The following message was shared with the UMBC community on April 21 to announce the naming of a new dean for the College of Engineering and Information Technology:

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Dear UMBC community,

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Jeanne M. VanBriesen as the dean of the College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT) effective July 1. Jeanne is a distinguished academic leader with a bold vision for the future of engineering and information technology research and education and a commitment to inclusive excellence.

Jeanne joins UMBC from Carnegie Mellon University where she is the Duquesne Light Company Professor in the departments of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy. She recently completed service as the division director in the Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental, and Transport Systems, in the Engineering Directorate, at the U.S. National Science Foundation. She previously served as the vice provost for faculty at Carnegie Mellon and as the chair of the faculty senate.

Jeanne holds a bachelor’s in education and a master’s and Ph.D. in civil engineering from Northwestern University. She is a licensed professional engineer, a board certified environmental engineer, and a diplomate of water resources engineering.

An accomplished scholar, Jeanne has published more than 75 scientific articles and given more than 200 professional presentations. Her research, which has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, the Colcom Foundation, the Heinz Endowments, the Packard Foundation, and the Pennsylvania Infrastructure Technology Alliance, focuses on environmental systems, including biotransformation of recalcitrant organics, detection of biological agents in drinking water and natural water systems, speciation-driven biogeochemistry of chelating agents and disinfection by-products, and environmental impacts of energy extraction.

An award-winning educator, visionary leader, and active mentor, Jeanne has supervised 24 Ph.D. dissertations and numerous M.S. theses. She has served on several boards, including the U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board, and she is a fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Environmental Water Resources Institute, the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

I want to give a special thanks to Bill LaCourse and the dedicated members of the search committee for their efforts in conducting a comprehensive national search.

I am excited for Jeanne to join UMBC and build on the tradition of integrating undergraduate and graduate education, research, innovation, and service to address evolving global needs. Please join me in welcoming Jeanne to the UMBC community.

Anupam Joshi Named Special Assistant to the Provost for AI and Computing

I am also pleased to announce an exciting opportunity for Anupam Joshi, who selflessly served as the interim dean for the past two years. In addition to his current roles as the Oros Family Professor and director of UMBC Cybersecurity Institute, Anupam will be transitioning to a new role as the special assistant to the Provost for AI and Computing. In this role Anupam will lead UMBC’s strategy for AI and Computing including coordinating and leveraging current efforts in this space, lead the strategic planning for university goals in this area, and leverage new resources and university partnerships.

Anupam is a renowned expert in cybersecurity, AI, and data science. He brings decades of leadership, research excellence, and visionary thinking to this new role. His appointment marks an exciting chapter for UMBC as we expand our efforts to drive innovation, foster interdisciplinary collaboration, and shape the future of ethical and impactful AI on campus, across the USM, and around the globe.

Please join me in congratulating Anupam on this well-deserved recognition. I look forward to the continued growth and success of the AI and computing programs under his leadership.

Sincerely,

Manfred H.M. van Dulmen

Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

The following message was shared with the UMBC community on April 15 to announce the naming of a new vice provost and dean of the Graduate School:

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Dear UMBC Community,

I am pleased to announce the appointment of Christa J. Porter as the next vice provost and dean of the Graduate School. Christa joins UMBC on July 1 from Kent State University in Ohio where she serves as the interim dean of the Graduate College and as a faculty member. 

The vice provost and dean of the Graduate School is a key position in serving the university to guide the future of graduate education and graduate student success at UMBC. Christa is a collaborative leader who brings a wealth of experience and a deep commitment to inclusive excellence and student success to the role. She brings substantial administrative experience at the department and university level, working across colleges and divisions in a shared governance environment. 

As we embark on strategic planning, Christa also has significant experience in this space. In addition to her administrative experience, Christa brings a very strong record as a faculty member. Christa is a nationally recognized scholar, teacher, and mentor. Her areas of expertise include the socialization and trajectory of Black women in higher education, student development at the intersections of identities, and research and praxis in higher education and student affairs. In addition to serving as the next vice provost and dean of the Graduate School, Christa will also have a faculty appointment in the Language, Literacy, and Culture doctoral program.

Christa earned a Ph.D. in college student affairs administration and an interdisciplinary qualitative research studies certificate at the University of Georgia, a M.A. in higher education from the University of Maryland, College Park, and a B.A. in social relations and policy from Michigan State University.

I want to give a special thanks to Jeffrey Halverson, who has selflessly served as the interim vice provost and dean of the Graduate School. His thoughtful leadership has been invaluable during this season of transition. I also want to take this opportunity to thank Ana Oskoz for chairing the search committee and everyone who was involved in the search process. I appreciate your continued commitment to graduate education at UMBC. 

