“What did you say?” is the phrase most likely to be heard when you’re walking the halls at Baltimore Animal Rescue and Care Shelter (BARCS) and the answer is most likely drowned out by a cacophony of barks, meows, and even some bird chirps. But Liz Willman wouldn’t have it any other way. 

As most animal lovers do at some point in childhood, Willman decided she wanted to be a veterinarian when she grew up. But unlike most kids, it wasn’t just a phase for this rising senior. That passion for pets brought her to UMBC—where she’s pursuing a major in biological sciences on the pre-vet track—and she’s honed her animal care skills as far as Scotland and as close as BARCS, just a few miles down the road from UMBC.

Dog days of summer

After starting as a volunteer dog walker at BARCS in fall of 2022, Willman accrued experience and staff there asked her to consider moving to the next level of volunteering. But she countered with the request to find an internship opportunity working with their medical professionals. They accepted, and in January 2023, Willman was able to start getting  hands-on experience in her field. For the last several months, Willman has been continuing her work with BARCS medical staff with one short break to  to work with animals across the pond as well. 

“The best part for me is getting to see an animal come for intake on their first day, and then seeing the progress they make,” she says. 

Left: Willman takes a minute to give Ovenmitts (with her extra thumbs!) some love. Right: Willman reviews daily medication and the animal schedules with a BARCS staff member. (Marlayna Demond ’11/UMBC)

Each day, Willman performs a variety of tasks, including distributing medication, checking weights, collecting samples, and more. The staff at BARCS have been especially supportive, taking care to seek out Willman and offer opportunities for hands-on learning. 

“Any time they see something that might interest me, they come find me,” she says. “They know I plan to go on to veterinary school, so they’ve been taking the time to teach me how to do a lot of things vet techs struggle with.” 

Taking to the sky

In addition to her classroom education and work at BARCS, Willman spent six weeks this summer interning with the Scottish National Wildlife Rescue Center. When Willman originally approached UMBC’s education abroad office, trying to find summer trips with a pre-vet focus there wasn’t an existing program, but the office worked with her to find one that would fulfill her requirements. 

Photos of Willman with the animals she worked with in Scotland, courtesy of Willman.

During this time abroad, Willman worked to rehabilitate birds that were injured or abandoned by their parents when they were still too young to care for themselves, performing daily exams and helping to build their strength to prepare them to return to the wild. This experience abroad was one with several firsts for Willman, including her first time leaving the country and her first foray into working with wildlife. 

“It wasn’t only a new experience for me to be working with wildlife, but it was also wildlife that you don’t see in the U.S., like finches native to the United Kingdom,” she says. 

Returning to Maryland this summer, Willman had both her work at BARCS and her own family zoo waiting for her. It’s no surprise an interest in caring for animals hits close to home for her—especially considering her family home in the outskirts of Frederick County has goats, sheeps, dogs, pigs, chickens, and even a registered emotional support turtle named Rumpelstiltskin who accompanies Willman to campus. But her internship experiences added an extra boost in confidence.

“It has just really reaffirmed that I’m not just trying to live out my childhood dream,” says Willman. “I’m meant to do this.” 

Peter Wilschke ’24, economics and political science, hit the ground running after graduation in May, beginning a two-year research assistant position at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in Washington, D.C. He is working on the quarterly Z.1, a report on the financial assets and liabilities, transactions, and balance sheets for households, nonprofit organizations, and businesses. Additionally, Wilschke assists economists with research projects. For Wilschke, these tasks are a welcome set of challenges—he thrives on long-term projects that combine both his majors and allow him a level of independence he nurtured successfully at UMBC.

Just weeks before graduating, Wilschke’s article “Political Drivers of State Fiscal Cyclicality” was accepted for publication in the State and Local Government Review, the official journal of the Section on Intergovernmental Administration and Management of the American Society for Public Administration. Wilschke published as the sole author, which is rare for an undergraduate researcher.

A few weeks after graduation, Wilschke was celebrating again. This time, with his teammates Arvind Kuruvilla ’25, financial economics and philosophy, and Matthew Dyson ’25, political science and computer science. Their paper, “Improving American Retirement Prospects: Policy Solutions for the Financially Fragile,” was one of two winning submissions chosen by the Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirement (WISER) 2024 iOme (I Owe Me) Challenge national student competition. It was the first time in the 20 years since the challenge was established that two teams held the winning title. UMBC’s trio of undergraduates proudly shared the spotlight with the Johns Hopkins Carey School of Business graduate student team.

