According to recent statistics, approximately 6,000 people in the United States apply for Fulbright awards yearly.  Fewer than 800 are awarded and rarely does one person win two.

Nevertheless, Ram Mohan, who received his Ph.D. from UMBC in 1992, was awarded a Fulbright Teacher-Scholar Grant in 2012, and a second Fulbright Teacher-Scholar Grant in 2020 to teach Green Chemistry in India, where he was born and raised, before moving to Baltimore at the age of 21 to attend UMBC.

Now a professor of chemistry at Illinois Wesleyan University, Mohan fondly remembers the people who inspired him as a student at UMBC.

Finding a Research Family at UMBC

Mohan graduated with honors in chemistry from a Hansraj College in New Delhi, and, like many of his friends, he says, wanted to pursue higher education in the United States. His interests were in organic chemistry but he really wanted to focus on the relationship between the environment and cancer. The incidence of cancer, often caused by environmental pollution, is increasing worldwide, especially in India.

Through his research, in the 1980s, Mohan discovered that the work of UMBC’s Dale Whalen, now professor emeritus of chemistry, matched his own interests.  “Simply put,” he relates, “I would not be where I [am] professionally without the kind and caring faculty at UMBC,” adding, “from the day I arrived, [Professor Whalen] took me under his wing . . . whether taking me to the Social Security office or showing me lab techniques.”

“The faculty at UMBC,” explains Mohan, “not only did cutting-edge research, but its members also cared about the success of each and every student.”  Whalen was not the only UMBC professor he remembers fondly. He also mentions Professors Creighton, Hosmane and Pollack. In fact, Mohan says, the entire Chemistry Department “hung out together,” including the staff, Anne Geffert, Patty Gagne, and Audrey Mahoney. He stays in touch with many of them.

After graduating from UMBC, Mohan pursued postdoctoral work at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign.  He began his teaching career in 1994 as a visiting professor at Coker College in Hartsville, South Carolina. After two years, he moved back to Central Illinois as an Assistant Professor at Illinois Wesleyan University (IWU), a small selective liberal arts college, where he remains today.  Again, Mohan claims his current passion for teaching stems from being a teaching assistant at UMBC for many semesters.

Raising Awareness

His research is inspired by green chemistry—principles and application—and he has traveled to Hong Kong, Malaysia, China and throughout India, lecturing and conducting workshops, which is what he now is doing in India as a Fulbright-Nehru scholar.

He is especially passionate about taking green chemistry to small, undergraduate colleges in rural areas where most students come from a farming background.  “Raising awareness for environmental problems in such areas,” he explains, “will help to solve India’s overall environmental problems.”

For example, a typical workshop consists of 10 lectures on various green chemistry topics and includes interesting case studies that highlight environmental problems and solutions, using green chemistry concepts.

Mohan also has introduced green chemistry into the curriculum at Illinois Wesleyan University and made significant strides in “greening” organic chemistry laboratory experiments.  His course at IWU especially highlights environmental problems in the United States. Undergraduate students at IWU take this enthusiasm for green chemistry on to graduate school and beyond into their professional careers.

Giving Back

Green chemistry, or sustainable chemistry, is the design of chemical processes and products that use nontoxic chemicals.  The goal of green chemistry is to minimize the impact of chemicals on human health and the environment. 

What Mohan finds especially rewarding is “the chance to give back to [his] country of birth while representing the United States as a cultural ambassador.”

Although Mohan enjoys his work—both teaching and research—at Illinois Wesleyan, and he likes to travel by train between Bloomington and Chicago, he says that even after 28 years he still misses UMBC. “Maryland and Baltimore always will remain my first home in America,” he says proudly.

– By Lynne Agress

* * * * *

Header Image: Ram Mohan (second from right) and his Illinois Wesleyan University undergraduate students at The Great Lakes Regional Meeting (May 2019, Lisle, IL). 

by John Rennie Short, Professor, School of Public Policy, UMBC

New disease outbreaks, like the novel coronavirus that recently emerged in China’s Hubei province, generate headlines and attention. Meanwhile, however, Americans face a slower but much more pervasive health crisis: obesity.

Nearly 40% of Americans are considered obese. Rates of obesity for children have increased in recent decades, putting more people at increased risk of heart disease, diabetes and some cancers. One in 5 deaths of those aged 40 to 85 are now attributed to obesity, and one recent study projects that by 2030, nearly half of all U.S. adults will be obese.

This problem is too often treated only as an issue of personal responsibility, with calls for people to eat healthier diets and exercise more. It is true that Americans need to cut their caloric intake, especially of foods high in sugar and saturated fats, and get more exercise. Nearly 80% of U.S. adults are not meeting federal guidelines for physical activity, which recommend 2.5 to 5 hours of moderate physical activity weekly.

