Financial Services’ Contract and Grant Accounting Manager Aimee Howell conducted a NCURA sponsored Departmental Research Administration Workshop in Portland, Oregon last week. Geared specifically for the departmental administrator who must have knowledge of pre- and post-award functions, this was an opportunity for Aimee to share her vast expertise by leading participants through an examination of the foundations of research administration in the context of departmental administration—the transactional level. Thanks to Aimee’s enthusiasm and dedication to knowledge sharing, participants left the workshop with an increased understanding of how to apply best practices to a department administrator’s day-to-day activities.

Can Alli Houseworth ’03 save American Theatre? She’s Trying: One Tweet at a Time

by Richard Byrne ’86
photos by Marlayna Demond ’11

The annual Theatre Communications Group (TCG) conference is one of the far-flung U.S. theatre community’s biggest stages for talking about the industry. And at the 2011 TCG Conference in Los Angeles, Alli Houseworth ’03, acting, grabbed the spotlight without using a microphone.

She did it on Twitter.

At the time, Houseworth was the director of marketing and communications at Washington D.C.’s Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company – one of America’s best regional theatres. And the laughter that she heard during a session on the social media habits of millennials irritated her enough to weigh in on Twitter in real time.

“I really wish this audience would stop laughing at the behaviors of gen y,” Houseworth tweeted. Her intervention caused an instantaneous online sensation, kicking up enough fuss that her tweet was read out during the panel itself.

Houseworth struck again when she heard artists at another TCG session belittle marketing, tweeting: “I’m so over this conversation surrounding #newplays that implies all marketing directors are stupid and evil.” The clamor created by that tweet carried on far past the panel itself into a few days’ worth of intense discussion – on and offline – among theatre professionals.

Washington Post arts writer Maura Judkis also attended the conference. She noted on the Engine 28 arts blog that Houseworth “achieved an odd distinction…. She was able to redirect the conversation in two sessions by voicing her objections to panel discussions on Twitter.”

Reflecting on her insurrectionary behavior a year later, Houseworth says acknowledgement of how technology has changed theatre – and discussion about it – is long overdue. “All these shifts have happened since the early 2000s,” she says. “I don’t think theatre recognizes that – or the complexity of that.”

Houseworth’s voluble tweets are backed up by her string of successes in pioneering new approaches to customer service and use of social media in theatre. She has formed her own company – Method 121 – to push her ideas forward, and teaching jobs at Columbia University and American University allow Houseworth to evangelize to a new generation of theatre professionals.

Among Houseworth’s converts is influential Washington Post theater critic Peter Marks, who credits the UMBC alumna with convincing him to join Twitter.

“Social media – and for me, Twitter in particular – have invigorated discussion of the theater to a point I’d call revolutionary,” says Marks. “For me, Twitter has provided deeper access to what’s on the minds of theater artists, and as a result, I think, it’s enriched my understanding and writing about the theater.”

TRYING ON ROLES

Houseworth came to UMBC in 1999 as a Linehan Artist Scholar to study acting. She commanded attention even in her initial interviews and auditions for the program and the scholarship, recalls Alan Kreizenbeck, a professor of theatre at UMBC.

“I was taken with her abilities,” says Kreizenbeck. “She was a strong, durable kind of person.”

Houseworth says that “it only took about a semester for me to realize that [UMBC] was an environment where the more I made out of it myself, the more I would get out of it in the end.”

For Houseworth, making a lot out of UMBC included stage managing a production in her freshman year, playing Lady Macbeth in a 2001 production of Macbeth and writing a popular column for The Retriever. But she says that her most important UMBC experience came not in a classroom but in Germany, when she accompanied a number of theatre faculty members affiliated with Maryland Stage Company on a trip to Berlin to put on plays by Samuel Beckett.

“I got to hang out with the faculty,” she recalls. “Wendy [Salkind] was in the show. Sam McCready was in the show. Xerxes Mehta directed the show. Greggory Schraven ’97 was there. I have these great memories of drinking beer with them in Germany when I was really young.”

