UMBC has been awarded a $30,000 Advancing Religious Pluralism Grant by Interfaith America to "further interfaith cooperation and learning on campus." The grant will allow Initiatives for Identity, Inclusion, and Belonging (i3b) to expand their interfaith infrastructures and, in collaboration with campus partners, to strengthen strategic plans, programs, initiatives, resources, and staff development across the University in order to equip students to engage across lines of religious differences in contributing to a sustainable and thriving democracy.

Matt Hoffman, assistant director in i3b, manages the Gathering Space for Spiritual Well-Being and is serving as team leader for this initiative. The team includes Dr. Ciara Christian, M.A. '18, Ph.D. '22, acting director of i3b; Darcie Adams '23, M.P.S.'25, i3b graduate assistant in the Gathering Space for Spiritual Well-Being; Dr. Renique Kersh, vice president for student affairs; Tanyka Barber, chief diversity officer and vice president of institutional equity; Dr. Laila Shishineh, director of Academic Engagement & Transition Programs; Rev. Kiran Sankhla, UMBC Hindu chaplain; and Aliza Silverman, interim director of UMBC Hillel.

Hoffman explains, "As i3b has grown its diversity, equity, and inclusion work, the two-year-old Gathering Space for Spiritual Well-Being in the Center for Well-Being has become the hub of religious and spiritual life--during a challenging time when increasing interfaith understanding and collaboration is more important than ever. While intentional interfaith work has been one focus in i3b, we recognize the need to develop new sustainable programs and educational opportunities that support our undergraduate and graduate students. Our goal is to create hallmark curricular programs that teach skills and provide a laboratory for students to learn how to create and facilitate interfaith conversations and programming.

"The timing for this grant is excellent as UMBC begins to develop a strategic plan that includes broad plans for students' comprehensive belonging and cross-cultural competency development, including leveraging the institution's compositional diversity in order to increase cultural and global competencies of students; promoting student health and well-being; and increasing opportunities for applied learning experiences," Hoffman adds.

UMBC will use the grant to develop two programs:

The UMBC Interfaith Fellows Program will be a stipended year-long fellowship program, with curricular (non-credit) and co-curricular experiences to develop student leaders committed to engaging across religious and spiritual traditions. It will also serve as an entry point for students who identify as spiritual but don't necessarily connect with a religion or defined worldview. Through a series of weekly meetings and campus-focused projects, students will gain practical and theoretical experience to develop communities committed to justice, dedicated to lifting up diverse identities and energetic pluralism. Fellows will be responsible for shaping campus culture to make interfaith engagement a campus norm. The capstone experience will be an opportunity for participants to lead a series of interfaith programs on campus, aimed at applying their skills and knowledge to address the growing, shifting, pluralistic community at UMBC and how the institution can continue to develop proactive systems to develop graduates to address emergent issues.

The UMBC Bridge Builders Program will be a semester-long program focused on dialogue across differences, related to pressing global issues in religious/spiritual spaces. In this weekly program, a small group of students will develop skills and competencies connected to dialogue, identity exploration, and community building that center restorative practices. Each Bridge Builders series will focus on one contemporary, contentious issue connected to religion and spirituality. Bridge Builders will proactively address such needs through the creation of an intensive, relationship-building dialogue-centric program. Participants will commit to a semester of engagement, developing relationships and skills for dialogue before engaging in a specified topic of conversation. This dialogue program will engage in the work of restorative practices to help participants learn how to respond and engage after harm has been done. 

Interfaith America's mission is to inspire, equip, and connect leaders and institutions to unlock the potential of America's religious diversity. Interfaith America seeks partnership with campuses who recognize that American colleges and universities have a unique role and responsibility to help our communities and our nation explore and learn how to embrace differences while maintaining a common life together.

