The suburban campus of 10,400 students is located in the Baltimore-Washington corridor , providing easy access to both metropolitan areas and the numerous federal agencies, industrial research centers, and consulting firms. Degree programs lead to a BS, MS and PhD in Computer Science and an MS and PhD in Electrical Engineering. New undergraduate and graduate programs in Computer Engineering are being developed. The MS program consists of 33 credit hours of course work with the option of either writing a scholarly paper and taking a comprehensive examination or writing a research thesis and taking an oral examination based on that thesis. The PhD program consists of course work, comprehensive and preliminary examinations, a dissertation based on original research, and an oral examination on the dissertation.
Research facilities are excellent.
The University is a member of the San Diego Supercomputing Center Consortium through which it has access to a number of large supercomputers. Departmental laboratories are well-equipped and support the research activities of faculty and students. UMBC's library ranks among the nation's leading university libraries in providing automated-enhanced systems. There is an integrated on-line catalog and circulation system with access to the holdings at other University of Maryland libraries, the Uncover database of journal articles, and other databases. There are 550,000 monographs and bound periodicals as well as a current standing subscription order for 4,000 journals.