April 3, 2020

Dear Colleagues:

I am so proud of the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) family - those of you who are at work every day keeping our essential functions running, those of you who are meeting the challenge of learning to work in a new way from home, and our students who continue their advance to professional degrees online. We are asking a great deal of each of you. While our No. 1 goal remains to ensure the health and safety of the UMB community, it is also of utmost importance that the University remains open for business to meet the needs of our students, patients, clients, and community. And with your hard work, we are fulfilling that duty.

But the challenge posed by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is more than a challenge to the way we do business at UMB, it is also a challenge to the business itself. We must be diligent in the stewardship of our resources, mindful that we will likely lose tens of millions of dollars by the end of this fiscal year.

You may have heard that our colleagues at the University of Maryland, College Park are instituting a hiring freeze. This is not a step we have taken, but to avoid a similar situation at UMB, I encourage everyone to be mindful in your hiring practices and to hold off for the time being on hiring any faculty or staff who cannot be productive from Day One.

Whatever may come, I want to assure you that we are committed to mitigating the impact of COVID-19 on our employees where possible. To that end, I ask for your ongoing support of the business decisions we are making. As the Persian adage says: This too shall pass. And when it does, we will find ourselves in a position of renewed strength.

Please continue to take care of yourselves and your families.

Sincerely,

Bruce E. Jarrell, MD, FACS
Interim President