Minds Unleashed Retriever

Design Artist: Jennifer Fourney
Painter: Jennifer Fourney
Location: Outside of Library

As Jennifer explained her design:

Each day I spend as a part of the UMBC community opens my mind and outlook bit by bit to a larger view of the world and the people that live in it. The image of “expanded horizons” is a bit cliché, so I chose the phrase “Unleashed Minds” to encompass what I’ve been experiencing this semester.

The first way I feel my mind has been opened is through the content of my classes. For example, in my sociology class, we have been taught to make the familiar strange, to question why people do things in society. This has changed my thinking to understand that our American culture is not the “normal” way to do things. My “mind-opening” education has not been purely academic, either—my textbooks have contributed to what I’ve learned in the past few months, but it’s honestly the people and the experiences that have taught me the most. Since UMBC is such a highly diverse campus, everywhere I turn, I can meet someone from a different culture or country than my own. Interacting with these new friends has opened my eyes to the wide variety of traditions, beliefs, and values of individuals. Each one of these people has a story, unique gifts, and personal challenges. As I prepare to go into the nursing field, I will be better prepared to serve whoever comes through the hospital door, because I have already learned how to relate to, interact with, and help people that come from a different background as me.

I feel as a community, students here are learning to abandon close mindedness, in whatever form that may come, and be free to open their outlooks and minds to the larger world around them. Students are being “unleashed” from narrow-mindedness—and we are retrievers, after all.

And why did I choose graffiti in my design? I don’t support defacing—but graffiti can also represent freedom, as well as the fact that it is colorful and exciting, exactly the way a statue celebrating our UMBC community should be.