Your gift is worth much more than you think.

UMBC is a great place to get an education, make friends, and build your future — but many alumni don’t realize how many donors made their experience possible. Although most of our donations support student scholarships, we also raise funds for programs to build on-campus community, help students connect with employers, and extend learning beyond the classroom to include real-world research and exploration.

When you give back, you fund all the things that have made UMBC known for exceptional undergraduate education and research after just 50 years.

Another thing most alumni don’t realize is that our reputation depends on you. The percentage of alumni who give back each year contributes to our national ranking, meaning that when you make a donation of any size, you’re helping to strengthen the value of your degree.

Most importantly, as a donor, you can feel confident that 100% of your gift goes straight to the program, department, or group you choose. You can support whatever means the most to you, while also supporting the university that means so much to all of us.

Make your gift of any size today. It’s an easy way to make a big difference.

As we send this year’s group of Alternative Spring Breakers off on their service learning trips, we thought we’d take the time to spotlight one of the wonderful people who donated to ASB.  Kirsten Brinlee, program manager for the Baltimore Collegetown Network and friend of UMBC, tells us about how she decided to give, and why the cause is so close to her heart. 

What is your relationship to UMBC, and how did you become involved with us?

When I first moved to Maryland in 2012, I was working for Johns Hopkins University in service-learning, and one of my job responsibilities was to serve on the Service-Learning and Civic Engagement conference. In 2013, UMBC served as the host institution. I would attend planning meetings and many of my first colleagues and friends were from the staff at UMBC. In 2014, I made the transition to my current role as Program Manager at Baltimore Collegetown Network, where I collaborate with 14 institutions, including UMBC.

Can you share a favorite memory from your time here?

Being a member of the 2013 Service-Learning and Civic Engagement conference is one of my top memories at UMBC. I remember being so impressed by the passion and values-focused keynote address given by Dr. Freeman Hrabowski.

What made you decide to give to Alternative Spring Break, specifically?

My first exposure to Alternative Spring Break was when I worked at the University of North Texas’ Center for Leadership and Service. I had never experienced ASBs at my undergraduate institution, but in my work at UNT, our office managed all of the ASBs for the university. I went on my first ASB to St. Louis and we worked with youth. It was one of my most memorable experiences from UNT. When I moved to Baltimore, I was attracted to my position at JHU because it included ASB management. What I loved about JHU’s program was that they were all locally focused. It helped me learn about my community and realize that meaningful service doesn’t have to take place far away from your own community, and in fact it’s more sustainable and impactful to work with your own community.

For this specific ask, one of my Collegetown LeaderShape students reached out to let me know she was participating in an ASB program at UMBC. Collegetown LeaderShape asks students to identify their passions, create a vision, and impact their communities. An ASB is a direct way for students to get involved in service and their community and I want to support those initiatives.

How do you hope your support will impact students?

I hope that my support demonstrates how I continue to live my own values around service and meaningfully engaging with the community.

Why do you think it’s important to give back?

It’s important to give back because it was other people’s generosity and kindness that created opportunities for me. I want to be able to pay forward the experiences I’ve been able to have for another generation.

Guests enjoyed dances choreographed and performed by UMBC students.

There is no question that one of the secrets to UMBC’s incredible success is our dedicated donors. This past fall, we took an evening to say a special thank you to a very important group of our supporters, the Hilltop Society. These generous leadership donors support the university annually with gifts of $1,000 or more, providing powerful support for research, teaching, student activities, financial aid, and more. Their leadership gifts make an incredible difference to the University—and to every student at UMBC.

In November, we invited Hilltop Society members to join us in the new Performing Arts and Humanities Building. That night, they had the opportunity to meet the students and faculty they are supporting. They also enjoyed dances that were choreographed by some of our talented UMBC students.

Dr. Freeman Hrabowski visits with donors Joy and Kingsley Achikeh and scholarship recipient Marta Stachorowski.