But our built environment, which includes not only buildings but roads, sidewalks and public spaces, also plays an important role in physical health. Researchers call cities that promote sedentary lifestyles and poor diet obesogenic. As a researcher focusing on urban issues, I am encouraged to see city planners paying increasing attention to helping residents lead healthy lifestyles.

Fat cities

Modern U.S. cities were designed to make exercise unnecessary. Cars and elevators symbolized urban areas as machines for more efficient living. Now it is clear that these improvements provide great benefits but also impose health costs.

Recent studies show that urban sprawl encourages more driving and is associated with higher weight. This correlation suggests that the layout and design of cities can hinder or promote healthier lifestyle choices.

As a thought experiment, what would a city that makes residents more overweight look like? It would probably have few fresh food facilities and discourage physical activity, thus encouraging people to eat fast food and sit in cars rather than walking or bicycling. In other words, it would resemble the standard car-centric U.S. cities that have emerged in the past 50 years.

Cities did not create the obesity epidemic, but they can make it worse by neither promoting nor prompting healthier lifestyles. And it’s not just happening in the U.S. Around the world, health experts contend, cities are making people fat.

One hundred U.S. cities, rated on key indicators of weight-related problems. Low scores (purple/dark blue) connote higher obesity rates; higher rank (light blue) indicates healthier cities. Mouse over locations for individual scores.

Creating the healthy city

Urban planning still centers in large part on solving the problems of the past. Of course cities still need to foster standard public health practices, such as separating toxic facilities from homes and restricting heavy truck traffic through dense residential areas. But it’s also important to create healthier cities – and the discussion is already underway.

One important issue in many poorer neighborhoods is a lack of fresh food. Food deserts are places where good nutritional options are limited. Cities across the country are reshaping ordinances and changing tax codes so as to make it easier to create and sustain the production and sale of local, affordable and nutritious food.

As one example, Tulsa now limits permits for stores that do not provide fresh food. Others, including Boston, Buffalo, New York City and Seattle, have passed new ordinances that allow for community gardens, urban gardens and urban farms.

Cities are pursuing a wide range of nutrition strategies. Detroit modified its zoning ordinances to encourage urban gardens to sell food. Cleveland now allows residents to raise small farm animals and bees. Los Angeles has an urban agriculture incentive zone that promotes farming on vacant lots through reduced property tax assessments.

Other programs include “virtual supermarkets” in Baltimore that enable purchases of fresh food with food stamps; a food hub in New Orleans that teaches people how to grow and cook healthier food; and a statewide program in Pennsylvania that uses public and private dollars to support fresh food projects in low-income neighborhoods. Residents of two low-income communities in Louisville cleared land for a farm that now produces good-quality food for people with little access to healthy options.

Getting out and about

Planners are also paying increasing attention to encouraging physical activity by making it easier and safer for people to recreate, walk, bike and take public transportation. Longevity studies show that people live the longest in environments where physical activity is part of everyday life.

Providing more walkable spaces, better protected bike lanes and more recreational spaces are important steps. But even smaller changes can be effective.

Cities can close off streets on weekends to encourage communities to get out and walk. They also can provide more seating in public places, so that less-fit residents can rest during their journeys. Using public spaces in cities as places where people can exercise promotes equity, rather than allowing physical activity to become restricted to private gyms with often-expensive monthly fees.

Studies show that when cities are designed to provide walkability, bikeability, public transportation and more attractive green recreational spaces, then physical activity across the entire community increases. Minneapolis-St. Paul was rated the nation’s fittest city after it made a commitment a decade ago to expand bike lanes, tree planting and safer sidewalks. The changes encouraged residents to walk more and get more exercise.

Cities as machines

It will be expensive to create healthier cities. But a recent survey of mayors revealed that a majority believes their cities were too car-centric. Many wanted to invest more in bike infrastructure, parks and public sports complexes. Cities with high levels of obesity typically don’t make these features a priority.

The U.S. health care system, with its emphasis on tests and interventions to treat individual illness rather than on prevention, is the most expensive in the world with only modest levels of health outcomes and life expectancy compared to similarly wealthy countries. Integrating better diets and more physical activity into everyday urban life can help Americans become healthier more effectively, and at less cost.

* * * * *

Header image: The Ohio City Farm in Cleveland provides low-cost land, shared facilities and technical assistance to support entrepreneurial farmers. Horticulture Group/Flickr, CC BY

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John Rennie Short, Professor, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

UMBC’s swimming and diving teams celebrated strong performances at the 2020 America East Championships, which concluded on February 16 at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. The men’s team won the four-day meet, while the women’s team finished second to New Hampshire.

