Dear UMBC community,

I am excited to announce that Carlos Jensen and Sophia Sotilleo will join the provost leadership team this fall. Carlos will serve as vice provost for student success and dean for the division of undergraduate academic affairs, and Sophia will serve as vice provost and dean of the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery. Both Carlos and Sophia will join the UMBC community on August 1.

Carlos and Sophia fill out a provost leadership team that has been reimagined to meet UMBC’s unique needs in an evolving educational landscape. In his role, Carlos will oversee undergraduate academic programs and services while fostering an environment of inclusive excellence. Sophia will lead the library in its vital efforts to support the teaching and research needs of an R1 institution. 

Carlos comes to UMBC from the University of California, San Diego where he has served the last five years as the associate vice chancellor for educational innovation. Sophia joins us from our USM sister institution, Bowie State University, where she has served as the dean of the Thurgood Marshall Library since 2022.

Sophia’s academic interests center on embedded librarianship, particularly its intersections with access, advocacy, and leadership in higher education. At Bowie State, she led transformative initiatives in digital access, research support, and campus-wide library engagement. Sophia served as previous chair of the Council of Library Deans and Directors for the University System of Maryland and Affiliated Institutions, where she led efforts to improve system-wide digital access, research support, and inter-campus collaboration. She is a dedicated academic librarian and higher education leader with a career rooted in intellectual freedom, student-centered service, and inclusive access to information. Sophia brings a collaborative and visionary approach to librarianship, championing innovation, advocacy, and engagement across academic and community contexts.

While at UC San Diego, Carlos provided strategic leadership to advance education and innovation, including the implementation and improvement of curricular analytics to help departments close equity gaps and help all students progress toward their degrees. He oversaw instructional development for educators and comprehensive academic support for students and played a key leadership role in the academic affairs response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

To each community member who participated in the two searches as well as the search committee members who put in countless hours throughout the process, thank you for your time and dedication to making sure we got this right. I want to give a special thanks to Peggy Re and Kimberly Moffitt for their leadership in chairing the search committees. 

I also want to take this opportunity to thank Stephen Freeland for serving as interim dean and vice provost for undergraduate academic affairs and Richard Darga for serving as the interim dean of the library. Their steadfast leadership has been invaluable during this time of transition.

Please join me in welcoming Carlos and Sophia to UMBC.

Sincerely,

Manfred H.M. van Dulmen

Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

Dear UMBC Community, 

I am delighted to announce the appointment of Michael Sarbanes as the inaugural executive director of the George and Betsy Sherman Center beginning June 23, 2025.

The George and Betsy Sherman Center furthers UMBC’s commitment to excellence in urban schools in Baltimore City and the region. Established by a visionary gift to UMBC from the Sherman Family Foundation, the center brings together initiatives to support transformational education in four connected areas:

Sherman Scholars: The Sherman Teacher Scholars Program develops STEM and early childhood educators who are skilled, passionate, and committed to an excellent education for all children.

School Community Partnerships: The Sherman School Partnerships program works with schools, families, and community groups to create innovative, responsive, and effective partnerships that help students thrive.

Early Childhood Learning: The Sherman Center engages parents, community groups, and schools to ensure that a child’s early years become the foundation for life-long learning.

Research: The Sherman Center supports applied research linking the insights of UMBC’s outstanding faculty with the daily educational experience of school communities.

The Sherman Center for Early Learning in Urban Communities served Baltimore City’s early childhood education field from 2017-2024. Several of the initiatives are being continued through the George and Betsy Sherman Center.

As the inaugural executive director of the Sherman Center, Michael brings to UMBC a unique range of leadership experiences in education, partnerships, and community engagement. As executive director of engagement for Baltimore City Schools, he led the city’s efforts to mobilize Baltimore’s institutions and communities around educational excellence. He brings to the Sherman Center a decade of experience and passion for excellent classroom teaching, as a physics teacher at Green Street Academy in the same Baltimore City neighborhood where he lives. His work has also involved leadership roles in community safety as the head of the Governor’s Office of Crime Control and Prevention, and in transportation, and housing as executive director of the Citizens Planning and Housing Association.

Michael’s experience as a visionary community leader and educator in Baltimore City and Maryland uniquely qualifies him to lead the transformational work of the Sherman Center. Please join me in welcoming Michael to the Sherman Center and UMBC.  

Sincerely,

Manfred H.M. van Dulmen

Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

Dear UMBC community,

I am pleased to announce Anupam Joshi has been named vice provost and chief AI officer beginning July 1. Anupam brings almost three decades of experience at UMBC to the new role. For the last two years he has served as the interim dean of the College of Engineering and Information Technology in addition to his position as the Oros Family Professor and director of the UMBC Cybersecurity Institute.