Mehta’s memories are even more exact. “When the Maryland Stage Company took ‘Beckett’s Play’ to an international festival in Berlin in 2000,” he says, “I put what is Beckett’s most technically difficult and nerve-wrackingly demanding work in her tender hands. Allison was the key to its success. At the age of 19, she more than held her own in very fast company, controlling and cuing three fine professional actors, never faltering, never dropping a cue, pulling it all off with astonishing bravery and skill. Her technical control of that production was widely remarked upon in Berlin and in the Beckett press.

That experience confirmed for us all in the department that we had someone quite extraordinary on our hands.”

Houseworth took an acting degree from UMBC, but her career path eventually led her backstage, working in theatre administration at CENTERSTAGE, the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and as an assistant to the directors of New York City’s largest theatrical publicity agency Boneau/Bryan-Brown.

“[Publicity] is a really interesting job, because in order to excel at it, you have to understand the big picture,” Houseworth says. The clients at Boneau/Bryan-Brown, she adds, “were every big show on Broadway…. I was in the room and saw everything and watched everything.”

One of the firm’s directors, Chris Boneau, taught at Columbia University. He wrote Houseworth’s letter of recommendation to enter the university’s prestigious theatre management and production program.

“By the time I was halfway through my time at Boneau/Bryan-Brown,” she recalls, “I knew that I only wanted to go to Columbia and only go to the producing program. I think he sold them on the fact that I was always questioning why things were the way they were, and that I’d be going to graduate school to find out why things were the way they were.”

A DIFFERENT CLASS

Steven Chaikelson, an associate professor of theatre arts at Columbia University, says that Houseworth immediately stood out at Columbia, excelling in classes in marketing and audience development.

“She was inspired by what we were doing in the classroom,” says Chaikelson. “We could see her blossoming in the very first year, and finding a niche in social media and the Internet.”

Indeed, one of Houseworth’s Columbia projects turned her passion for asking questions about audiences into one of her most notable professional successes.

Houseworth’s project touched on a ritual that is part of the theatre going experience for thousands of people each year: the Theatre Development Fund’s TKTS discount ticket booth in Times Square, where patrons (many of them tourists) line up for cheap tickets to pricy Broadway and Off-Broadway shows.

Theatre Development Fund executive director Victoria Bailey teaches a class in audience development at Columbia, and Houseworth saw surveying TKTS patrons as a way of finding out what the audience wanted and needed.

“I think I was in a class and blurted something out,” Houseworth says. “Thousands of people line up outside [the TKTS booth] every day in Times Square. Has anyone ever asked them what they were thinking about their experience?”

Houseworth surveyed the masses and reported back to Bailey. She found that those waiting to buy bargain tickets had little information about what was on offer, and were easy prey for touts and scalpers. “The research was initially so provocative to her,” Houseworth says, “that she kept me on for the summer.”

Though Houseworth had a knack for using online tools to build audiences, Bailey was impressed with her student’s willingness to press the flesh to find answers.

“[The survey] was just the opposite of a virtual experience,” she observes.

Houseworth then helped Bailey and others develop a new way to help TKTS customers: The Theatre Development Fund’s pioneering Patron Services Program. The fund hired representatives in snazzy red jackets to work the line and offer impartial information for consumers. They also policed the scalpers and hucksters. The TKTS booth’s ticket sales (and customer satisfaction) shot up – and stayed up.

Bailey says that Houseworth was a driving force behind “building what has developed into a good, strong, and extensive program. She has a real understanding of the importance of new audiences and how to open up theatre to other people.”

Chaikelson agrees: “She is one of the amazing success stories of the program.”

He also pressed Houseworth to finish up her thesis so that he could hire her. “I’d been trying to find someone to teach a course on social media before social media was a big thing,” he says. “But I couldn’t find anyone who was a real teacher. I saw that in Alli when she was still a student. She was already grappling with big ideas and could communicate them.”

