Communications

Dear campus community, As COVID-19 cases increase in our region and around the country, the University of Maryland continues to actively monitor all available data and trends both on our campus and in our surrounding community. Throughout this pandemic, our goal has been unwavering: to prioritize the health and well-being of every member of our campus community.

This week, we had planned to celebrate your extraordinary accomplishment as you complete your academic degrees here at the University of Maryland. But the COVID-19 virus once again upended our plans and our lives. Although I believe we made the prudent decision to postpone our commencement exercises to help keep you and your loved ones safe, it is a decision that comes with great sadness and heartbreak. I feel for every single one of you.

As our Chief Medical Officer Dr. Spyridon Marinopoulos reported yesterday, our campus community – like many communities across the country – is experiencing a sharp increase in the number of COVID-19 cases. Earlier today, our COVID-19 dashboard was updated to show 98 positive cases from university testing plus an additional 12 self-reported cases and we expect to see another high number of cases from today’s testing. These are the highest case counts we’ve seen this fall semester. Given these numbers and the potential further spread of the virus, we are taking the following actions, effective immediately:

As this year draws to a close, we are filled with a sense of optimism and gratitude. We are thankful for our community of Terps—students, faculty, staff, alums and friends—and our collective spirit of commitment to building a welcoming and respectful multicultural community on our campus. Wishing you a joyous holiday season and a bright new year!

As we begin the final weeks of our first fully in-person semester since 2019, we will soon be celebrating the grit, determination and success of our winter 2021 graduates at our campuswide commencement ceremony on December 20, 2021 at XFINITY Center. It is with great pride and pleasure that I announce our Winter 2021 Commencement Ceremony speaker is Diary of a Wimpy Kid creator, Jeff Kinney '93.

Dear University of Maryland community, We are pleased to announce that eight professors from the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) and University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB), four from each university, have been chosen as the inaugural MPower Professors. This award from the University of Maryland Strategic Partnership: MPowering the State (MPower) recognizes, incentivizes, and fosters collaborations between faculty in Baltimore and College Park.

Dear campus community, As part of our collective goal to ensure that every campus community member feels welcomed, affirmed and experiences a sense of belonging at the University of Maryland, the Division of Student Affairs leadership has prioritized meeting with students who belong to communities that have experienced exclusion and underrepresentation.

Today, we celebrate a historic milestone in the advancement of our university. Thanks to the generosity of more than 117,000 alumni and friends, I am proud to announce that we have reached our ambitious $1.5 billion goal for Fearless Ideas: The Campaign for Maryland, the largest and most successful campaign in our 165-year history.

Sharing a new approach to tackling the challenge of economical, transit-oriented, nearby housing for graduate students. We have been listening carefully to the graduate student community to understand their needs and concerns for how we can better support the tremendous work they do for our university and our research enterprise.

Recently, antisemitic flyers were found at several off-campus residences, including several Greek houses. This follows an earlier incident of anti-Jewish hate displayed in a residence hall. These events mirror an alarming rise in hate-bias incidents targeting the Jewish community across the country and across the globe. In light of these events, I feel that I must be very clear: We reject and condemn all acts of hate, bias, and racism against the Jewish community.