Thanks to award-winning education faculty and UMBC’s research-based teacher preparation programs, hundreds of Retriever alumni lead pre-k through 12-grade classrooms across the state, meeting the need for highly qualified teachers. Maryland’s high school students now have a unique opportunity to join their ranks by beginning their teacher training early in preparation for applying to UMBC’s teaching programs. This fall, UMBC joined an existing network of higher education institutions across Maryland that partner with the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) and the Teacher Academy of Maryland (TAM) to offer Maryland-high-school students interested in teaching a direct admissions pathway to UMBC’s undergraduate teacher education programs.

UMBC awarded its first TAM scholarship and academic credit this fall to three first-year students, Layla Bugarini, Alna Thekkiniath, and Sofia Driver.“Once the word gets out that UMBC is a TAM-participating institution offering not only great benefits for TAM students but also a high quality and unique teacher education program, we anticipate many more aspiring educators will see UMBC as a destination institution for teacher education,” says Vickie Williams, director of student services and certification officer for UMBC’s Department of Education and a member of the organizing committee

TAM’s mission is to grow and diversify the teaching field by igniting high school students’ passion for teaching. The program provides them with foundational knowledge and skills essential for success as educators, learners, and leaders. Through a partnership with a higher education institution, participants gain valuable experience in a university setting which helps them prepare for their transition to education majors.

Participating high schoolers develop a portfolio that includes three high school courses: Human Growth and Development through Adolescence, Teaching as a Profession, and Foundations of Curriculum and Instruction. Students are also required to complete an internship in a classroom setting under the supervision of a TAM mentor. After fulfilling all the TAM requirements, students submit their portfolio for review and feedback to the university they plan to attend. Each university offers students different benefits.

UMBC is providing students who successfully complete the TAM program, with several incentives:

• a $75 application fee waiver
• three lower-level education elective credits that can be applied towards the 120-minimum credit graduation requirement 
• for those who matriculate directly from high school, a $1,000 merit scholarship from the Homer and Martha Gudelsky and the Maggie Geeter Hrabowski Scholarship, to be applied directly to their UMBC account to assist with tuition, fees, and other educational expenses
• an opportunity to interview for UMBC’s Sherman Teacher Scholars Program. 

“Our undergraduate students enter classrooms equipped with pedagogical knowledge, field experience, and expertise from their academic major. This prepares them for their teacher certification exams in their chosen grade level and subject area,” says Williams. “Collaborating with TAM provides high school students with exposure to rigorous education research and practice, along with guidance, financial support, and mentorship.” 

“My journey with TAM began back in my freshman year at Eastern Technical High School [Baltimore County], where I had the opportunity to intern in a third-grade classroom at Rossville Elementary in Baltimore County Public Schools,” says Bugarini. She notes that the experience led her to enroll in UMBC’s education program and major in psychology. “TAM didn’t just introduce me to teaching in a classroom, it also gave me a glimpse of what education courses at college would be like. This head start has been invaluable as I pursue my education certification and the required classes to complete it.”

To learn more about UMBC’s teacher preparation programs, contact Vickie Williams, director of student services and certification officer.

There’s already a student waiting outside the office of Faisal Quader, Ph.D. ’20, when the adjunct professor arrives at the Information Technology and Engineering building on a Thursday afternoon. 

The recent graduate, Smriti Khilnani, M.S. ’24, information systems, patiently waits for the information systems instructor—a full-time president of Technuf LLC, philanthropist, and board member of several organizations—to open his office for his limited hours on campus. Quader breezes in, greeting his guest with a smile while asking her how she’s doing. 

“I don’t know,” the graduate says, before the pair steps inside the office. After several minutes, the duo exit and Khilnani’s face looks more relaxed and at ease than moments before. 

“She’s looking for a job, and she’s a little frustrated,” says Quader of the graduate, who is an international student. “She’s trying to get a cybersecurity job, but it needs security clearance, which she cannot get due to her non-U.S. citizen status. However, we talked about alternative solutions to her problem.”

Moments like these aren’t uncommon for Quader, a former international student himself. He spends a large portion of his time in service to those around him, whether it’s in the classroom, in a meeting room at the high-tech company he runs, or on stage when he’s singing classic Bengali songs. 