The Retriever men have now captured 12 of the 13 championships overall and three in a row since America East reinstituted men’s swimming and diving as a championship sport in the winter of 2018. This year, the team captured 16 of 18 swimming events and amassed 1,051 points, more than 200 points ahead of second-place Binghamton.

“We knew it was one of the deepest men’s squads we have ever had,” said head coach Chad Cradock ‘97, psychology. “They came into the meet with confidence and belief in themselves.”

UMBC also received 2020 America East Men’s Coaching Staff of the Year honors. 

Leading “in every way”

UMBC senior Ilia Rattsev swept the freestyle sprints (50, 100, 200 yards). In doing so, he became the first-ever swimmer in America East history to sweep the freestyle sprints in three consecutive years. He earned the league’s David Alexander Coaches’ Award as the senior with the most points accrued at the meet. 

America East also honored Rattsev with their Elite 18 Award, which is presented to the top-achieving student-athlete at the championships. Rattsev is maintaining a 3.97 GPA in bioinformatics and computational biology.

“Ilia is a leader in every way,” Cradock said. “We are grateful for his trust in all aspects of our program. We are going to miss him and all of the seniors.”

Retriever junior Kai Wisner, mechanical engineering, earned the meet’s Most Outstanding Swimmer Award. Wisner triumphed in the 500 freestyle, 400 individual medley, and 1650 freestyle.

Freshman Niklas Weigelt took home the men’s Most Outstanding Rookie Award. The California native earned golds as part of the 200, 400 and 800 freestyle relays, took silver in the 200 yard freestyle, and earned bronze in the 100 freestyle.

Senior Garrett Wlochowski, financial economics, also captured multiple golds for the Retrievers, winning the 100 and 200 backstroke events. He was also part of the title-winning 200 and 400 medley relay quartets.

In addition to sharing his pride in the success of UMBC’s graduating seniors, Cradock says, “Our freshmen have already made a huge impact and they give us a lot of hope for the future.” He also notes, “Our sophomores and juniors are our future leaders. They bought in more this year and their results showed this weekend that hard work does pay off.”

Success in the pool and the classroom

On the UMBC women’s team, junior Vanessa Esposito, psychology, took home gold in the 1650 freestyle. Sophomore Caroline Sargent, psychology, earned a pair of silvers in the 100 and 200 backstroke events and a bronze in the 200 individual medley.

“We started the year losing close races, but, as the season went on, we built our confidence and were able to find the power to win the close ones and get the job done,” Cradock said.

Junior Natalija Marin earned the women’s Elite 18 award, for academic excellence. The native of Belgrade, Serbia is maintaining a 3.87 grade-point average in mechanical engineering. Marin, a three-time champion in the league championships, took home silver in the 200 butterfly in the final individual event of this year’s meet. 

“On the women’s team, we knew we had big shoes to fill after losing an amazing senior class.” Cradock said. “We found our new and returning athletes to be resilient and tough, and highly competitive. We are so proud of them.”

Cradock is quick to point out the tremendous support that he and his programs receive from the UMBC community, including university and athletics department leadership and staff, alumni, parents, and his own family.

“Your love and support does not go unnoticed by our student-athletes and our coaching staff,” says Cradock. “This family is the best, and one I am sure everyone would dream to be a part of.”

To support UMBC Swimming and Diving during Giving Day on February 27, visit givingday.umbc.edu.

Steve Levy, ‘85, interdisciplinary studies, of UMBC Athletics was the lead author for this article. For more swimming and diving coverage, see the UMBC Retrievers website.

Featured image (l-r): UMBC’s Ilia Rattsev, Jeremy Gates, Jack Carlisle, and Jethro Ssengonzi pose with the 2020 America East Championship trophy; Feb. 16, 2020; Worcester, Massachusetts. Photo by Brian Foley for America East.

Kenneth Harris II caught the engineering bug early.

Beneath the desk of his father, NASA engineer Kenneth Harris, was a slice of foam left over from the Mars Pathfinder. After school, Kenneth the younger would curl up on the foam and nap or color Pokemon pictures while his dad worked. 

Perhaps he became an engineer by osmosis, but that makes it sound too easy.

Harris ’14, mechanical engineering, labored doggedly to become a senior satellite engineer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, where his father still works. Recently named to the Forbes Magazine 30 Under 30 List, Harris helped build the NASA telescope set for launch in 2021, and flies satellites that spot wildfires and hurricanes, and tends to the data that can predict weather to save lives. 

