Written by Richard Forno, principal lecturer in computer science and electrical engineering, UMBC

Volt Typhoon is a Chinese state-sponsored hacker group. The United States government and its primary global intelligence partners, known as the Five Eyes, issued a warning on March 19, 2024, about the group’s activity targeting critical infrastructure.

The warning echoes analyses by the cybersecurity community about Chinese state-sponsored hacking in recent years. As with many cyberattacks and attackers, Volt Typhoon has many aliases and also is known as Vanguard Panda, Bronze Silhouette, Dev-0391, UNC3236, Voltzite and Insidious Taurus. Following these latest warnings, China again denied that it engages in offensive cyberespionage.

Volt Typhoon has compromised thousands of devices around the world since it was publicly identified by security analysts at Microsoft in May 2023. However, some analysts in both the government and cybersecurity community believe the group has been targeting infrastructure since mid-2021, and possibly much longer.

Volt Typhoon uses malicious software that penetrates internet-connected systems by exploiting vulnerabilities such as weak administrator passwords, factory default logins and devices that haven’t been updated regularly. The hackers have targeted communications, energy, transportation, water and wastewater systems in the U.S. and its territories, such as Guam.

In many ways, Volt Typhoon functions similarly to traditional botnet operators that have plagued the internet for decades. It takes control of vulnerable internet devices such as routers and security cameras to hide and establish a beachhead in advance of using that system to launch future attacks.

Operating this way makes it difficult for cybersecurity defenders to accurately identify the source of an attack. Worse, defenders could accidentally retaliate against a third party who is unaware that they are caught up in Volt Typhoon’s botnet.

Why Volt Typhoon matters

Disrupting critical infrastructure has the potential to cause economic harm around the world. Volt Typhoon’s operation also poses a threat to the U.S. military by potentially disrupting power and water to military facilities and critical supply chains.

Microsoft’s 2023 report noted that Volt Typhoon could “disrupt critical communications infrastructure between the United States and Asia region during future crises.” The March 2024 report, published in the U.S. by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, likewise warned that the botnet could lead to “disruption or destruction of critical services in the event of increased geopolitical tensions and/or military conflict with the United States and its allies.”

Volt Typhoon’s existence and the escalating tensions between China and the U.S., particularly over Taiwan, underscore the latest connection between global events and cybersecurity.

Defending against Volt Typhoon

The FBI reported on Jan. 31, 2024, that it had disrupted Volt Typhoon’s operations by removing the group’s malware from hundreds of small office/home office routers. However, the U.S. is still determining the extent of the group’s infiltration of America’s critical infrastructure.

On March 25, 2024, the U.S. and U.K. announced that they had imposed sanctions on Chinese hackers involved in compromising their infrastructures. And other countries, including New Zealand, have revealed cyberattacks traced back to China in recent years.

All organizations, especially infrastructure providers, must practice time-tested safe computing centered on preparation, detection and response. They must ensure that their information systems and smart devices are properly configured and patched, and that they can log activity. And they should identify and replace any devices at the edges of their networks, such as routers and firewalls, that no longer are supported by their vendor.

Organizations can also implement strong user-authentication measures such as multifactor authentication to make it more difficult for attackers like Volt Typhoon to compromise systems and devices. More broadly, the comprehensive NIST Cybersecurity Framework can help these organizations develop stronger cybersecurity postures to defend against Volt Typhoon and other attackers.

Individuals, too, can take steps to protect themselves and their employers by ensuring their devices are properly updated, enabling multifactor authentication, never reusing passwords, and otherwise remaining vigilant to suspicious activity on their accounts, devices and networks.

For cybersecurity practitioners and society generally, attacks like Volt Typhoon can represent an enormous geopolitical cybersecurity threat. They are a reminder for everyone to monitor what’s going on in the world and consider how current events can affect the confidentiality, integrity and availability of all things digital.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article and see more than 250 UMBC articles available in The Conversation.

