UMBC has again made the Kiplinger’s Personal Finance list of the 100 best values in public higher education. The list ranks four-year colleges and universities that “combine outstanding education with economic value.”

This marks the third year in a row UMBC has appeared among Kiplinger’s best values. On the 2012 list released today, UMBC ranks 84 for in-state students and 63 for out-of-state. Four other Maryland universities made the list, highlighting the state’s commitment to both affordability and excellence in public higher education.

Kiplinger’s assesses quality and affordability based on a number of factors, including retention and graduation rates, student-to-faculty ratios, sticker prices and average debt at graduation. The full methodology is available here. The complete rankings are online at www.kiplinger.com/links/college, or in the February 2012 edition of Kiplinger’s magazine.

The UMBC chess team came in second place on December 30 in the Pan-Am Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship, advancing to the 2012 President’s Cup, known as the “Final Four” of chess.

The UMBC chess team headed into the 2011 Pan-Am Intercollegiate Team Chess

Championship with a record nine titles to its name. The competition known informally as the Pan-Am, was held December 27 to 30 in Fort Worth, Texas. Since the tournament began in 1946, dozens of universities throughout the Americas have participated. The Retrievers won their first Pan-Am title in 1996, and then embarked on a five-year title streak from 1998 to 2002.

This year, the University of Texas at Dallas came in first with six points, UMBC came in second with 5 points, and Texas Tech and New York University tied for third with 4.5 points each.

“It was an exciting finish, because we could have won right up until the last match,” says Alan Sherman, Chess Director. The University of Texas at Brownsville surprisingly did not make the cut for the Final Four even though they were the highest ranking team going into the tournament.

The UMBC team, all on chess scholarships, is composed of students not only with exceptional chess skills but also with strong academic records, Sherman says. UMBC requires students to maintain a 3.0 GPA to maintain chess scholarships.

The Retrievers last won the Pan-Am title in 2009, and took second last year. This year’s team will compete in the 2012 President’s Cup, the “Final Four of College Chess,” to be held March 31–April 1 in Herndon, Va.

About the UMBC players

Leonid Kritz, an International Grandmaster from Germany
Giorgi Margvelashvili, an International Grandmaster from the Republic of Georgia
Sasha Kaplan, an International Master from Israel
Sabina Foisor, International Woman Grandmaster from Romania

Average rating: 2521

With David Bobb ’02, Track & Field Head Coach

Don’t get us wrong: there’s nothing bad about being slow. We like to relax as we sip our coffee in the morning. We like to take our time ambling down UMBC’s treelined thoroughfare on a cool spring morning. And we like to savor a long, juicy novel word by luscious word. Really, we do.

Sometimes, though, you have to be fast. And when that time comes – whether you want to beat a fellow shopper to the last deal on the sales rack, or outstep your buddies on a lunch break dare – you need to be prepared.

Where matters of speed at UMBC are concerned, we made a beeline straight to the source: David Bobb ’02, health administration & policy, UMBC’s Track & Field Coach and one of the university’s most highly decorated athletes of all time.

If it’s pep that your step is after, Bobb’s three-week plan will put you on the fast track. And fast.

— Jenny O’Grady

Step 1: Set a Goal…and Stick to it

So, you want to be fast, but first things first. What’s your goal?

“You have to have a plan,” says Coach Bobb, who was a five-time Division I All-American as a student-athlete at UMBC and was inducted into UMBC’s Athletic Hall of Fame in 2003. “Whether you’re training for an event or just want to race your friends, you have to know what you want and work toward it.”

Maybe you want to run a 5K, or maybe you want to run for five seconds. For the purposes of this story, we’re going to imagine ourselves wanting to improve our time running the classic 40-yard dash, a short-yet-deceptively-tough sprint.

Keeping a goal in mind as you begin training is important for staying focused. Without goals, it’s all too easy to stop before you even start, says Bobb. And never starting is the opposite of fast.

Step 2: “Routine” is Anything But When Training

And now for the dreaded physical first step: actually getting up and moving. Sad to say, without consistent reminders – i.e., practice – your body will not get used to moving faster than normal.

“Most of the time, people are sitting in one place,” says Bobb. “When you train consistently, for at least three weeks, you’re reintroducing those explosive moments to your body.

For Bobb, an “explosive” three-week training regimen would flow like this:

• Monday: Run up stadium steps (or equivalent) several times
• Wednesday: Run a couple of 40-yard dashes
• Friday: Run a couple of 100-yard dashes

Find yourself a local track with distance markings (UMBC has one, if you’d like to visit!), and you should be on your way. And don’t forget to stretch your arms and legs well before and after each, um, explosion. Hurting yourself would be an unfortunate hurdle in completing your training.

Step 3: You Are What You Eat

Chances are, you’ve seen advertisements for this or that energy drink/powder/gel chew promising amazing results for little effort. Maybe you’ve even tasted one (yuck!) and felt an extra zip in your gait. But, when considering your meals during the three-week training period, Bobb says to steer clear of empty promises.

“Stay away from the energy drinks,” he urges. “You should be eating lean proteins, you should stay away from high fat foods, and make sure you stay hydrated.”