While these accomplishments came one right after another, Wilschke has been successfully merging his two passions—political science and economics—for some time.

“Once you take statistical analysis and research methods classes in economics or political science, your world is open to how empirical research is actually conducted in those fields. I would not have known where to start without these classes,” says Wilschke, the 24th recipient of the Pittman Family Scholarship, established in 2006 by Kenneth Pittman ’79, economics, and Patricia Pittman ’78, political science, who shared Wilschke’s majors.

“Peter’s accomplishments and that of his colleagues at UMBC are very impressive,” says Kenneth Pittman.“Congratulations to everyone on the iOme team!”

With a little help from my mentors

His desire to see the impact of policy for the long haul keeps Wilschke open to inspiration. A couple of years ago, Wilschke attended the economic department’s Mullen Lecture, presented by Carlos A. Vegh, the Fred H. Sanderson professor of international economics at Johns Hopkins University. Vegh discussed his research on how fiscal policy is conducted over the business cycle in developing and developed countries. What intrigued Wilschke was how developed countries contract their fiscal policy when the economy is doing well and expand fiscal policy during an economic downturn while developing countries do the exact opposite. He wondered if individual states reflected similar cycles and, if so, whether other factors influenced the expansion and contraction of fiscal policy. 

“I explored whether and how political factors—political polarization, turnover, and electoral competition—work to explain why some U.S. states tend to spend more in good times and less in bad times, unlike the federal government,” says Wilschke, who presented the paper at UMBC’s 2024 Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day. 

This was Wilschke’s first time leading a research project. “I didn’t quite know what I was getting myself into,” says Wilschke. He shared the idea with Carolyn Forestiere, professor of political science and his professor of research methods, and she connected him with Eric Stokan. 

Stokan, associate professor of political science and now Wilschke’s mentor, says he enjoyed working with Wilschke weekly for over two semesters, which helped him think through all aspects of the work. He taught Wilschke R, a statistical computing and data visualization programming language. Stokan also suggested pieces of literature on the topic, which helped Wilschke think through the operationalization of his variables and analytic specifications and framing policy. 

“For each session, I would consistently say, ‘Okay, your next step should be X,’ and he would have done X, Y, and Z,” says Stokan. “It was amazing. Peter learned R more quickly than anyone I have ever met.” Wilschke adds, “It was very helpful to have a mentor who had gone through this process multiple times before.”

“Eric and I encouraged Peter to submit his work to a professional journal,” says Forestiere. “We figured that it would be a learning experience even if it were rejected.” They were all delighted when the journal—which only accepts about 14 percent of submissions—asked Wilschke to revise and resubmit. “We were ecstatic when it was finally accepted for publication!”

WISER choices

Doug Lamdin, professor of economics, mentored Wilschke,Kuruvilla, and Dyson to the finish line of the WISER iOme Challenge. The competition raises awareness among university students about the impact of retirement security on society’s social and economic well-being. Students nationwide respond to the annual iOme Challenge question with a policy paper. This year, students were asked to imagine that Congress named them to an independent commission on retirement, with instructions to re-evaluate and modernize the retirement system from the perspective of Gen Zers (those born between 1997 and 2012).

“I put the team together,” says Wilschke. “I knew Matthew from classes and volunteering at UMBC’s Volunteer Income Tax Assistance club, and Arvind was a co-worker of mine in the Admissions Office. It was a lot of fun to work with them and much easier with three people than it would have been by myself.”

Lamdin has ushered four iOme winning teams through the process, starting in 2018 with Evan Avila ’18, economics and political science, now a financial analyst at the Securities and Exchange Commission. Avila has served as a co-moderator for the iOme winner’s presentation for the last two years. Lamdin’s mentoring approach—based on guiding mentees toward independence—has stayed consistent since he first mentored Avila. Lamdin assists them in developing a timeline for producing the essay by the due date that aligns with the judging criteria and provides students with background reading materials. From there, Lamdin steps back, trusting the team to work independently, with weekly check-ins to monitor their progress and provide feedback on their drafts. 

Lamdin notes that Wilschke was proactive and professional. He appreciated his ability to find relevant research, interpret data, and consider new possible retirement policies. 

“It is a rewarding experience for the students and me, so I hope to continue doing it,” says Lamdin. “I have never had a team I mentored not win, so maybe I will stop doing this when the winning streak ends—kidding, sort of.”

