UMBC’s student-athletes posted a record-setting semester in the classroom in the fall of 2011.

Sixty-two percent (209) of Retriever student-athletes recorded grade-point averages of 3.00 or better, which is the highest figure since these statistics have been reported. Moreover, the combined grade-point average of the department was 3.03, also setting a new mark.

“I am extremely pleased with the dedication my staff showed to the success of UMBC’s student-athletes,” Assistant Athletic Director for Academic Services Jessica Hammond said. “The student-athletes bought into our program and their hard work certainly paid off in the classroom. We are hoping to continue this success through the spring semester.”UMBC’s fall-sport athletes also excelled, as 67.6 percent of athletes in men’s and women’s soccer, volleyball and men’s and women’s cross country earned 3.00 grade-point averages. UMBC was ranked fourth of the six America East Conference schools that sent better than 60 percent of its fall student-athletes to the league’s Academic Honor Roll.

“I am very pleased with the progress we’ve made with our student-athletes’ academic prowess,” Director of Athletics Dr. Charles Brown said. “These are the best results that we have ever had and I attribute that to the hard work of Jessica Hammond and her academic support staff, our head and assistant coaches, and, of course, the dedication of our student-athletes. It feels really good to reach our goal. Future goals will be to improve even more on these results.”

On February 16, Nicole King, assistant professor of American studies, will present “Mapping Baybrook: Environmental Justice in Industrial South Baltimore” as part of a series of “Baltimore History Evenings” at the Village Learning Place, co-sponsored by the Baltimore Historical Society.

King will discuss the history of the communities that make up Far South Baltimore, several of which no longer exist as residential areas. She is currently working with UMBC’s Imaging Research Center on a digital component to this research project.

There is no charge, but contributions to the Village Learning Place are encouraged. The Village Learning Place is located at 2521 St. Paul St., Baltimore, 21218. A reception will be held at 7:00 pm, and the talk will begin at 7:30. More information about the lecture series can be found here.

Jessica Berman, Associate Professor and Chair of English, has just published a book, Modernist Commitments: Ethics, Politics and Transnational Modernism. In the book Berman explores how modernist narrative connects ethical attitudes and responsibilities to the active creation of political relationships and the way we imagine justice. She challenges divisions between “modernist” and “committed” writing, arguing that a continuum of political engagement undergirds modernisms worldwide and that it is strengthened rather than hindered by formal experimentation. The book also makes the case for an expanded, transnational model of literary modernism.

Modernist Commitments is part of the Modernist Latitudes book series from Columbia University Press, which Berman coedits with Paul Saint-Amour. For more information, visit http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14950-1/modernist-commitments.

It may still be January, but UMBC’s students are already thinking ahead to Spring Break — and not for the reasons you may be thinking. UMBC’s Alternative Spring Break, which gives students a chance to band together and volunteer in a variety of settings, is as popular as ever this year.

Among the trips planned for this March:

• ARC Trip (serving mentally and physically disabled individuals in Carroll County)
• Environmental Trip (emphasizing sustainable living in urban environments)
• Through the Eyes of a Refugee (focusing on the refugee population in Baltimore City)
• Animal Advocacy Trip (exploring animal rights and humane treatment of animals)
• Day in the Life (focusing on homelessness in Baltimore City)

How great is that? We’re so proud of the ways UMBC students make a difference in the world! Read more about the Alternative Spring Break here.

As GOP presidential candidates vie for support in Florida, immigration politics and the fight for the Latino vote have moved front-and-center, notes UMBC political science professor Thomas Schaller in Salon. He writes, “onstage at the University of North Florida, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich…went after each other with obvious, mutual disdain on immigration, the subject of the opening question and nearly the full first half-hour of the debate.”

Schaller suggests that the challenge for GOP candidates is to “appease xenophobes within their base during the primaries” without alienating the Latino voters they will need to remain competitive in swing states such as Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Nevada and New Mexico — trying “to remain anti-immigration without sounding anti-immigrant.”

Maryland’s Republican and Democratic senators have recently come together to support a group of bipartisan bills on education, tax and identity theft issues, but will this collaboration have a significant effect? In Maryland’s Gazette, Professor Donald Norris argues, “The reality is on all substantive issues, the parties are miles apart.” Norris is chair of public policy and director of the Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research at UMBC.

Baltimore social media entrepreneur Sean Carton ’90, English, headlined UMBC’s inaugural Social Media Strategy Summit today, speaking to a group of more than 80 from local colleges and universities about the “Myths & Realities” of social media in higher education.

Founder and director of the Center for Digital Communication, Commerce, and Culture at the University of Baltimore, and chief creative officer of idfive, a Baltimore-based advertising, web design, brand consulting, and digital media agency focused on higher ed and non-profits, Carton joked that as long as viral videos like “Charlie Bit My Finger Again” rise to the top of Internet viewership, social media practitioners will have to continually change to stay relevant.

“Until then, we all have to kind of work together to figure it out,” said Carton, who was named an Outstanding Alumnus of the Year by UMBC in 2005.

Read more about the Summit here. Stay tuned for video of Carton’s talk.

UMBC political science professor Thomas Schaller continues his commentary on the presidential election today with new columns in Salon and the Baltimore Sun.

In “Obama takes his case to the swing states,” Schaller explores the implications of the president’s post-State of the Union speaking tour. Schaller writes, “For the past three months, political eyes have been focused squarely on the Republican White House contenders. But after his State of the Union speech, the commander-in-chief shifts himself into campaigner-in-chief mode, whether or not the GOP has settled on a candidate yet.”

Schaller’s latest Baltimore Sun column explores the GOP field, arguing that so far “no Republican candidate has been able to consolidate the support of discontented conservative populists.” He suggests the first GOP presidential candidate to articulate a thoughtful plan that effectively appeals to middle-class Republicans “could very well claim the nomination.”

Is there water on Vespa? Timothy Stubbs and his colleague, Yongli Wang think so.  In a NASA special Web feature Stubbs talks about their findings.

“”Near the north and south poles, the conditions appear to be favorable for water ice to exist beneath the surface,” says Timothy Stubbs of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Stubbs and Yongli Wang of the Goddard Planetary Heliophysics Institute at the University of Maryland published the models in the January 2012 issue of the journal Icarus. The models are based on information from telescopes including NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.”

At the November meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, Robert Provine, professor of psychology, and his student co-authors presented a poster entitled “When the whites of the eyes are red, yellow, and super-white: A uniquely human communication medium.”

Provine’s co-authors included Marcello Cabrera ’12, psychology; Skylar Spangler ’12, psychology; Jessica Nave-Blodgett ’12, psychology; Schnaude Dorizan ’13, psychology; and Iman Kennedy ’12, psychology.

An article on their work ran in the February issue of the Swedish magazine Modern Psykologi.