“The fact that people are so open to come to me for help—that makes my day knowing that I’m able to make a difference,” says Quader.

Bringing industry perspectives into the classroom

Since graduating in 2020, Quader has spent the last four years as a part-time instructor teaching two graduate-level cybersecurity courses at UMBC and an additional course at the University of Maryland, College Park. On top of teaching, Quader works full-time as the president of the company he co-founded, Technuf, which specializes in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), robotic process automation, mobile application development, and software engineering. The Rockville-based company supports agencies, such as the Internal Revenue Service, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Homeland Security, and some state governments on high-profile cybersecurity initiatives.

Quader has a B.S. in computer science from the University of Wisconsin and an M.S. in computer science and engineering from Johns Hopkins University. Before going down the path to becoming a faculty member, Quader was initially a non-degree student at UMBC, but after enjoying his class so much, he decided to pursue a doctoral degree in information systems, specializing in cybersecurity. 

“It was a difficult path working full-time and being a student, but I got so much from UMBC,” says Quader. “My mentors and professors supported me tremendously. I love this school, and now I feel like it’s time for me to give something back. Nothing is better than being able to share what I’ve learned with students.”

Quader brings his data science industry know-how to the classroom in more practical ways, educating students on how he and his team at Technuf work to address timely cybersecurity challenges, such as securing network infrastructures from cyber attacks and analyzing data to protect from cyber threats. His courses are capped to capacity every semester and has an ever-evolving waitlist of students hoping to learn from his tutelage. 

“Cybersecurity is an extremely hot topic, and I like that I can bring in the industry perspective to my theoretical teachings,” explains Quader. “I love teaching—it’s my passion. Even though I work full time, I do this because I love to be able to share what I do everyday.”

A passion for performance

While Quader has spent the last three decades in engineering, computer science, and information science as an industry leader, he’s dedicated much of his life to something he got from his mother: a love of singing. 

As a child growing up in Bangladesh, Quader frequently performed on tv shows as a vocalist and continues to feed his passion for performance today. He shares that music is his “weekend work” where he occasionally puts on family performances with his wife and two children. Every few weeks, Quader travels across the DMV singing with various groups. He’s a big fan of Lionel Richie and Bengali polymath Rabindranath Tagore. With his performances, Quader says that he is trying to create a bridge between Eastern and Western music. 

The tech-heavy data scientist says that finding time to mesh his creative passions with his analytical and technical skills gives balance to his life—music and technology are more related than one may think, he adds. 

“Technology has a lot of mathematical inductions, different kinds of modeling theories and patterns. Music is also something that is kind of like a pattern,” says Quader. “Music refreshes my brain. When the weekend comes, I focus on music and that gives me more energy to do my work. That keeps me sane.”

Supporting the next generation of data scientists and engineers

In 2023, Quader established the Technuf Endowed Fellowship at UMBC, a $100,000 fund that supports master’s or Ph.D. candidates in information systems with entrepreneurial aspirations who are conducting research and/or pursuing a career in AI/ML or cybersecurity. The fellowship, Quader shares, is particularly for students who are unable to receive financial support for their education. 

“When I was a student here in the U.S. after emigrating from Bangladesh at age 18, I didn’t have a scholarship or funding because of the fact that I was an international student. I struggled so badly and had to work three jobs to make my tuition,” he says. “I don’t want my students to go through the same process of struggling. I’m not able to help every student, but this is a good start.”

Quader also created a summer internship program at Technuf where students work hand-in-hand with data scientists and engineers on solving technical problems. Several UMBC students have gone on to work full time at Technuf following their internships, including Isha Shah, M.S. ’23, information systems. In summer 2022, Shah worked at Technuf as a software engineer and data science intern. 

“I often found it challenging to secure job or internship opportunities. During one of our initial classes, Dr. Quader mentioned his company, which immediately caught my interest,” says Shah. “I reached out to him to inquire about internship opportunities and to my surprise, he responded with enthusiasm and asked me to send over my resume. That moment felt like a turning point in my career journey.”

After graduating from UMBC, Shah was offered a full-time position at Technuf and currently works at the company as a product development engineer.