High Expectations

But at UMBC, a worried academic advisor once suggested Harris change majors. “It was not an option to change my future goals,” Harris remembered, shaking his head. He talked to his father and friends, then buckled down. “I saw it as adversity to be overcome.”

Anne Spence, a former engineering professor at UMBC now at Baylor University, remembered Harris struggling. 

“There was one course, in particular, that seemed to be his nemesis. Yet he persevered,” Spence recalled. Harris tried the class a third time, with tutoring and faculty support, she said, and passed. “The effort required to be an engineer is high and individuals rise to the occasion at different points in their career. UMBC places high expectations on their students. Kenneth has certainly achieved the dreams that we hoped for him.”

Harris started working at NASA in high school, graduated from UMBC, then finished a master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University. Now, he strolls through the vast NASA building where space telescopes and satellites are built. He peers into cleanroom prep areas stacked with white “bunny suits,” peeks in the vibration chamber that tests whether machines will withstand the rattle of launch, and wistfully motions to a pair of massive venting towers, the last remaining pieces of the James Webb Space Telescope left at Goddard. 

Standing in front of a color-coded schematic, Harris points to connections that he ensured would deliver data and power to each piece of the massive telescope. Set to launch in 2021, the Webb telescope will see back in time to when the universe first began, even farther than its predecessor, the Hubble. 

Pondering the deep questions about time and space, not to mention the engineering steps to reach those nebulous answers, was difficult, Harris admitted. Terrific mentors guided him, he said, but didn’t give him the answers. 

“That’s something I’ve adopted,” Harris said. “I never give my mentees the full answer. It may be frustrating, but you learn more when you come up with the answer on your own.”

Paying it Forward

Passionate about mentorship, Harris has done a TEDx Talk on it and speaks at schools and conferences to promote mentorship and STEM studies. 

“Mentors are the foundation I was built on,” Harris said, and he hopes to “pay it forward.”  

Harris worked as a UMBC resident assistant, and closely with Nancy Young, vice president of student affairs. 

“Ken is making a mark in science, but as a resident assistant, he had great compassion for others,” Young said. “He would be in my office lobbying me about Greek organizations — he would argue up a good storm — but he was always willing to take on another’s perspective to solve problems. People in research are often intensely focused. But Ken is also passionate about leadership, passionate about cultural organizations. He had passion and focus in everything he did. He’s the quintessential UMBC Retriever.”

Driven to Explore 

At NASA, Harris strides into the observation room overlooking the cleanroom, a space large enough to house two Space Shuttle payloads, where he helped build the Webb telescope high up on ladders. Harris is joined by his best friend, Reginald McNeill, also a Meyerhoff Scholar, a planning and facilities project manager at NASA who just finished his masters’ degree at UMBC. They each married UMBC classmates, and all four remain close; Harris often cooks for Taco Tuesdays. 

Harris nodded over his shoulder to a Hubble Space Telescope photograph, a blue and gold marvel of cloud that shows the Eagle Nebula. Exploration drives him, he said. He wants to be an astronaut and excitedly talks about astronauts he knows who are rooting for him. 

“My belief is that as scientists, as engineers, we have the opportunity, no, the responsibility, to be open to the unexpected,” Harris said. “Our goal is to make it more plausible for the next generation to explore with a different definition.” 

– Susan Thornton Hobby

* * * * *

Header image by Christopher Gunn.

Learn more about Harris here.

UMBC’s Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery presents the work of Baltimore artist Antonio McAfee in the exhibition Antonio McAfee: Through the Layers, Pt. 2, now through March 13.

Since 2011, Antonio McAfee has been making work influenced by historical portraiture of African Americans in the The Exhibition of American Negroes. Organized for the 1900 Paris World Exposition by W.E.B. Du Bois, the display functioned as a legislative, economic, and photographic survey of middle-class African Americans living in Georgia from 1850–1899. This ‘counter archive’ challenged racist assumptions steeped in pseudo-science, presenting proof of the vitality and upward social mobility of southern blacks. 

Beth Saunders, curator and head of UMBC’s Special Collection and Gallery, noted that “McAfee’s persistent archival impulse led us to invite him to work with historical photographs in Special Collections.” Once on-site, McAfee engaged primarily with the Rooks Collection of African and African American Photographs, named for Ronald Rooks, a Baltimore art dealer who donated the earliest accessions.

In an interview with curator Emily Hauver for the exhibition catalog, McAfee, a photographer raised and based in Baltimore, said that working with the Rooks Collection expanded the context of understanding the period of 1850-1900: “The assortment of vernacular photography made during and after the Civil War in the Rooks Collection is a resource for accessing the intimate and public lives of African Americans of the Civil War period.” He also relayed that the variety of processes represented in the collection including daguerreotypes, hand-painted tintypes, albumen silver prints, cabinet cards, and gelatin silver prints also triggered more experimentation in his own work with the images. “(Seeing) the markings and strokes on some of the prints in this collection, I have been inspired to incorporate more mark making in my new work.”