Two UMBC students, Markus Proctor, interdisciplinary studies, and Emily Grace, English, shared their stories with donors. Grace, a humanities scholar, shared her experiences as a member of UMBC’s Engineers Without Borders, a program that gives students a chance to create a more stable and prosperous world by addressing people’s basic human needs, such as clean water, power, sanitation, and education.

Proctor, recipient of the Joseph and Freida Faiman Eisenberg/VPC, Inc. Scholarship, told donors that after a stellar high school career that included captaining robotics teams and internships at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, he set his sights on college. Although many schools offered Proctor admission, UMBC was the only school that also offered him much-needed financial aid.

Markus Proctor, scholarship recipient, shares his story.

That support and UMBC’s culture turned out to be just what Proctor wanted. “UMBC is not too big or too small, but it is the right size to build truly amazing relationships with professors and administrators,” says Proctor. He went on to share that his current and future successes—and those of so many UMBC students—hinged on the support of our donors.

“I have to admit, it is difficult to put into words how thankful I am for your support, however, just know, the magnitude of your impact on our campus is appreciated by every student,” Proctor said, echoing the sentiments of all our UMBC scholarship recipients.

—Meredith Purvis

 Todd Carton ’77, interdisciplinary studies, has never been one to follow a conventional route. As an undergraduate, his degree program (then called Option II) combined theatre criticism, literature, and creative writing. Additionally, his experience as a tutor in the Learning Resource Center inspired him to get a master’s degree in linguistics and teach English as a foreign language.

When that market proved dry, he went on to become an accountant and work for several nonprofit organizations until his retirement. It’s certainly not what one might expect from a former theatre student!

Despite his varied career paths, Carton has remained committed to both the performing arts and UMBC.  He says his professors encouraged him to go off the beaten path and fostered “an independent and creative thinking process.”

He recalls, specifically, an American literature final he took as an undergraduate. The first question on the exam was about William Faulkner, and Carton was inspired to write his answer in that author’s distinct stream-of-consciousness style.

By the time he finished, he realized he only had a few minutes to answer the other two essay questions, but he passed the exam “despite giving [the questions] short shrift.”

“I think that built a strong attachment to UMBC for me,” he says now.

Carton has directed his philanthropy to support the arts at UMBC in significant and deeply personal ways. His initial gift, made when the first phase of the Performing Arts and Humanities Building opened in 2012, was to name the building’s box office in memory of his late brother, Steven M. Carton, whom he remembers as “the coolest guy ever.”

More recently, he has established the Carton Family Endowed Scholarship (named in honor of his parents) to support promising students in the performing arts who come from disadvantaged backgrounds. He has also included the university in his estate plan, in hopes that the scholarship fund will continue to grow and benefit more students far into UMBC’s future.

The inaugural recipient, Chandler Stafford ’19, theatre, says she is “truly honored and grateful” for the opportunity, and says that not having to worry about how she’ll pay for school has given her much more freedom to pursue her artistic and academic goals.

“With the help of this scholarship […] I can focus on furthering my knowledge and growing in my field of study,” she says.

Carton is looking forward to meeting Stafford at the Endowed Scholarship Luncheon later this semester. When asked what he might say to her, Carton says he would “…encourage [her] to make the most of [her] opportunities at UMBC, and to realize that…it’s possible to use a UMBC education and succeed in a field that may not be a direct line from your [degree].”

Suzanne Schlenger poses with a few volumes from her collection.

If a university and its people are dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge, there is perhaps nowhere on campus that more embodies that mission than the library. That is surely true here on UMBC’s campus. Much more than books on shelves, the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery is an engine for discovery, providing our students and faculty with the resources and support they need on their academic journey.

This year, those resources grew thanks to Suzanne Schlenger. A member of the Friends of the Library since 2001, she recently established the Suzanne Schlenger Endowment for a Collection of American Women in Literature and donated a substantial set of books that will form the basis for this new collection.

The volumes, which now reside in UMBC’s Special Collections, include many works by Willa Cather and Edith Wharton, as well as a limited edition of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. The collection was built over many years, as Mrs. Schlenger and her late husband, Jack Schlenger, a lawyer and friend of Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, travelled the world looking for works by their favorite authors.