Please welcome Christa to the UMBC community as she returns to Maryland. 

Sincerely, 

Manfred H.M. van Dulmen

Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

Sean Silverman began his UMBC journey as a computer science major. After taking several programming classes in high school, he was ready to pursue a career in data science while also enrolling in history courses to foster his love of history. However, by his second semester, Silverman’s passion for history inspired him to switch majors during his sophomore year. It is a common misperception among incoming students that they must commit to one path, but UMBC is a place where students can explore careers across disciplines and have the support needed to shift gears and equip themselves with the tools to succeed academically. 

Silverman’s initial interest in history was sparked by his older sister’s trips to Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries and then by the deep dive into that region’s intricate past. At UMBC, he found a mentor in Brian Van Wyck, assistant professor of history, who shared a similar academic trajectory. During the fall semester of his senior year, Silverman completed his 30-page history capstone research paper on the Tokyo War Crimes Trials of 1946 – 1948. As he looks forward to graduation, Silverman reflects on how he rose to meet the challenge of his successful capstone project with the support ofVan Wyck.

Learning the skills as you go

Van Wyck, who has been at UMBC for nearly five years, shares Silverman’s enthusiasm for learning about places, events, and languages vastly different from his own experiences and history. Like Silverman, he did not travel abroad or become fluent in a second language during his undergraduate years. It wasn’t until after college, when Van Wyck worked and lived in Turkey, that he began learning Turkish and German. These skills flourished through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program in the Turkish immigrant community of Detmold, in northwestern Germany, and the support of the Turkish Critical Language Scholarship. Van Wyck’s willingness and curiosity to immerse himself in Detmold’s linguistic, cultural, and political crossroads shaped the trajectory of his research and influenced his teaching, including Silverman’s capstone course.

“I like the complexity and challenge of research, putting different kinds of sources in different languages in conversation with one another to find surprising answers to important questions relevant to understanding problems and injustices in our contemporary world,” says Van Wyck, who promoted opportunities for UMBC, faculty, and students to study and research in Germany as a 2023 – 2024 DAAD Research Ambassador.

(right)While conducting research at the Atatürk Library in Istanbul, Van Wyck consulted a 1966 news article from the Cumhuriyet, the oldest Turkish daily newspaper, about Turkish migrant workers’ attempt to organize religious services in West Germany. (Image courtesy of Van Wyck)

A diverse tool kit for humanities and social science research

Silverman’s capstone class first learned about the post-WWII Nuremberg Trial of 1945 – 1946 and the Tokyo War Crimes Trials of 1946 – 1948, then students chose an aspect of one of the trials for further research. With Silverman’s keen interest in Asian history, the Tokyo War Crimes Trials intrigued him. His passion and dedication helped him find elusive dates, names, references, and footnotes, which led to a domino effect of ideas about the 11 presiding judges representing 11 countries from North America, Europe, and Asia that shaped his thesis, “Presupposed Justice: How Orientalism Affected the Tokyo Trial.” An Orientalism framework analyzes how the West negatively perceives, stereotypes, and exerts power over the East, often through colonialism, racism, and the sexualization of Asian people.

For students with little experience researching international topics, Van Wyck’s expertise in international and multilingual research helped bridge that gap. He has spent over a decade studying migration from Turkey to West Germany, starting in the 1960s. His current research was spurred by a long-forgotten banned Turkish public school textbook, created by Germany, to teach Turkish students their language and culture without input from Turkey.

“There was little information, but I found some copies. I spent a great deal of time reading and coding the information and conducting a quantitative analysis of the topics according to geography, the authors in each section, and those cited,” says Van Wyck who also took advantage of UMBC’s interlibrary loan service to access law books in Dutch from the 1980s, original pamphlets in German from the 1970s, and Turkish-language memoirs written by imams and theology professors. “I used government documents and archives. Then, I tracked down the project’s administrators and authors and conducted in-depth interviews. By using humanities and social science research methods, I was able to tell the story of this unique and broad textbook project that was, in the end, canceled.”  

