Campus Messages

Our collective commitment of service to humanity is why I am encouraging the campus community to make volunteering a regular part of our lives. The Terps in Service initiative is designed to support employees who want to volunteer time to help our communities.

Today, we officially launch Arts for All, a campus-wide initiative that seeks to humanize the world’s grand challenges and integrate the arts more fully into conversation with the sciences and technology, enriching all.

Tomorrow marks the 20th anniversary of September 11, 2001, an opportunity for all of us to remember and honor all those who perished on that day, and the loved ones who still grieve their loss. Our hearts and sympathies are with their families.

Today marks a new start for all of us, a fresh beginning. Today I ask everyone to take the opportunity to recommit ourselves to the two priorities that I have established for our university: pursue excellence in everything we do; and establish a more inclusive, multicultural campus. These two goals are intrinsically interconnected to inclusive excellence. You can't have one without the other.

It is with much pride that I share with you the exciting news that President Joseph Biden has nominated our very own Dr. Laurie Locascio to be the next Under Secretary for Standards and Technology in the Department of Commerce, subject to Senate confirmation.

This memo outlines expectations for every member of our campus community for the upcoming fall semester. As has been our practice from the very beginning of this pandemic, we will continue to monitor the prevalence of COVID-19 within our community, including all variants, and follow guidance from the CDC, and state and local health officials. We will not hesitate to implement more stringent measures and additional consequences for non-compliance when warranted.

We have witnessed increasing incidences of transgender people publically harassed and ridiculed, and there has been an avalanche of anti-transgender legislation proposed in dozens of states. We are committed to increasing our support for our transgender and nonbinary populations and we oppose legislation or any other actions that would limit or diminish that support.

We are deeply saddened to see the devastating impact that COVID-19 is creating across India and other countries around the world. The University of Maryland community includes nearly 6,000 students and over 900 faculty members from across the globe. It is important to recognize and respond to the terrible impact that the pandemic is having on our international Terps, as well as their friends, families and broader communities.

I am pleased to announce the appointment of our new Senior Vice President and Provost, Dr. Jennifer King Rice, effective August 11, 2021. Dr. Rice currently serves as Dean of UMD's College of Education and has excelled at aligning educational resources with key initiatives to advance excellence, equity and social justice in preschool through graduate school.

I want to send a message of support to our international community members who have family and friends living in countries that are seeing a surge of cases and a lack of sufficient resources to fight COVID. We recognize that this must be very difficult to witness this struggle from afar and we extend our deepest sympathy to you and your loved ones. Here in Maryland, we are privileged to have an abundant supply of vaccines available, and I urge you to take advantage of that and get vaccinated as soon as possible. Getting vaccinated is one of our best tools in the fight against COVID-19 to end the pandemic here and around the world.