“Dr. Quader has had a tremendous impact on both my studies and career. His approach to teaching went far beyond textbooks. He always emphasized the importance of real-world applications and critical thinking, which made a significant difference in my understanding of cybersecurity concepts,” Shah explains. “Dr. Quader believed in my potential and opened doors for me at Technuf, where I’ve been able to gain invaluable hands-on experience in the field.”

In October, Quader was honored for his service as a 2024 recipient of UMBC’s Distinguished Service Alumni Award.

“That was a big encouragement for me,” Quader beamed. “I can see the difference I’m able to make with my students by giving them job opportunities, internships, training, and industry focused-teaching. That’s what keeps me going.”

Register here.

“Recipes are like an address to a homeland, but they’re also very personal to your own story,” said Karla T. Vasquez, author of The SalviSoul Cookbook, in True Grit’s Test Kitchen. Celia Bonilla, a business technology administration sophomore, grinned and nodded—the addresses for her own recipes come from El Salvador and Maryland. Bonilla joined other UMBC students earlier this fall for the “More than Pupusas” cooking demonstration, sponsored by the Dresher Center for the Humanities, to learn how to cook Salvadoran street food.

Bonilla sat at one of two tables set with brown butcher paper with her classmates, Stephania Fonseca, a social work sophomore, and Jeffrey Molina Soriano, a computer science junior. They also have roots in Maryland and El Salvador. “Pastelitos [pah-steh-lee-tos] means little pie and it’s the Salvadoran version of empanadas [em-pah-nah-dahs],” said Vasquez. “Empanadas are well known all over Latin America. Greeks, Italians, and other Europeans make meat pies, too.”

Like many Salvadoran students at UMBC, their journeys to UMBC are as complex as the ingredients they use for this meal. “Sometimes Hispanic Heritage Month events portray Latinx culture as a monolith, often focusing on the Caribbean or Mexican American experience,” said Courtney C. Hobson ’10, M.A. ’14, history, program manager at the James T. and Virginia M. Dresher Center for the Humanities. “I grew up in Prince George’s County, Maryland, where a significant part of the Latinx immigrant community comes from Central America, specifically El Salvador. Many of our Latinx students have roots in Central America—I wanted to organize an event that celebrated the rich culture they represent.”

“I came here when I was six years old from El Salvador,” said Bonilla, who attended the event as part of an assignment for the Spanish for Heritage Spanish Speakers class. Students must participate in two on-campus and two off-campus cultural events that celebrate Hispanic/Latinx culture. While Bonilla is familiar with campus events as the parent of a UMBC alum Jasmine Esmeralda Bonilla ’21, chemical engineering, this event felt different. “This class gives me a chance to learn more about my culture and language by engaging with people from various countries and age groups.”

Culinary traditions

Most students at the event said they had eaten pupusas (puh-poo-suhz) at home or at a restaurant. This flat corn flour cake, stuffed with cheese, beans, and sometimes meat is the national dish of El Salvador. “I have an aunt who is from El Salvador. She taught my mom, and then my mom taught me how to make pupusas with my sister,” said Fonseca. “My dad is from El Salvador, and my mom is from Mexico. We learned to make pupusas together as a family. So it became a typical food from my home.”

As students kneaded the dough into a palm-sized disc, filled it with sautéed mushrooms, and pinched the edges to seal the pastelitos, they also shared what food meant to them in the context of their family and student life. A clear theme emerged, culinary traditions can extend beyond the kitchen. “We have the Philly pretzel factory. I’ve never been able to find a soft pretzel as good as the Philly Pretzel Factory,” said Ashley Gutshall about her hometown of Royersford, Pennsylvania. Gutshall, a history and Spanish sophomore, shares, “It’s our family tradition to get Philly soft pretzels after doctor’s appointments.”

Snack routines also create taste memories. “I was born in El Salvador during the Civil War [1980-1992] but was raised in Los Angeles. I would often fantasize about the routines my family would have had if they had been able to stay in their homeland,” said Vasquez, as she cooked down strawberries that she used to sweeten a large container of water filled with chan seeds—similar to chia seeds in texture and nutrition. “Fresco de chan satisfied that question for me because it’s a drink students have after school,” said Vasquez. 

Food as a cultural bridge

Dishes are a fingerprint of a family’s traditions and tastes that can also serve as a timeline marking the evolution of ingredients locally and globally. “When my mom hears of these new trending food ingredients like chia seeds or quinoa,” says Vasquez, “she argues that they have been used in El Salvador and Central American communities for a long time.” 