Silverman faced similar obstacles in his research throughout the semester. “The Tokyo Trials are not covered as well as the Nuremberg Trial and less so through an Orientalism framework,” says Silverman. To help students move beyond the general knowledge of the trials, Van Wyck noted databases and archives that were less familiar to students. He first pointed Silverman to the University of Virginia Law School International Military Tribunal for the Far East Digital Collection. Then, Silverman navigated the databases of the Library of Congress and the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s  War Crimes Documentation Initiative

“Professor Van Wyck suggested a document written in French that related heavily to the Tokyo Trials and Orientalism. He knows some French and helped me translate it.” Silverman also made the most of his budding Japanese skills to further his project. He was in search of the dissent by the only judge who wanted to acquit all the Japanese leaders charged with war crimes. “I couldn’t find much in English. My one semester of Japanese came to the rescue,” says Silverman. “I found the dissent by looking up his last name in Japanese, which ended up being in the title of a book.”

The trail didn’t end there. Silverman struck gold among the 690,000 physical books in the Albin O. Kuhn Library, where he found two books in the political science and international law sections that profoundly shaped his paper. The Tokyo Trial and Beyond: Reflections of a Peacemonger is a collection of interviews with one of the sitting judges and the Sugamo Prison, Tokyo: An Account of the Trial and Sentencing of Japanese War Criminals in 1948, by a U.S. Participant, describes life inside the American-guarded prison. With a wide array of resources, Silverman began to write. 

Writing history

After the research is complete, students begin analyzing the facts. However, this part of the process shifts from a solitary task to a communal experience. Students read each other’s papers, ask questions, and suggest changes several times before Van Wyck gives feedback. Four to five drafts later, students turn in a final product—Silverman received an A. It’s a moment Silverman didn’t foresee when he started at UMBC.

“Switching to a history major two years into my college career, I felt a little behind for a while, especially with my research skills. Wanting to go to graduate school, I knew I needed to work on that and build the skills over the years,” says Silverman. “The extensive research and synthesizing writing skills have been the most valuable skills I’ve gained, not just in this class but from all my history classes at UMBC. They will serve me well as I continue further into my academic career in graduate school and make plans to travel to Asia.”

“I became a historian because the questions that interested me take place predominantly in the past,” says Van Wyck. He will return to Germany this summer as a visiting research fellow at the Leibniz Center for Contemporary History Potsdam and at the International Youth Library. “I think it’s important for historians and undergraduate history majors to gain access to a broad and diverse toolkit.”

In fall 2025, Van Wyck will teach HIST 372: Nazi Germany, HIST 210: Migration in World History, a new course he developed.

Learn more about the UMBC History Department‘s degree programs, faculty research, and events.

Written by Margie Burns, assistant teaching professor of English, UMBC

Most readers hear “pride and prejudice” and immediately think of Jane Austen’s most famous novel, that salty-sweet confection of romance and irony with a fairy-tale ending.

Few people, however, know the history of the phrase “pride and prejudice,” which I explore in my new book, “Jane Austen, Abolitionist: The Loaded History of the Phrase ‘Pride and Prejudice.’”

Like most Austen fans and scholars, I had read and loved her novels for years without learning much about the history of the title, which Austen chose after scrapping the original one, “First Impressions.”

By the 20th century, “pride and prejudice” became solely associated with Austen’s 1813 novel.

The phrase, which has religious origins, appeared in hundreds of works before Austen was born. From Britain it traveled to America, and from religious tomes it expanded to secular works. It even became a hallmark of abolitionist writing.

Fighting words for religious factions

While 2025 marks Austen’s 250th birthday, the phrase “pride and prejudice” first appeared more than 400 years ago, in religious writings by English Protestants. As the daughter, sister, cousin and granddaughter of Church of England ministers, Austen was certainly aware of the tradition.

If ministers wanted to reproach their parishioners or their opponents, they attributed criticism of their sermons to “pride and prejudice” – as coming from people too arrogant and narrow-minded to entertain their words in good faith.

While the usage began in the Church of England, other denominations, even radical ones, soon adopted it: “Pride and prejudice” appears in the writings of Nonconformists, Anabaptists, Quakers, Dissenters and other representatives of “Schism, Faction and Sedition,” as one anonymous writer called them.

One early takeaway is that, amid fervent religious conflicts, various denominations similarly used “pride and prejudice” as a criticism.

The unnamed minister himself complained that, owing to “the Pride and Prejudice of mens Spirits, the prevailing Interests of some Factions and Parties, the greatest part of the Nation are miserably wanting in their Duty.”

At the same time, the phrase could be invoked to support religious toleration and in pleas for inclusiveness.

“When all Pride and Prejudice, all Interests and Designs, being submitted to the Honour of God, and the Discharge of our Duty,” an anonymous clergyman wrote in 1734, “the Holy Scriptures shall again triumph over the vain Traditions of Men; and Religion no longer take its Denomination from little Sects and Factions.”

