As Maryland legislators work to resolve budget woes and gaming disagreement through possible special sessions, Laura Hussey, assistant professor of political science, argues in the Gazette that separating the budget and gaming discussions into two special sessions will make it more difficult for the gaming expansion to pass.

Why? Initial slots legislation was considered alongside possible tax increases in 2007 and was passed as an effort to resolve that year’s challenging budget situation. Hussey suggests that if the current budget issue is solved separately, it will be harder for proponents to suggest gaming is a fiscal necessity. “I don’t think a special session is going to be called unless Miller has the votes lined up,” she said, noting that the Senate president wouldn’t risk having the measure fail.

“Annual conference showcases UMBC’s focus on undergraduate research,” the Baltimore Sun announced this morning. The article highlights the hard work of over 200 UMBC students who participated in this year’s Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day (URCAD), from fields as diverse as political science, chemical engineering and visual arts.

URCAD is “like a middle-school science fair, only for college-age people of intimidating drive and intellect,” writes reporter Childs Walker. In addition to providing undergraduates with this opportunity to share their scholarship, UMBC also offers competitive Undergraduate Research Awards of up to $1,500 and publishes a selection of projects in an undergraduate research journal.

Student projects highlighted in the Sun article include Macy Bokhari’s research on “Implications of the Arab Spring on Women’s Rights” and Dagmawi Tilahun and Kevin Tran’s design for low-cost incubators for premature infants. Watch videos of UMBC undergrads talking about their work on the URCAD blog.

Fred L. Pincus, Professor of Sociology, will retire at the end of the semester after spending 44 years at UMBC. He came to Baltimore from UCLA as a 26-year-old instructor in 1968, the third year of UMBC’s existence. In addition to all the committee work needed to build the department and the university, Pincus taught courses in race relations, social psychology and introductory sociology. He also became very involved in the movement against the war in Vietnam and promoted campus policies to increase the number of African American students on campus. He was an early supporter of Black Studies and Women’s Studies.

In 1972, Pincus visited the People’s Republic of China. He was excited to see a non-capitalist country and for the next dozen years he learned all he could about China. He developed a course called “Social Organization in the People’s Republic of China,” wrote several articles about Chinese education and served on the editorial committee of New China, a magazine published by the US-China Friendship Association. He also became the China writer and later the education writer for The Guardian, an independent radical newsweekly published in New York.

In the late 1990s, Pincus joined the steering committee of UMBC’s (then) new Language, Literacy and Culture (LLC) doctoral program. He became interested in diversity in the United States in terms of race, class, gender and sexual orientation. He took over the graduate seminar “Constructing Race, Gender and Class” and developed the undergraduate course “Diversity and Pluralism: An Interdisciplinary Perspective.”

Over the years, Pincus published four books and monographs and several dozen scholarly articles on a wide range of topics including the role of community colleges in higher education, race relations, affirmative action, conservative education policy and diversity. Over the course of his career, he has taught between 6,000 and 7,000 undergraduates and several hundred graduate students in applied sociology, LLC, public policy and intercultural communication.

For the past several years, he has also been working on a memoir and has taken creative writing classes through the Gotham Writers Workshop based in New York City.

UMBC thanks Fred L. Pincus for his tremendous service to our community and to the field of higher education over the past 44 years.

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Have a memory of classes with Dr. Pincus? Share them in the comments below!

This originally appeared in UMBC Insights.

Fred L. Pincus, Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, will retire at the end of the semester after spending 44 years at UMBC. He came to Baltimore from UCLA as a 26-year-old instructor in 1968, the third year of UMBC’s existence. In addition to all the committee work needed to build the department and the university, Pincus taught courses in race relations, social psychology and introductory sociology. He also became very involved in the movement against the war in Vietnam and promoted campus policies to increase the number of African American students on campus. He was an early supporter of Black Studies and Women’s Studies.

In 1972, Pincus visited the People’s Republic of China. He was excited to see a non-capitalist country and for the next dozen years he learned all he could about China. He developed a course called “Social Organization in the People’s Republic of China,” wrote several articles about Chinese education and served on the editorial committee of New China, a magazine published by the US-China Friendship Association. He also became the China writer and later the education writer for The Guardian, an independent radical newsweekly published in New York.

In the late 1990s, Pincus joined the steering committee of UMBC’s (then) new Language, Literacy and Culture (LLC) doctoral program. He became interested in diversity in the United States in terms of race, class, gender and sexual orientation. He took over the graduate seminar “Constructing Race, Gender and Class” and developed the undergraduate course “Diversity and Pluralism: An Interdisciplinary Perspective.”

Over the years, Pincus published four books and monographs and several dozen scholarly articles on a wide range of topics including the role of community colleges in higher education, race relations, affirmative action, conservative education policy and diversity. Over the course of his career, he has taught between 6,000 and 7,000 undergraduates and several hundred graduate students in applied sociology, LLC, public policy and intercultural communication.

For the past several years, he has also been working on a memoir and has taken creative writing classes through the Gotham Writers Workshop based in New York City.

UMBC thanks Fred L. Pincus for his tremendous service to our community and to the field of higher education over the past 44 years.

The Baltimore Sun’s “Picture of Health” blog today highlights an exciting new online resource developed by UMBC’s Hilltop Institute in partnership with the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. The interactive website provides expanded public access to Medicaid data, giving users a clear picture of population health by county.

The site includes maps that reveal the frequency of chronic diseases (like diabetes and asthma), mental health conditions and substance abuse across Maryland’s counties. “These data will help localities plan for health improvement,” said Frances B. Phillips, Deputy Secretary for Public Health Services. Governor O’Malley has also responded positively to the site, commenting on the value of Hilltop’s health data visualization.

William H. Thomas, a geriatrician, author and UMBC Erickson School faculty member, calls himself a “nursing home abolitionist.” For years he has championed an innovative, new approach to senior care based on small, home-like environments. Today his vision is a reality.

The Green House Residences at Stadium Place opened in Baltimore last week. Coinciding with the launch of the new facility, Sheilah Kast of WYPR’s “Maryland Morning” interviewed Thomas about the future of senior living.

Tom Beck, Chief Curator, was interviewed about “Photographic Memory: Civil War Photographs from UMBC’s Special Collections” by Bill Vanko on WBAL’s “Maryland’s Morning News.” He described the exhibition and said that the intention of the show is commemorate the 150 anniversary of the Civil War.

The University System of Maryland is asking faculty, staff, students and parents to contact their state legislators to encourage them to keep supporting public higher education in Maryland. You can learn more about the USM effort here.

The USM Student Council also has produced a video, asking lawmakers to keep public higher education in Maryland affordable.

Craig Saper, associate professor of Language, Literacy and Culture, has published a new book under his alter-ego ofdj readies.

Intimate Bureaucracies is a history from the future looking backward at our present moment as a turning point. Our systems of organization and control appear unsustainable and brutal, and we are feeling around in the dark for alternatives. Using experiments in social organization in downtown New York City, and other models of potential alternative social organizations, this manifesto makes a call to action to study and build sociopoetic systems. It is published by Punctum Books.

The book is also a part of the AK Press Tactical Media Project, which makes short, timely political interventions freely available in download and zine form.  More information about the book, including a link where it can be downloaded for free, is available here.