A university can offer up a lot of drama: joys and terrors, dark mysteries and the quest to unravel or unlock them.

The issue that you have in your hands is chock-full of such drama. There is drama in the most literal sense: the amazing journey taken by students, faculty and staff in UMBC’s Theatre Department to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

Led by associate professor Eve Muson, the department took its Fall 2010 production of Lynn Nottage’s smart and provocative play Las Meninas all the way to selection as one of only four university productions in the final round of the American College Theatre Festival. (Just think of it as the “Final Four” of U.S. college and university theatre.)

Careful planning got the cast and crew of Las Meninas to the Kennedy Center, but that didn’t mean that there weren’t thrills and (near) spills in a one-day load-in, set construction, rehearsal and performance. But you’ll need to read the story to find out how the Las Meninas gang made it work – and just how Muson’s vision of the play will live on in the forthcoming professional production of Las Meninas she will direct at Columbia’s RepStage next year.

Another drama detailed in this issue’s story by Elizabeth Heubeck ’91 is darker and more destructive, yet it also celebrates the role that historians and cultural scholars can play in reclaiming memory. When Suzanne Ostrand-Rosenberg – a professor of biological sciences and the Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Chair of Biochemistry – found a box of letters kept by her mother from Nazi-era Germany, the discovery led not only to a nearly decade-long search for her family’s history, but also an illuminating new work of scholarship on the Holocaust by Rebecca Boehling, a UMBC professor of history and director of the James T. and Virginia M. Dresher Center for the Humanities, and Uta Larkey, a professor of German and modern languages at Goucher College.

Nature has its dramas as well – and few of them are as powerful and destructive as hurricanes. So UMBC Magazine asked longtime USA Today weather writer Jack Williams to talk with Jeffrey Halverson – an associate professor of geography and environmental systems and a researcher at Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET) – who is one of America’s preeminent hurricane trackers. Halverson’s work not only sheds light on how these most impressive storms form and intensify, but his findings may help scientists and local governments take actions that will save lives when hurricanes do inevitably sweep through our area.

— Richard Byrne ’86

PUTTIN’ ON A HARD HAT

The progress on the construction of Phase I of UMBC’s new Performing Arts and Humanities Building is impressive when seen from the outside. But put on a hard hat and get into the guts of the new building that will open in Fall 2012 and that progress is even more apparent.

Already, one can see the shape of the new 275 seat theater – with high-ceilinged passageways between the scenery workshop and the stage to make set construction easier. The elegant curved lines of the James T. and Virginia M. Dresher Center for the Humanities – which overlook one of the new building’s lobbies – are also clearly discernible.

Outlines of new classrooms on the top floors are also taking shape. And did we mention the views? The building’s perch at the north end of campus offers up sweeping vistas south and west to Baltimore and the Key Bridge.

But the best news about the Performing Arts and Humanities Building, however, isn’t that Phase I is going so swimmingly. It’s that lawmakers gathered in the recently-concluded session of Maryland’s Legislature decided to close a proposed two-year gap in funding for Phase II of the building – including new concert and dance venues – and allow the university to begin construction of the final wing in 2013.

“It is clear that our governor and other state officials understand how important this project is for our campus,” says UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski III. “And the leadership of our alumna, House Speaker Pro Tem Adrienne Jones ’76, was pivotal in ensuring in the building’s completion in 2015.”

— Richard Byrne ’86

COMING HOME TO HELP

UMBC’s reputation as a magnet for adult and returning students attracts many who have served in our nation’s military. In Fall 2010, for instance, 219 Maryland veterans receiving GI Bill education benefits were studying at UMBC.

And UMBC’s outreach to veterans is expanding. A new initiative – The Maryland Campus Compact for Student Veterans – was signed by UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, in January. It committed UMBC and other state colleges and universities to centralize efforts to guide student veterans through all facets of university life and provide more training across campus in issues affecting veterans.

The compact was spearheaded by Maryland Lt. Governor Anthony G. Brown – a colonel in the Army Reserves, a graduate of the Reserved Officer Training Corps (ROTC) and the nation’s highest ranking elected official to have served a tour of duty in Iraq.