PREACHING THE POTENTIAL

On a sultry spring day in a classroom at Columbia University, Houseworth leads students through the case study of a fundraising campaign she created at Woolly Mammoth. The effort leveraged Twitter and Facebook exclusively to raise cash for the company – and she emphasizes that the idea for the “social-media only” fundraiser began not in a cubicle, but over a supercharged lunch debate.

“You probably won’t get your best ideas at your desk,” she quips.

Social media is an integral part of Houseworth’s curriculum. Students even tweet in class, using the hashtag “#alliclass” as they tap away on laptops.

Houseworth’s passion about social media isn’t restricted to classrooms at Columbia and American University. She has brought it to high-profile jobs at Woolly Mammoth and in an effort to rebrand Washington D.C.’s Helen Hayes Awards as a larger and more proactive group called theatre Washington.

“I love teaching,” she says. “But you have to work in the industry to teach well.”

Houseworth’s work at Method 121 – keeps her engaged in a broad range of projects. And her increasing profile as a leading voice in using social media to win and retain new theatre audiences continues to impress the Washington Post’s Peter Marks.

“One of the reasons she’s good at her job is that she’s a magnetic saleswoman,” says Marks. “When she talks about the glories of social media, she’s the digital world’s Professor Harold Hill. Except that what she’s selling is not a mirage. And so, at her urging, I took the leap, and I will always remember that she was the one standing up there behind me, on the ledge.”

But salesmanship is not Houseworth’s only strength. As she showed at the 2011 TCG conference, she is not afraid to take provocative public stands on hot-button issues in theatre.

Even when she’s not looking for controversy, it somehow finds her – as it did this past spring when circumstances thrust Houseworth directly into the middle of the biggest U.S. theater controversy in recent memory: the dustup over monologist Mike Daisey’s The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs.

Daisey’s pungent monologue about the chasm between the genius of Apple’s design and the often lamentable conditions in which its dazzling gadgets are manufactured in China was political theatre par excellence – engaging audiences deeply, selling tickets, and making a strong case for theatre’s power to inform current events.

After a long string of successes, the truth of Daisey’s account of what he’s found in China was called into question by the public radio show This American Life – which worked with Daisey on a broadcast based on his monologue. The radio program was retracted and a major media controversy over the relation between theatre and journalism ensued.

Houseworth was Woolly Mammoth’s marketing director when the show debuted on that company’s stage, and she was stung by what she saw as Daisey’s betrayal of the audience in marketing the show as “nonfiction.” So she committed an act of extreme anti-marketing: while en route from New York to Washington, D.C., she stretched out on the floor at Penn Station and typing out a blog post calling for a boycott of The Agony and Ecstasy of Steve Jobs until Daisey offered an apology. (He later did.)

“Boycott Mike’s gorgeous, amazing piece of theatre that is based on a true story,” Houseworth wrote. “Boycott it until you get the apology that you deserve and do not ever, ever remount it or produce a work of his again until you know for sure what is true and what is not so your audiences are never ever mislead again.”

Chaikelson says that such stands are part and parcel of what makes Houseworth so influential. “She’s extremely smart and very gutsy,” he says. “She’s willing to put herself on the line for what she believes.”

Houseworth says that making the change she wants to see in American theatre requires self-interrogation and a willingness to speak out.

“It’s healthy to always be questioning yourself,” she says. “And the people around you. Why do you do things the way you do. Quite frankly, I don’t see anyone else doing it. So someone has to speak up. And I hope I don’t come across as always being right. I just want to present an intelligent opposing view.”

– Subscribe to Alli’s tweets here

This article originally appeared in the Fall 2012 issue of UMBC Magazine.

For All the World to See – the award-winning exhibit created at UMBC on the role of visual culture in America’s Civil Rights movement – makes a triumphant return to campus.

Introduction by Richard Byrne ’86

Photo essay text by Maurice Berger, Research Professor and Chief Curator at UMBC’s Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture

One major victory in the preservation of American memory over the last 40 years is the prominence now enjoyed in that narrative by our nation’s long, bloody and (in many respects) still-unfinished Civil Rights struggle.