Motivation to follow a hunch

While Wilschke was conducting his research for his papers, he was also interning at The Hilltop Institute at UMBC, a nonpartisan research organization dedicated to improving the health and well-being of people and communities. He worked for Morgan Henderson, principal data scientist and affiliate professor of economics, and Morgane Mouslim, policy analyst, on a research project funded by the National Science Foundation on hospital pricing transparency. His two-year internship entailed helping to organize data collected from hundreds of hospitals and writing a news brief, “The Impact of Market Concentration on Hospital Pricing,” and presenting it at URCAD 2024. 

“Peter is an excellent researcher who helped our hospital price transparency project significantly over the past two years,” says Henderson. “The quality of his work is top-notch—we predict that he’ll go far.”

Wilschke did not plan on contributing empirical research to the field of political science as an undergraduate student. Looking back, he is grateful for the classes and opportunities UMBC afforded him that prepared him to follow a hunch. Wilschke said that he felt that some students don’t look forward to statistical analysis or research methods classes in economics or political science because they’ve heard the classes can be difficult and may appear irrelevant at the moment.

“Most of what I accomplished as an undergrad was something I had to decide I wanted to do without having anyone to tell me I should do it,” explains Wilschke. “I’ve learned how far I can go if I try everything I can think of. It gives me motivation and a little bit of pressure to keep up that level of work throughout my time at the Fed Reserve and, hopefully, in grad school.”

Meet Patty Hathaway ’97, M.S. ’03, who earned her B.A. in economics and M.S. in information systems while working at UMBC. After 23 years of service to UMBC, Patty went on to work at three other universities, including the University of Maryland, College Park, where she retired. Patty now works with U.S. Navy veterans as the secretary/treasurer of the USS Hamner DD-718 Association and is the owner of Hathaway Photography of Bowie. Patty recently authored a book for the Hamner association, An American Destroyer: USS Hamner History in Photographs. Take it away, Patty!

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

A: I am a Retriever in many ways: a double alum, a former employee, a UMBC parent (twice), and a past Hilltop Society Member. I was a staff member for 23 years and earned my B.A. and M.S. while working on campus. I worked for three other universities after UMBC, and I now am loving my work with our Navy veterans. I am certain that I would not be where I am today without UMBC.

Q: What’s the one thing you’d want someone who hasn’t joined the UMBC community to know about the support you find here?

A: I would emphasize the feeling of being a “part of the campus family.” It’s not too big and not too small. You just feel like you “fit.” I felt that way as an employee and as a student, and when I visit, I still feel like I am coming home. UMBC was and continues to be a huge part of my life and the person I am today.

Q: Tell us about someone in the community who has inspired you or supported you, and how they did it.

A: UMBC had an atmosphere that made it feel like you were with family. A lot of that was encouraged by Freeman Hrabowski. Although he was the president of UMBC, he found time for employees and students, and was able to be a mentor, supporter, and leader for many. Although I have been away from the UMBC campus since 2005, I have been able to keep in touch with Freeman.

Left: Hathaway waving to the photographer at her 2003 UMBC graduation.

Q: Tell us what you love about your academic program or an organization you’re involved in.

A: During my time at UMBC, I also made time to help with non-profit veterans’ organizations. I was able to use the skills I learned on campus to help these groups. After retiring from paid employment, I have concentrated on my photography business and the USS Hamner DD-718 Association. The Hamner association is dedicated to preserving the memories of the ship and the crew who served on her.

My most recent accomplishment for the Hamner association is the book I authored for them: An American Destroyer: USS Hamner History in Photographs. This book is the sequel to a book I edited for the association in 2022. The history of our veterans needs to be told and I am very happy to be a part of that. Without the skills I acquired and the confidence I developed at UMBC, I would never have been able to edit or author a book.

Q: If you’re currently working, what’s your title and where do you work? What do you enjoy most about it?

A: I am the secretary/treasurer of the USS Hamner DD-718 Association (non-paid office). The relationships I have developed with these Navy veterans is like those at UMBC—we are family!

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

A: I first came to UMBC in the fall of 1976 as a freshman. I have to admit, I was not ready to be a full-time university student so I pursued my associate degree on a part-time schedule instead at Catonsville Community College. There was something about UMBC that drew me back, and in 1981, I was hired to work in the accounting department. Within four years I had completed my A.A. degree and began the pursuit of my B.A. degree in 1989. I loved working on campus and I enjoyed being a student again. I worked with great people and many friendships developed at UMBC that would last for decades.