Whether savory or sweet, the names of foods and spices across Latin America, and the dishes they inspire, are rooted in indigenous, African, and European languages and culinary traditions often fused to create unique dishes with local variations. Vasquez noted that achiote [ah-chee-oh-teh], the spice used to season and enhance the yellow color of the corn flour dough for the pastelitos, is a Nahuat word. Nahuat is a widely spoken indigenous language in Mexico and Central America. The rich legacy of Salvadoran food is seldom recognized alongside Western cuisine, even though many of its ingredients are sourced from the Global South—reinforcing cultural divisions. The Dresher Center’s “More than Pupusas” cooking event aimed to bridge this gap and celebrate the cultural footprint of Salvadoran cuisine.

“I interviewed more than 100 women while I’ve been working on this project. It’s taken me nine years,” says Vasquez about her recent release, The SalviSoul Cookbook. “I wanted to make sure that we’re giving credit where credit is due.” 

(r): Bonilla and Molina Soriano taste the fried pastelitos. (Marlayna Demond ’11/UMBC)

The tasters and aspiring chefs were grateful to be part of the long tradition of communities brought together across borders and time to learn, cook, and share a meal with new and old friends. They stamped their seal of approval with dough—a squiggly line, a star, a smile—sealing each pastelito with personal flair.

“Recipes are like an address to a homeland, but they’re also very personal to your own story,” said Karla T. Vasquez, author of The SalviSoul Cookbook, in True Grit’s Test Kitchen. Celia Bonilla, a business technology administration sophomore, grinned and nodded—the addresses for her own recipes come from El Salvador and Maryland. Bonilla joined other UMBC students earlier this fall for the “More than Pupusas” cooking demonstration, sponsored by the Dresher Center for the Humanities, to learn how to cook Salvadoran street food.

Bonilla sat at one of two tables set with brown butcher paper with her classmates, Stephania Fonseca, a social work sophomore, and Jeffrey Molina Soriano, a computer science junior. They also have roots in Maryland and El Salvador. “Pastelitos [pah-steh-lee-tos] means little pie and it’s the Salvadoran version of empanadas [em-pah-nah-dahs],” said Vasquez. “Empanadas are well known all over Latin America. Greeks, Italians, and other Europeans make meat pies, too.”

Like many Salvadoran students at UMBC, their journeys to UMBC are as complex as the ingredients they use for this meal. “Sometimes Hispanic Heritage Month events portray Latinx culture as a monolith, often focusing on the Caribbean or Mexican American experience,” said Courtney C. Hobson ’10, M.A. ’14, history, program manager at the James T. and Virginia M. Dresher Center for the Humanities. “I grew up in Prince George’s County, Maryland, where a significant part of the Latinx immigrant community comes from Central America, specifically El Salvador. Many of our Latinx students have roots in Central America—I wanted to organize an event that celebrated the rich culture they represent.”

“I came here when I was six years old from El Salvador,” said Bonilla, who attended the event as part of an assignment for the Spanish for Heritage Spanish Speakers class. Students must participate in two on-campus and two off-campus cultural events that celebrate Hispanic/Latinx culture. While Bonilla is familiar with campus events as the parent of a UMBC alum Jasmine Esmeralda Bonilla ’21, chemical engineering, this event felt different. “This class gives me a chance to learn more about my culture and language by engaging with people from various countries and age groups.”

Culinary traditions

Most students at the event said they had eaten pupusas (puh-poo-suhz) at home or at a restaurant. This flat corn flour cake, stuffed with cheese, beans, and sometimes meat is the national dish of El Salvador. “I have an aunt who is from El Salvador. She taught my mom, and then my mom taught me how to make pupusas with my sister,” said Fonseca. “My dad is from El Salvador, and my mom is from Mexico. We learned to make pupusas together as a family. So it became a typical food from my home.”

As students kneaded the dough into a palm-sized disc, filled it with sautéed mushrooms, and pinched the edges to seal the pastelitos, they also shared what food meant to them in the context of their family and student life. A clear theme emerged, culinary traditions can extend beyond the kitchen. “We have the Philly pretzel factory. I’ve never been able to find a soft pretzel as good as the Philly Pretzel Factory,” said Ashley Gutshall about her hometown of Royersford, Pennsylvania. Gutshall, a history and Spanish sophomore, shares, “It’s our family tradition to get Philly soft pretzels after doctor’s appointments.”