Initiatives for Identity, Inclusion, and Belonging (i3b) Assistant Director Angelina Jenkins is one of just five honorees to receive a 2024 American College Personnel Association (ACPA) Annuit Coeptis Award for Emerging Professionals. In March, she will attend the ACPA Annual Convention and 100th Anniversary Celebration, where awardees will be honored at a dinner with wide-ranging discussion and exchange about professional issues. 

The Annuit Coeptis Awards were created in 1979 by ACPA to celebrate the lives of Philip A. Tripp, Ursula Delworth, and Cynthia Johnson who dearly loved to challenge their contemporary and junior colleagues in a spirit of personal and professional sharing, good humor, and intellectual debate. This award is intended to be a generative and cross generational experience. The dinner models the importance of being both teachers and learners. It invites awardees into the practice of the synergy that can be created when we come together with cross generational wisdom.

Angelina came to i3b in July 2022. She was previously assistant director of the Paul Robeson Cultural Center at The Pennsylvania State University. At UMBC, she manages the core operations of The Mosaic, which officially celebrated 20 Years on February 2, 2024, and is celebrating with events and programs throughout the spring 2024 semester. She develops the Mosaic's educational programs and curriculum on cultural diversity, identity development, social justice awareness and advocacy, leadership development, and intercultural learning. Angelina also provides support to underrepresented population identities such as immigrants and children of immigrants and multi-racial and multi-ethnic identities, with the intent to foster community, healing, and learning. She is especially proud of the work she has done with the Multicultural Leadership Experience, Mixed Up (Multiracial / Cultural Series), and LOTUS: Leading Others to Thriving and Universal Success (a peer mentoring program for APIDA students, funded by a UMBC Hrabowski Innovation Fund grant).

She currently plays several leadership roles with national organizations, including co-coordinator of the Asian Pacific Islanders Promoting Educational eXcellence (APPEX) Summit; leadership team member for the Asian Pacific Islanders Knowledge Community (APIKC); and member of the NASPA 2024 Conference Leadership Committee and Engagement and Volunteers Subcommittee. She is a member of the UMBC Asian and Asian American Faculty and Staff Council and NASPA | Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education.

Angelina is working on her Ph.D. in Higher Education, Student Affairs, and International Education Policy with a Student Affairs concentration from the University of Maryland, College Park.

UMBC and the Center for Democracy and Civic Life are featured in a new e-book, The Place Collaboratory: Higher Education, Community Engagement, and the Public Humanities. Dr. David Hoffman Ph.D. '13, is also one of the book's contributing writers. The chapter "University of Maryland, Baltimore County and and Community Precarity" begins on page 47.

From 2019 to 2022 UMBC participated in a national partnership called the PLACE Collaboratory, organized by Bringing Theory to Practice and funded by the Mellon Foundation. The partnership explored how humanities methods could be used to support community-driven social change. UMBC's Baltimore PLACE Project involved community organizing in two Baltimore City neighborhoods, Brooklyn and Curtis Bay. 

Center for Democracy and Civic Life staff played leading roles in designing and implementing UMBC's Baltimore PLACE project along with Center for Social Science Scholarship Associate Director Felipe Filomeno, also an associate professor of political science and global studies, and eight undergraduate fellows. Dr. Hoffman and Dr. Romy Hubler, former Center for Democracy and Civic Life associate director, developed and co-taught a class with Dr. Filomeno to prepare the PLACE fellows for their roles.

"The Baltimore PLACE Project was a wonderful opportunity to blend insights from the humanities with the community organizing and community-building approaches at the heart of the Center for Democracy and Civic Life's work," says Hoffman. "The work Center leaders did with Felipe Filomeno and the undergraduate PLACE fellows was deeply meaningful and empowering, as the book describes: a student affairs/academic affairs collaboration that really worked well. All of us on the UMBC team shared stories and learnings with partners across the U.S. as we adapted to the COVID-19 lockdowns and supported imaginative work toward community-identified objectives."

Learn more about UMBC's PLACE project and how it empowered students as civic actors.