While I had previously announced Anupam would be serving as a special assistant to the provost for AI and computing, I was continually impressed with his forward-thinking leadership as we worked to fill out the provost leadership team. In light of Anupam’s ongoing contributions to the leadership team, as well as budgetary considerations, I have made the decision to eliminate the open senior vice provost for academic affairs position and appoint Anupam as vice provost and chief AI officer.

In this newly created role, Anupam will oversee various areas previously managed by the vice provost for academic affairs (e.g., academic resource planning and management, space management), provide leadership to academic affairs strategic initiatives, and lead the university’s strategy for AI and computing. This includes coordinating and leveraging current efforts in AI and computing, leading the strategic planning for university goals in this area, and leveraging new resources and university partnerships.

A prolific scholar, Anupam obtained a B.Tech degree from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT)  Delhi in 1989, and a master’s and Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1991 and 1993. His research interests are at the intersection of AI and systems. He is a pioneer in data management and security for mobile and ad-hoc networks using AI approaches.

Over the last decade, Anupam has explored this intersection to improve cybersecurity – using distributed AI approaches for attack detection and resilience in CPS/IoT systems that undergird critical infrastructure and policy-driven approaches to security and privacy. He has worked with scholars from areas as diverse as medicine, psychology, linguistics, gerontology, and public policy to explore AI-based approaches in those domains that have led to publications and extramural funding.

Anupam is an affiliate faculty in the School of Medicine at the University of Maryland, Baltimore and in UMBC’s Erickson School of Aging Studies. He is also an adjunct professor at IIT Delhi’s School of IT. He is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and serves on the Maryland Cybersecurity Council chartered by the Maryland legislature. Anupam has published more than 300 technical papers with an h-index of 97 and over 34,000 citations (per Google scholar), been granted nine patents, and has obtained research support totaling more than $22 million from the National Science Foundation, NASA, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, U.S. Dept of Defense, NIST, IBM, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Northrop Grumman, and Lockheed Martin amongst others.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank Peggy Re who has served for the past year as interim vice provost for academic affairs. Peggy has been an incredible resource as I started my first year as provost and has been instrumental in academic affairs making significant progress this past year. I look forward to continuing to work with Peggy as she returns to her position as associate provost for academic affairs. 

Please join me in congratulating Anupam on his new role as vice provost and chief AI officer.

Sincerely,

Manfred H.M. van Dulmen

Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

Dear UMBC community, 

As I reflect back on this past academic year, I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to each and every one of you. Your dedication, creativity, and tireless commitment to our students and to one another have made this year a success in so many meaningful ways. On a daily basis, I am reminded about the critical role you play in making UMBC a great university and a wonderful place to work and educate.

This past year has seen considerable changes on the leadership team. I want to thank you for your patience as we continue to build a team capable of supporting UMBC 3.0 and serving the university community. This coming year we also will have over 60 new faculty members joining UMBC. We will highlight each of our new faculty members throughout the fall semester. 

Whether you were teaching in the classroom, supporting students behind the scenes, conducting research, or helping keep our campus running smoothly, your efforts have made a lasting impact. I’m especially proud of the way our community continues to lead with inclusive excellence, creating a learning environment where every student, faculty, and staff member feels supported and valued.

Your work does not go unnoticed, and I hope you can take real pride in what we’ve accomplished together. As we head into summer, I encourage you to take time to rest and recharge. You’ve earned it.

Looking ahead, I also want to share a few updates regarding our fall academic schedule: beginning academic year 2025-2026, Thanksgiving Eve (the Wednesday prior to Thanksgiving, this year, November 26) will be an administrative holiday for both faculty and staff. We hope this gives you a little extra time to rest and spend with loved ones during the holiday season. For faculty members with classes on Wednesdays, please be aware that you will have one less class session than in previous years this fall as the semester will start on Wednesday, August 27. While we initially planned to start on a Monday, we will not start on a Monday until AY 2026-2027 to allow for review and modifications (as necessary) of the faculty start/end dates of contracts as well as scheduling of activities prior to the start of the semester. Click here to see the fall academic calendar. Starting AY 2026-2027, the academic year will also include a Fall Recess (Monday/Tuesday in October, specific dates TBD) as recently approved by the faculty senate.

Thank you again for everything you do. Wishing you a restful summer and looking forward to all we’ll achieve together in the year ahead.

Warmly, 

Manfred H. M. van Dulmen

Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs