UMBC alumni are stars whose light extends well beyond their graduation. Past award winners include Duff Goldman, founder of Charm City Cakes, Maryland Delegate Jon Cardin, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutes medical researcher Crystal Watkins and Baltimore Sun reporter Jamie Smith Hopkins. The UMBC Alumni Association welcomes nominations for the 2012 Outstanding Alumni of the Year Awards.

The UMBC Alumni Association will present five awards to honor alumni for their professional and personal achievements, as well as their service to the community and to UMBC. In addition, the Association will present a “Rising Star” award to a graduate of the past decade. To nominate an alum for this prestigious award, please submit your nomination by May 30, 2012 at this link: http://alumni.umbc.edu/alumniawards.

UMBC professor Roy T. Meyers, political science, offered his budget expertise in this week’s PolitiFact analysis of a claim by Rep. Paul Ryan that “the president has doubled the size of government since he took office.” The article concludes that data do not support Ryan’s statement. Meyers argues that even if the doubling claim were true, President Obama would not be the cause.

“Were all the increased outlays because of Obama’s actions? Of course not,” Meyers says. “Many of them were the result of ‘mandatory’ policies in place before he took office, and those policies responded to unfavorable economic conditions — deposit insurance, food stamps, Medicaid, unemployment insurance and so on.”

PolitiFact rated Ryan’s claim “Pants on Fire” and Ryan’s office has since replaced the sentence on his congressional website.

Jen Dress, assistant director of Student Life was honored at the national convention of ACPA College Educators International with the Commission for Student Involvement’s Outstanding Mid-Level Professional Award.

Dr. Lee Calizo, director of Student Life was honored at the national convention of ACPA College Educators International, with the Standing Committee for Women’s Research and Scholarship Award.

Christopher Corbett, professor of the practice of English, will give a talk at Baltimore’s City Lit festival on Saturday, April 14.

Corbett will join author Arthur Magida to discuss “Literary Necromancy: The Art of Writing Biography.” The two authors, and moderator Evan Balkan, will explore the art of writing biography, how subjects are chosen, and why writers delve into the lives of often not-so-well known figures.

Their talk will take place at 11 a.m. in the Central Library’s fine arts department.  The Central Library is located at 400 Cathedral Street, Baltimore. For more information, visit the City Lit Project.

CNN’s “Schools of Thought” blog has featured UMBC students David H. Murray ’14, economics, and Edward Burroughs, who made headlines last week after strong wins in the Prince George’s County Board of Education primary election (districts 1 and 8).

“At the end of the day, it’s about student success,” Burroughs told CNN. “My number one priority is going to be hiring and retaining highly-qualified teachers…and the ones that are struggling we need to provide them professional development. If they’re not able to be successful after that, they have to exit our system.”

Reflecting on criticism that the candidates are too young to be effective leaders, Murray argued, “We’re the ones that can really make a difference, because we’ve been there and we understand what’s working and what’s not.” Emphasizing the importance of diversity on the school board, he continued, “It doesn’t help to have a room of 10 people if they all have the same background and the same set of ideas.”

This feature follows a front-page Metro story in the Washington Post on the students’ electoral success. Both received the most votes in their districts by wide margins.

“The president of the Council of Prince George’s County PTAs said her phone has been ringing nonstop since final results from Tuesday’s primary election were reported,” writes Ovetta Wiggins in today’s Washington Post. The results of that election? Three young adults, including two students from UMBC and one from College Park, soundly defeated their Prince George’s County Board of Education primary opponents to advance to the general election in November.

Wiggins reports that although the isolated election of a single teenager to a school board is not unusual, this case’s three young candidates make it exceptional. UMBC student David H. Murray, a 20-year-old UMBC economics major and Sondheim Scholar, is vying for a District 1 seat. Fellow sophomore Edward Burroughs is running for reelection in District 8. Both received the most votes in their districts by wide margins.

This month, Ellen Handler Spitz’s children’s literature column in The New Republic discusses two books from India as the honors college professor of visual arts examines The Enigma of Karma by Raja Mohanty and Folk Tales of Uttarakhand  by Deepa Agarwal.

“As twenty-first century juggernauts of globalization and technology ride roughshod over regional cultures, there is a risk that precious legacies—oral, visual, and dramatic—are being lost. How will we preserve local customs, idiosyncratic habits of speech and dialect, humor, folklore, imagery, symbols, and artistic techniques—all with their concomitant wisdom? Sensitive editors of children’s books are grappling with these questions,” Spitz writes. “India may serve as an instructive guide.”

Spitz discusses these issues as they relate to these two very different but equally impressive children’s books in her essay “For Midnight’s Children.”  The piece appeared in The New Republic on April 4.

Seth Sawyers ’99, history, and adjunct faculty in English, has a new essay in the online literary magazine The Millions.

This essay, which is a chapter is from his recently completed memoir about growing up in the hills of western Maryland, is entitled “Baseball, Finally.”  It appeared on the journal’s website on April 4.

“….I can still feel the rhythm of the infield drill. I did thousands of them, the movements deep inside me like the steps of a dance, like the bass lines to certain Beatles’ songs.I loved turning double plays, taking the throw from third or from short, quickly hopping backward off the bag and, in the same motion, flinging a sidearm shot to first. It was the only dance I was ever any good at,” he writes.

“…we would never again, it turns out, be quite so free, quite as on the edge of something as beautiful and deep, and strange. Way out ahead of us was the unknowable everything, but just within reach was seven innings of baseball, a game we knew better than maybe anything else in the world.”

This post originally appeared in UMBC Insights.

Seth Sawyers ’99, history, and adjunct faculty in English, has a new essay in the online literary magazine The Millions.

This essay, which is a chapter is from his recently completed memoir about growing up in the hills of western Maryland, is entitled “Baseball, Finally.”  It appeared on the website on April 4.

 “….I can still feel the rhythm of the infield drill. I did thousands of them, the movements deep inside me like the steps of a dance, like the bass lines to certain Beatles’ songs.I loved turning double plays, taking the throw from third or from short, quickly hopping backward off the bag and, in the same motion, flinging a sidearm shot to first. It was the only dance I was ever any good at,” he writes.

“…we would never again, it turns out, be quite so free, quite as on the edge of something as beautiful and deep, and strange. Way out ahead of us was the unknowable everything, but just within reach was seven innings of baseball, a game we knew better than maybe anything else in the world.”