About TRP!

 WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A RETRIEVER?

The Retriever Project began in Fall 2011 by a small group of students (Co-Creators Camila Sotela, Travis Bell, Kelsey Krach, and previous member Abby Fanara) at UMBC who had a goal in mind: let's color our campus.  We took a class called POLI 205 Civic Agency and Social Entrepreneurship, taught by David Hoffman and Delana Gregg.  In the class, we were asked "If you could change something in your community, what would it be?"  Our imaginations were sparked.  

Brainstorming led us to find that we wanted to see more physical representations of school spirit on our campus.  Don't get us wrong-- we see many students on campus wearing UMBC t-shirts/hoodies/pants.  However, while walking around on campus, how would you know that we are the home of the UMBC Retrievers, unless you already knew it?

After deliberating and processing a few ideas, the statue project came across our path and it was instantly popular.  The statue idea itself is not new.  Statue projects like this are represented in cities all over the world.  In fact, our very home city of Baltimore has the Fish and Crab statues.  We figured that we could do something similar with Retriever statues on campus at UMBC.  

In the POLI 205 class, we developed a project plan and were set to action.  After hours of researching, polling the student body, and several drafts, a plan was completed.  We were lucky because the following spring semester, the UMBC Student Government Association (SGA) was running its biannual ProveIt! competition.  We entered and won $10,000 to implement our project on the UMBC campus!

Following the contest, we began working for over two years to make our Retriever Project dream a reality.  In Fall 2012, we held the design contest and three statue designs were chosen by the Retriever Project Committee.  

Roughly a year later, those three statues have been installed around campus.  Go check them out.  See your Retriever pride.  Share our story and go out and share your Retriever spirit!