Over the weekend of April 6 – 7, the UMBC student chapter of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) will host the 2024 Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference on campus. The event will feature workshops, research presentations, and a career fair with companies such as AstraZeneca and Astek Diagnostics and schools including Johns Hopkins University, Rutgers University, the University of Delaware, and Lehigh University. It will also feature the conferences’ two signature competitive events: Chemical Engineering Jeopardy and ChemE Car—a competition to build and operate a car powered and stopped by chemical reactions.

Organizers expect more than 350 attendees from more than 30 universities across the region. UMBC students are encouraged to register to attend, even if they aren’t chemical engineering majors. “As the premier student chemical engineering conference in the region, this event will offer great opportunities for networking, presenting research, landing internships and jobs, and general professional development,” says Terra Miley ’25, chemical engineering, who is serving as the communications chair for the student organizing committee.

Urban development firms Future Roots and Team Elle Woods are competing to win the City of Yorktown’s Elmwood District urban redevelopment project. The teams hover over their LEGO-built cities moving black, blue, red, and orange bricks representing new parking garages, low and high-rise office buildings, retail spaces, housing, and historic buildings. The site planners, financial analysts, marketing directors, environmental and equity directors, and community liaisons are mapping out neighborhood layouts that will entice former residents to return, draw professionals, and bring businesses to the once-thriving neighborhood.

The firms’ offices are on the first floor of UMBC’s Performing Arts and Humanities Building. This is POLI 443 Urban Policy Analysis where two groups of students, seven on each team, spend six weeks developing a hypothetical urban redevelopment plan based on their understanding of urban policy, problems, and solutions. The teams then compete for the winning bid—that is, the green light of industry experts who’ve come to campus to judge their proposals.

Building a vision

“I could lecture students about the ethical, financial, structural, and environmental issues cities grapple with in the land redevelopment process, but simulations create an entirely different learning process,” says Eric Stokan, associate professor of political science. Always looking for ways to make community development concepts more engaging, Stokan worked for several years on developing an urban development class simulation.

Around this time, Ghadeer Mansour ’13, political science, senior associate at the Urban Land Institute (ULI), reached out to her former political science professor, Carolyn Forestiere seeking a faculty member who might be interested in ULI’s UrbanPlan simulation curriculum program. ULI is a nonprofit global network of professionals in every real estate development and land use sector, focusing on decarbonization and net zero, increasing housing attainability, and education. The UrbanPlan exercise requires students to design a realistic land use redevelopment plan, including a 3-D city model, that addresses private and public sector needs and wants.

Forestiere suggested Stokan to Mansour. “ULI had thought of everything a student needs to understand urban development. They had a whole step-by-step manual with tabs for the history of the town, design guidelines, site plan, roles, letters from residents, a glossary of terms, and a presentation checklist,” says Stokan. He first completed a condensed version of the simulation as a participant followed by a training tailored to educators adopting the simulation into their classroom.

“The simulation gives students a critical take on how to better balance equity and economic growth, and what that means for affordable housing,” says Stokan. “They have to confront those trade-offs and understand it’s not an all-or-nothing thing. They have to be able to balance growth, equity, and environmental sustainability.”

Balancing the books

Cooperation, teamwork, and compromise are necessary for sustainable development. International student Florian Dambacher,listens intently to Alex Schultz ’25, political science, the environmental and equity director; Sam Kennedy ’26, social work, the neighborhood liaison, and Meghna Chandrasekaran ’24, political science, the site planner as he calculates the expenses. His job is to ensure the team’s ideas for creating a sustainable, economically vibrant, distinctive district stay within the city’s budget requirements and profit projections while ensuring the designs encourage cross-generational interactions that maximize the surrounding commercial, educational, and cultural resources. 

“It was a bit daunting at first. You have all these different requirements. You have the city that wants something from you, the investors you have to answer to who have interest groups in the community that have demands, needs, and wants,” says Dambacher. Today he is the student, but when he returns home to Technische Universität Dortmund in western Germany, Dambacher plans on using this teaching tool with his high school students. He feels this kind of simulation can be a powerful tool in any subject. “Teaching the theoretical side of a topic may be enough, but having a practical aspect has a more lasting impact on students,” says Dambacher.