“My husband was a book collector and a reader,” she says. “I read everything he collected, and I wanted to collect books, too.” Mrs. Schlenger and her husband thoroughly enjoyed their search, which took them as far away as Europe. “I have a collector’s mind,” says Mrs. Schlenger. “This satisfies my love of books, my love of reading, and my love of collecting.”

Although Mrs. Schlenger could have opted to sell her books, she says that donating them to the library and establishing the endowment just felt right to her.  She sees this as an opportunity to ensure that the books are well used, and she is eager to see what research and scholarship comes out of her collection. “I wanted to pass [the collection] on to scholars,” she says. “I hope people come and read it.”

Left to right: Tom Beck, chief curator of AOK Library; Suzanne Schlenger; and Larry Wilt, former director of the AOK Library.

Her love for books and reading is clear. When asked about her favorite book in the collection, Mrs. Schlenger answers without pause: it’s Willa Cather’s My Antonia. She cites Antonia’s resilience as a key factor in her appreciation for the book. “[Cather] is an outstanding stylist,” says Mrs. Schlenger. “She writes sparely with such style, and she digs at your heart.”

And while Mrs. Schlenger’s books provide a critical base for the new collection of American women writers, the library staff will also be able to use the endowment she’s created to enrich and expand that collection in consultation with faculty from the English and Theatre Departments. This, Mrs. Schlenger hopes, will fill a void in the library and ensure a rich collection in years to come.

“I’ve seen UMBC grow, and through my husband’s enthusiasm for UMBC, I joined him in that,” says Mrs. Schlenger of her choice to invest her time, treasure, and talent in the university.

Dr. Jodi Crandall

UMBC has announced four recipients in the inaugural round of the Jodi Crandall Fellowship for Research in Language, Literacy & Culture. Named for The LLC Doctoral Program’s founder and professor emerita Dr. Jodi Crandall, the prizes will promote collaborative interdisciplinary research by LLC doctoral students.

“The Jodi Crandall Fellowship will allow our doctoral students to pursue important interdisciplinary research in areas of increasingly pressing importance in our local Baltimore community and internationally; in very general terms, all of the Fellowships in 2015 will study issues involved in communicating across cultural borders,” said Dr. Craig Saper, Professor and Director of The Language, Literacy, and Culture Doctoral program.

The inaugural fellows are:

•  Jermaine Ellerbee for his research titled “Social Context of Education Lab,” in the Social Context of Education Lab Category, with mentor Dr. Susan M. Blunck, and collaborator Dr. Juanita Ashby-Bey
• Erin Berry for her research on “Online Sociolinguistic Practices Among Black Female Millennials at Historically Black Colleges and Universities,” in the Sociolinguistics Lab Category, with mentor and collaborator Dr. Christine Mallinson
• Landry Digeon and Ibrahim Er, for their research titled “Social Context of Education Lab,” in the Digital Publishing Lab Category,” with mentor and collaborator Dr. Edward Larkey

Back row, L-R: Jermaine Ellerbe, Landry Digeon, Dr. Craig Saper; front row, L-R: Dr. Jodi Crandall, Erin Berry, Ibrahim Er

“The LLC Doctoral Program will benefit enormously from the Crandall Fellowships as it helps us establish research clusters and applied research laboratories in our program, and each of the Fellows will do research relevant in those areas,” said Dr. Saper.

The fellowship program was first announced at Dr. Crandall’s retirement celebration in 2012 to support students of the program; the LLC faculty decided it should be named to honor her. Crandall hopes to grow the endowment in the coming years with the help of the LLC community.

“Support for interdisciplinary research in the humanities and social sciences is quite limited. There are always fewer research assistantships for our students than are needed,” she said. “I specifically wanted to start a fellowship to support students and to encourage interdisciplinary, collaborative research between LLC students, LLC students and faculty, or LLC current and former students.”