The agreement formalized outreach efforts that were already under way. In February 2010, the university’s division of student affairs established a Vets 2 Vets program in its off-campus student affairs office, offering support services, networking opportunities and referrals to a wide network of resources on-and-off-campus. UMBC’s Vets 2 Vets program will also offer an orientation session for new veterans on campus in early August.

“The UMBC community is proud to welcome returning veterans to campus,” said Hrabowski after signing the compact. “We know the transition back to the classroom can be challenging, and we are committed to supporting student veterans with access to the information and services they need to be successful.”

— Richard Byrne ’86

NET GAIN FOR ALUMNI

If you’re an alumna or alumnus who’s already plugged into getting UMBC information via email, you’ve likely discovered that our online community – Retriever Net – has a brand new face.

The makeover began over a year ago, when we asked alumni what they wanted from a web community. Among the priorities that emerged from the feedback were more campus news, more notice about alumni events and easier ways to reconnect with former classmates. Alumni also wanted a fresher look and greater clarity in the website.

The Retriever Net redesign addressed all those priorities and desires – linking alumni directly to events on campus and to news from faculty and students. Plus the site makes it easier to find information about alumni events, discounts and other benefits of being a UMBC graduate. The range of things you can now do via Retriever Net includes:

• Submit class notes with photos that will be published online and in the magazine
• Search a password-protected alumni directory
• Update your personal information and even upload a photo
• Send messages to old classmates
• Browse an up-to-date calendar of alumni events
• Use your new login to access both Retriever Net and myUMBC, the central campus web portal

But don’t take our word for it! Check out the new Retriever Net and tell us what you think! Fill out our user survey by July 31 at http://alumni.umbc.edu/sitefeedback and you may win a $15 Amazon gift card!

— Meredith Purvis

EXCELLING BY EXAMPLE

The TIAA-CREF Theodore M. Hesburgh Award for Leadership Excellence is among the highest awards for academic leadership. Named after the former University of Notre Dame president who guided that institution to national preeminence, the annual prize recognizes the personal leadership that a university or college president has provided for the greater good of society.

In 2011, a distinguished panel of judges singled out the work of UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, for the prize, which he received at the American Council on Education (ACE) annual meeting in Washington, D.C., in March.

Stephanie Bell-Rose, head of the TIAA-CREF Institute, which sponsors the prize, observed that “Dr. Hrabowski’s leadership at UMBC and commitment to underrepresented groups in science and engineering has had a powerful impact on both the Maryland system and on higher education as a whole. The Hesburgh award honors those higher education leaders who demonstrate innovative thinking, a positive impact on both higher education and society and a willingness to collaborate both within and outside the university, all of which are embodied by Dr. Hrabowski’s work.”

UMBC’s president used the occasion to urge greater innovation within the academy as a critical element in helping the nation face an unprecedented set of challenges. “It takes all of us in the academy to build our institutions and prepare the next generation of leaders,” Hrabowski said. “Higher education is more important now than ever before for both our nation and humankind. I am honored to accept this award on behalf of my UMBC colleagues and students, and to have our work associated with the example of extraordinary leadership provided by Father Hesburgh.”

— Richard Byrne ’86

Hurricanes are powerful – and they also hold great mysteries. UMBC researcher Jeffrey Halverson uses the latest technology in collaboration with NASA to unlock those secrets and make potential storm victims safer.

By Jack Williams

Hurricanes as strong as the infamous Hurricane Katrina which ravaged New Orleans and the coast of the Gulf of Mexico in 2005 rarely hit the Delmarva area. But as Hurricane Isabel showed in 2003, a hurricane – even a storm that is weakening – can cause serious damage to our region.

Isabel’s power pushed water up the Chesapeake Bay to flood Fells Point and the Inner Harbor in Baltimore. It also damaged many buildings at the U.S. Naval Academy and in other parts of Annapolis. The cost of Isabel’s flooding and wind in Maryland and Washington, D.C. was estimated at $945 million – but fortunately only one death was reported.

