In 2025, UMBC’s Public Humanities program entered a pivotal phase of restructuring, increased recognition, and expanded teaching and community engagement. The most significant development was the merger of the Public Humanities Minor with the Orser Center for the Study of Community, Place, and Culture to form the Orser Center for Public Humanities. Co-directed by Dr. Nicole King and Dr. Sarah Fouts, the new center reflects a more unified and intentional commitment to public-facing scholarship, collaborative research, and student-centered learning. This reorganization was the work of a sub-committee of the Public Humanities Advisory Committee. For more on the Orser Center for Public Humanities see: https://amstcommunitystudies.org/.
The center officially launched with a public event that brought together students, alumni, faculty, and community members to celebrate the Soul of the Butterfly exhibition in the AOK Library Rotunda which showcased our commitment to community engagement, archival research, and public and traditional art in Baltimore (see photo above).
Internally, we strengthened key partnerships to improve both administrative efficiency and student support. Collaborating with UMBC’s CARAT office, we streamlined our grant writing and internal processes with Maryland State Art Council’s Maryland Folklife Network.
With the support of Program Management Specialist Morgan Dowty, we also revised and updated our elective course listings, so that Public Humanities students have access to the full range of interdisciplinary offerings each semester. This effort corrected previous gaps in course visibility and accessibility. To improve student access to transportation, we partnered with leaders from CDLR, Visual Arts, CADVC, History, and Public Humanities to petition for the coordinators of the UMBC Downtown Shuttle to stop at the Lion Brothers Building, making it easier for faculty and students to reach Baltimore-based classrooms and studios.
Those of us who teach at the Lion Brothers Building (875 Hollins St) in downtown Baltimore, led a presentation at the downtown classroom, tour of IMDA MFA students studios, and a walking tour of the community surrounding the classroom (Hollins/Poppleton) with our previous Dean Kimberly Moffitt and President Valerie Sheares Ashby. In addition to co-directors King and Fouts, we had Sarah Sharp and Beth Yashnyk (VART), Joby Taylor (Shriver Center/Community Leadership), Melissa Blair (Public History), Mika Thornburg (Postdoctoral Fellow of Global Asias), and Poppleton community member Pastor Brenda White (Allen AME Church) attend the tour with President Sheares Ashby. (See photo below)
We deepened our external collaborations, particularly with the Maryland State Art Council’s Maryland Folklife Network (MFN). This included strategic planning meetings and new grant applications aimed at connecting CAHSS departments more closely to public folklife initiatives at our regional center. This work, led in partnership with UMBC Special Collections and Dr. Beth Saunders, supports a more integrated model of public humanities and folklife network programming and community archival work.
Check out more information and apply to be a BFS 3.0 Fellow in 2026 here (also under the application tab above).