2009 Performance Accountability Report Vol. 2 - Maryland Higher ...

Highlights of individual accomplishments this past year represent both national and regional
recognition. Those receiving highly competitive and prestigious fellowships and research awards include
faculty from the humanities, engineering, and science. Kate Brown (History) was named a Guggenheim
fellow, receiving the only fellowship awarded in Russian History. Stephen Miller (Biological Sciences)
received a Fulbright Award and will be collaborating with the Max Planck Institute next year. Brian
Maguire (Emergency Health Services) also received a Fulbright, which he will use to study occupational
risks among ambulance personnel in Australia. Andrew Sears (Information Systems) received an IBM
Faculty Award for his work on cognitive abilities of an aging workforce. UMBC science and engineering
faculty members continue to compete successfully for prestigious CAREER awards from the National
Science Foundation: Theodosia Gougousi (Physics) and Haijun Su (Mechanical Engineering) both
received CAREER awards this year. Taryn Bayles (Chemical and Biochemical Engineering) received a
2009 Board of Regents Award of Excellence for Mentoring for her outstanding work with in fostering
engineering education and in preparing students for careers in engineering; Jason Loviglio (Director of
Media and Communication Studies) received a Regents’ Award for Excellence in Teaching. UMBC’s
administrators have also received recent recognition for their contributions. Dean of Undergraduate
Education, Diane Lee (Education), was honored as one of Maryland’s top 100 Women by the Daily
Record, along with Ms. Ellen Hemmerly, Executive Director of UMBC’s Research Park. President
Freeman Hrabowski (Education) was named one of America’s Best Leaders by U.S.News & World
Report in collaboration with the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy
School of Government.
Faculty have also, once again, generated significant expenditures for research and development
(see output indicator for Objective 6.1). At $127,400, the indicator far exceeds the university’s 2009
target of $100 thousand per full-time faculty member. Federal R&D expenditures grew an average of
13.7% over the past five years, and the university’s rank among its peers on this measure remained at 3 rd
(Objective 6.2). This ranking still keeps the indicator within its target of ranking in the top 3 among its
peers. The trends for these indicators are influenced by the existence of two well-established research
centers at UMBC (the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology [JCET] and the Goddard Earth
Sciences and Technology Center [GEST]), as well as four smaller centers: the Center for Advanced
Studies in Photonics Research (CASPR), the Center for Urban and Environmental Research and
Education (CUERE), and the Center for Aging Studies. UMBC has also been successful in securing a
cooperative agreement from NASA to establish the Center for Research and Exploration in Space
Science and Technology (CRESST), a consortium with UMCP and the Universities Space Research
Association, which is led by UMBC. Continued growth in the university’s research expenditures is
anticipated for the foreseeable future.
Recruitment and Retention. One of the top two priorities to emerge from UMBC’s strategic
planning activities is the recruitment of new faculty. Increasing the number of core faculty is important
for achieving many of UMBC’s objectives, particularly those that relate to its status as a first-rate
research university. Although new faculty hires have been authorized, and outstanding new faculty
members have been recruited, promoted, and tenured over the past several years, the net number of core
faculty has grown only slightly. Because of budget constraints, the majority of our recruitment efforts
were devoted to filling recently created faculty vacancies.
As faculty members increasingly achieve national and international recognition, retention
becomes a serious concern. Although faculty members leave for many reasons, we have lost several to
other universities that can offer higher salaries, lower teaching loads, research support, and other
perquisites. We are already aware of resignations and retirements that will negatively impact our fall
2009 faculty count. Junior faculty members recruited during UMBC’s first decade in the 1960s and early
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