Hurricanes such as Isabel and Katrina now cost the United States an average of $10 to $11 billion a year, and yet the population of coastal areas frequented by hurricanes continues to grow. And while Katrina was the deadliest and most expensive U.S. hurricane ever, a wide variety of storms have attracted close attention from hurricane researchers.

Some of that research is being done in the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET), where associate director and UMBC associate professor of geography and environmental systems Jeffrey Halverson works with colleagues from NASA to tackle questions about hurricanes that could help save lives.

JCET is a joint effort between UMBC and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and the center’s researchers have the advantage of possessing some of the latest technology available to help guide their search for

answers. One of the most pressing questions that Halverson and his colleagues are trying to solve is what information forecasters need to better predict when a hurricane will intensify quickly and become that much more dangerous.

Since the 1950s, scientists have learned enough to enable forecasters to do a much better job of predicting where a hurricane is likely to go. But Halverson observes that “there has not been much progress in forecasting intensity changes.”

Hurricane Wilma’s ferocious journey over the Caribbean Sea in October 2005 illustrates just what can happen when storms suddenly gain power. In a mere 24 hours, Wilma strengthened from a 69 mph tropical storm to a 172 mph Category 5 hurricane. Fortunately, Wilma’s winds then weakened to 150 mph before the storm hit the Mexican island of Cozumel and then Cancun two days after reaching peak strength, and those precious 48 hours gave local governments time to move thousands of residents and tourists out of harm’s way.

The nightmare for hurricane forecasters is a storm like Wilma that kills hundreds of people after strengthening with little or no warning, leaving government officials and residents in a populated area only hours – instead of days – of warning.

In order to help forecasters better predict when a hurricane will intensify in an explosive fashion, scientists such as Halverson need to learn exactly what happens before a storm begins to grow into a monster, how to detect precursors to intensification, and then update forecasting computer models to handle the new data.

“The storm speaks to us in code that we’re trying to understand,” Halverson says.

Scientists armed with technology have already cracked some of the code. Global-scale winds at levels of up to 30,000 feet steer a hurricane across the ocean and land, and forecasts that track storms have improved as scientists learned more about how hurricanes interact with these winds. Forecasts of how winds will change

during a hurricane’s life have also improved. Indeed, many outside factors – especially the temperature of the ocean over which a hurricane is moving and the speeds and directions of global-scale winds around it – help determine when a hurricane will weaken or strengthen.

Scientists still need to learn more about what happens inside a storm that’s about to intensify. This part of the code is difficult because a hurricane is a cauldron of rising and sinking air moving in horizontal and vertical swirls ranging in size from inches across to the hundred-miles or larger diameter of wind spiraling into the storm. Water is changing among its vapor, liquid and ice phases to warm or cool rising and falling air. The moving air and changing temperatures are all interacting in ways that aren’t always clear.

“There is a lot of the physics we don’t understand,” Halverson admits. “We are trying to adapt new technologies to answer these questions.”

Up Up And Away

One way to get closer to the physics of hurricanes is to get physically closer to them – close enough to measure. Often the best way to research bad weather is in an airplane.

Halverson began conducting weather research from airplanes even before earning his Ph.D. in environmental science from the University of Virginia in 1995.

From November 1993 to February 1994, he worked aboard a NASA DC-8 research airplane as the scientist in charge of the cylindrical packages of instruments called dropsondes – sometimes described as “Pringles cans with microprocessors and parachutes.” After being dropped from an airplane, a dropsonde radios back data on temperatures, humidity and air pressure as it falls to the ocean. (In recent years, dropsondes have also been fitted with GPS receivers and have added wind speed and direction data to the data they send back as they descend.)

In addition to his time spent on that NASA DC-8 and on other airplanes, Halverson has also conducted weather research on ships, and worked in the jungles of the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific studying El Niño – the chain of ocean-atmospheric events that can affect weather around the globe – which begins with a cooling of the same western tropical Pacific Ocean where Halverson and other scientists conducted their 1993-94 research.