In addition to acting as the founding director of The Language, Literacy & Culture Doctoral program at UMBC, Crandall is a professor emerita of the Department of Education, as well as a former co-director of UMBC’s TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) master’s program.

Click here to support the Jodi Crandall Fellowship.

UMBC is thrilled to be the newest school to participate in the Strong Scholars Program with the Hattie M. Strong Foundation. The program provides scholarships to undergraduate and graduate students in teacher-training programs.

The foundation continues the legacy of its founder, Hattie M. Strong. Prior to becoming a philanthropist, she lived a life of considerably less ease, including raising a son as a single mother and journeying with him across the continent to find work during the Alaska Gold Rush!

After marrying Henry Strong of the Eastman Kodak Company, she dedicated her life to helping those less fortunate than her. She supported a variety of causes including hospitals, educational institutions, and social service agencies in the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa. You can learn more about Hattie Strong here.

UMBC’s Education Department selected its first Strong Scholars in January and will continue to make new awards each year. The scholarships will benefit who are completing their student-teaching at a local K-12 school. The scholarship provides important financial aid during a semester where students are incredibly busy and often stretched thin financially.

We know that this scholarship will make a tremendous difference to these students. UMBC is incredibly thankful to have such generous foundation partners!

Contact the department to find out more about UMBC’s Strong Scholars Program.

Clolita Vitale ’75, theatre, is truly a Retriever Believer. When she first walked onto UMBC’s campus in the late 1960s, she was struck by how new the university was. She even recalls walking around on plywood planks as construction was underway. But where some might have preferred an older, established school, Vitale found UMBC’s newness exciting–a promise of things to come.

Since then, Vitale has been involved with UMBC in just about every way possible. As a student, she decided to study theatre and dance. Though she would later pursue a career in law, she says her time in the performing arts program at UMBC was critically important to her. The tight-knit community and creative ingenuity of faculty and fellow students inspired and supported her, and it’s something she’ll always remember. “They helped me find my sense of self,” she says.

Later on, when she joined the staff at UMBC, she felt that Dr. Freeman Hrabowski and the other campus leaders were supportive. They encouraged her to get involved on campus and grow professionally. Eventually, she became an Assistant Vice President and University Counsel. “They allowed me to evolve,” Vitale says. “It didn’t seem like I was in the same place standing still for 30 years.”

Even after moving on to other career opportunities, Vitale has stayed deeply connected to the campus community. She’s taken UMBC students under her wing, helping them get their start in life. And she’s supported the university with gifts to the arts (including naming two seats in the new PAHB theatre) and now with the decision to make a planned gift to the university.

That pioneering spirit that is so prevalent in UMBC’s earliest faculty and alumni is clearly present in Vitale. She invested in the place that invested in her, and she’s been proud to watch UMBC grow into a nationally recognized research university. “I feel like someone who went from the horse and buggy to the space age,” she says.

Vitale says she felt it important to give early on, even when she could only make smaller donations. “I knew that even if I only had $100, it was important to contribute,” she says. “I knew it would go to something really needed.”

There’s no doubt that Vitale’s passion for UMBC is real–her voice is full of emotion as she reflects on everything she’s experienced at the university. And now, more than 40 years after she first came to campus, Vitale continues to support UMBC. In fact, as she looked forward to retirement, she knew there was no question that she would include UMBC in her will. “You can’t take a place you’ve been associated with for so long and just forget about it,” she explains. She sees her planned gift as an opportunity to leave a legacy at the place that has so deeply impacted her life. “It means something to me,” she says. “I want to be a piece of that.”

Learn more about making a planned gift to UMBC.

Dr. Ana María Schwartz Caballero, associate
professor of Spanish and second language
education, is something of a fixture here at UMBC: she’s worked at the university in various capacities for the past 30 years, mostly bouncing between the Language and Education Departments, but always making sure to stay closely involved with students.

