Alumni
Since its founding, UMCES has graduated hundreds of new environmental leaders. Today’s UMCES alumni are able and eager to take on the mounting challenges facing our natural world. Reflecting the vital reach of environmental science, they span the globe and are found in careers in government service and academia as well as industry and the nonprofit sector. They are educators, entrepreneurs, and passionate innovators, all in the service of a thriving and sustainable planet.
This page is a place to share, connect, and reflect with friends and colleagues. Please visit often as UMCES continues to build services for our students and alumni.
“Lead boldly. Lead authentically. Lead knowing that your presence is powerful, your voice is necessary, and your leadership is already reshaping the world.
And as you rise, reach back. Lift someone else with you. Be the mentor, the advocate, the champion—the person who opens a door.
Because when people from diverse backgrounds lead, communities transform, science evolves, and the future becomes brighter, more just, and more possible for everyone.”
– Dr. Caroline Solomon ‘06, UMCES Commencement Address 2026
Alumni Connections
Honoring our own: The UMCES Distinguished Alumni Award
Each year, UMCES honors those who were educated at UMCES and continue to excel professionally and in service to society. Nominations open in March each year. Please review the nomination details and consider celebrating your colleagues and peers with a nomination!
UMCES Baseline Data Project
Scientists know how foundational good data can be. It is important for UMCES to be able to accurately benchmark our educational effectiveness with our peer institutions and for the state. Please respond to the baseline graduate data survey to help us demonstrate the impact of an UMCES education. Thank you.
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Support
UMCES alumni understand better than most the financial realities of grad student life. Join your fellow alums in helping empower the next generation of environmental leaders tackling the challenges that can’t wait. Your gift today fuels the research that shapes tomorrow’s solutions.
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Alumni-funded Spark Award Supports UMCES Graduate Students
As you all know, making the most of key opportunities during your graduate school years is crucial to one’s education and career development, and that the cost of such opportunities is often the barrier to participation.
The Maryland Sea Grant Award seeks to remove those barriers. Initiated by generous support from Dr. Sara Gottlieb—an UMCES alumnus—and supported by additional philanthropic gifts (opens in a new tab), these funds help support new and on-going research, reporting research results, or professional development activities relevant to a graduate student’s career advancement.
Alumni Events
All-UMCES Webinar
“Turning the Tide on Plastic Pollution and Other Ocean Threats: A Science-based Campaign Approach”
When: Thursday, September 10th | 12:00pm
Featured Speaker: Dr. Kimberly Warner, Oceana Senior Scientist
Topic: How do we protect and restore our oceans? This talk will explore the campaign approach Oceana, an ocean conservation organization, uses to achieve science-based policy victories. Warner will touch briefly on her work and what it took to achieve favorable policy outcomes in both the mercury contaminated and mislabeled seafood campaigns but focus more on her current work on plastic pollution, including the full lifecycle of plastic and its harmful effects. Warner will also touch on the distinctions of doing science for advocacy and what training helped prepare her.
Contact provost@umces.edu for the Zoom link.
Part of the UMCES Distinguished Global Scholars Series
Alumni Profiles
Check in on what your UMCES friends and colleagues are up to. Share your own accomplishments or update your contact information via the UMCES Baseline Data Project.
Alumni Q&A: Dr. Deborah Bronk MEES ‘92
Dr. Deborah Bronk is president and CEO of the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Science in Maine. She has conducted more than 50 research cruises and field studies in freshwater and marine environments that stretch from pole to pole during her three decades of experience as an oceanographer.
Alumni Profile: Aimee Hoover
Aimee Hoover earned her master's degree, specializing in fisheries science, in spring 2017. Working under her adviser Helen Bailey, at Chesapeake Biological Laboratory, she conducted her thesis on the movement and dispersal of leatherback turtles from nesting beaches in Costa Rica considering implications for management and conservation.
Alumni Profile: Ryan Powell
Powell earned his Ph.D. at the Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology in Baltimore, where he discovered a technique that could revolutionize the algal biofuel industry. Today, he is an entrepreneur, translating his laboratory work into a Baltimore-based biotechnology firm called Manta Biofuel.
Commencement 2026
Commencement 2025
Commencement 2024
Commencement 2023
Commencement 2022
Commencement 2021
Commencement 2020
Commencement 2019
Commencement 2018
Commencement 2015