It may sound elementary, but treating your body to healthy foods for an extended period of time will not only make you feel better, it will improve the results of your physical training, Bobb says.

Step 4: Birds of a Feather are Fast Together

If you’re sensing a bit of a theme here (hint: consistency!), you’re already one lap ahead. But, what do you do when, two and a half weeks into training, you suddenly run out steam? How can you re-energize yourself?

“When I run, I think about the pure joy, the freedom,” says Bobb, while admitting that no one motivational tool works for everyone.

Working out with a friend or spouse is a great way of staying on track, he says, but there are also plenty of great resources online to keep you motivated, including runnersworld.com and marylandrunning.com, as well as online social communities devoted to nutrition and exercise tracking. Whatever you choose, just remember Coach Bobb’s parting words.

“Anyone can run. Anyone.”

Magazine Staff Challenge

We here at the UMBC Alumni House care about our readers’ health. That’s why we knew we had to test out Coach Bobb’s plan for getting fast and spend the first three weeks of January eating healthy (or, at least, healthier), thinking positive thoughts and racing up and down Walker Field. Did we actually improve our speeds? You’ll have to watch our video to see.

Congratulations to Eric Zeemering, assistant professor of public policy at UMBC, on receiving a research award from the IBM Center for the Business of Government. Through this grant Zeemering and colleague Daryl Delabbio will develop, “A County Manager’s Guide to Local Government Service Collaboration.”

The IBM Center’s goal for the highly competitive award is “to help public sector executives and managers address real-world problems by supporting leading researchers who produce empirical evidence to inform the debates about whether particular management approaches will improve government performance.”

Baltimore’s Pratt Library has announced that UMBC’s Tyson D. King-Meadows will read from his new book “When the Letter Betrays the Spirit: Voting Rights Enforcement and African American Participation from Lyndon Johnson to Barack Obama” on January 26, 6:30 p.m., at the Central Library (400 Cathedral Street) as part of the library’s Black History Month celebration.

King-Meadows is associate professor of political science at UMBC. Published in August 2011, his new book explores weaknesses in the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and argues that the law often enables rather than prevents the disenfranchisement of minorities. King-Meadows is also co-author, with UMBC professor Thomas Schaller, of “Devolution and Black State Legislators: Challenges and Choices in the Twenty-First Century.”

“This is the moment [Obama] and his presidency promised to deliver,” writes UMBC political science professor Thomas Schaller in Salon, of the fight over the payroll tax cut extension. “This is,” he suggests, “a moment  for the president to demonstrate the resolve that earned his hopeful believers’ support three years ago, and it comes as he begins asking the electorate for another four-year lease on the Oval Office.”

Beyond supporting the payroll tax cut extension, Schaller argues, “the president should go a step further and call out the GOP’s Tea Party wing,” which blocked the passage of a two-month extension earlier this week. “He can’t let their stalling tactics break him,” Schaller writes, “Because this is not just the fight of his presidency — it could very well be the fight for his presidency.” Read the full column at Salon.com.

From the entire UMBC community to you, our alumni, have a wonderful holiday season!

We hope you enjoy this short video featuring the UMBC Mama’s Boys singing “Let it Snow.”

-View the holiday e-card here.

Author and medical student Sheg Aranmolate ’05 has released his second book, a novel set in the African savannah entitled Bountiful Famine.

The story follows a young man through the memories of his childhood on a subsistence farm after awaking in the dark bound, injured and afflicted with amnesia.

Aranmolate “hopes to transport readers into a unique world and reveal not only some of the suffering of Africans, but also some of the rich culture and the joyful moments that are shared with family and friends,” he said.

A medical student at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center in Memphis, TN, Aranmolate earned his bachelors in biochemistry and molecular biology (with a minor in psychology) from UMBC in 2005. In 2008 he was featured on the ABC television show, Oprah’s Big Give and appeared twice on the Oprah Winfrey Show.

– Read more about Aranmolate here.
– View a Memphis television interview with Aranmolate here.

A recent collaboration between UMBC’s New Media Studio, headed by Bill Shewbridge ’80, history, and the Erickson School resulted in a digital storytelling project pairing university students with seniors at the Charlestown Retirement Community. Shewbridge, Director of the New Media Studio, noted that the participation of freshman in the course inspired the theme of life transitions, the Catonsville Times reported.

Read the full story here.

“You can’t tell your life story in three minutes,” Shewbridge said, but the results are compelling. “They’re all different. Some are funny. Some are poignant. But they all have their own value and their own message.”

The digital stories are now also online for public viewing.

Today’s Catonsville Times highlighted an exciting collaboration between UMBC’s New Media Studio and Erickson School: a digital storytelling project paring university students with seniors at the Charlestown Retirement Community. Bill Shewbridge, Director of the New Media Studio, noted that the participation of freshman in the course inspired the theme of life transitions.

The students and elders learned from one another’s life experiences through weekly meetings, culminating with the creation of 14 three-minute films, presented in the UMBC Library Gallery. “You can’t tell your life story in three minutes,” Shewbridge said, but the results are compelling. “They’re all different. Some are funny. Some are poignant. But they all have their own value and their own message.” The digital stories are now also online for public viewing.