Snack routines also create taste memories. “I was born in El Salvador during the Civil War [1980-1992] but was raised in Los Angeles. I would often fantasize about the routines my family would have had if they had been able to stay in their homeland,” said Vasquez, as she cooked down strawberries that she used to sweeten a large container of water filled with chan seeds—similar to chia seeds in texture and nutrition. “Fresco de chan satisfied that question for me because it’s a drink students have after school,” said Vasquez. 

Food as a cultural bridge

Dishes are a fingerprint of a family’s traditions and tastes that can also serve as a timeline marking the evolution of ingredients locally and globally. “When my mom hears of these new trending food ingredients like chia seeds or quinoa,” says Vasquez, “she argues that they have been used in El Salvador and Central American communities for a long time.” 

Whether savory or sweet, the names of foods and spices across Latin America, and the dishes they inspire, are rooted in indigenous, African, and European languages and culinary traditions often fused to create unique dishes with local variations. Vasquez noted that achiote [ah-chee-oh-teh], the spice used to season and enhance the yellow color of the corn flour dough for the pastelitos, is a Nahuat word. Nahuat is a widely spoken indigenous language in Mexico and Central America. The rich legacy of Salvadoran food is seldom recognized alongside Western cuisine, even though many of its ingredients are sourced from the Global South—reinforcing cultural divisions. The Dresher Center’s “More than Pupusas” cooking event aimed to bridge this gap and celebrate the cultural footprint of Salvadoran cuisine.

“I interviewed more than 100 women while I’ve been working on this project. It’s taken me nine years,” says Vasquez about her recent release, The SalviSoul Cookbook. “I wanted to make sure that we’re giving credit where credit is due.” 

(r): Bonilla and Molina Soriano taste the fried pastelitos. (Marlayna Demond ’11/UMBC)

The tasters and aspiring chefs were grateful to be part of the long tradition of communities brought together across borders and time to learn, cook, and share a meal with new and old friends. They stamped their seal of approval with dough—a squiggly line, a star, a smile—sealing each pastelito with personal flair.

Climbing 30-meter ladders and avoiding osprey nests might not sound like typical activities for scientists who usually work with equations and models—but it’s all in a day’s work for Kevin Turpie’s team, which includes an international group of scientists and engineers from UMBC, NASA, the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences (RBINS) and the Vlaams Instituut voor de Zee (VLIZ), also known as the Flanders Marine Institute, also in Belgium. Over the last 15 months, they have collaborated with Maryland Department of the Environment (MDE) staff, with the blessing of the U.S. Coast Guard, to install, monitor, and repair a new instrument on top of a Coast Guard navigation tower in Chesapeake Bay near Tolchester, Maryland.

The instrument, called the Pan-and-Tilt Hyperspectral Radiometer (PANTHYR) and developed by VLIZ, is one of multiple PANTHYRs deployed worldwide. Each is part of the WATERHYPERNET—a growing network of automated instruments that provide measurements to validate observations from space. The WATERHYPERNET concept was developed by RBINS and VLIZ and supported by  the European Space Agency (ESA). Another instrument called the HYPSTAR is installed at some other WATERHYPERNET sites, and the Chesapeake Bay station may add one in the future.

The Chesapeake Bay PANTHYR station is the first WATERHYPERNET station installed in North America; others operate off the coasts of France, Italy, Belgium, and Argentina. The new station “will provide a wealth of information regarding water quality and the environmental and ecological conditions in the Upper Chesapeake Bay,” says Turpie, a research associate professor with the Goddard Earth Science Technology and Research Center (GESTAR II), a UMBC partnership with NASA. 

A “rigorous test”

The Chesapeake PANTHYR will also help validate data coming from the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI) aboard the recently-launched NASA PACE satellite, which also carries HARP2, an instrument designed and built by UMBC researchers. The station will also provide data to validate many other satellite missions, including NASA’s future Surface Biology and Geology (SBG) mission, part of the upcoming Integrated Earth System Observatory. 

