Michelle Scott, associate professor of history, will head to South Africa this winter to work with students on issues of diversity.

Scott is a Resource Faculty in the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow-SSRC Graduate Initiatives Program, which aims to transform the academy by eradicating racial disparities on the faculties at colleges and universities in the United States and South Africa.  She and five other Resource Faculty Fellows have been invited to lead a seminar at the University of Capetown, South Africa, for graduate students. The seminar will deal with diversifying the academy and finishing the dissertation.

Scott has also been asked to speak at a cultural exchange program with students from Wesleyan, Williams, Duke, Oberlin and the Emory Summer Institute for HBCU students. She will be in South Africa from January 3, 2012, to January 14.

Kugel. Challah. Blintz. Lox.

For many students, these words aren’t even part of their vocabulary, much less their diet. They certainly weren’t for the fellows at the Imaging Research Center. But in spring 2010, they left behind campus grub for the world of Jewish food. The results of their endeavor are now featured in “Chosen Food: Cuisine, Culture and American Jewish Identity,” an exhibit at the Jewish Museum of Maryland that runs through next fall.

“I wanted the fellows to work on a project that would have a public impact and show off what they could do technologically, but also really enrich their experience,” said Timothy Nohe, associate professor of visual arts, who worked with the fellows on the project.

The fellows visited kitchens, banquet halls, restaurants and marketplaces, and conducted interviews in the studio. The end result of their work is a series of documentary films and interviews shown throughout the exhibition.

“We’ve been increasing our inclusion of media over the past few years, and the media components of this exhibition are the strongest we’ve had yet,” said Rachel Kassman, assistant curator at the museum. “While we’ve always relied on the stories of actual people, this really brings it home.”

None of the students who worked on the project are Jewish, but their unfamiliarity with the topic was often an advantage because the museum wanted to create an exhibit that was accessible to both Jews and non-Jews.  The students helped to universalize aspects of the Jewish food experience—such as the concept of “yosher,” or ethical consumption—to an audience that might not be familiar with these terms.

Timothy Bubb ’11, animation, and ’13 M.F.A., imaging and digital arts, pointed out that the project didn’t just take them out of their comfort zone culturally, but technologically as well. “Past projects have mostly involved creating artwork on a computer in the safety of my dorm room,” he said. For this project, the students had to physically travel to locations around the state and work with video and sound equipment.

That was part of the point of the project, said Nohe. “Everybody, at some point, took on the role of camera operator, sound operator or director,” he said. “That really allows them to experience what it’s like to be in the real world, because they’ll find that, once they leave UMBC, they’re constantly changing themselves because the market is constantly driving them in new directions.”

Giving students that real-world research experience is an integral part of the IRC Fellows program: cohorts of about 8 students spend two years working on a different project, under a different professor, each semester. That means that while the Jewish museum of Maryland was celebrating the grand opening of the exhibition on October 23, the IRC fellows were already well into developing a game for their next project.

But while the students have moved on, the “Chosen Food” exhibit will run through September 30, 2012. Kassman said that the museum also plans to feature the materials the fellows collected on its website over the coming months, and the exhibition will travel to other locations after it finishes its Baltimore run.

“I think they realize that they have really rich research materials here, as rich as the material culture that’s in the exhibition,” said Nohe.

(11/18/11)

If you’re driving through nighttime Baltimore in the next few weeks, don’t forget to look up. Every day, from sunset to sunrise through mid-December, the iconic 100-year old Bromo Seltzer Tower’s four clock faces will be lit up with animations created by Kelley Bell ’06, MFA, who also teaches at UMBC.

From the Baltimore Sun:

“I love the idea of people interacting with my work,” Bell says.

“One of the things that’s very problematic for me with most animation is that it takes place inside a frame. You sit in a chair and look at it. My art is about finding ways to get out of that box. People can immerse themselves in the artwork, share a physical space with it.”

Read the full story in the Baltimore Sun and watch a video about the project here.

Mario Monti “may be just what Italy needs” to avert economic crisis, writes UMBC associate professor of political science Carolyn Forestiere in a letter to the Baltimore Sun. She notes, “Mr. Monti does not belong to a specific political party and was not directly elected by the public,” which makes his rise to the office of prime minister perplexing for some. However, Forestiere argues, at a time of political disagreement over how to manage necessary reforms, “Prime Minister Monti’s technocratic government may be the best immediate solution to thwart economic crisis in Italy.”

UMBC public policy professor David Salkever delves into the University System of Maryland merger debate in a new Washington Post letter to the editor and Baltimore Sun commentary, published last week.

In the Sun, Salkever argues that merging the University of Maryland, College Park and University of Maryland, Baltimore in an effort to “raise their national rankings based on total research funding” represents flawed logic, given that rankings groups are aware of and have mechanisms to mitigate the effects of such tactics, such as collecting data at the campus rather than institutional level. He writes, “to increase the College Park rankings, in the authoritative ‘Top American Research Universities’ report, we would need to make some (very expensive and disruptive) geographic moves of programs to the College Park campus.”

