Kimberly Moffitt’s book, Blackberries and Redbones: Critical Articulations of Black Hair and Body Politics in Africana Communities, has received the outstanding book award from the National Communication Association’s African American Communication and Culture Division.

Moffitt, an assistant professor of American studies, co-edited the volume with Regina Spellers. The book examines the way that hair and bodies shape perception of African Americans through a variety of interdisciplinary lenses, including poems, creative writing and scholarly essays.

More information about the book can be found here.

In the November issue of his monthly podcast, “The EMS Squadcast,” Emergency Health Services alumnus Tim Perkins ’97 interviewed UMBC paramedic program director Dwight Polk about Polk’s recent EMS World Expo presentation “HIV/AIDS: Why Don’t We Talk About It Anymore.”

Perkins, who works for the Virginia Office of Emergency Management Services, began his 20-year career in EMS as a volunteer fire fighter in rural New York.

To read more about The EMS Squadcast and to hear the podcast, click here. Polk appears 8 min 51 sec into the recording.

To learn more about UMBC’s EHS program, click here.

Seniors in need often receive excessive donations near the holidays. Julie Rosenthal, program management specialist for Asian studies, makes sure that they are fed the rest of the year, too.

Rosenthal runs a nonprofit program called “Food on the 15th.”The project has delivered 9,500 bags of groceries to hundreds of low-income seniors over the past six years, and is designed to introduce children of affluence to people who are struggling.

“I thought my kids were way too focused on themselves. There was dance and drama and all that, but it was all about them,” said Rosenthal. She needed something that would make her kids understand how privileged they were compared with others around them, so she organized parents, teachers and children to bag and deliver groceries to low income seniors. The key to the approach is for the kids to do more than fill a bin with canned peas and boxes of cereal. By handing the food to people in need, they get a more intimate look at what people who struggle might look like.

The story, “Food program puts kids face-to-face with the needy, not just at the holidays” was published in the Washington Post on November 21.

This week EMS World features an EMS Squadcast interview with Dwight Polk, UMBC’s paramedic program director. Polk was interviewed by Tim Perkins, a UMBC alumnus who now works for the Virginia Office of EMS. The conversation focuses on Polk’s EMS World Expo presentation “HIV/AIDS: Why Don’t We Talk About It Anymore.” Key topics include how trimming educational budgets has harmed preventative measures targeting the disease and how instructors can better prepare EMS practitioners to provide quality care for patients with HIV/AIDS. To access the podcast click here. Polk appears 8 min 51 sec into the recording.

Our everyday lives are increasingly affected by events and issues beyond our nation’s borders, and many colleges are responding by creating specific programs that address the need to understand different cultures, reports the Baltimore Sun in an education supplement story entitled “Learning through Language.”

One program that the Sun highlights is UMBC’s new Asian studies program, the first such program at a public institution in Maryland. “Asia cannot be ignored, and our students need to be prepared for a world in which Asia plays a major role,” said Constantine Vaporis, director of the program.

The story appeared in the Sun’s education supplement on November 20. A pdf of the full story can be seen here.

On Tuesday, November 15, UMBC professor Bruce Walz, chair of Emergency Health Services and past president of the National Association of EMS Educators, represented NAEMSE at a White House meeting with national security staff. Walz was part of a delegation of 13 physicians, EMS and trauma service experts assembled by Advocates for EMS to discuss the issue of an EMS federal lead agency.

During the meeting, Walz stressed that EMS educators prepare health care professionals regardless of the means by which the providers deliver EMS response and care. Walz is also immediate past-president of  AEMS, a coalition of EMS providers, physicians, regulators and educators who advocate for EMS-related issues at the federal level.

MarylandReporter today noted that unless the U.S. Congress acts by January 1, physicians will face a Medicare reimbursement rate cut of 30%. Expense concerns have motivated some doctors to close their practices and go to work for hospitals, says UMBC Erickson School Professor Joe Gribbin, a former associate commissioner for the Social Security Administration. He explains, “The implications [of changes to reimbursement rates] are huge not just for physicians but for the beneficiary community, and they’re not well understood.” The article was also picked up by Citybizlist Baltimore.

Saturday, October 22, over 350 students, faculty members, and guests gathered at UMBC for the 14th Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium in the Chemical and Biological Sciences. Fourteen UMBC students took home awards — five in biochemistry and molecular biology and nine in the biological sciences.

The symposium included more than 200 posters. Forty-five faculty and graduate student volunteers selected 70 posters as first or second place winners in 37 categories. The winning students were presented with framed certificates and will receive gift cards to an online bookstore.

The daylong event has become a major annual symposium on the East Coast for presenting undergraduate research. This year featured poster presentations by students representing 40 institutions from eight states and Washington, D.C.

Michelle Starz-Gaiano, an Assistant Professor of Biology at UMBC, says the event, ”is a great opportunity for students to learn to talk about their research in an understandable way to a broad audience.”

Niambi Brewer, a winner in the symposium agrees. She says that each time you present your work, “you learn different and better ways to get your point across. It’s always a rewarding experience.”

Bill LaCourse, Interim Dean of the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences says, “The event, is designed to promote and recognize undergraduate research across the region by providing a juried, multi-institutional opportunity for students to present their work in a professional manner.”

UMBC President, Freeman Hrabowski gave the opening remarks. Dr. Rachel Brewster, Associate Professor in Biology at UMBC, gave the midday plenary lecture, “Getting the Brain into Shape: Mechanisms of Neural Tube Morphogenesis.”

The Undergraduate Research Symposium in the Chemical and Biological Sciencs is sponsored by UMBC through a grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health. The annual event is planned and organized by faculty and staff in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in UMBC’s College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences.

As a photographer for the Baltimore Sun, A. Aubrey Bodine’s photography captured Maryland life. On Saturday, November 19, the Baltimore Sun will auction of over 7,000 of his prints.

Tom Beck, chief curator at the Albin O. Kuhn Library, was on “Midday with Dan Rodricks” on November 17 to discuss the library’s Bodine collection, which contains over 3,000 Bodine prints.

“He was the person who I think single-handedly invented our cherished traditional Maryland imagery,” said Beck.

The full conversation can be heard here.

Recent polls indicate that America thinks congress is a lost cause.  Is the solution to hand over leadership to a younger generation? Will the momentum of Occupy Wall Street propel young people to greater levels of civic engagement?

Those are the questions that Craig Berger, student life’s coordinator for campus and civic engagement, discussed on WYPR’s “Midday with Dan Rodricks” on Thursday, November 17.

“What I think is interesting about the Occupy Wall Street movement is how it has been institutionalized,” said Berger. “Millennials like institutions, they like to work together, but in this case the institutions are failing them. So they’re creating their own.”

The full conversation can be heard here.