hrabowski answers that one easily: Her parents.

Growing up in rural Virginia, Hrabowski remembers her parents constantly serving others. For years, young Jackie accompanied her parents as they filled out forms, calculated taxes, built brick walls, or repaired houses for her parents’ combined 28 siblings or for the rest of the town. As a teenager, she once pouted, “Why does it always have to be us that helps everyone?”

Her father answered simply, “Because we can.”

“Those are the role models that I saw,” Hrabowski said. “You grow up with that in your DNA. And that’s been the thing that has moved me forward throughout my entire life.”

Hrabowski is a former vice president of community involvement at T. Rowe Price, a passionate advocate for child welfare, and the wife of Freeman. She has been mentoring the recipients of her endowment’s scholarship for 20 years. Because she can.

One of Hrabowski’s mentees, Nia Hampton ’13, media and communications studies, struggled with expectations at the internship that Hrabowski found for her. After Hampton’s rough first day with the company, Hrabowski responded by buying Hampton clothes, getting her hair done, and counseling her on professional behavior.

Now a freelance journalist, multimedia artist, and still a self-proclaimed “rebel,” Hampton recently texted Hrabowski, thanking her for her support. 

“Mrs. Hrabowski was really good at connecting me with people who could see me and understand me. I kinda knew I would be something she may not know what to do with,” Hampton said, but Hrabowski didn’t give up, instead connecting Hampton to UMBC Vice Provost and mentor Yvette Mozie-Ross ’88, healthy science and policy. To help mentees toward success, Hampton said, “sometimes it takes all kinds of people.”

Thomas Southerland ’22, economics, met Hrabowski at the scholarship recipients’ cohort dinner she gave at Baltimore’s Center Club.

“She was very supportive and very wise,” he said, and he and many of the scholars took notes while they chatted with their mentor. The connections he made will serve him well in his career in finance after graduation, he said.

You Can’t Be What You Can’t See

Hrabowski excelled at math, even beating her future husband Freeman on their calculus test scores. But she majored in psychology at Hampton University, because a role model, a Fisk University graduate who taught Sunday School at her church, was also a psychology major.

She often quotes the saying posted in her husband’s office: “You Can’t Be What You Can’t See.”

“Role modeling means having to see actual images of what it looks like to be what you want to be,” said Hrabowski, who taught educational psychology and early childhood education at UMBC in the 1980s. “You can sit and talk until you’re blue in the face about what you need to do and how you need to behave. Words alone aren’t enough. They’ve got to see it.”

Alicia Wilson ’04, political science, Hrabowski’s first mentee, agrees.

“Jackie was one of the first Black women I’d ever met in corporate America at the highest level,” said Wilson, now the vice president for economic development at Johns Hopkins University and Health System. “She’s a wonderful mentor—she imparts her knowledge and her experience in a spirit of love and caring and support.”

Jackie Hrabowski and Alicia Wilson in 2017, courtesy of Jay Baker.

Now Wilson is mentoring seven Retrievers, making sure she “meets students where they are,” at the UMBC dining hall or outside their dorms.

Wilson, and so many others, clearly learned lessons from Hrabowski.

“You use the talents that you have, not so much for your own purpose, but to make life better for others,” Hrabowski said. “Because when you do that, your universe expands in a positive way as well.”

Read more about the Hrabowskis’ philosophy of mentorship in the Equation of Change.

Congratulations to PhD students Shonda Campbell and Devonique Brissett on receiving the Jessica Soto Perez Memorial Award at yesterday's GSA Award Ceremony. 

The Graduate Student Association has established the Jessica Soto-Perez Award to honor an outstanding graduate student who aids his/her peers in academic and professional pursuits during their time at UMBC. Receipts of the Jessica Soto-Perez award show continued dedication to their fellow students through their compassion, hard-work, and academic excellence. This award honors students who are community minded and who reach beyond their own academic pursuits to support the achievements of others.   

Congratulations as well to Dr. Meagan Jezek on receiving the Richard E. Wolf, Jr. Dissertation Award.

Established in 2000 by Dr. and Mrs. Richard E. Wolf, Sr. in honor of their son, Professor Richard E. Wolf, Jr., to recognize exceptional dissertation research that has made significant contributions to disciplines within the biological sciences