Congratulations to Shariece Johnson, a PhD student in the health track, who received an Excellence in Program Planning Award at the 2015 American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Meeting in Chicago, IL. She was the program chair for the Community Health Planning and Policy Development section of APHA.

UMBC President Dr. Freeman Hrabowski was the keynote speaker at the APHA meeting. See the video of his speech here.

Public Policy PhD student Justin Vélez-Hagan has written an introductory economics book that offers easy-to-understand language and a humorous tone. The book, "The Common Sense behind Basic Economics: A guide for budding economists, students, and voters" (Lexington Books, 2015) is intended to educate the public on the importance of understanding the basics of economics before participating in upcoming elections.

Hello all!

Do you love politics? How about international affairs? Are you looking for an interactive way to build your public speaking skills and learn about current world affairs? If so, UMBC's Model United Nations Team wants you! That's right, you!

All majors are welcome and no previous experience is necessary. Just come out with an open, curious mind.

UMBC's Model U.N. team helpsbuild one's knowledge regarding the culture and governments of countries around the world. Overall though, Model U.N. helps one understand the inner workings of the United Nations.

UMBC Model U.N. team is planning on attending the next NMUN Conference in New York from March 27th to March 31st in the Spring of 2016

To find out more about this amazing opportunity, come out to our interest meeting on Wednesday, November 4th at 8pm in PUP 206.

See you all there!

Best regards,
The UMBC M.U.N. Team

Following the October 28 Republican presidential debate on CNBC, Kimberly Moffitt, an associate professor of American studies, moderated a panel on WEAA’s The Marc Steiner Show analyzing the performance of the candidates and how it affected the campaign for the Republican nomination.

Panelists included Eugene Craig III, a grassroots activist and 3rd Vice-Chair of the Maryland Republican State Party, Catalina Byrd, media consultant and political strategist, and Charles Ellison, political strategist and Host of The Ellison Report, new on WEAA 88.9FM.

Moffitt led the discussion on a host of issues, including key takeaways from the debate, which candidates gained momentum, the line of questioning and approach of the debate moderators, polling, and key issues in the campaign such as economic policy and taxes. Moffitt is a frequent guest host and panelist on The Marc Steiner Show.

Listen to the complete segment on The Marc Steiner Show.

On United Nations’ World Cities Day, School of Public Policy Professor John Rennie Short published a column in The Conversation about what he calls the “Third Revolution,” or urban resurgence of cities around the world and its uneven impacts on social and economic progress. He wrote that while some cities are seeing strong population growth, others are failing to attract new investment.

“Industrial cities such as Baltimore or Detroit, unable to replace the defunct industrial and manufacturing jobs, continue to lose population and fail to attract investment. And housing affordability in the most desirable cities is a worrisome trend that threatens to exacerbate social inequalities,” Short explained.

In his column, Short also pointed to the decline of household sizes and the attraction of cities with more job opportunities and amenities, but balanced with economic costs: “Because we are now expected to do more in less time, time itself becomes more highly valued, adding to cities’ allure. The city is being turned inside out as the poor are displaced to the suburbs to spend more of their time commuting while the wealthier can devote more of their time to work and leisure such as visiting the gym.”

Even with many cities experiencing growth, Short wrote that there are many negative economic impacts to go along with it, especially as home prices and rents continue to climb: “The most obvious is the displacement of the poor from central cities, the suburbanization of poverty and the creation of cities divided by class and income as the rich take over the central city and the poor and middle-income are displaced to the suburbs…We should be building cities that are productive, competitive, sustainable, livable and fair. On World Cities Day, we should commit to building a more humane city.”

Read “Cities are booming but progress is uneven and, to some, too costly” in The Conversation.

Hello POLI!

Fun news on a one of our former students, enjoy!

We recently published a career Q&A with Humanities Scholars alum Alex Bush '09, political science, on the UMBC Alumni Blog. After graduating from Pepperdine Law, Mr. Bush is now a personal injury attorney at Ingerman & Horowitz in Baltimore, and co-hosts the weekly Baltimore Barristers radio show on CBS 1300 AM. The story can be found here: http://bit.ly/1Oa5Biw.

Best!

Christy Chapin, an assistant professor of history, recently joined the Harvard University podcast This Week in Health Law for a discussion about the history of health care in the United States. Chapin is author of the new book Ensuring America’s Health: The Public Creation of the Corporate Health Care System, which was published earlier this year by Cambridge University Press.

The wide-ranging interview covered several topics including how many ideas to save costs today are similar to ideas presented in the decades spanning the 20th century, what health policy would look like if it were better informed by history, and the validity of the conventional wisdom on the post World War II rise of employer-sponsored health insurance.

“People often connect the employer provision almost solely to World War II wage and price controls saying it really took off then because employers wanted to attract scarce labor. They had wage controls, and they could at least offer these benefits,” Chapin explained in the podcast. “But in reading other historians…they took issue with that. I went back and looked at the statistics and found that you do see some growth in health insurance during World War II, but nothing unusual.”

Chapin noted that a lot of the growth was due to the benefit that employers received from the government in the indirect form of subsidization.

Listen to the complete interview on Harvard’s This Week in Health Law website.