Antonio McAfee, The Magician, 2019. Pigment print, 3D image with 3D glasses. © Antonio McAfee, Courtesy of the Artist

Antonio McAfee, Robert Smalls, 2019. Pigment print, 3D image with 3D glasses. © Antonio McAfee, Courtesy of the Artist 

Antonio McAfee, The Gem, 2019. Pigment print, 3D image with 3D glasses.  © Antonio McAfee, Courtesy of the Artist

Antonio McAfee, Third (3), 2019. Pigment print, 3D image with 3D glasses. © Antonio McAfee, Courtesy of the Artist 

Antonio McAfee, Young Man and Dog, 2019. Pigment print, 3D image with 3D glasses.  © Antonio McAfee, Courtesy of the Artist

* * * * *

A public program with reception to follow is free and open to the public on Thursday, February 27, at 5 p.m.: Art, Race, and the Archive: Antonio McAfee in Conversation with Shawn Michelle Smith

Header Image: Installation view of Antonio McAfee: Through the Layers, Pt. 2. Exhibition, photo by Marlayna Demond ‘11 for UMBC

by Sarah Leupen, Senior Lecturer in Biological Sciences, UMBC

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com.

How do we get the fingerprints we have? – Oscar V., age 8, Somerville, Massachusetts

Fingerprints are those little ridges on the tips of your fingers. They’re essentially folds of the outer layer of skin, the epidermis. The “prints” themselves are the patterns of skin oils or dirt these ridges leave behind on a surface you’ve touched.

Your fingerprints began to form before you were born. When a fetus starts to grow, the outside layer of its skin is smooth. But after about 10 weeks, a deeper layer of skin, called the basal layer, starts growing faster than the layers above it, which makes it “buckle” and fold. The expanding lower layer ends up scrunched and bunched beneath the outside layer.

These folds eventually cause the surface layers of the skin to fold too, and by the time a fetus is 17 weeks old – about halfway through a pregnancy – its fingerprints are set.

Although this folding process might sound random, the overall size and shape of fingerprints are influenced by the genes you get from your parents. So you probably share some fingerprint patterns with your family members.

But the details of your fingerprints are influenced by many other factors besides genes. For example, the shape and size of the blood vessels in your skin, how fast the different layers of skin are growing, and the chemical environment inside the womb all play a part. No two people end up with exactly the same fingerprints, even identical twins.

It was only in 2015 that a big long-term study showed that fingerprints are stable over a person’s lifetime. The ridges of a fingerprint are visible on the skin’s surface layer, but the pattern is actually “encoded” below that. Even if you have a major skin injury, your prints will come back when the outer layer heals – though you might have a scar, too.

So your fingerprints are totally unique to you and have been since before you were born. No matter how much you change as you grow up, you’ll always have the set you have now, no matter how long you live.

What’s a fingerprint’s point?

Surprisingly, nobody really knows what fingerprints are for.

People have long thought that fingerprints provide the friction that helps our hands grip objects. This makes sense because the other animals besides human beings that have fingerprints – including many other primates like apes and monkeys, and koalas – are all tree climbers.

But sometimes what makes sense isn’t true, and a recent study found that fingerprints don’t really help people hold onto things – at least, not things with smooth surfaces.

Other possibilities are that fingerprints improve your sense of touch or help protect your fingers from injury. But scientists don’t know for sure yet.

Making use of your prints

Police have been using fingerprints and their unique loop, whorl and arch shapes to help catch criminals for more than 2,000 years, starting in ancient China.

Fingerprints are now used for many other things as well, all based on the fact that each person’s fingerprints are different. You can use that unique code to unlock your phone or enter a restricted area, for example. In Malawi, fingerprints have been used to identify farmers who have taken out loans. They can even be taken from babies and used throughout the person’s life to access their immunization records.

Police forces are still finding new uses for fingerprints, too. As fingerprint detection and study methods have improved, detectives can even use them to see who threw a particular stone. Those little ridges can hide tiny amounts of substances too – which means they could be used to detect the use of illegal drugs like cocaine and heroin. And now forensic scientists can detect decades-old fingerprints, too – maybe allowing detectives to solve really old crimes – with a new technique that uses a color-changing chemical to map the sweat glands within your fingerprints.

