1. UMBC itself, named by the editors of the 2003 Kaplan/Newsweek How to Get Into College Guide as one of America’s “hot schools,” an exclusive list of a dozen schools that are among students’ top picks nationwide.

2. The Imaging Research Center, which took viewers back to the 19th century in a virtual-reality tour of the Baltimore Museum of Art’s renowned Cone Collection of Impressionist paintings—as they originally appeared in the apartments of sisters Claribel and Etta Cone.

3. Mathematician Manil Suri, whose first novel, The Death of Vishnu, launched an international book tour and drew great reviews in Time, The New York Times, and other media.

4. English and women’s studies professor Joan Korenman, founder of the Center for Women and Information Technology, named one of the “Top Women on the Web.”

5. Psychologist Robert Provine, an expert on laughter and other human behaviors, whose research has been reported in newspapers and magazines ranging from Scientific American to Elle and on television programs including “20/20” and PBS’s “Scientific American Frontiers.”

6. UMBC’s theatre productions, which range from the contemporary to the classics, have won many “Best of the Year” accolades by Baltimore and Washington media, as well as praise from the international press for performances of works by Samuel Beckett directed by Xerxes Mehta.

7. American studies professor Warren Belasco, whose research on food draws both scholarly and popular interest here and abroad and earned him a prestigious Oxford University prize in food
history.

8. Asia scholar Warren Cohen, a regular contributor to major national magazines and newspapers and the first Scholar-in-Residence at the U.S. State Department.

9. Lena Cowen Orlin, professor of English and head of the Shakespeare Association of America, named a Guggenheim Fellow in 2002.

10. UMBC athletes, winners of the NCAA Northeast Conference’s top prize, the Commissioner’s Cup, for four consecutive years.