Accessibility in motion

With two internships under his belt, one at the Frederick County Transit Planning Department and the other at the Maryland Transit Administration Planning Department, Travis Martin ’25, political science, was more than ready for his role as site planner. His previous experience proved indispensable as he brainstormed ideas with Aurora Quezada ’24, the neighborhood liaison, and Suhaib Mirza ’25, political science, environment and equity director.

“A well-functioning transit system gives people the tools they need to be successful, to build a sustainable life,” says Martin, who enjoys exploring and analyzing transportation systems when he visits new cities. In the real world, he notes, there’s a lot more paperwork and sometimes years of deliberation before a development decision is made. The simulation made it possible for Travis to experience the entire proposal process. “Transportation is a social justice issue for me, not everyone is fortunate enough to have access to it.”

Defending the vision

On the day the industry professionals arrive to judge their projects, Team Elle Woods and Future Roots inspect every colorful block of their city model making sure it reflects their upcoming proposal. Stokan and Mansour are excited. This is what they have been looking forward to since they first connected. “Professor Stokan has been so welcoming and open about the whole process so that in many ways, students are leading the process themselves,” says Mansour. “Then we bring in professionals who do this planning work for their day jobs, and they mentor the students and help think through the trade-offs and issues they face as urban planners.”

Perry Mahle, a project manager at the Whiting-Turner Contracting Company, and Rose Dalay, operations and leasing specialist at SparkFlex, co-chairs of the UrbanPlan simulation, walk around the LEGO cities, chatting with students from both firms.

“Beyond meeting the metrics or asking the questions that the curriculum provides. I always try to ask questions to encourage students to evaluate their final decisions,” says Brennan Murray, assistant managing director of business and neighborhood development at the Baltimore Development Corporation. “Like in the real world, when industry professionals are presenting projects, you are going to get questions that call your thinking, your process, and your solutions into question. How students respond on the fly is a lesson in itself.”

The two student firms stand before the council explaining their vision statements, site plan, and financial model. Team Elle Woods’ multimillion-dollar investment centers around multigenerational living, youth job development, and walkability.

Left: Team Elle Woods’ redevelopment plan. Right: Future Roots’ redevelopment plan.

Future Roots’ plan is geared more toward walkability, integration of essential services, historic preservation, and environmental sustainability. The council demands a clear cause and effect for each item on the financial statement. They hone in on the long-term benefits every decision would have on the area’s multigenerational community.

Team Elle Woods won the bid on many grounds, but most importantly because their finances stayed in the green. Future Roots, while presenting a compelling case, resulted in debt. Martin, the transportation planner for the team, contested the decision, but ultimately he said, “The simulation was fun and made me feel like I was doing something important.”

Role vs. real-life

As the class prepared to celebrate the end of their project, Shanika Freeman ’24, individualized studies, reflects on what she describes as an eye-opening experience that will help her in her work as a leader in Baltimore City. She is well aware of the impact real estate development can have on a city. Freeman, who grew up in Baltimore City, says the real estate design choices historically driven by segregation—favoring white communities and ostracizing Black ones—have been linked to an increase in crime, incarceration, and recidivism.

Freeman is working on dismantling such inequalities as a member of the Baltimore County Public Library’s diversity, equity, and inclusion team. So when she was given the role of marketing director, Freeman initially didn’t want it. She was weary of the role marketing has played in the negative portrayal of urban neighborhoods.

“I was put off by my role because I’m more into social justice, people over profit. Marketing and finance aren’t my thing. Having to shift my focus and my personal biases was really difficult, to be honest,” says Freeman. But she didn’t give up. She leaned in. “Once I dug deep into it, I got excited about it and came to understand that without money the city can’t build; if we can’t build, we can’t help more people. It’s a collaborative effort. I learned a lot about myself as a person and also about a career path that I might take in the future.”