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

Header Image: Even identical twins have different fingerprints. El Greco/Shutterstock.com

Sarah Leupen, Senior Lecturer in Biological Sciences, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Linda Dusman, professor and chair of music, has been named the Bearman Foundation Chair in Entrepreneurship for 2020 – 2023. This role is designed to recognize and support a faculty member with an interest in entrepreneurship, outstanding teaching skills, and a strong record of scholarship in entrepreneurial studies or a field related to entrepreneurship.

The three-year appointment will enable Dusman to further her work with EnCue, an audience engagement app she co-designed for use during classical music performance. EnCue is intended to be used by the audience on tablets or smartphones in real time during performances, especially symphony orchestra concerts.  It helps listeners understand and more fully appreciate the music, thereby deepening the experience. EnCue was co-developed by Eric Smallwood, former assistant professor of visual arts, and received support from UMBC and the Maryland Innovation Initiative.

“Linda Dusman’s work exemplifies entrepreneurship in the arts,” says Scott Casper, dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. “Through EnCue, Linda translates classical music for broader audiences in ways that enrich the listening experience.”

Audience experiences around the world

“The thing I’m most excited about,” says Dusman, “is that Bearman support will enable me to try to answer the questions I started asking ten years ago, which are: Can people learn about music in real time during concerts, and if they do learn, does that make a difference? Does it enhance their engagement of the experience? Does it make it more likely for them to want to return?”

“Now I’m going to be able to actually work with an educational psychologist — Linda Baker, recently retired professor of psychology here at UMBC — to test that hypothesis,” Dusman explains. “I’ll also be able to travel to orchestras that are engaged with this process, to see how audiences respond in different parts of the world.”

Last fall, Dusman was asked to speak at a conference in Berlin at the German Orchestra Days (Deutsche Orchestertag) about real-time education using mobile technologies. There, she described how EnCue has been used by orchestras in locations as diverse as Baltimore, Winnipeg, London, and Augusta, Georgia.

“I want to better understand EnCue’s impact in diverse geographic regions with diverse audiences,” says Dusman. “Obviously, audiences in London are very different than audiences in Augusta, Georgia, yet they’re listening to the same music played by symphony orchestras. How does that impact the engagement of the audience, and what does the live classical music experience mean for them?”

The Bearman Foundation Chair in Entrepreneurship was established by The Herbert Bearman Foundation to acknowledge and honor the contributions of Arlene Bearman, who taught in UMBC’s administrative and managerial sciences program for many years.

Featured Image: Linda Dusman. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Sarah Christa Butts ’07, social work, is used to battling society’s biggest problems, from ending homelessness to stopping family violence.

Now, the licensed master social worker is taking her advocacy straight to the top of the policymaking world on Capitol Hill. Her next-level challenge? Making sure that professionals working to protect society’s most vulnerable populations are themselves adequately protected.

“I’ve always been driven by social work values,” says Butts, Director of Public Policy for the National Association of Social Workers, for whom the work is incredibly personal. “We’re advocating for the needs of our clients and the social workers serving those clients.”

Education and Advocacy

In her new role, she educates and advocates among members of Congress and their staffs, federal agency officials, lobbyists, and political candidates, working to advance the goals of the world’s largest organization of social workers.

Her issue portfolio includes pay equity and adequate compensation for social workers and access to mental health and behavioral health care services, including substance use disorder treatment and workplace safety.

“UMBC has a special commitment to support
students like me and I am grateful.”
– Sarah Butts

For example, the “Protecting Social Workers and Health Professionals from Workplace Violence Act,” a recently introduced bipartisan bill, would direct federal grants to states to improve facility safety, provide safety training to staff, and purchase safety equipment for social workers and health professionals.

“Sometimes clients are in crisis. We are a lot like first responders,” says Butts. “Social workers work in a number of settings, including visiting clients in their homes. Unfortunately, we are disproportionately the victims of violence. Some social workers have died on the job, but this risk doesn’t stop us in our mission to help others.”

Butts also works to reduce student loans for social workers, who are required to have a high level of education but who are among the lowest-paid professionals in the workforce.

All of these issues address “what attracts and retains social workers,” says Robyn Golden, Associate Vice President of Population Health and Aging at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. “More hard-to-reach populations will be better served as a result.”

Making Her Mark

Golden has worked with Butts on policy issues such as Medicare beneficiary’s access to social work services, and describes her as “a critical thinker and strategist.” “She balances her clinical knowledge with policy, and listens so well to both the client and constituent voice,” Golden says.

Social work students often follow one of two paths: policy work or clinical practice. Even as an undergraduate, Butts chose both.

“I was interested in the large systemic issues—managing the policy implications—but also in one-on-one practice,” she says.

As part of UMBC’s Title IV-E Education for Public Child Welfare Program, a collaboration with the Maryland Department of Human Resources to prepare social work students for public child welfare practice, Butts spent a year as a caseworker, providing services and going to court with children who had been removed from their homes.

