Leadership Announcement

Wed, 02 Jul 2025 11:41:12 -0400
provost

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