The Urban Plan simulation will be a standalone class in the Honors College in fall 2024 and fall 2025. For more information, contact Eric Stokan: estokan@umbc.edu.

Written by Constantine Nomikos Vaporis, professor of history, UMBC

In 1980, when James Clavell’s blockbuster historical novel “Shōgun” was turned into a TV miniseries, some 33% of American households with a television tuned in. It quickly became one of the most viewed miniseries to date, second only to “Roots.”

I’m a historian of Japan who specializes in the history of the Tokugawa, or early modern era – a period from 1603 to 1868, during which the bulk of the action in “Shōgun” takes place. As a first-year graduate student, I sat glued to the television for five nights in September 1980, enthralled that someone cared enough to create a series about the period in Japan’s past that had captured my imagination.

I wasn’t alone. In 1982, historian Henry D. Smith estimated that one-fifth to one-half of students enrolled in university courses about Japan at that time had read the novel and became interested in Japan because of it.

“‘Shōgun,’” he added, “probably conveyed more information about the daily life of Japan to more people than all the combined writings of scholars, journalists, and novelists since the Pacific War.”

Some even credit the series for making sushi trendy in the U.S.

That 1980 miniseries has now been remade as FX’s “Shōgun,” a 10-episode production that is garnering rave reviews – including a near-100% rating from review-aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes.

Both miniseries closely hew to Clavell’s 1975 novel, which is a fictionalized retelling of the story of the first Englishman, Will Adams – the character John Blackthorne in the novel – to set foot in Japan.

And yet there are subtle differences in each series that reveal the zeitgeist of each era, along with America’s shifting attitudes toward Japan.

The ‘Japanese miracle’

The original 1980 series reflects both the confidence of postwar America and its fascination with its resurgent former enemy.

World War II had left Japan devastated economically and psychologically. But by the 1970s and 1980s, the country had come to dominate global markets for consumer electronic, semiconductors and the auto industry. Its gross national product per capita rose spectacularly: from less than US$200 in 1952 to $8,900 in 1980 – the year “Shōgun” appeared on television – to almost $20,000 in 1988, surpassing the United States, West Germany and France.

Many Americans wanted to know the secret to Japan’s head-spinning economic success – the so-called “Japanese miracle.” Could Japan’s history and culture offer clues?

During the 1970s and 1980s, scholars sought to understand the miracle by analyzing not just the Japanese economy but also the country’s various institutions: schools, social policy, corporate culture and policing.

In his 1979 book, “Japan as Number One: Lessons for America,” sociologist Ezra Vogel argued that the U.S. could learn a lot from Japan, whether it was through the country’s long-term economic planning, collaboration between government and industry, investments in education, and quality control of goods and services.

A window into Japan

Clavell’s expansive 1,100-page novel was released in the middle of the Japanese miracle. It sold more than 7 million copies in five years; then the series aired, which prompted the sale of another 2.5 million copies.

In it, Clavell tells the story of Blackthorne, who, shipwrecked off the coast of Japan in 1600, finds the country in a peaceful interlude after an era of civil war. But that peace is about to be shattered by competition among the five regents who have been appointed to ensure the succession of a young heir to their former lord’s position as top military leader.

In the meantime, local leaders don’t know whether to treat Blackthorne and his crew as dangerous pirates or harmless traders. His men end up being imprisoned, but Blackthorne’s knowledge of the world outside of Japan – not to mention his boatload of cannons, muskets and ammunition – save him.

He ends up offering advice and munitions to one of the regents, Lord Yoshi Toranaga, the fictional version of the real-life Tokugawa Ieyasu. With this edge, Toranaga rises to become shogun, the country’s top military leader.

Viewers of the 1980 television series witness Blackthorne slowly learning Japanese and coming to appreciate the value of Japanese culture. For example, at first, he’s resistant to bathing. Since cleanliness is deeply rooted in Japanese culture, his Japanese hosts find his refusal irrational.