Right: Hathaway and her granddaughter at a USS Hamner Reunion.

Q: Where have you found support in the UMBC community?

A: I had several people who helped me along the way, sometimes just with encouragement as I tried new positions or pursued a new path in life. Friends who are now gone, Diane Taylor ’76, Jim Milani ’73, and Gary Rupert always had an encouraging word or good advice as I selected courses or applied for the next job opening on campus. Their confidence in me meant more than I can put into words.

In both my work life as well as academic and personal life, David Gleason, M.S. ’04, would always be there to help me find the confidence I needed to move forward. He would always know how to convince me that I could take that next step. His friendship is one I still treasure.

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

A: I am proud to be a part of Retriever Nation both as a alum and a former employee/retiree. I enjoy seeing UMBC grow and being able to feel like I was part of that growth.

Q: What drives you to support UMBC?

A: I have tried to support UMBC whenever I can. I hope to be able to continue and do more in the future.

* * * * *

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.

Learn more about how UMBC can help you achieve your goals.

NASA holds a special place in the public’s imagination. The federal space agency has delivered astronauts to the moon, collected breathtaking images of the cosmos with space telescopes, explored Mars with robotic rovers, and sent satellites into orbit to keep watchful eyes on our own life-supporting planet. 

Leah Narat ’24, business technology administration, shares in the awe. She knew that getting an internship at NASA was highly competitive—around 5 percent of those who apply get offered positions—but she didn’t let the high bar dissuade her from trying.

“Honestly, being at NASA was something that I never thought I would achieve, but I put my application out there, and here I am,” says Narat, who worked as a business intelligence intern at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, this summer. “It’s been wonderful.”

During the internship, Narat worked on computer systems that help keep NASA missions safe and its employees engaged. In one project, she created and updated databases to track awards given to NASA employees. The agency will use the information to maximize employees’ recognition and success and guide them toward career paths that best take advantage of their strengths. 

“It’s been great to have this real world experience, where I can get my hands dirty and decide: Is this the type of work I want to do?” Narat says. “It’s also great that I can receive upper-level credit hours for the internship.”

In another project, Narat sorted information from meetings during which teams debriefed after they completed projects. She identified insights, recommendations, and lessons learned—valuable information that NASA can use to better manage projects in the future.

“Safety is a big priority for NASA, so they have requirements to make sure that each project is scrutinized and every possible improvement is considered,” Narat says.

Narat says her experience working at NASA helped solidify her interests in data analytics and database management. She credits Handshake, UMBC’s job and internship search platform, with helping her find and apply for the position.

Interns from the Flight Projects Directorate at NASA Goddard, including Narat, tour the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. (Images courtesy of Narat)

“The best part of the experience has been meeting people, networking, and making connections,” says Narat. She was also thrilled when the interns got to visit NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Virginia, from which the agency launches a variety of space and high-altitude missions. 

“I got to actually stand on the launch pad where rockets blast off,” says Narat. “It was just wild.”

As a community, farmers in the United States often face challenges that are out of their control, such as drought, livestock disease, and global pandemics like COVID-19. For Black farmers, says Loren Henderson, associate professor of public policy, these obstacles are compounded by land theft, inadequate succession planning, systemic racism, and discriminatory U.S. Department of Agriculture policies and practices. As a result, Black farmers today are facing extinction. Henderson was featured on The Academic Minute to talk about her research.

Henderson, who will be the first African American director of UMBC’s School of Public Policy this fall, is the author of Race, Ethnicity, and the COVID-19 Pandemic(University of Cincinnati Press, 2023). She began researching how Black farmers were faring amid these hurdles during COVID-19. Henderson conducted 50 in-depth virtual interviews with Black farmers in the U.S. The project addressed Black farmers’ expertise and experiences in establishing and maintaining farms under the onslaught of systemic racism and COVID-19. 

“Additionally, I asked the farmers about their use of governmental and private financial resources and their understanding of social policies that impact their ability to establish or maintain their farms,” Henderson shares with Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities and host of The Academic Minute, a daily show featuring faculty from colleges and universities worldwide speaking about their cutting-edge research.