“Observations from space are critical to understanding how our planet functions as a system and how that system is changing. But such measurements are done in the harsh environment of space, looking through the entire atmosphere, and always from several hundred kilometers away,” Turpie explains. “So, we need to compare those data against the same kind of measurements taken at the surface. PANTHYR offers a rigorous test for PACE and its ability to glean vital information about our world’s most critical coastal resources.”

PANTHYR is the newest instrument in the WATERHYPERNET, a global network of instruments managed by the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences and supported by the European Space Agency. 

A challenging work location

The Chesapeake Bay PANTHYR station was installed in July 2023, but encountered challenges due to winter weather, complex logistics, and the collapse of Baltimore’s Key Bridge and subsequent environmental threat assessments. However, after a repair mission in September 2024, PANTHYR is up and running again, and data are streaming in. 

Arranging each trip to service PANTHYR is complicated. MDE staff pilot the boats that take the researchers to and from the site, and only tower climbers with special training can access the instrument. Calm weather is a necessity. Plus, in the spring, there’s always a risk that ospreys or eagles will choose the tower for nesting. That makes the instrument inaccessible if young birds are present.

But the team is committed, because the data PANTHYR produces are valuable. Every 20 minutes, PANTHYR measures the intensity of light encountering the surface of the water, the brightness of the sky, and how much light is reflected back from the water’s surface. PANTHYR detects visible and near-infrared light. These are some of the same data collected by satellites like PACE. WATERHYPERNET instruments also help scientists develop improved algorithms for processing the data and monitor phenomena like harmful algal blooms. 

“Autonomous stations like this collect a wealth of validation information—more than we get from science cruises or other means, which can be very expensive,” Turpie says. “It’s exciting to get multiple observations a day of the changing water quality and ecosystem conditions of this important coastal estuary. For surface radiometry, this is very important in order to build up as many match ups with satellite observations as possible.”

Moving forward, UMBC is responsible for the maintenance and operation of the PANTHYR station. Turpie and his colleagues will be working hard to keep the station in tip-top shape so that it can continue to produce useful data and inform future satellite missions—with or without the “help” of neighborhood ospreys. 

Meet Emma Swartling ‘10, anthropology, prenatal and pediatric chiropractor and owner of Lumos Chiropractic in Tacoma, Washington. She was drawn to UMBC to experience the East Coast after being raised on the West Coast. Emma combined her interests in cultural and biological anthropology, pre-medicine, and working with children to shape her career as a chiropractor. Take it away, Emma!

Q: What’s one essential thing you’d want another Retriever to know about you? 

A: Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest (PNW), I started college with the intent to major in pre-medicine but ended up falling in love with anthropology. I was fortunate to find a career that allowed me to combine many of my multiple interests by following the path to chiropractic. Chiropractic has allowed me to use many of the skills in empathy and understanding that cultural anthropology teaches, and biological anthropology offers insights into human anatomy and function. It was the Chesapeake Bay Retriever that initially sparked my interest into learning more about UMBC. I love dogs and spent my childhood involved with dog training and showing, as well as teaching younger children involved in the same program. This is how I learned I enjoy working with children.

Q: Tell us about your current job. What do you enjoy most about it?

A: I am a prenatal and pediatric chiropractor and own my practice in Washington state. The best part about my work is being part of the village that supports people during the huge transition periods of pregnancy, postpartum, and childhood.

Q: Tell us about your primary WHY, and how it led you to UMBC.

A: What brought me to UMBC was the beginning of my love to travel and explore. After finishing the first two years of college in my home state, I decided to transfer to the East Coast to visit a part of our country that I had never seen. The initial reasons UMBC stood out are superficial: Maryland was a central location to explore north and south along the East Coast; the Maryland State flag is amazing; and most importantly, I wanted to say I went to a school where the mascot is a unique dog breed like the Chesapeake Bay Retriever!

I wanted an adventure and to try something new. I can honestly say, when my airplane landed at BWI in the dead of winter, I started to question my decision. Coming from the lush, always green PNW it looked like I was about to land in a brown and desolate land. I grew to appreciate the seasons while in Maryland and was awed by the abruptness of changes in weather. My first semester was timid—I was finding my footing and trying to discover my place. There were other students and professors who helped me make the most of the next three semesters, who helped me step out of my comfort zone and learn more about myself. I love the small community of UMBC, the ease in moving around a campus that felt both big and compact. 

