UMBC Honors and ACHIEVEMENTS

LEADERSHIP and INNOVATION
UMBC is nationally recognized for its leadership in a variety of innovative programs.

UMBC’s Meyerhoff Scholarship Program is a national model for educating talented students from all backgrounds in science, engineering, mathematics and computer science. The university is a leading producer of blacks who go on to receive Ph.D.s and M.D./Ph.Ds. Over 50 Meyerhoff Scholars completed Ph.D.s or M.D./Ph.D.s, and as the program continues to mature, hundreds more will join the graduate school pipeline.

The university is joining with Princeton to create a new Engineering Research Center (ERC) expected to revolutionize optics. The ERC is one of a select number of interdisciplinary centers located at universities across the U.S. UMBC’s optics expert, Anthony Johnson, professor of physics and computer science and electrical engineering, is the deputy director.

A collaboration between UMBC and IBM will create The Multicore Computing Center (MC2), a unique facility that will focus on supercomputing research related to aerospace/defense, financial services, medical imaging and weather/climate change prediction. IBM awarded UMBC a significant gift to support the development of this new center, which researchers describe as an “orchestra” of one of the world’s most powerful supercomputing chips.

The university’s Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship received $2 million from the Kauffman Foundation to build entrepreneurship education across the campus. The mission of the Kauffman Campuses Initiative is to catalyze entrepreneurship programs outside of business and engineering schools. The award acknowledges the success of UMBC's Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship, created six years ago through a gift of $1 million from the Alex. Brown Foundation to develop a leading university entrepreneurship center for the Baltimore region.

UMBC is ranked first nationally in the total number of undergraduate chemistry and biochemistry degrees awarded to African Americans (18) according to the most recent (2004-05) data from the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB). The ASBMB also ranked UMBC seventh nationally in overall undergraduate chemistry and biochemistry degree production (63) and fourth nationally in the total number of chemistry and biochemistry undergraduate degrees awarded to Asian Americans (23).

The University is among the top three Ph.D-granting universities in the U.S. in the production of IT degrees at the undergraduate, master’s and doctoral levels, according to the National Science Foundation (NSF). According to current NSF education data, UMBC ranks second in degrees awarded by U.S. colleges that grant bachelor's, master's and Ph.D. degrees in the computing sciences. UMBC continues to be the largest producer of IT graduates in the Maryland area, according to the NSF.

UMBC’s ADVANCE program is the catalyst for a 38 percent increase in the number of science, technology, engineering and mathematics women faculty, from 29 in 2003 to 40 in 2006. The program, funded by the National Science Foundation, is helping to increase women’s participation in the scientific and engineering workforce by increasing the representation and advancement of women in the academic sciences and engineering careers.

Through a $2.5 million National Science Foundation PROMISE grant, UMBC leads an effort by Maryland’s three public research universities to increase the number and diversity of Ph.D. graduates in the sciences and engineering who go on to academic careers.

The National Science Foundation awarded UMBC a $2.9 million grant to establish an innovative interdisciplinary doctoral training program in “Water in the Urban Environment.” The award places UMBC among the most visible universities carrying out high-level research and doctoral training in urban environmental issues.

The Princeton Review features UMBC in its new 2008 edition of the Princeton Review Guide: "Best 366 Colleges" and ranks UMBC 10th on its Diverse Student Populations list. Only 15 percent of four-year colleges in the U.S. and two Canadian colleges were chosen for the book, with "outstanding academics" as the primary criterion for inclusion.

General Electric (GE) awarded UMBC a 2007 “Partnership Award” for being a top producer of GE talent. GE gives this award to just two to three schools each year.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute has chosen UMBC as part of a collaborative network of 12 colleges and universities to teach a new, hands-on genomic course aimed at involving more U.S. first-year college students in authentic research. HHMI received 44 applications and selected 12 institutions for the initiative, the first from its Science Education Alliance

*Last updated 3/14/2008