UMBC Academic Minute episodes

Henderson joins other UMBC scholars in sharing the latest research in media and communication studies; modern languages, linguistics, and intercultural communication; language, literacy, and culture; philosophy; gender, women’s, and sexuality studies; and history. This series is republished on NPR podcasts and Inside Higher Ed.

Learn more about Loren Henderson’s research

• Minority Landowner Magazine podcast (2023)
• “Black Mothers in Racially Segregated Neighborhoods Embodying Structural Violence: PTSD and Depressive Symptoms on the South Side of Chicago,” Journal of Ethnic and Health Disparities (2023) 
• “Black mothers trapped in unsafe neighborhoods signal the stressful health toll of gun violence in the U.S.,” The Conversation (2023)  
• Diversity in Organizations: A Critical Examination (New York: Routledge, 2015)

Get to know UMBC’s School of Public Policy.

Parag Shinde knew that in order to get the most out of his summer as a biotechnology master’s student, he needed to find a way to get full-time, hands-on experience in a laboratory. To that end, in spring 2024 he emailed his résumé to dozens of local companies, whether or not they had formal internships posted. The strategy served him well: Shinde landed a role as an analytical chemist at Vici Health Sciences, a pharmaceutical research and development firm in Elkridge, Maryland.

“You can gain knowledge through books, but then you actually go to a company and start doing something, and you feel like you know nothing. So my plan was to work here and get physical experience, as much as possible,” Shinde shares.

As an undergraduate in India, he always enjoyed working in a biology lab setting. So when Shinde, M.P.S. ’25, biotechnology, wanted to advance his career, he looked for a program that aligned with his interests and would prepare him for a role in quality control at a biotechnology company. UMBC’s master’s of professional studies in biotechnology, offered through the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences at the Universities at Shady Grove, fit the bill. This summer, after his first year in the program, Shinde is putting his passion and hands-on lab skills to the test at Vici Health Sciences.

A worthwhile challenge

Shinde’s role involves testing drug compounds for purity, shelf-life, and many other attributes before they can be formulated into medications or other medical treatments—a crucial step in the drug development process. The role requires extreme precision and attention, from mixing testing solutions to calibrating equipment and meticulously recording every step in logbooks. It is nonstop action in the lab, managing multiple steps of different testing protocols simultaneously. “Even the smallest piece of glass” must be accounted for, Shinde says. “And at the end of the day, I start preparing for the next day. It’s a lot.”

The work is challenging, but it offers exactly the type of experience Shinde was looking for. “My primary goal from this internship was to be around stuff that happens in an industry laboratory. How do they go about it? How do they use this equipment? How do they maintain good manufacturing practices?” he says.

 Already, Shinde’s confidence and skills continue to increasing. In particular, his ability to keep track of multiple tasks at once and find the most efficient way to carry out a set of steps is improving. “It has even been helpful at home, like with doing chores,” he shares.

In addition to learning new things in the classroom, Shinde is learning to navigate a new city and country as well—he only moved to the United States from Mumbai, India, last summer, to attend UMBC. The transition has gone well, and he’s looking forward to continuing in the biotechnology program this fall. “God has been kind here,” he says.

Shinde is glad he chose Vici, even if it is stressful at times. It’s moving him toward his goals in ways only a role that pushed his limits could. “It’s really challenging,” he says, “which is why I’m learning a lot of things.”

Learn more about UMBC’s biotechnology programs, including undergraduate and graduate level degrees and certificates.

The Maryland State Board of Education has unanimously elected Josh Michael ’10, political science, Ph.D. ’22, public policy, as its new president following his completion of a one-year term as vice president last year. Michael, whose career in education advocacy has been greatly intertwined with UMBC for years, began his interaction with the Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) as a student representative on the board in 2005.

Now, as president, Michael will continue to oversee the administration of MSDE with the 11-member board, which includes public school educators, parents, community leaders, and a student. UMBC alumna Chuen-Chin Bianca Chang ’91, nursing, is also a board member, representing Howard County since 2021. 

Michael will work with the state superintendent to provide oversight of Maryland’s 24 school districts and lead the board’s work in guiding the implementation of MSDE’s Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, an initiative to increase state funding for education over the next 10 years with a focus on historically underserved students.

“Over the last 10 to 15 years, Maryland public schools have slowly declined in achievement, in literacy, and math. Our rankings have dropped in many ways. Taking this head-on has been a focus of our work,” Michael explains. “We seem to have lost sight of what is most important—ensuring our students are learning. Our schools must serve children from all backgrounds at all performance levels and provide opportunities to excel. The board is focused on restoring stability, vision, and direction for the state to support public schools.”