Blackthorne’s, and the viewers’, gradual acclimatization to Japanese culture is complete when, late in the series, he is reunited with the crew of his Dutch ship who have been held in captivity. Blackthorne is thoroughly repulsed by their filth and demands a bath to cleanse himself from their contagion.

Blackthorne comes to see Japan as far more civilized than the West. Just like his real-life counterpart, Will Adams, he decides to remain in Japan even after being granted his freedom. He marries a Japanese woman, with whom he has two children, and ends his days on foreign soil.

From fascination to fear

However, the positive views of Japan that its economic miracle generated, and that “Shogun” reinforced, eroded as the U.S. trade deficit with Japan ballooned: from $10 billion in 1981 to $50 billion in 1985.

“Japan bashing” spread in the U.S., and visceral anger exploded when American autoworkers smashed Toyota cars in March 1983 and congressmen shattered a Toshiba boombox with sledgehammers on the Capitol lawn in 1987. That same year, the magazine Foreign Affairs warned of “The Coming U.S.-Japan Crisis.”

This backlash against Japan in the U.S. was also fueled by almost a decade of acquisitions of iconic American companies, such as Firestone, Columbia Pictures and Universal Studios, along with high-profile real estate, such as the iconic Rockefeller Center.

But the notion of Japan as a threat reached a peak in 1989, after which its economy stalled. The 1990s and early 2000s were dubbed Japan’s “lost decade.”

Yet a curiosity and love for Japanese culture persists, thanks, in part, to manga and anime. More Japanese feature films and television series are also making their way to popular streaming services, including the series “Tokyo Girl,” “Midnight Diner” and “Sanctuary.” In December 2023, The Hollywood Reporter announced that Japan was “on the precipice of a content boom.”

Widening the lens

As FX’s remake of “Shōgun” demonstrates, American viewers today apparently don’t need to be slowly introduced to Japanese culture by a European guide.

In the new series, Blackthorne is not even the sole protagonist.

Instead, he shares the spotlight with several Japanese characters, such as Lord Yoshi Toranaga, who no longer serves as a one-dimensional sidekick to Blackthorne, as he did in the original miniseries.

This change is facilitated by the fact that Japanese characters now communicate directly with the audience in Japanese, with English subtitles. In the 1980 miniseries, the Japanese dialogue went untranslated. There were English-speaking Japanese characters in the original, such as Blackthorne’s female translator, Mariko. But they spoke in a highly formalized, unrealistic English.

Along with depicting authentic costumes, combat and gestures, the show’s Japanese characters speak using the native language of the early modern era instead of using the contemporary Japanese that made the 1980 series so unpopular among Japanese viewers. (Imagine a film on the American Revolution featuring George Washington speaking like Jimmy Kimmel.)

Of course, authenticity has its limits. The producers of both television series decided to adhere closely to the original novel. In doing so, they’re perhaps unwittingly reproducing certain stereotypes about Japan.

Most strikingly, there’s the fetishization of death, as several characters have a penchant for violence and sadism, while many others commit ritual suicide, or seppuku.

Part of this may have been simply a function of author Clavell being a self-professed “storyteller, not an historian.” But this may have also reflected his experiences in World War II, when he spent three years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. Still, as Clavell noted, he came to deeply admire the Japanese.

His novel, as a whole, beautifully conveys this admiration. The two miniseries have, in my view, successfully followed suit, enthralling audiences in each of their times.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article and see more than 250 UMBC articles available in The Conversation.

Over two weeks at the end of January, six UMBC faculty woke up early to deliver lectures and lead workshops with students more than 9,000 miles away, in the small Asian nation of Brunei, located on the island of Borneo. The online talks were part of the Diversity in Cybersecurity, Brunei conference, organized jointly by Edah Hasnal, an advocate for gender diversity in the tech sector in Brunei, and Carolyn Seaman, director of the Center for Women in Technology (CWIT) at UMBC.

