"UMBC’s 50th anniversary is an important time to celebrate our success. It also represents a vital strategic opportunity. As the campus completes a new strategic plan and prepares for a comprehensive fundraising campaign, anniversary events and communications will build pride in the campus and its extraordinary impact in just 50 years. The celebration also provides a significant opportunity to renew and deepen relationships with our more than 65,000 alumni. During the past 10 years, 20,000 alumni have been event participants, volunteers, or donors. Alumni engagement is a central focus of 50th anniversary planning, with the aim of increasing the number of active alumni by 10,000, or 50 percent. Change at this scale depends on a campus-wide effort.

We deeply appreciate the ideas, energy, and resources so many members of our community are bringing to this once-in-a-generation opportunity. Our alumni are the best advocates for our endeavors and aspirations, and we are confident that the campus celebration of the 50th will benefit UMBC for decades to come." — President Freeman Hrabowski and Provost Philip Rous

• The National Institutes of Health awarded UMBC over $18 million to create STEM BUIILD@UMBC as a national model
  to broaden the range of students who successfully complete STEM degrees.
• UMBC opened a new $160 million, LEED Gold-certified Performing Arts and Humanities Building, which features innovative learning and performance spaces such as an archaeology lab, concert hall, dance technology studio, and proscenium theatre.
• The bwtech@UMBC Research and Technology Park houses Maryland’s first cyber incubator and 120 technology, bioscience and research companies and organizations. The park generated $500 million in income and business sales in 2014 and contributes more than 2,500 jobs to Maryland.
• UMBC’s BreakingGround initiative has been recognized nationally for its contributions to the higher education civic engagement movement by the American Democracy Project and the American Association of Colleges and Universities. BreakingGround has supported the redesign and launch of dozens of courses and community projects, including an American studies course that culminated in students producing a week-long documentary series in deindustrialization in Baltimore that aired on the Marc Steiner Show.
  
  

• Student Enrollment (Fall 2014): 13,979 (11,379 undergraduate, 2,600 graduate)
• Freshman Class Profile (Fall 2014): First-time freshmen: 1,629; Living on campus: 72%; Average GPA: 3.78; Average SAT: 121 (two-part), 1801 (three-part)
• The Final Four of Game Design: A UMBC video game development team is among the final four student groups competing to represent the U.S. in the Microsoft Imagine World Cup competition. The group of computer science and visual arts majors were invited to present their original game, HueBots, at the April 2015 national finals. They include (l. to r.) Jasmine Martin, Erika Shumacher, Tad Cordle, and Michael Leung. Their faculty mentor, Marc Olano, computer science, recently completed a sabbatical assessing new game technologies at Firaxsis Games.
• The Princeton Review,Kiplinger’s Personal Finance and Fiske Guide to Colleges have named UMBC a “Best Value” university.
• UMBC students regularly receive highly prestigious, nationally and internationally competitive awards, including the Goldwater Scholarship, Fulbright Award, U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship, Huayu Enrichment Scholarship, and Frank Karel Fellowship.
• UMBC graduate students have received numerous research fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Ford Foundation, GEM, and Fulbright

• Mario Armstrong, Emmy Award-winning radio and television talk show host, appears as a digital lifestyle expert on The Today Show, CNN and HLN
• Duff Goldman, chef, owner of Charm City Cakes, star of the show Ace of Cakes on Food Network
• James P. Clements, 15th president of Clemson University and 23rd president of West Virginia University
• Adrienne A. Jones, first African-American female to serve as Speaker Pro Tem in the Maryland House of Delegates
• Dan Patrick, radio talk show host, politician, and current Lieutenant Governor of Texas
• J. Thomas Sadowski, vice chancellor of economic development for the University System of Maryland
• Kathleen Turner, Academy Award-nominated actress, starred in Hollywood movies Body Heat, Romancing the Stone, Who Framed Roger Rabbit
• Gail H. Bates, member of the Maryland House of Delegates