Page 22 - Baltimore County 2022 Quality of Life Guide & Business Directory

Q&A:
Lisa Akchin, Chief Marketing Officer & Associate VP for Engagement, UMBC
When it was founded in 1966, UMBC was the first public university in Maryland that students could attend regardless of race. From those remarkable beginnings grew a diverse, thriving institution with nearly
11,000 undergraduate and 2,600 graduate students. Recently, UMBC received the largest gift in its history: a $21 million donation from the Sherman Family Foundation that will allow the university to launch a center dedicated to advancing excellence in urban schools.
UMBC has developed a reputation as one of the finest public research universities. What are some of the factors that have contributed to UMBC’s rise in this regard?
Akchin: After the Naval Academy, we have the second-highest percentage of bachelor’s degrees produced in STEM fields — 48% of our degrees are in life sciences, in environmental sciences, in engineering and in computing. We have just been designated by the Carnegie Classification system as a Research 1 university, which makes us among the top tier of colleges and universities nationally in research activity. So we are one of 146 R1 institutions nationally. We are also really proud that since 2018, we have had two students selected as Rhodes Scholars, both of whom are now studying at Oxford.
It is very unusual for a university that does not have a medical school to build the level of research that we have built. I think what is particularly distinctive about the way we built it is, we involve our undergraduates in research from the very beginning.
Hope Davis, Director of Media Relations, Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC)
With more than 4,000 individuals on staff, CCBC is one of the county’s biggest employers, but it’s also a crucial resource for companies looking to recruit skilled workers. We asked the college to tell us more about how CCBC ensures Baltimore County businesses have the pool of talented candidates they need.
20 Quality of Life Guide and Business Directory
So at larger, more established research universities, you would find mostly graduate students with professors in their labs. At UMBC, you are likely to find freshmen and sophomores working in the labs and juniors and seniors actually authoring papers with their names on them alongside faculty members in very prestigious publications like Science and Nature.
The skills needed in fields such as cybersecurity and biotech evolve frequently. How does UMBC ensure that its graduates' skills stay relevant to employers' needs?
Akchin: One of the most exciting recent initiatives is the Maryland Technology Internship Program, which we call MTIP for short. That came about through legislation by Delegate Sandy Rosenberg. He knew that particularly small technology companies have a hard time competing for talent. The larger companies can offer paid internships and great hiring bonuses, and the small companies just have struggled to compete with them. So his bill created a program in which the state would match an employer’s contribution to pay an internship stipend, and while that program is administered at UMBC, it is open to students from any two-year or four-year college in Maryland. In 2021, we had 92 organizations host interns across 10 counties in Maryland and there were 241 internships funded. These internships often lead to job offers for our students. Actually, 66% of the students were either hired by their internship site or were invited to have another internship there. And in addition to UMBC in the county, the program has placed students from Towson University and CCBC and Goucher.
The other connection we have to business is our bwtech@UMBC research and technology park. We have more than 130 companies there. Those companies employ almost 1,900 people and we have the largest concentration of cybersecurity companies that we can find anywhere in the nation.
How does CCBC ensure its degree and certificate programs meet the needs of local employers?
Davis: CCBC prides itself on preparing 21st-century students for 21st-century jobs. The college is constantly reviewing programs to ensure they align with employers’ needs. Our goal is to make sure students are job-ready, with the skills required to enter the workforce.
New programs as well as those being revised go through a rigorous review process utilizing labor market analysis, wage research and a review of competitive educational providers. CCBC develops strategic partnerships with businesses to
gain real-time feedback on the current labor market. CCBC programs also have advisory boards utilizing local employers who assist in identifying current practice, trends and essential foundation skills needed in the regional workforce. A number of the advisory boards also have recent graduates who are now working in their field of study and who can provide valuable input that helps CCBC keep curriculum relevant and create a steady pool of talented workers to meet the needs of employers.
EDUCATION continued on page 25
Q&A:
EDUCATION