Life’s Work

After receiving her bachelor’s of social work from UMBC, Butts earned a master’s of social work from the University of Maryland, Baltimore, and she is now pursuing a Ph.D. in public policy at UMBC.

“I’ve had such a great experience at UMBC. Grit and Greatness… I see myself in that slogan,” says Butts, who was a Pell Grant recipient. “I identify with being resilient, persistent, passionate about my work and striving for excellence and impact. I had to overcome a lot of complicated life circumstances, including losing my dad at nine years old, my mom’s substance use disorder and returning to college with a young daughter… UMBC has a special commitment to support students like me and I am grateful.”

Butts has held roles in state and local government, as well as nonprofits, including positions in Maryland’s Department of Human Services, Social Services Administration and the Family League of Baltimore. Prior to joining NASW, Butts served as the first executive director of the Grand Challenges for Social Work, a national initiative to collaborate on 12 of the United States’ most deep-rooted and pressing social problems. She’s also the founding administrator of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare, an honorific society for the profession.

“She has always been able to make the connection between what social workers do, for who, and for how long with the larger policies,” says Carolyn Tice, Associate Dean and Professor in the School of Social Work. “She’s absolutely committed to equity and social justice and that permeates her work.”

– Laura Cech

Wind turbines are massive, with a single turbine blade measuring up to 350 feet (about 110 meters), longer than the wingspan of some commercial airplanes. At its highest point, a blade can be 850 feet (260 meters) off the ground, almost reaching the height of Eiffel Tower. When UMBC engineer Soobum Lee looks up at these turbines, generating energy in fields and even offshore, he thinks about their size as an enormous opportunity, and also a challenge.

Lee, associate professor of mechanical engineering, studies energy harvesting, but not in a way that most casual observers would connect with wind turbines. He researches how vibrations can power portable devices on a very small scale, and he develops devices that convert those subtle vibrations into energy.

A few years ago, Lee began exploring how to harvest energy from the rotation of vehicle tires. This led him to begin looking at the spinning motion of wind turbines, and the additional small vibrations that turbines make as they spin continuously. He came up with a novel idea: using these small vibrations—not previously harnessed for energy—to power transmitters that could send sensor data to a wind turbine’s operation and maintenance systems.

Lee explains that wind turbines have sensors on their blades to alert their operators if the blade gets damaged, such as by birds or lightning, or if there is a malfunction or maintenance issue. For example, icicles can form on turbine blades, changing their aerodynamics. Or, the blade could be vibrating abnormally, indicating a more serious mechanical or structural issue in the blade.

Until now, these sensors have been powered by batteries that need to be changed every two years or so. Changing the batteries is time-consuming and can be dangerous for people maintaining the turbines, as they need to climb up the turbines, hundreds of feet in the air, to access multiple sensors on one blade.

“The sensors are to help with maintenance,” says Lee. “If they also create a maintenance need, it’s a problem.” He wondered, what if you could design a sensor that wouldn’t require new batteries?

Bringing research to consumers

Over the past 7 years, UMBC faculty from engineering and the sciences to the arts have worked to commercialize their research, to bring innovative technologies to companies and consumers. Knowing that this can be a challenging transition, UMBC and the State of Maryland have created a range of initiatives to help faculty pursue entrepreneurship opportunities. One core opportunity is the Maryland Innovation Initiative (MII), established by the state and five research institutions, including UMBC, to promote research commercialization.

A unique feature of the MII program is the introduction of university “site miners” to facilitate the application process for faculty inventors. These commercialization experts support faculty with preparing proposals and advocate for projects in the review process. UMBC site miner David Fink, entrepreneur in residence, says, “The MII program is the most significant factor in the increased commercialization of UMBC-owned intellectual property.” Sixteen companies have been formed by UMBC faculty since the start of MII.

Since 2013, Lee has applied for three MII grants. His first two attempts were not successful but helped him grow his proposal. On his third try, he received a phase one grant to develop his vibration-powered sensor technology.

Through bwtech@UMBC, UMBC’s research and technology park, Lee connected with Pranay Kohli, an energy sector executive with experience working with companies and clients around the world. In 2018, Lee and Kohli founded ACTIVEcharge, LLC, a startup that develops solutions to autonomously monitor wind turbines.

“Soobum and I have benefited tremendously from the MII program. Although we had the technology and the business skills, what MII and bwtech provided us was the ecosystem of professionals who have guided us along the way,” says Kohli, CEO of ACTIVEcharge. “That has opened up so many doors for us as we move forward to commercializing the solution.”