Indeed, the iconic images of that journey toward equality are now inescapable – so much so that they are perhaps in danger of becoming over familiar – and thus diminished in power and pathos.

The new challenge for historians and other scholars is to recount the battle for Civil Rights afresh, keeping its immediacy alive and deepening its hold on our shared memory.

For those seeking to meet that challenge, the unalloyed success of For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights – an exhibit created by UMBC professor Maurice Berger at the university’s Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC) – is an exhilarating guide to the way forward.

The power of For All the World to See is its excavation of a rich trove of visual history around the Civil Rights movement to deepen and enrich the context in which the struggle’s classic images are viewed. The exhibit does not displace the epic photojournalism of the movement, but intensifies its resonances through juxtapositions – profound and provocative – with television, print and material culture of the 20th century.

For All the World to See already has found a home at some of the key cultural institutions in the United States – including the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., the International Center of Photography in New York City, and the DuSable Museum of African American History in Chicago – and received glowing reviews in the press – including major features in the New York Times and the Washington Post. And For All the World to See’s impact will spread even further as a traveling version of the exhibit visits at least 20 more museums across the nation between now and 2017 as part of the National Endowment for the Humanities’ NEH On the Road series.

The UMBC community has eagerly awaited a chance to welcome For All the World to See back to the university’s campus. And to mark the occasion of its arrival on November 15, 2012, UMBC Magazine asked curator Maurice Berger to select a few images from the exhibit as a preview to give readers a taste of what they can expect when they see the full show at CADVC.

PHOTO ESSAY:  With essays by Maurice Berger, Research Professor and Chief Curator at UMBC’s Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture

INTERVIEW: Read an interview with Maurice Berger by UMBC Magazine editor Richard Byrne ’86

This article appeared in UMBC Magazine’s Fall 2012 issue.

• Create and sustain a magazine and Web site that strengthens each UMBC graduate’s intellectual and emotional ties to the University.

• Maintain the highest journalistic and literary standards. Stimulate thinking and expand perspectives.

• Reflect UMBC’s strengths as a research and teaching university and as a diverse and global campus in the magazine’s content.

• Imbue the publication with a lively design, incorporating high-quality photography and illustrations.

• Paint a picture of the campus as it is now; establish a sense of place.

• Report on the institution with candor and impartiality.

• Create forums that provide alumni with opportunities for self-expression, personal reflection and re-connection with other alumni and the wider university community.

First Impressions

The first phase of UMBC’s new Performing Arts and Humanities Building is already teeming with students and faculty eager to study, teach, work and create in the brand-new space.

Yet the campus celebration of the new building – scheduled for Wednesday, September 19 – will be an occasion for the university and the general public to experience the Performing Arts and Humanities Building in an event-packed day of discussion, debate and entertainment.

The day kicks off at 2 p.m. when Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley joins UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, to officially cut the ribbon on building’s first phase and to break ground for the building’s second phase, set to open in 2014.

The ceremonies will be followed at 3 p.m. by an Arts and Humanities Festival held outside at the new building. The festival will feature music and readings by UMBC student groups and community artists, highlighted by a performance by UMBC alumnus Lafayette Gilchrist ’92, Africana studies. The festival will last until 6:30 p.m., with delicious and diverse cuisine provided by some of the area’s best food trucks.

And as the festival continues outside, the Performing Arts and Humanities Building’s 275-seat proscenium theatre will be the site of “New Space” – a dynamic panel discussion co-hosted by UMBC and the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance. (3:30 p.m.)

Moderated by WYPR’s Tom Hall, “New Space” will allow prominent UMBC scholars and local artists to reveal the physical, conceptual and virtual spaces that motivate their work and explore how new spaces inspire them to think, create and engage in expected and unexpected ways.

Tours of the new building will be given between 4:30 p.m. and 6:30 p.m., followed at 7 p.m. by an Inaugural Lecture presented by The Humanities Forum in the proscenium theatre.  Pauline Yu, President of the American Council of Learned Societies, will speak on the topic: “The Humanities, Without Apology.”

