LeaderNotes Winter/Spring 2022

I hope you have all had a safe and healthy, if not a little cold, 2022 so far. As always, our advancement teams across the System have been doing great work in fundraising. Our USM campuses have reached 74 percent of the $322.6 million goal for this fiscal year – a fantastic accomplishment. I would like to specifically congratulate our HBCUs, which have done exceedingly well. Bowie State University set an ambitious goal of $6 million and they are at 60 percent of their goal and Coppin State University has raised more than $3.5 million, or 142 percent of their goal. Lastly, the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore has also exceeded their goal of $3.5 billion, raising over $4 million. Most of the other USM campuses are on track to reach their fundraising goals and the Foundation is proud to support them in these efforts.

Within the USM Foundation Board, the newly created DEIJ (diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice) working group has met twice. I would like to thank the Board Directors who are involved in these efforts for their dedicated participation. Early discussions within the group have focused on defining the scope of the committee and so far, we have established that identifying areas in our investment practices to measure and track is important, that paying attention to our governance and nomination process for Board Directors will ensure meaningful and sustained change, and that our internal operations – who we hire, how we advance our staff – are an important part of the journey. The next step for the group is to work with a consulting firm, which will be able to help us look at peer practices and benchmarks.

As we celebrate Black History Month, I’d like to point you to a few stories in this newsletter about Black USM leaders who are making history. The Baltimore Sun recently named USM Regent Dr. Michelle Gourdine and Coppin President Dr. Anthony L. Jenkins to its 25 Black Marylanders to Watch list and named University of Baltimore President Kurt Schmoke as a Living Legend. Meanwhile, UMBC President Dr. Freeman Hrabowski was named to the National Academy of Engineering, a rarity for a non-engineer. These individual honors, as well as many stories about our HBCU’s progress, show how diversity is integral to the USM’s success.

In this newsletter, you will find a USM Foundation Board meeting recap of our February 16 online meeting. You will also read more about the great work of our USM institutions from the past few months.

As always, please reach out to me with any questions you may have!