UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, takes your questions.

The powerful connection between research and teaching has been a foundation to UMBC’s success. Why is this vital link so important to the university community? What makes this relationship special at UMBC?

– Richard Byrne ’86, English

When I talk with students and parents, or with donors, or with legislators about the uniqueness of UMBC, I invariably address the relationship between research and teaching at the university.

People often want to know why research universities expect their faculty to teach fewer courses than faculty at comprehensive institutions or community colleges. Parents often want to know if research faculty actually work with students, and what advantages there are for undergraduates who attend a research university. Even graduate students want to know: If I come to UMBC for a Ph.D. program, will I have not just the skills but the connections to get the job I want in the academy or in a company or a government agency?

This is what I say to them. First, there is the larger aspect of the research university. Faculty who do research – at a research university, or at a fine liberal arts college – are constantly asking good questions. They read the most up-to-date literature in their fields, and they are able to talk comfortably about the most interesting trends in these fields.

The students of these professors have the benefit of being pulled into fascinating conversations about this work. And as a result, students learn how to ask good questions, how to tackle problems, how to work collaboratively in interpreting data or in understanding the problems that we face in our society. We are creating new knowledge that can help in solving a variety of problems.

What makes the experience at UMBC special is that we are an institution that prides itself on undergraduate research as well as our strengths in graduate research. Undergraduate students get to work side by side with faculty in science labs, or with teams in the social sciences, or on projects in the humanities and the arts.

And whether they are undergraduates or graduates, UMBC students have the opportunity to think about their future in research – and how they can use those skills. They are important skills for those who seek academic positions, and also for those who seek positions at companies such as T. Rowe Price, or jobs at the Social Security Administration. That is the connection between the research and the teaching.

Our research faculty is strong at UMBC. From our beginnings, you had a number of faculty members doing first-rate research with students. I remember talking with Michael Hooker, my predecessor as president, about the fact that we had a number of excellent research faculty here. The problem was that many of our students were not able to take advantage of the high quality of research going on.

So we needed to recruit students who could take advantage of what our research faculty had to offer. But we also needed to look at the environment here. We started programs like the Meyerhoff Scholars Program. We used analytics to understand who was succeeding and who was not and to make changes. This gave us the foundation that we could build on. Because you must have students doing well academically in their course work in order to talk about having students involved in research activities.

We have moved to a different place now. In the 1980s, the average student at UMBC was not involved in research. Today you find that thousands of our students are engaged in research. This is happening across disciplines – from our two undergraduate research journals to students working in labs and publishing in academic journals. It’s a very different environment.

Mike Summers, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, is one of our most noted researchers. He just became a member of the National Academy of Sciences. That is an immense achievement. But he is also a powerful mentor and teacher. In fact, one of his former students, Victoria D’Souza ’02, Ph.D., biochemistry and molecular biology, recently became a full professor at Harvard University.

This is just one example of this very important key to our success in developing the relationship between research and teaching across the disciplines. We have a large number of our research faculty who are also strong mentors and advisers to students in their research and in their careers. Those qualities in our faculty are why we send such a high percentage of our undergraduates to graduate school, and it is why so many of our graduate students go on to successful careers.

To send a question to President Hrabowski, visit Ask the President.

* Listening to Robert Burchard, emeritus professor of biology, talk about launching a research lab in the earliest days of the university, with basic equipment at UMBC and the use of more specialized equipment at USDA labs in Beltsville: “The most important thing in my toolkit was a microscope,” he said. “I was asking interesting questions. I adapted.”

* Talking with Marilyn Demorest, emerita professor of psychology, who was delighted by a question about UMBC students. “We had the thrill of working with some really fine undergraduates,” she said, “who self-selected into our research teams and laboratories.”

* Sharing a table with Phillip Sokolove (who took his Ph.D. at Harvard University) at UMBC’s annual commencement dinner, and watching the emeritus professor of biology beam with pride as UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III introduced Victoria D’Souza ’02, Ph.D., biochemistry and molecular biology as the first UMBC alumna to be tenured at Harvard University.

* Hearing Walter Sherwin and Jay Freyman – emeritus professors of ancient studies – talk about their collaboration with students and staff in 1969 on a musical (Keep the Peace, Baby) based on their joint translation of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata. “The play was funny as all get out,” says Freyman, recalling that Myrrhina’s seduction of her husband Cinesias to entice him to commit to making peace was done as a striptease.

* Talking with Joan Korenman, emerita professor of English and women’s studies, and founder of the Center for Women in Technology (CWIT). “When I think of what was important to me during my career at UMBC,” she told me. “Women’s studies and information technology, The necessity I felt to combine those. At many universities, I don’t think I could have worked in those areas and done what I did. It says something about UMBC that they were open to all of this.”

* Sitting with Willie Lamousé-Smith, emeritus professor of Africana studies, as he spun stories about academic governance past and present. Lamousé-Smith was tremendously eloquent about the difficult road one must traverse to achieve knowledge: “If you want to put the discipline of learning into yourself, or into somebody, you have to cultivate asceticism in yourself. That is what I try to put into my students. Self-cultivated asceticism. So you can focus and do the work. And that is uncomfortable.”

I invite you to tell us your story at Retriever Stories (retrieverstories.umbc.edu) and I also invite you to return to campus to participate in the 50^th Anniversary celebration September 16-19, 2016. See page six of this issue for a full guide to the weekend’s festivities – and check out our 50^th anniversary website (50.umbc.edu) for all the events associated with this milestone event.

— Richard Byrne ’86

From the day UMBC opened its doors, the work of teaching and research has been at the heart of university life. The love of learning has been passed on by the university’s faculty across disciplines in lecture halls, laboratories, office hours, and in the field. We’ve selected some of the best images of a dynamic endeavor of teaching and exploration that has stretched from 1966 to the present day, aspiring not only to excellence but to greater access for all students to the wisdom and understanding that our faculty carry with them.