The first phase of Performing Arts and Humanities Building is the new home of UMBC’s theatre and English departments, along with the Dresher Center for the Humanities, the Linehan Artist Scholars Program and the Humanities Scholars Program.

The building was designed not only to be aesthetically pleasing, but to advance key elements in teaching, research and creative endeavor at UMBC. The Performing Arts and Humanities Building is also projected to incorporate enough sustainable design strategies to be designated as a LEED Silver project – including a white roof to reduce the structure’s “heat island” effect and a system that harvests rainwater for irrigation.

While the fences and cranes have moved from the front of the building, the work site at the north edge of campus won’t be closing down anytime soon. Construction has already begun on phase two of the building, which will open in fall 2014 and provide a new home for the departments of dance, music, philosophy and ancient studies, as well as a 350 seat concert hall and a 120 seat dance studio.

Go here to learn more about the Performing Arts and Humanities Building or to view the full details for the Grand Opening Celebration.

(9/12/12)

From Freeman Hrabowski, President, and Philip Rous, Provost and Senior Vice President

We are delighted to share the news that UMBC has been recognized again as a national leader in innovation and undergraduate teaching in U.S. News & World Report’s Best Colleges guide.

For the fourth year in a row, UMBC tops the U.S. News ranking of “Up-and-Coming” national universities, a place we share this year with George Mason University.

U.S. News also ranks UMBC eighth on a list of the national universities that excel in undergraduate teaching, tied with Duke University, the University of California-Berkeley, the University of Chicago, and the University of Notre Dame. As Americans consider the value of a college degree, this recognition is a reminder of what we all know firsthand – public universities can be exceptional.

When U.S. News says “Up-and-Coming” it is talking about universities that consistently find new ways to improve students’ educational experiences, that are entrepreneurial, and that are models for others. Specifically, the magazine asks presidents, provosts, and admissions deans all over the country to identify institutions that have “made the most promising and innovative changes in the areas of academics, faculty, student life, campus, or facilities.”

In short: They are looking for leaders. Congratulations to all our faculty, staff, and students who make UMBC just such a place.

UMBC is proud to be recognized again as a national leader in innovation and undergraduate teaching in U.S. News & World Report’s Best Colleges guide.
For the fourth year in a row, UMBC tops the U.S. News ranking of “Up-and-Coming” national universities — a designation recognizing universities that consistently find innovative ways to improve students’ educational experiences. We share the top spot with George Mason University.
U.S. News also ranks UMBC eighth on a list of the top national universities “where the faculty has an unusual commitment to undergraduate teaching.” UMBC is tied with Duke University, the University of California-Berkeley, the University of Chicago, and the University of Notre Dame.
“We are delighted to be recognized as one of America’s most innovative universities and a national leader in undergraduate education,” says President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III. “As Americans consider the costs and value of a college degree, this recognition is a reminder that public universities can be exceptional.”
This year, for example, UMBC is launching a competition that will encourage faculty to reimagine what it means to teach and learn; challenge students to take an active role in their educations; fuel creativity and entrepreneurship; and transform classrooms into laboratories of the mind. The work will be supported by grants from the new Hrabowski Fund for Innovation and will build on our longstanding commitment to combining the best of research and teaching.
UMBC offers the personal attention of a liberal arts college within the setting of a major research institution. Our 13,000 students come from more than 150 countries and take full advantage of the educational, business, cultural and recreational resources of Baltimore and Washington, D.C.
Congratulations to our faculty, staff, students, alumni and supporters who make UMBC a leading university!
This article originally appeared on UMBC’s website.

UMBC is proud to be recognized again as a national leader in innovation and undergraduate teaching in U.S. News & World Report’s Best Colleges guide.

For the fourth year in a row, UMBC tops the U.S. News ranking of “Up-and-Coming” national universities — a designation recognizing universities that consistently find innovative ways to improve students’ educational experiences. We share the top spot with George Mason University.