Education policy at work

Michael’s work with public education began as a UMBC Sondheim Public Affairs Scholar, where he learned about education policy. After graduating, he worked as a math teacher at Baltimore City’s Booker T. Washington Middle School and The Commodore John Rodgers School. After six years in the classroom, Michael returned to UMBC in 2016 to work on growing what was then called UMBC’s Sherman STEM Teachers Scholars Program with Rehana Shafi, the inaugural director, and with the support of The Sherman Family Foundation. The program prepared STEM majors to become high-quality K-12 teachers in urban settings through academic and professional coaching. The program has since broadened its scope and is now called the Sherman Teacher Scholars Program.

Shafi and Michael fostered existing partnerships and helped establish the Lakeland Community and STEAM Center, where many Sherman Teacher Scholars continue to hold student-teacher placements and serve as math volunteers. During this six-year period, Michael also earned a doctorate degree at UMBC focused on mathematics achievement and improving outcomes for struggling students. 

Humanizing policy

“Josh’s work at the Sherman Teacher Scholars Program laid the groundwork for lasting partnerships between the university and City Schools. One example of this legacy is the Reach Together Tutoring Project (RTTP), which provides over 400 City Schools students each year with targeted math tutoring by UMBC students,” says Jane Lincove, professor of public policy and Michael’s dissertation chair. “The program is both reducing math achievement gaps and inspiring UMBC students to become math teachers. Josh’s work is a glowing example of how academic research by doctoral students in UMBC’s public policy program can be put to work to improve the lives of Marylanders.”

“My advice to students interested in public policy is to serve in the communities you want to work with,” says Michael, currently the executive director at The Sherman Family Foundation and a board member of the Maryland Family Network, Cherry Hill Strong, and the Teach For America Baltimore Advisory Board. “Direct service in the classroom and communities have humanized the policy process for me.”

Katherine Carver ’26, physics and mathematics, started off her UMBC experience with a big bang—participating in the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory CIRCUIT internship as a first-year student in spring 2023. Carver says she took advantage of every opportunity she could, from on-site guest lectures and panel discussions to informally networking with APL employees down the hall.

One of the panelists particularly caught her attention, so Carver approached her afterward—and in the two-hour conversation that followed, Kathleen Hamilton-Campos, an APL researcher, encouraged Carver to apply to the Space Astronomy Summer Program at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) at Johns Hopkins University, which Hamilton-Campos had completed in 2019. Carver received notification that she’d been selected as an intern while attending a Society of Women Engineers conference this spring.

This summer at STScI, Carver, a Meyerhoff Scholar, has been digging into developing open-source software that allows astronomers anywhere to analyze data arriving from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), the most powerful space telescope ever launched. 

Mission possible with James Webb

“The whole mission objective for JWST was to see further back into the universe than ever before or possible with the Hubble Telescope or any other type of telescope,” Carver explains. “With how light travels, if you’re looking at something four billion light years away,”—which JWST can—“that means you’re looking at it as it appeared four billion years ago. Which could be very useful for scientists trying to understand how our universe has come to evolve to its current state.” Indeed, Carver continues, JWST can observe light so old that it comes from nearly the beginning of the universe, more than 13 billion years ago—billions of years before Earth even existed. 

The analysis software Carver is working on is called Jdaviz, and it’s written in python. The data files are massive and complex, Carver explains, “so for a scientist who’s interested in only a brief part of the sky, or a particular source, like a star or a galaxy, it can be hard to navigate,” she says, “especially when some of these images have thousands and thousands of sources in them.”

Carver’s contributions are making the data easier to work with, and as a result facilitating scientific discovery in a wide range of research areas. As part of the internship, she also went on a field trip to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and saw where the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope—a telescope whose capabilities will complement JWST’s observations—is being developed. 

“Be persistent”

Through her CIRCUIT and STScI internships, Carver, a rising junior, has already picked up valuable coding skills, including managing interactions between behind-the-scenes code and the user interface, debugging code with errors, navigating code sets that include hundreds of files that all need to talk to each other, and much more. 

The computer science training is likely to come in handy in her future, she says, but she doesn’t expect coding to become her bread and butter. She wants to stay on the science side, using tools like Jdaviz rather than developing them—although her time coding will make her even more grateful for the programmers who do. This fall, Carver is excited to move in that direction by conducting research with UMBC astrophysicist Adi Foord. 