The idea for the conference was born out of an internship that Hasnal completed with Seaman in the fall of 2021 through the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative, a U.S. State Department-funded leadership development program. During the internship, which was conducted remotely due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hasnal created a series of short videos highlighting tech workers in Brunei. She also worked with Seaman to propose a follow-up project that ultimately turned into the Diversity in Cybersecurity, Brunei conference.

The goal of the conference was to share cybersecurity concepts and career paths with women interested in the tech sector. Out of around 50 applicants, the organizers picked 10 women with varying backgrounds. 

“We wanted to keep the conference relatively small, so that we could connect the participants with further opportunities,” Hasnal says. She says she was inspired by the stories of the women who attended, including a woman who worked as a cleaner while pursuing a tech education. Hasnal also says that Brunei is working to diversify its economy, and she sees the tech sector as a natural area of growth. 

Seaman recruited speakers from across UMBC to join the conference virtually and share their cybersecurity knowledge with attendees. Karuna Joshi, information systems, Deborah Kariuki, education, Christine Mallinson, language, literacy, and culture, Vandana Janeja, information systems, and Sreedevi Sampath, information systems, gave talks on topics ranging from cloud computing security to AI deepfake detection.

“The great thing about having women trainers who come from different backgrounds was that it was both insightful and inspiring for us all,” Hasnal says. 

It was wonderful to have CWIT’s reach extend so far through participation in the conference, Seaman says. “We’ve been dedicated to increasing gender parity in the tech industry, and we could see that many of the same issues and same goals we have are shared by people on the opposite side of the world.”

With Winona Caesar ’09, American studies and history

As a first-year student—before classes had even started—Winona Caesar ’09, American studies and history, took to heart some advice she heard at Welcome Week: Keep in touch with your loved ones. So she started writing to her grandfather who lived a few miles down the road in Baltimore City. And then, two years into their correspondence, he passed away. “His letters were amazing,” says Caesar, “a wealth of knowledge.” 

Around that same time—halfway through her time at UMBC—Caesar’s older friends began graduating and moving around the country. She kept in touch with a few of them through letters, occasionally splurging on stickers to be extra thoughtful. Now she spends a good portion of her free time corresponding regularly with 16 established pen pals, although she’s written back and forth with more than 50 interlocutors in the past two decades.

For Caesar, a sergeant in the Baltimore City Police, it’s a creative outlet. Whether hand writing a letter or using one of her seven typewriters, Caesar says the process slows her down and connects her to individuals all over the globe. As the world grows increasingly more digitized, Caesar and her pen pals are saving the lost art of keeping in touch.

Tools of the Trade:
A writing implement
Paper or postcard
Postage stamp
Envelope (handmade, if you’re serious about this)
A collection of stickers or ephemera to share

Step 1: Find a willing pen pal (or several)

For Caesar, her letter writing career started as a natural offshoot of keeping in touch with loved ones, but she has since joined two professional letter writing societies that connect new pen pals and charge a very small fee to screen participants.

Caesar says that not all matches work out but letter exchanges that hit a good groove sometimes go on indefinitely. One of her first matches was with Amy in Tennessee [pictured in the photobooth series with Caesar, left]. After seven years of corresponding, while on vacation in Tennessee, Caesar and Amy met up. Caesar says her pen pal was exactly like her letter-writing persona. “Reading her writing and meeting her in person, it was like we were best of friends. It worked,” says Caesar.

Step 2: Tap into your creativity

Caesar has been writing and sending letters long enough that she can hand make an envelope with her eyes closed, she says. In her writing nook in her apartment, Caesar keeps clear boxes stacked on each other—each organized by the correspondent’s name and send date—with thousands of letters filed inside. Nearby are her collection of typewriters, her stash of pens, her paper supplies, her stamp options, colorful washi tape, old magazines and paper samples for envelopes, so many stickers and other fun items to include in her letters. 

Seated in a command-center-like swivel chair in the middle of her supplies and the sun streaming past her collection of succulents on the window nearby, Caesar will spend as long as she needs to (and as much energy as her job leaves her) replying to friends and new acquaintances near and far. 