U.S. News also ranks UMBC eighth on a list of the top national universities “where the faculty has an unusual commitment to undergraduate teaching.” UMBC is tied with Duke University, the University of California-Berkeley, the University of Chicago, and the University of Notre Dame.

“We are delighted to be recognized as one of America’s most innovative universities and a national leader in undergraduate education,” says President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III. “As Americans consider the costs and value of a college degree, this recognition is a reminder that public universities can be exceptional.”

This year, for example, UMBC is launching a competition that will encourage faculty to reimagine what it means to teach and learn; challenge students to take an active role in their educations; fuel creativity and entrepreneurship; and transform classrooms into laboratories of the mind. The work will be supported by grants from the new Hrabowski Fund for Innovation and will build on our longstanding commitment to combining the best of research and teaching.

UMBC offers the personal attention of a liberal arts college within the setting of a major research institution. Our 13,000 students come from more than 150 countries and take full advantage of the educational, business, cultural and recreational resources of Baltimore and Washington, D.C.

Congratulations to our faculty, staff, students, alumni and supporters who make UMBC a leading university!

This article originally appeared on UMBC’s website.

UMBC alumnus Nelson Emokpae ’03, psychology, will make his television debut tonight on NBC’s singing competition “The Voice.” Emokpae immigrated to the U.S. as a political refugee from Nigeria and received his B.A. from UMBC before picking up a guitar for the first time while in graduate school. He decided to pursue a full-time music career as Nelly’s Echo just last year, and has been touring at college campuses around the country.

In a recent interview, the Baltimore-based Emokpae remarked, “I love touring. I love meeting different people. I love seeing different locations, trying out different cultures. Because even in America, the variety of cultures within one country is so vast, and being able to travel from California to Maine to Seattle to Florida and every [place] in between affords me that opportunity to meet a lot of people and amass a lot of great experiences.”

To watch Emokpae’s audition on “The Voice,” tune into NBC at 8:00 p.m. EST on September 11th and 12th (Note: his exact air date has not been announced and it could be either day), and check out this video performance of the song “If I Were the King.”

This article originally appeared on UMBC Insights.

At his San Francisco museum, UMBC alumnus Jerry Cimino ’76 makes sure the world is still hep to one of America’s greatest literary movements.

By Jenny O’Grady
Photos by Mirissa Neff and Brittany Powell

The Beat Generation was a uniquely American movement – producing pockets of poetry and art across the land. You could find them in 1950s New York City in their early days clustered around Columbia University – or down in the cafes and jazz clubs of Greenwich Village. Some of them found refuge at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. And they drank and declaimed in juke joints across the Midwest and the Southwest.

That restless urge to explore great spaces is at the heart of Beat verse and prose. But if you had to pick an epicenter of the movement, you’d likely choose San Francisco’s North Beach – and specifically the crossroads of Broadway and Columbus Avenue.

That’s where you’ll find one of America’s great literary meccas: the checkerboard-floored City Lights Books, which was founded by poet/ publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 1953. Right next to it is the Vesuvio Café, a popular watering hole of poets like Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac. And just up the street, at 1562 Grant Avenue, young writers spent hours smoking dope on a crooked stairwell called “Poet’s Corner” – and then headed to the press next door to check galleys of the latest chapbook.

North Beach is also where you’ll find Jerry Cimino ’76, history. From the book-lined open air porch of the Beat Museum, which he founded in 2003 at 540 Broadway to pay homage to a generation of writers and artists who continue to inspire him, he takes in the rich history of this historic section of the city. He savors it. And he can’t help but share it with anyone who will listen.

“What we like to say is: ‘Welcome to the center of the universe,’” enthuses Cimino, with the flair of a modern day P.T. Barnum. “Because you’re at Broadway and Columbus right now – and everything that happened with the Beat Generation happened right here at this intersection.”

The museum’s walls reflect this, exploding with colorful posters, books, author photographs, drawings and videos covering every surface. One wall is devoted completely to editions of Kerouac’s On the Road from around the world. Another shows an early version of Ginsberg’s “Howl,” complete with scrawling edits by the author – enough to make even the biggest bookworm giddy.

