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
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