From politics to prose

In the 18th century, advances in publishing led to an explosion of secular writing. For the first time, regular people could buy books about history, politics and philosophy. These popular texts spread the phrase “pride and prejudice” to even more distant shores.

One fan was American founding father Thomas Paine.

In his 47-page pamphlet “Common Sense,” Paine argued that kings could not be trusted to protect democracy: “laying aside all national pride and prejudice in favour of modes and forms, the plain truth is, that it is wholly owing to the constitution of the people, and not to the constitution of the government[,] that the crown is not as repressive in England as in Turkey.”

Others included Daniel Defoe, author of “Robinson Crusoe.” In his 1708 essay “Review of the State of the British Nation,” Defoe satirically exhorted the public to vote Tory rather than electing men of sense, to “dispell the Poisons” that “Sloth, Envy, Pride and Prejudice may have contracted, and bring the Blood of the Party into a true circulation.”

After the philosophers, the historians and the political commentators came the novelists. And among the novelists, female writers were especially important. My annotated list in “Jane Austen, Abolitionist” includes more than a dozen female writers using the phrase between 1758 and 1812, the year Austen finished revising “Pride and Prejudice.”

Among them was Frances Burney. Scholars have often attributed Austen’s famous title to Burney, who used the phrase “pride and prejudice” in her novel “Cecilia.”

But Burney was not alone. Female novelists who used the expression before Austen included Charlotte Lennox, sisters Harriet and Sophia Lee, Charlotte Turner Smith, Mrs. Colpoys, Anne Seymour Damer and mother and daughter Susannah and Elizabeth Gunning, who jointly authored their novel “The Heir Apparent.”

An abolitionist rallying cry

As the critique embodied in the phrase progressed beyond religious and partisan conflict, it became increasingly used in the context of ethics and social reform.

My most striking discovery in this research is the long-standing association of the phrase “pride and prejudice” with abolitionism, the movement to eradicate enslavement and the slave trade.

The leaders of transnational antislavery organizations used it at their conventions and in the books and periodicals they published. In 1843, 30 years after the publication of Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice,” British Quaker Thomas Clarkson wrote to the General Antislavery Convention, which was meeting in London.

He exhorted the faithful to repudiate slavery “at once and forever” if there were any among them “whose eyes may be so far blinded, or their consciences so far seared by interest or ignorance, pride or prejudice, as still to sanction or uphold this unjust and sinful system.”

He even used the phrase twice. Acknowledging that some violent abolitionists had aroused reaction, he warned his audience that “this state of feeling arises as much from pride and prejudice on the one hand, as from indiscretion or impropriety on the other.”

At the funeral for abolitionist John Brown, the minister prayed over his body, “Oh, God, cause the oppressed to go free; break any yoke, and prostrate the pride and prejudice that dare to lift themselves up.”

Use of the phrase did not end with Emancipation or the end of the U.S. Civil War.

In fact, it was one of Frederick Douglass’ favorite phrases. On Oct. 22, 1883, in his “Address at Lincoln Hall,” Douglass excoriated the Supreme Court’s decision rendering the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional.

As was typical of Douglass, the speech ranged beyond racial inequities: “Color prejudice is not the only prejudice against which a Republic like ours should guard. The spirit of caste is malignant and dangerous everywhere. There is the prejudice of the rich against the poor, the pride and prejudice of the idle dandy against the hard-handed workingman.”

Austen’s independent women

Early on in “Pride and Prejudice,” the conceited Caroline Bingley snipes that Elizabeth Bennet shows “an abominable sort of conceited independence.” Later, the snobbish Lady Catherine accuses Bennet of being “headstrong.” But near the ending, Mr. Darcy tells Bennet that he loves her for “the liveliness” of her “mind.”

In this respect, Bennet reflects a quality that all of Austen’s heroines possess. While they try to adhere to standards of courtesy and respect, none are guilty of saying only what the leading man wants to hear.

Given that Austen chose her title to honor the phrase and its history, it is ironic that her own fame ended up drowning out the abolitionist associations of “pride and prejudice” after the Civil War.

If there is any work of fiction that successfully makes self-sufficiency, independent thinking and open-mindedness look good – and makes sycophants, rigidity and hysterical devotion to rank and status look bad – it is “Pride and Prejudice.”

Yet the lasting popularity of Austen’s novel demonstrates that the ethics contained in the phrase continue to resonate today, even if its context has been lost.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article and see more than 250 UMBC articles available in The Conversation.

