Dresher Center's Rachel Brubaker receives USM Staff Award

Rachel Brubaker, the Assistant Director in UMBC's Dresher Center, recently won a University System of Maryland (USM) Board of Regents Staff Award for Exceptional Contribution to the Institution. Rachel has spearheaded two kinds of external funding for the Dresher Center for the Humanities--for arts and humanities faculty at UMBC and for the Dresher Center itself. Over the past five years in her position, she has supported 59 faculty members seeking funding. She issues a regular newsletter that includes funding opportunities; she has built a reference bank of successful proposals; she coordinates with the Vice President for Research on application workshops and processes; and—most importantly—works one-on-one with the faculty. In addition, Rachel was instrumental in securing significant funding from both the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation in support of the Dresher Center. As UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski has observed: “Rachel’s vision and focus have helped place UMBC at the forefront of humanities learning, teaching, and research.”