More than 60 years after the Beats’ heyday, the culture has found a true evangelist in Cimino, a determined man driven by respect for the inclusive, nonconformist ideals the Beat authors represented. With a little elbow grease – and some recent attention from Hollywood – he’s on the road to making a lasting tribute to his heroes.

“IT KNOCKED ME OUT”

Cimino grew up in the suburbs of Baltimore, the son of a WWII vet-turned-postal clerk. His first encounter with the music and movement of the Beat writers came when a teacher read poems from Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s classic collection A Coney Island of the Mind to his eighth-grade class.

“That whole book of poetry literally changed my life…it knocked me out,” says Cimino, who to this day can recite the book’s fifth poem, “Sometimes During Eternity,” from memory.

“You know, 1968 is when it all happened,” Cimino recalls. “Bobby Kennedy was shot and killed. Martin Luther King was shot and killed. The Vietnam War was raging, and all of us kids were looking at each other and saying, ‘What in the hell are we inheriting?’”

When Cimino arrived at UMBC in 1972, he was among the few students actually living on campus at the time, splitting time between what were then called “Dorms 1, 2, and 3.” He says that many of the bonds that he formed in that era at UMBC – including friendships with older students freshly scarred from serving in Vietnam, and with closeted gays who trusted him with their secret – would forever change his own way of thinking. He also enjoyed some time on stage with the theatre club, sharing the bill (but, sadly, never the stage) with one-time UMBC student Kathleen Turner in a 1975 campus production of Antigone.

“For the first time in my life, I was interacting with a lot of people who weren’t like me,” says Cimino. “And that’s what the Beats were all about – coming together and really celebrating your differences… they were about tolerance and compassion and having the courage to live the most authentic life you can.”

Jonathan M. Cooperman, who roomed with Cimino at UMBC before finishing a degree in physical therapy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, recalls a thoughtful, passionate friend who also had more hair back then.

“He is very much the same guy to me now as he was then,” says Cooperman, who is now a member of the Beat Museum’s board. “If you walked into his room at three in the morning, the door would be cracked open with light pouring out into the hall. If you walked inside, Jer would be sipping tea and reading a book – usually Kerouac.”

Although he loved history and other subjects he’d studied at UMBC, Cimino graduated without a clear career path to follow. So he went with the flow in which he found himself, relocating to California and forging a successful career in sales for both IBM and American Express.

VOICES THAT SPAN GENERATIONS

Over the years, however, Cimino and his wife, Estelle, started craving something more than a career in business. His continuing affection for the Beat literature he had read as a young man led him to befriend John Cassady – the son of Kerouac’s friend Neal Cassady, who is immortalized in the character of “Dean Moriarty” in On the Road.

Cimino also began building a collection of Beat generation memorabilia which eventually became “The Beat Museum on Wheels” in 2003. And just as Dean Moriarty took off across the country with Sal Paradise (the character representing Kerouac himself in On the Road), Cimino and Cassady drove “the mighty beatmobile” across America’s highways in October 2005 – even parking it overnight in Commons Circle at UMBC.

Cimino says he reveled in the chance to share his growing collection with UMBC students and see his old campus. And faculty members were happy to have a bit of the Beats in Catonsville.

“The students enjoyed visiting the museum on wheels, with all kinds of interesting, hard-to-get publications and memorabilia, and just hanging out with Jerry and John,” says UMBC associate professor of English Piotr Gwiazda, who helped organize the appearance.

The Beats cast a spell over today’s students now just as much as ever, Gwiazda says.

“Whenever I teach ‘Howl,’ students respond with interest,” he says. “There still seems to be something magnetic about the work of Beat Generation writers: the idea of community it embodied, its counter-cultural aspects, its philosophical dimensions, and of course its sheer verbal power and vitality.”

STAR POWER

Of course, interest in the Beats has never been limited to college students reading in circles on the grass. A new Hollywood treatment of Kerouac’s On the Road – which features Kristen Stewart of Twilight fame and Viggo Mortensen from the Lord of the Rings films – is traveling the festival circuit now and scheduled for general release later this year.