As a senior in high school in Prince George’s County, Maryland, Randi Williams ’16, computer engineering, was almost certain she was going to MIT for undergrad. Since middle school she’d had the understanding that MIT was the school “for people who want to build things,” and by spring of senior year she had already been admitted under early action. But fate had other plans. 

Her mother had learned about UMBC’s Meyerhoff Scholars Program from a 60 Minutes segment that aired right around when Williams was applying to colleges. The nationally renowned Meyerhoff Scholars Program, founded in 1988, works to increase diversity among future leaders in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics by supporting students who intend to pursue a Ph.D. or combined M.D./Ph.D. in these fields. 

Williams applied to the program and it was during an on-campus event for top Meyerhoff applicants that her mind began to change. She was impressed with the support and camaraderie the program offered. In the end, Williams opted to become a Retriever—and never looked back.

“If I hadn’t gone to UMBC, I don’t think I would have developed the leadership skills I did,” says Williams, who is returning to campus on April 16 as the keynote speaker for Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day. “My mentors always encouraged me to speak up. I really benefited from that.”

Lifting others up along the way

At UMBC, Williams embraced myriad opportunities to learn and grow. She excelled in her classes, conducted research in the Mobile, Pervasive, and Sensor System Lab of Professor Nilanjan Banerjee, and was involved in the Meyerhoff Scholars, Honors College, and Center for Women in Technology communities.

“Randi’s work was noticeably excellent,” says Charles LaBerge, Ph.D. ’03, electrical engineering, a professor of the practice in the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering who taught Williams in six different courses, from Intro to Engineering to her senior capstone, in which she and her team worked on underwater vision for a robotic sub. “Randi is always upbeat and friendly. Her capstone peers regarded her as a great teammate.”

In her sophomore year, Williams co-founded the hackUMBC student group with fellow Meyerhoff Scholar Perry Ogwuche ’14, computer science and mathematics, and organized the university’s first hackathon, a 24-hour competition where teams of students create innovative solutions to problems that matter to them. Using that experience, she also ran hackathons for youth in Baltimore, centered around issues of community safety and interactions with police.

Williams always wanted the people around her to succeed, and worked hard to lift everyone up, says her UMBC roommate of four years, Amreen Chadha ’16, financial economics: “I saw Randi pull all-nighters just to help her peers with studying and assignments that she had already completed.”

Throughout her time at UMBC, Williams stayed true to her passions and ideals, Chadha says. “Randi was always herself in the absolute best way: She was honest, thoughtful, caring, and all around great. If I had something on my mind, I was never afraid to be open with her. She balanced her school work and social life so well that it drove others around her to find the same balance.”

To MIT and beyond

After graduating summa cum laude, Williams did at last say “yes” to MIT, where she joined the Personal Robots Group at MIT’s Media Lab. She earned a master’s in media arts in sciences in 2018 and a Ph.D. in the same field in 2024. Williams studied how young children understand and interact with AI, and worked on tools and teaching methods to enable young learners to undertake their own AI-based projects. She developed robots, called PopBots, that can teach AI concepts to preschoolers through social interaction, and also developed a middle school AI and ethics curriculum used by thousands of teachers around the world called “How to Train Your Robot.”

Williams tells the story of one young student she met who wanted to become a doctor and was not, at first, particularly interested in AI. But through a project in Williams’ class the student developed an AI tool to translate when a doctor and patient don’t speak the same language. “This student was inspired by her own situation of translating for her mother in doctors’ offices, and she imagined an AI companion that could do the same,” Williams says. 

Williams says the anecdote illustrates how she would like young people to see AI—as a tool to empower themselves and address the problems they see around them.

Making AI accessible for all

In the summer of 2026, Williams will head to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh to become an assistant professor in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute.

“Running my own research lab has been my dream for years,” Williams says.

Before beginning that next chapter, she is working as a research lead at Day of AI, a nonprofit organization spun out of MIT, with the mission of preparing K-12 students of all backgrounds and abilities to be successful, responsible, and engaged in an increasingly AI-powered society. The mission fits with Williams’ passion of making technology education accessible to everyone. 

“AI is like a big wave approaching us. We can either put our heads in the sand and pretend it’s not coming, or we can ride the wave,” she says. “I want everyone riding the wave.”

Although pop culture often portrays AI as an adversary of humans, Williams prefers to focus on the collaborative potential.  

“I tell my students, this is what AI can create—And I’ll make a small circle with my hands; this is what humans can create, and I’ll make a bigger circle; And, putting my arms out wide—this is what we can create together.”