Carver has some words of encouragement for students just getting started on their research journey. 

“There’s no hurt in putting your name out there, even if you feel like you will get rejected. Sometimes you might see the final polished picture, like, ‘Oh, she’s done research at APL. She’s done research at STScI. Those are really competitive’—but I also got a lot of rejections,” Carver says. “Shoot for the internships even if you feel like you won’t get them. Be persistent, ask around, talk to your professors. And then once you are there, take maximum advantage of every opportunity.”

For the last seven weeks, Robert Barry ’25, ancient studies and visual arts, worked in a trench under the sweltering 90-degree sun. It may sound grueling, but this is Barry’s second year working in this archeological site in Greece with Michael F. Lane, associate professor of ancient studies and field director on the Kopaic Cultures, Economies, and Landscapes (KOCECOLA) research program. KOCECOLA is an archaeological investigation of a prehistoric settlement in its physical, human, and historical circumstances in the Kopaic Basin of central mainland Greece. Lane has conducted fieldwork in this area since 2010.

“What I really like about ancient studies is the faculty,” shares Barry. “They show a lot of interest in their students, and I feel like I belong.” Barry has taken archaeology and ancient Greek language classes with Lane, where he has excelled.

Barry learned about the project in Lane’s ancient Greek language class. Lane was seeking undergraduate research assistants to join the 2023 six-week summer archeological fieldwork opportunity, and Barry joined the team. This year, he returned as a trench supervisor with more responsibilities.

From excavating to supervising

Student research assistants use satellite-based differential Global Navigation Satellite Systems (DGNSS) and optical survey equipment. “We use the DGNSS and optical equipment both to plot the location of our trenches and to record the position of discoveries in three dimensions: latitude, longitude, and elevation above sea level,” explains Lane. Once an excavation site is identified, students use trigonometry to measure trenches and then large shovels to reveal distinct layers of soil. Excavation teams are made up of 2 – 3 students spread across six trenches.

“This year, I was a trench supervisor and learned a lot about myself. My priorities changed,” explains Barry. “Last year, I was digging and following directions from my supervisor. Now, I’m giving the orders and having to be responsible for the health and safety of everyone else while getting the job done.”

Lane says the senior staff at KOCECOLA regarded Barry as a peer. “He’s smart, meticulous, punctual, responsible, untiring, even-keeled, good-humored, and funny,” says Lane. “For this reason, I gave him a trench of his own to supervise for the last three weeks this summer, and he exceeded expectations.”

To get the job done, the team’s daily routine meant leaving the village at 5 a.m., taking a 20-minute drive to the dig site, hiking up a mountain, and beginning work around 5:30 a.m. Barry’s team of three students used small hand trowels and brushes to help reveal soil layers and artifacts, such as pottery. A fine mesh screen helped sift the soil removed during excavation, leaving behind finer artifacts. They would take soil samples for scientific dating and chemical analysis, as well as basic soil and sedimentary descriptions. Thanks to a 2024 UMBC Strategic Awards for Research Transitions grant that Lane received, students also had the opportunity to sample for radiocarbon dating and luminescence dating, which measures the energy of photons released from minerals to determine the age of exposed strata.

“We record where each artifact is, define its features and its chronological, historical, cultural, and social contexts,” says Barry. “It can get complicated when there are numerous artifacts to identify, map, excavate, bag, and label.” At 1 p.m., the crew would head to the lab for three hours to wash the day’s finds, scrub them with toothbrushes, and catalog finds. The rest of the afternoon would be all theirs until 8 p.m. when they would gather for a communal dinner at the local taverna (Greek for restaurant). 

To Greece and beyond

Now that the internship has ended, Barry is sightseeing in Austria before returning to the U.S. “My favorite part of this year’s experience was the international collaboration. I enjoyed getting to know students from the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Germany, and Greece,” says Barry, who used these opportunities to practice his Greek and Latin skills, which are important in the ancient studies graduate programs he’ll apply to after returning to UMBC.

“Probably the moment that most touched me this summer was when Robert sat down at the kitchen table at the staff house with me and said, ‘Lane, can I tell you something…? I think I want to do this for the rest of my life’,” Lane shares. “I now consider it my duty to help him continue to excel, doing everything in my power to get him into the best academic programs and relevant jobs.”

Learn more about UMBC’s ancient studies program.