The University of Baltimore Made Important Strides in 2016
January 25, 2017
Contact: Public Affairs
Phone: 410.837.5739
For the University of Baltimore, 2016 will be remembered as a year of both bold moves forward and incremental progress on a wide range of issues of interest to our campus community. Whether it was a Commencement Day appearance by one of the most powerful women in the world, the historic freeing of an inmate after years of wrongful conviction, the establishment of a new writing fellowship for social justice, the grand opening of a new center for budding entrepreneurs, or the kickoff of a new teaching program for incarcerated persons, UB and its professors, staff, leadership and alumni showed how an urban university can be much more than a casual observer of events and trends.
Here are a few reminders of what the University of Baltimore achieved in the past year. Stay tuned for even bigger news in 2017.
- U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Janet L. Yellen served as keynote speaker for UB's Fall Commencement on Dec. 19.
- The Merrick School of Business opened its new Attman Incubator and a home for the Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and hosted another highly successful Attman Competitive Business Prize competition, open to all UB students.
- The University opened a Campus Food Pantry in the Student Center, to serve all community members in need.
- The College of Public Affairs and its Schaefer Center for Public Policy partnered with The Baltimore Sun, the Maryland League of Women Voters, WJZ-TV and the Yale Gordon College of Arts and Sciences to host a candidates' forum for the 2016 Maryland U.S. Senate race on Oct. 26.
- Construction of a completely renovated Langsdale Library got underway.
- The Yale Gordon College of Arts and Sciences launched a new specialization, Performance Studies: Baltimore, matching budding actors, writers and others interested in theatre arts with professionals from partners Everyman Theatre and the Hippodrome Foundation.
- The School of Law's Innocence Project Clinic gained the freedom of Malcolm Bryant, a wrongfully convicted Baltimore man who served 17 years for a homicide that DNA evidence determined he did not commit.
- Graduates of the accounting program in the Merrick School of Business continue to lead a wide majority of the area's largest accounting firms, according to the Baltimore Business Journal's annual Book of Lists. Of the 25 largest accounting firms in metropolitan Baltimore, nearly half are led by alumni from the University of Baltimore—with the largest concentration bearing UB graduate degrees.
- The Klein Family School of Communications Design announced the new Michael F. Klein Fellowship in Creative Writing and Social Justice, which will be awarded to a student beginning the University's M.F.A. in Creative Writing & Publishing Arts program next fall.
- U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch delivered a capstone speech at the School of Law on her department's efforts to improve community policing, after visiting the school a number of times for deliberations and meetings related to the death of local citizen Freddie Gray.
- For the sixth straight year, U.S. News & World Report included the University of Baltimore's Online MBA program in its 2017 Best Online Programs rankings.
- The University of Baltimore and Baltimore City Community College announced a new partnership on Nov. 21 to ensure that BCCC students will be able to transfer seamlessly to UB.
- B-Power, a University System of Maryland initiative involving multiple campuses in an effort to increase educational opportunities for Baltimore students, was launched last summer. B-Power comprises the College Readiness Academy and Dual Enrollment in five local high schools this year, and 10 in 2017-18. Students who complete College Readiness are eligible to earn three credits in Dual Enrollment WRIT 101 before graduating from high school.
- Darlene Brannigan Smith, B.S. '78, MBA '80, professor of marketing in the University of Baltimore's Merrick School of Business and former dean of the school, was named executive vice president and provost of the University on Jan. 20, 2016. She has taught at UB since 2005.
- The College of Public Affairs and its School of Criminal Justice unveiled its Second Chance program, which enrolls incarcerated individuals into a degree program held at the Jessup Correctional Institution. UB is one of 67 colleges and universities from across to participate in the Second Chance Pell pilot program, a U.S. Department of Education effort to determine whether participation in high quality education programs increases after expanding access to financial aid for incarcerated individuals.