Responding to the argument that a merger would increase research collaboration across the campuses, Salkever’s Post letter notes: “Before proceeding with an expensive, complicated process to solve [the suggested] collaboration ‘problem,’ officials should first get evidence that a problem exists.” He adds that if the problem does exist, officials should take a careful, evidence-based approach to addressing it.

Thomas Schaller’s new Baltimore Sun commentary responds to Rick Perry’s recent debate gaffe, where he failed to recall the third cabinet agency he’d like to close, after naming the Depts. of Education and Commerce. Beyond the “oops” moment, UMBC political science professor Schaller asks why Perry wants to eliminate those three departments in particular, rather than cutting spending across all departments or eliminating newer agencies.

Schaller has also written a new guest post for Sabato’s Crystal Ball, exploring the limited political impact of President Obama’s foreign policy successes in Iraq, Libya and with the killing of Osama bin Laden. Schaller writes: “His performance thus far has been pretty solid, but he stands to reap little to no electoral benefit from it.”

Three students were awarded the Second Generation Scholarship on November 9 during the W.E.B. DuBois Lecture featuring speaker Carla L. Peterson of the University of Maryland College Park. The annual lecture is sponsored by the department of Africana Studies.

A group of African-American alumni started the Second Generation Scholarship in 1986 as a means to give back to the campus and become more involved in UMBC. The scholarship provides funding to continuing students whose money for college often decreases the longer they stay in college and graduate. Among the requirements, scholarship candidates must be currently enrolled or have taken a course in Africana studies and demonstrate a commitment to improving the lives of minorities through community service, extracurricular activities or other community involvement.

Learn more about the scholarship here.
The 2011-12 scholarship winners: Oseogie Okojie ’14, Nia Hampton ’13, founder James Wiggins Esq. ’75, and Mahelet Gennene ’13.

Kathy Scales Bryan, American studies lecturer, recently commented on a California politician’s daughter who has publicly split with her father on a controversial issue.

Briana Bilbray, the daughter of Republican Congressman Brian Bilbray, recently came out in support of medical marijuana dispensaries and extoled the drug’s therapeutic benefits for chemotherapy patients. Briana is currently in remission from melanoma.

Children of politicians often are brought up to put the public persona ahead of their private lives, Bryan said .

“The understanding within a family is that that’s where you could take care of your needs that can’t be taken care of out in public,” she said. “What being in politics does is take that private place and turn that into a kind of commodity that has to be produced on a public stage.”

The story, “Bilbray’s daughter at center of med pot debate,” appeared on the Sign On San Diego website on November 12.

Steve Bradley (associate professor, Visual Arts) is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Arts in Community (MSAC AIC) matching grant for his “Portrait Stories” initiative in the Baybrook community.

In addition to this grant, “Portrait Stories” has been chosen by the Baltimore Rotterdam Sister City for its Artist Exchange program. The intended exchange will occur between the Baybrook neighborhood and Rotterdam’s Heijplaat neighborhood in the future.

The Baybrook initiatives are rooted in Professor Bradley’s 2009 residency in the Heijplaat neighborhood. His inspiration came from an educational curriculum developed by the Willem de Kooning Academie, also in Rotterdam.

Cut off from downtown Baltimore by the Patapsco River, the richly diverse communities of Brooklyn and Curtis Bay have few safe public recreational places for the youth to gather before or after school. The intergenerational “Portrait Stories” project strives to engage the youth and the elders of Brooklyn and Curtis Bay in a mutual exchange of stories. The objective is for the participants to create portraiture, in response to these stories, to share with the community.

This project is facilitated by students from UMBC and Maryland Institute College of Art for students from the Benjamin Franklin High School and elders from the Brooklyn and Curtis Bay community.

Exhibitions from “Portrait Stories” will be in several locations around Baybrook and Curtis Bay beginning May 2012.

Tim Nohe (associate professor, Visual Arts) has been awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts Our Town Project – Creative Placemaking program, managed by the Station North Arts & Entertainment District.

The grant supports his sound project, “My Station North.” This winter and spring he will work collaboratively with children at Baltimore Montessori Public Charter School, their teacher, Ms. Meg Fink, and IMDA MFA graduate student Charlotte Keniston to document the Station North neighborhood through sound. Students working with an easy to use audio recorder will sample the sounds and stories of their neighborhood and school, which is located at 1600 Guilford Avenue in Station North. Once the sounds have been gathered, Professor Nohe will edit, mix and master a surround sound work for installation at the North Avenue Market in June 2012. The project will be a partnership with the Baltimore SoundscapeProject and Locus Sonus, a streaming audio project based in France.

The project will bring positive attention to the neighborhood, its vibrant arts community, the historic North Avenue Market, and Baltimore Montessori Public Charter School. Professor Nohe remarks, “Connections in our community will be heard through focused listening: to what we hear all around, to the music of the street, to the people working to revitalize homes and businesses, to our creative workers, and to the stories of elders and children. The installation will bring us together to listen, carefully, to this vibrant city neighborhood.”