However, you won’t find her just on UMBC’s campus. Since Dr. Schwartz Caballero is heavily involved in Baltimore’s Hispanic and Latino community, you’re just as likely to find her running a meeting of the Latino/Hispanic Faculty Association. Or walking through City Hall with the rest of the members of Mayor Rawlings-Blake’s Hispanic Commission. Or presenting her research on language teaching and learning to the Alliance for the Advancement of Heritage Languages.

So, it should come as no surprise that Dr. Schwartz Caballero was selected to receive the 2014 NFL Hispanic Heritage Leadership Award at a special presentation ceremony during the Ravens’ September 28 game.

It should also come as no surprise that she chose to donate the $2,000 grant that came with the award to UMBC’s Esperanza Scholarship Fund. “My heart has always been with the students I work with and the community here at UMBC,” says Dr. Schwartz Caballero. “I couldn’t think of giving money to anyone else.”

Which is exactly why she chose the Esperanza Scholarship: it supports undergraduate and graduate students of Latino or Hispanic ancestry and/or students committed to the advancement of minorities, especially of Latino or Hispanic descent. And, as faculty advisor for the Hispanic/Latino Student Union, as well as a member of the UMBC Hispanic and Latino Student Admissions Advisory Group, Dr. Schwartz Caballero knows that students need all the support they can get. “I know that students struggle. They work hard, juggling jobs and schoolwork, and that can be very stressful.”

For students of immigrant families, though, it can be even more difficult. “Students from families that are just beginning to be established here often lack the financial support available to others,” explains Dr. Schwartz Caballero. “And, in many cases, the students themselves, on top of working and going to school, are also supporting their families however they can.”

And Dr. Schwartz Caballero is doing what she can to help, too. “It takes a long time to build up the funds for something like that [the Esperanza Scholarship], and any donation can help build that base. I just hope it makes someone’s life a little easier.”

Support the Esperanza Scholarship Fund.

Dr. Ana María Schwartz Caballero, associate
professor of Spanish and second language
education, is something of a fixture here at UMBC: she’s worked at the university in various capacities for the past 30 years, mostly bouncing between the Language and Education Departments, but always making sure to stay closely involved with students.

However, you won’t find her just on UMBC’s campus. Since Dr. Schwartz Caballero is heavily involved in Baltimore’s Hispanic and Latino community, you’re just as likely to find her running a meeting of the Latino/Hispanic Faculty Association. Or walking through City Hall with the rest of the members of Mayor Rawlings-Blake’s Hispanic Commission. Or presenting her research on language teaching and learning to the Alliance for the Advancement of Heritage Languages.

So, it should come as no surprise that Dr. Schwartz Caballero was selected to receive the 2014 NFL Hispanic Heritage Leadership Award at a special presentation ceremony during the Ravens’ September 28 game.

It should also come as no surprise that she chose to donate the $2,000 grant that came with the award to UMBC’s Esperanza Scholarship Fund. “My heart has always been with the students I work with and the community here at UMBC,” says Dr. Schwartz Caballero. “I couldn’t think of giving money to anyone else.”

Which is exactly why she chose the Esperanza Scholarship: it supports undergraduate and graduate students of Latino or Hispanic ancestry and/or students committed to the advancement of minorities, especially of Latino or Hispanic descent. And, as faculty advisor for the Hispanic/Latino Student Union, as well as a member of the UMBC Hispanic and Latino Student Admissions Advisory Group, Dr. Schwartz Caballero knows that students need all the support they can get. “I know that students struggle. They work hard, juggling jobs and schoolwork, and that can be very stressful.”

For students of immigrant families, though, it can be even more difficult. “Students from families that are just beginning to be established here often lack the financial support available to others,” explains Dr. Schwartz Caballero. “And, in many cases, the students themselves, on top of working and going to school, are also supporting their families however they can.”

And Dr. Schwartz Caballero is doing what she can to help, too. “It takes a long time to build up the funds for something like that [the Esperanza Scholarship], and any donation can help build that base. I just hope it makes someone’s life a little easier.”

Support the Esperanza Scholarship Fund.