Picture this: It’s a cool, crisp night and you’re cruising north up Interstate 95, with the city of Baltimore rising up before you. The image of a metropolis can rise and fall with its skyline and its immense iconic representation of the city’s civic aspirations.

Much of Baltimore’s story is written in its skyline. There’s the urban renewal that spawned the National Aquarium and the twin stadiums of South Baltimore, for instance. The city’s history is also etched there in places such as the famous and distinctive Emerson Bromo-Seltzer Tower, which was built in 1911 at the corner of Eutaw and Lombard Streets.

Kelley Bell ’06, M.F.A., a graphic designer and professor at UMBC, was recently given an opportunity to transform the city’s skyline by creating art within the tower’s distinctive clock faces. Her exhibit is based on the renowned astronomical clock in Prague, and features the sun, the moon, and planets and stars circling in orbit around the tower. Bell even did careful calculations to ensure that her representations of heavenly bodies synched up with their celestial counterparts.

Bell moved to Baltimore in 2002, and quickly fell in love with the local art scene. “People are willing to share ideas and collaborate, and that’s an integral part of the work I do,” she explains.

Read the full story in the Winter 2012 issue of UMBC Magazine.

“The protracted battle for the Republican presidential nomination is about to thrust Maryland’s GOP voters into the unusual position of having a voice in a national political contest even though they live in one of the country’s most reliably blue states,” reports today’s Baltimore Sun. The battle for the state’s 37 delegates has begun.

One Maryland lawmaker suggests, “Maryland is a state that could be up for grabs,” but UMBC public policy chair and MIPAR director Donald Norris has a more reserved perspective. “Every delegate at this point is important,” he says. “But could Maryland knock one of them out? Absolutely not.”

UMBC’s Eric Zeemering, assistant professor of public policy, commented in the Baltimore Sun this week on a measure that would allow residents of New Windsor to recall their local elected officials.

Zeemering credited the sluggish economy with motivating recall efforts and petition drives across the U.S. “There is not mass public distrust of government,” he said. “In many cases, this is about the serious budget and services challenges these jurisdictions face as the full impact of the recession unfolds.”

The Washington Post‘s “Maryland Schools Insider” blog reports that UMBC’s David H. Murray ’14, economics, is running for a seat on the Prince George’s County Board of Education.

Murray has previously served as a member of the Maryland State Board of Education and educational liaison for former Councilman Tom Dernoga and Senator C. Anthony Muse. Murray told the Post that he entered the race because the “school system is not up to par. We are lagging behind our peers. You shouldn’t get a different level of education because you live in the side of Laurel that’s in Prince George’s, over the side that is in Howard or Anne Arundel counties.”

“Thing could always be worse,” Robert Provine, professor of psychology, reminds us in an essay published by Business Day.

“We have all heard of the ‘grass is greener’ syndrome. This is its ‘grass is browner’ counterpart, the achievable antidote for broken dreams and bolsterer of the status quo,” he writes.

The essay, “Thing Could Always be Worse,” appeared in Business Day on March 16, and was excerpted from Provine’s answer to the Edge question “What Are You Optimistic About?”

“There are not that many of me left,” George Vitak, ’73, biological sciences, says jovially as we walk together from the Library Pond back to his office in the University Center on a blustery late November day.

The “me” in this case is a select group of faculty and staff who have witnessed UMBC’s rise to national prominence almost in its entirety. And at least as far as the University System of Maryland payroll is concerned, today is the day that another “me” bids UMBC farewell.

On December 1, Vitak retired from his position as director of campus card and mail services. He entered UMBC as a fresh-faced undergraduate from Archbishop Curley High School in 1968. Fate – and President Richard M. Nixon – kept him at the university for another 38 years, during which he helped supervise the campus’ physical growth and then shifted gears to become a key mover in UMBC’s early digital telecommunication services.

Read the full story in the Winter 2012 issue of UMBC Magazine.

UMBC students from  SOCY/HAPP 354, “The Social Basis of Community and Public Health,” regularly visit Baltimore’s Port Discovery Children’s Museum to discuss health issues with young visitors (ages 2-10) and their families. This semester, the students shared public health messages at Port Discovery’s March 3rd “Healthy First Saturday” (photos now online).

The course, taught by Andrea Kalfoglou, is part of UMBC’s Health Administration and Policy Program. It explores the history, major concepts and practice of public health in the U.S and abroad. Students also learn about health disparities and how government, the private sector, NGOs and social entrepreneurs address public health needs.

March 15, 2012
TO:  The UMBC Community
FR:  Freeman Hrabowski, President and Philip Rous, Provost
RE:   Your Support Vital for Higher Education Budget

As the Maryland General Assembly works to address a $1-billion State budget gap, legislators are considering a number of budget plans that would reduce Governor O’Malley’s proposed budget for the University System of Maryland (USM) and negatively impact USM campuses.  Budget cuts currently proposed for the System range from $5.3 million to nearly $20 million.

It is vital that faculty, staff, students, and alumni take time to urge legislators to continue the strong support they have shown higher education in the past.  Approving the Governor’s proposed budget for the USM would provide new resources enabling USM campuses to limit the FY-2013 tuition increase for in-state, undergraduate students to 3 percent.  At a time when budget cuts in many other states are forcing public campuses to raise tuition 10 to 15 percent, this support for higher education is exceptional.

Please email your legislators and urge their support for the Governor’s budget and access to high-quality, public higher education.  Go to: http://capwiz.com/usmd/home.  Click “Elected Officials” on the red tab at the top of the page to find your legislators.  Click “Take Action” in the middle of the page to compose a letter using the text provided by USM.

Thank you.

“[T]he 2012 presidential election is effectively over right now,” suggests political science professor Thomas Schaller in a provocative new Salon column this week. Despite the twists and turns of the GOP primary, he argues, “All of the available data indicate that Romney will be the Republican nominee by end of spring, and Barack Obama will be the victor come fall.” So what is at stake in the GOP primary in Schaller’s eyes? The identity and future prospects of the Republican party.

Schaller’s latest Baltimore Sun column focuses on Rush Limbaugh’s remarks about Sandra Fluke and his later apology to her, following the loss of several show sponsors. Schaller writes, “What the talk show host should apologize for is his obvious and rather profound ignorance about contraception.”

It’s been a busy week in the media for Donald Norris, UMBC public policy chair and director of the Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research. Norris offered expert comments for four articles on public policy in Maryland, focusing on current debates in the state legislature.

In “Some State Agencies Want More of Your Money,” Norris explains that proposed state fee increases face an uphill battle as “[p]aying anything for government goods and services has become conflated with taxes.” Norris argues that alternative doomsday budget plans based on severe cuts are unlikely to pass in another Sun article, later suggesting in the Gazette that it is more likely Maryland will gradually shift the cost of teacher pensions onto local jurisdictions to close the state’s budget gap.

Finally, Norris commented in the Sun on the indictment of Anne Arundel County Executive John R. Leopold on corruption charges, stating: “It’s going to affect absolutely everything he says and does…When he tries to stay in office and wait for a trial, during that period of time, county government is going to be on trial.”