Cimino couldn’t be happier about what the new film means for the legacy of the Beats – and for the future of his own museum.

“It’s just great, have you seen it?” he says, cueing up the movie trailer on a screen above the museum’s entrance. Since filming began in 2010 under director Walter Salles, Cimino says members of the film’s cast have visited the museum and asked questions about their characters.

The cast and crew even dropped off a surprise prop from the film at the museum. Just to the right of the museum’s check-in desk sits a dusty maroon 1949 Hudson Hornet used during filming and driven to its resting spot in North Beach by none other than the movie’s star Garrett Hedlund (“a really delightful young man,” says Cimino), who portrays the ever-restless Dean Moriarty.

Beside it stands a sign: “Walter’s only request of us was that the dust and grime – accumulated on the car during the 5,000 miles he and Garrett spent traveling the country making the film – remain undisturbed. Walter considers this ‘the Holy Dirt of America.’”

“You know, every fingerprint has a story,” says Cimino. “It’s important to keep that history intact.”

That’s a major part of Cimino’s job as curator: making the story of the Beats accessible and fun for anyone who might wander in. He loves every second of his evangelism for the movement and its great writers.

“The museum is successful because it represents a significant part of American culture and American literary history,” says Cooperman. “The opening of the movie On the Road demonstrates how this literature is still relevant.

“Of course, the fact that Jerry is probably as knowledgeable of the Beats as any academic doesn’t hurt either,” he adds. “He’ll ultimately be successful because he has a passion for what he does.”

NOW AND LATER

Passion is one thing. But, if you’re wondering how a start-up museum makes it in such difficult economic times, here’s your answer: It ain’t easy.

But the Beat Museum now survives and thrives thanks to Cimino’s magnetic business sense and a lot of hard work.

Just above Cimino’s desk hangs a complicated organizational chart showing a collage of boxes representing duties spanning everything from marketing to merchandising to fixing the guest toilet. One line connects them all.

“And every one of those boxes has my damn name on it,” he jokes. “That’s just how it is.”

The museum’s collection has grown as fans discover it. Cimino admits that “most people who love the Beats don’t have a lot of money,” but as fans of certain writers have discovered his museum, the memorabilia contributions have flowed in steadily. There’s a plaid jacket once worn by Kerouac, and a creaky pipe organ owned by Allen Ginsberg. There’s even an original “Can YOU pass the acid test?” card from the days when Neal Cassady drove Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters across the country in a psychedelic bus – a trip immortalized by author Tom Wolfe in his 1968 book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. (There’s also a film version of that book in works, to be directed by Gus Van Sant.)

Over the years, Cimino also found mentors to advise him as his plans for the museum have grown. He singles out the late Kim Greer, who was president of the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas, California, until his death in 2006.

“I have people come in every day telling me what I should be doing,” he says. “But I only take advice from people who have successfully done what they’re telling me I ought to do. It’s easy to guess…but that’s not going to get you anywhere.”

Right now, the Beat Museum is just as Cimino would like it to be: full, eclectic, engaging. Not too smooth, or too uniform: that wouldn’t fit well with the artists that it celebrates. Mismatched shelves offer hand-assembled chapbooks by local poets. A claw-footed bathtub filled with dime store novels invites visitors to try something new. There’s a definite flavor to the place – a sort of San Francisco sourdough bite.

Cimino would enjoy having someone else fix the toilet from time to time. More important, however, is growing the Beat Museum so that it can stand strong for generations to come. That’s his next step.

“I started this place the only way I know how. I built it from nothing,” he says. “Now we’ve built a track record, we’ve made it succeed with the blood and sweat of a lot of people. If this thing’s going to outlive me…I’m going to have to think big.”

• VIDEO: Interview with Jerry Cimino ’76, founder of The Beat Museum
• Read Jerry’s blog from his 2005 visit to UMBC
• Read Jerry’s review of Walter Salles’s new movie, On the Road