She says she doesn’t plan out her responses in advance. “I try to react directly to the letter and then add any extra stuff that’s coming up in my life, like, ‘Oh, I got a future trip,’ or ‘This is how I’m feeling.’” With some correspondents, she plays on-going games of hangman, scavenger hunts, mystery games, or Pictionary.

Step 3: Share as much as you want about yourself

One of Caesar’s regular pen pals, Sam, is a student from Belgium, who often sends her two letters a week, densely written on graph paper. His tight cursive isn’t easy to skim, but Caesar has grown accustomed to his handwriting over the past four years. “He’s more prolific than most,” says Caesar, and in addition to his own letters, Sam has also connected her to his mom, Christine. “Her letters were much more colorful and had lively stickers and things in them, while his are utilitarian.” 

After three or four years of letter writing with Christine, Caesar received a note this past December saying she wanted to end the correspondence. “I was sad,” Caesar said, “so I reached out to my letter writing groups and asked, ‘How do you feel when this happens?’”

Pen pal relationships have many of the same ups and downs as in-person friendships, so Caesar shares certain parts of her life more or less with some writers, but all of them know about her love of tea and the Marvel universe. Oftentimes, she’ll receive gifts of specialty tea flavors or themed-stamps, and she attempts to keep her correspondence and gifts focused on the recipients’ interests.

Step 4: Give it your stamp of approval

Getting your letter (or in Caesar’s case, sometimes dozens of letters at a time) out the door is the final step. When Caesar travels, she makes it a point to ask the local post office to add its own unique cancel stamp to her postcards or letters, so the recipients can see where she’s visited.

Once, a pen pal from New Hampshire sent Caesar a letter stamped from Valentine Station in Loveland, Colorado. Caesar was confused until she learned about a service that will send your mail through interesting named locations for a small fee. 

Thoughtful touches like these are part-and-parcel being a good pen pal, but they’re not necessary to get started writing letters. “This really does fulfill my creative spirit,” says Caesar, “especially since I don’t get to do this in my daily life—but actually this is my daily life.” 

For aspiring pen pals, Caesar says, start by writing to someone you already know and love. Who knows where your letters will take you after that.

UMBC’s Interdisciplinary Consortium for Applied Research in the Environment (ICARE) program, a cohort-based master’s program focused on local environmental research, held its first annual ICARE CoNavigator Day on Friday, February 23, in the University Center Ballroom. The all-day event consisted of research planning activities for ICARE trainees, poster sessions highlighting the trainees’ research, and a keynote address given by Jalonne White-Newsome, senior director for environmental justice in the White House Council for Environmental Quality. The Maryland deputy and assistant secretaries of the environment and representatives from the League of Conservation Voters also attended.

“ICARE is a unique training model in which master’s students in the environmental sciences and engineering are co-mentored by UMBC faculty mentors, professional scientists or engineers, and community leaders. This day brought together all the trainees and their mentors to conceptualize their research through CoNavigator and present their research in well-attended poster sessions,” shares Tamra Mendelson, ICARE director and professor of biological sciences. 

CoNavigator is a unique three-dimensional concept mapping protocol the ICARE trainees and their thesis committees used to brainstorm. The structured format encouraged creative thinking about their projects’ goals and implementation.

Danish researchers created CoNavigator in 2015, and “UMBC was a big part of the genesis of this,” shared Katrine Lindvig, one of CoNavigator’s founders who facilitated the ICARE session. UMBC was one of the first institutions to apply the unique protocol, Lindvig said.

White-Newsome said in her keynote that addressing environmental problems “takes multiple perspectives; it takes creativity; it takes ensuring that those folks who are most impacted are part of and given the space to implement and co-solve and create solutions that will benefit us all.” 

She also encouraged the ICARE trainees: “To read about the questions you’re asking, and the way you’re going about answering them— your work is so important.”

Learn more about ICARE.