Pictured left: Emma in a treatment room at her chiropractic practice, Lumos Chiropractic

Q: Tell us about the people who helped you grow at UMBC and how they helped shape your next steps.

A: UMBC helped to shape “my why.” I really enjoyed learning from many of the professors in the anthropology department, in particular a former professor, Seth Messinger, who taught many of my favorite courses including a course on Medical Anthropology. Anthropology courses that combined the study of other cultures and their medicinal practices were particularly engaging to me. I began to imagine my future career—what direction would anthropology take me?

My first semester was timid—I was finding my footing and trying to discover my place. There were other students and professors who helped me make the most of the next three semesters, who helped me step out of my comfort zone and learn more about myself.

Emma Swartling ’10

After graduating from UMBC, I took some time to travel and consider my career opportunities. It was when my chiropractor cousin suggested I come listen to a talk hosted by a chiropractic school that I began to consider it as a career. The presenters shared about their unique experience opening a chiropractic clinic abroad, living in a country other than their own, and interacting with and helping a small community that I started to put the pieces together. I could combine my many interests: cultural anthropology and working with different people, cultures, populations, pre-medicine, and biological anthropology by working with bodies, studying the human form and its function, and be able to work with children, support childhood development, and help to grow a healthier community. 

Q: What’s your favorite part of being a part of Retriever Nation?

A: I really appreciated UMBC’s focus on academics and on inclusion. Also, I found an amazing group of people at UMBC who were kind, generous, and fun in the fraternity of Phi Mu. Some of those friendships led to future travel and experiences that helped to shape my career choice.

* * * * *

UMBC’s greatest strength is its people. When people meet Retrievers and hear about the passion they bring, the relationships they create, the ways they support each other, and the commitment they have to inclusive excellence, they truly get a sense of our community. That’s what “Meet a Retriever” is all about.

Families, friends, furry pals, and Retrievers of all ages returned to UMBC’s campus last week for the 2024 Homecoming celebration. Retrievers were in high spirits as they enjoyed more than 30 events, including UMBC Homecoming staples like the beloved carnival and bonfire, and some attendees kicked off their Halloween festivities with costumes, pumpkins, and fall treats. 

Robots, pups, and Retriever traditions

In UMBC tradition, the Homecoming celebration had something for everyone. Leading up to main Homecoming weekend, students kicked Homecoming fun into high gear with the return of the student org kickball tournament. UMBC faculty and staff also took part in the fun at the annual faculty-staff social. 

A diverse breadth of UMBC’s research and creative achievement was on display at the eighth annual GRIT-X event. First-year computer science student Morgan Robbins attended this year’s GRIT-X with her mother, Nicole Robbins. The pair were impressed by GRIT-X speaker Aryya Gangopadhyay, professor of information systems, and student researchers in UMBC’s Center for Real-time Distributed Sensing and Autonomy (CARDS) who led a demonstration of their autonomous robotics technology.

“I’m interested in autonomous communication, and I like combining computing with helping people,” said Robbins. “This was my first time seeing research talks, and it was great to see the research happening at UMBC.”

During Homecoming and Family Weekend, there were smiles, cheers, and barks all around for the annual Puppy Parade, which featured dozens of animals in wild costumes. Dharma Bhatt ’23, psychology, said he came to Homecoming for one reason: “The puppy parade—entirely the puppy parade.” 

A weekend for family and friends 

Homecoming weekend also featured several get-togethers for various groups across the community, including reunions for UMBC’s “Founding Four” group and members of the university’s Honors College and scholars programs. President Valerie Sheares Ashby took part in the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority Lambda Phi chapter’s celebration of their 15th reunion. The group helped to raise more than $1,600 for UMBC’s Second Generation Scholarship Fund.

Jim Lotfi ’89, visual and performing arts, kept the party rocking during the annual Greek alumni reunion party. Lotfi shared that he loves hosting the Greek alumni party, saying that, “It’s a great time for fraternity and sorority members across all organizations to come together and reconnect. This is one of my favorite Homecoming events to participate in.” 