Technology with an impact

Lee’s work has continued to move forward since he received the MII grant. In the lab, he and his students have developed a power management circuit and have integrated it with a power source, sensor, and data transmitter that is about six inches tall and weighs about two pounds.

The sensor provides the signal to the transmitter, and the transmitter sends the data to a receiver. This process uses the energy produced by the attached mechanical generator, powered by vibrations from turbine blades. No external source of energy is needed. It is also designed to sit inside the blades, so it is completely protected from the elements and does not interfere with the blade aerodynamics.

Lee and Kohli hope that, in the next two to four years, their integrated solution will be installed on turbine blades across the country and internationally. Their goal is to provide turbine maintenance crews with near-real-time data that can support their work in a way that doesn’t create additional labor or physical risk and prevents potential catastrophic events.

Sustainable energy projects are growing in the U.S., and now is an important moment to make technology improvements that will boost that growth further, Lee notes. He shares, “I want to make things even better than they are now.”

Banner image: Wind turbines. Photo by Kam Abbott, used under CC BY 2.0.

UMBC is proud to be named a 2019 – 2020 Fulbright Top Producing Institution, an honor granted by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. The Fulbright program is the U.S. government’s flagship international exchange program. Over 2,200 U.S. students are awarded Fulbright grants annually, from hundreds of colleges and universities. Only a small portion of these institutions are designated as top producers each year. UMBC is one of 45 doctoral universities nationwide and three in Maryland to receive a Fulbright Top Producing Institution designation for 2019 – 2020. Over 43% of UMBC’s Fulbright U.S. Student Program applicants earned awards. This is the third-highest proportion among all top-producing doctoral institutions, speaking to the quality of UMBC student applications.

“The Fulbright Top Producing Institution designation honors our entire UMBC community,” reflects President Freeman Hrabowski. “It recognizes how UMBC prepares students to get beyond their comfort zones and to tackle global challenges through engagement with communities around the world.”

UMBC global ambassadors

In the last decade, UMBC has received over 60 Fulbright U.S. Student Program awards. In the 2019 – 2020 academic year, fourteen students and alumni earned awards to teach, conduct research, or pursue graduate studies in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, South America, and Europe. 

“These Fulbrighters serve as citizen ambassadors for the United States in their host communities, and we will benefit from the skills, knowledge, and global connections they build on their exchanges long after they return home,” shares Marie Royce, assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs.

This year, 27 UMBC students and recent alumni, a record number, have been selected as Fulbright semifinalists. This selection recognizes their academic merit, leadership potential, and vision to create solutions and serve as leaders around the world. 

Support on the Fulbright journey

Each year students must complete a rigorous application process to apply for a Fulbright. They receive support from Brian Souders, M.A. ‘19, TESOL, and Ph.D. ’09, language, literacy and culture, UMBC’s Fulbright program advisor, as well as faculty and staff across campus. This process asks applicants in all majors to provide evidence of their academic excellence, commitment to global community partnerships, and a record of leadership through service. 

“Dedicated UMBC faculty and staff mentor students and alumni annually from across the campus, from film-making and anthropology to quantum physics to mechatronics,” says Souders. “They support them through the application process, and help them prepare their work to reflect their academic purpose and goals for this globally prestigious and life-changing award.” 

Study abroad as a pathway to Fulbright

Many future Fulbright recipients begin their international experience with study abroad through International Education Services. This UMBC office offers students opportunities to study and research internationally as early as the summer before their incoming year. In UMBC’s 2019 – 2020 Fulbright class, ten out of fourteen recipients had already pursued research and education abroad. For the 2018 – 2019 class, that number was six out of eight recipients. 

“Studying abroad gives students that first foundational taste of being in a new global environment,” shares Caylie Middleton, associate director of education abroad. “International academic, social, and cultural experiences help develop the curiosity and skills that prepare students for prestigious international opportunities in the future.”

Fulbrighters have also participated in other international opportunities, including with student organizations like Engineers Without Borders, class-based online international exchanges like Global Engineering, faculty-led study abroad courses, and online language exchanges, which UMBC offers in Spanish and Japanese. 

Souders is proud that so many Retrievers are accessing opportunities for international learning experiences, through Fulbright and a broad range of other UMBC international programs. The Top Producer accolade is a milestone that represents an important trend—more UMBC students and recent alumni are researching, learning, and teaching abroad each year.

“Retrievers have a deep understanding of the value of diverse experiences, identities, and cultures,” Souders says. “They know that the world they dream of can only be made possible by reaching together in mutual understanding.”

Feature image: Souders with UMBC’s 2019 – 2020 Fulbright U.S. Student recipients. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 unless otherwise noted.