In the Alumni and Friends tent on Erickson Field, attendees enjoyed games, food, petting zoo fun, and moments of reconnecting with old classmates and other familiar faces. Senior Emily Trentalance said she attended Homecoming to be able to see friends and professors again. “It’s hard hanging out, especially with your alumni friends when people are busy, so it’s nice to see everyone,” she shares. 

During this year’s Taste of Maryland Homecoming event, 100 attendees gathered across from UMBC’s Bookstore in The Commons for a crab and assorted buffet feast. Alumni Association President Kevin Yang ’07, computer science and financial economics, and his wife Katelyn Niu ’05, biochemistry, brought their son along for the Homecoming fun. The family enjoyed the endless bushels of crabs with fellow alumni friends. 

“There’s nothing like a UMBC celebration, and what better way to reconnect and reminisce with old friends than with crabs,” said Yang. 

As the carnival lit up the night sky, many attendees made their way to the annual Homecoming Tailgate where they cheered on the men’s soccer team in their victory against the University of Vermont. 

Additional reporting provided by JJ Gee ’25 and Maashal Awan ’25 for UMBC.

A new study in Naturefinds that up to 215 million hectares of land (an area larger than Mexico) in humid tropical regions around the world has the potential to naturally regrow. That much forest could store 23.4 gigatons of carbon over 30 years and also significantly help enhance biodiversity and water quality. The study showed that more than half of the area with strong potential for regrowth was in five countries: Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, China, and Colombia. 

“Tree planting in degraded landscapes can be costly. By leveraging natural regeneration techniques, nations can meet their restoration goals cost effectively,” says the study’s co-lead author, Brooke Williams, a researcher at  the Queensland University of Technology, Australia, and the Institute for Capacity Exchange in Environmental Decisions. “Our model can guide where these savings can best be taken advantage of,” she says. 

A culmination of decades of work

Matthew Fagan, associate professor of geography and environmental systems at UMBC and second author on the new study, developed a data set the authors relied on.

In that work, “We used satellite images to identify millions of small areas where tree cover increased over time. We then excluded the areas planted by humans with machine learning, focusing on natural regrowth,” Fagan says. The study tracked regrowth between 2000 and 2012, and then checked if the regrowth was maintained through 2015. “Those natural patches were the input data for this novel study,” he says, “the first to predict where future forest regrowth will occur, given observed past regrowth.” 

The study, co-led by Hawthorne Beyer, head of geospatial science at Mombak, a Brazilian startup which aims to generate high-quality carbon credits through reforestation of the Amazon, and director of science at Institute for Capacity Exchange in Environmental Decisions, also pulled in global data sets describing factors like soil quality, slope, road and population density, local wealth, distance from urban centers and from healthy forest, and more. “Any time you build one of these global studies, you’re standing on the backs of so many other scientists,” Fagan says. “Each one of these studies represents years of work.”

The study found that the factors most strongly associated with high regrowth potential were a patch’s proximity to existing forest, the density of nearby forest, and the content of carbon in the soil. Those factors in particular “seem to do a really good job explaining the patterns of regrowth we see across the world,” Fagan says. Being close to existing forest, for example, is key to supplying a variety of seeds to the area to support diverse regrowth, Fagan explains. 

Keeping it local—by supplying a global map

The end product of the study is a digital map of the global tropics, where each pixel—representing 30 x 30 square meters of land—indicates the estimated potential for regrowth. That map, made possible by n extensive international collaboration of researchers, is a boon to environmentalists worldwide hoping to advocate locally for their efforts.

“Our goal and our hope is that this is used democratically by local people, organizations, and localities from the county level all the way up to the national level, to advocate for where restoration should happen,” Fagan says. “The people who live there should be in charge of what happens there—where and how to restore really depends on local conditions.”

Fagan points out that some of the potential regrowth areas the study identified are unlikely to be restored for a variety of reasons, such as being in active use for ranching or crops or located on prime real estate near roads and urban centers. However, a meaningful portion of the 215 million hectares is abandoned and degraded cattle pastures or previously logged forests, where encouraging natural regeneration would have minimal cost to local economies and a long list of benefits.

“If you restored that to rainforest, the benefit to water quality, water provision, local biodiversity, and to soil quality would be immense,” Fagan says. “It would also be an immense benefit for pulling carbon out of the atmosphere, so really it’s just a question of, ‘Where can we do this most efficiently?’ That’s what this paper is all about.”