That project is a model for how meteorological research has been conducted since the 1950s. Groups of scientists begin by observing the weather with sophisticated instruments and then use the data to form hypotheses. Halverson adds that computer models and satellite monitoring have also become an important part of the process.

Halverson’s scientific career boasts a direct link to Bob and Joanne Simpson, the pioneers of airborne hurricane research and computer weather models. Halverson did postdoctoral work with Joanne Simpson at NASA in the mid-to-late-1990s, and has also worked on projects with Bob Simpson.

In an April 2005 talk given at an Explorers Club dinner in Washington, D.C., Halverson acknowledged the Simpsons in the audience, observing that Bob Simpson’s invention of hurricane-research flying “led to a great deal of what scientists know about hurricanes that no one knew before the 1950s. All of the brilliant research started with getting eyeballs into storms.” He also noted that Joanne Simpson was not only the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in meteorology, but also the first person to develop a computer model of what happens in a cumulus cloud.

These days, Halverson is pushing the Simpsons’ legacy of innovation into the future. He is now a project scientist for the next big step in airborne hurricane research: sending the unmanned NASA Global Hawk airplane above the tops of hurricanes to help study their formation and intensification. He says 2010 “was the first time we flew the Global Hawk… it will revolutionize what we know about hurricanes… it’s the first time we’ll have a view from 65,000 feet over 25 hours. This will transform hurricane flying from reconnaissance to surveillance.”

The Global Hawk’s ability to stay in or above a storm longer than previous airplanes used for research is what is transforming the process from reconnaissance to surveillance. It is the latest tool for researchers in a wide range of airplanes used for big projects, including NASA’s DC-8, an ER-2 (NASA’s version of the U-2 spy plane), two WB-57s (a 1950s bomber now carrying research instruments), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)’s two WP-3 turboprops.

All of these airplanes maneuver inside or above a storm at the same time, but at different altitudes, to capture a more complete picture of what’s happening. The NOAA WP-3s slice through a hurricane’s eye 5,000 to 10,000 feet above the ocean, while the DC-8 flies at 40,000 feet on top of the storm and the ER-2 or the WB-57s soar high above the top. Depending on how far a storm is from the airplanes’ land bases, they all might be able to spend only the same two or three hours in a storm with the rest of their six- to ten-hour trips flying to and from the storm.

The Global Hawk, on the other hand, can stay in the air as long as 25 hours with its pilots at computers back at the missions base who work in shifts to keep the Hawk flying.

Halverson was a mission scientist for a NASA experiment in August and September 2010 that used the Global Hawk. It examined the formation and strengthening of storms in the Gulf of Mexico and western Atlantic Ocean. One Global Hawk flight included 20 passes over the eye of Hurricane Carl. NASA’s DC-8, a WB-57 and the Global Hawk also flew together on several data-collection flights.

“This has the possibility of reinventing what we do” says Halverson, who’ll be working with the Hawk as a member of the science team for NASA’s “Hurricane and Severe Storms Sentinel” mission from 2012 to 2014 to study hurricane genesis and intensity changes.

Few But Deadly: Why?

The “genesis” part of NASA’s “Hurricane and Severe Storms Sentinel” mission is a continuing quest to answer a question that Joanne Simpson and her colleagues asked more than 50 years ago: “Why are there so few hurricanes?”

The essential conditions needed for a tropical storm to form and grow into a 74 mph or faster hurricane for hurricane formation – including 80-degree-plus ocean water that’s at least 150 feet deep – are present for half of each year over many parts of the tropical Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico.

Each year, 80 to 90 minor disturbances dubbed “easterly waves” move off Africa and traverse the Atlantic Ocean, but only a mere 10 to 12 of these actually spawn hurricanes. The easterly waves also offer no obvious clues that this is going to happen.

In the new mission, researchers will use two Global Hawks operating from NASA’s Wallops Island Flight Facility on the Virginia coast near Chincoteague during the 2012 through 2014 Atlantic hurricane seasons.

Those easterly waves are a key question for researchers. “Is there something about a seedling that makes it develop?” Halverson asks. “Is there something coming off Africa that gives it a head start?”

Halverson and other researchers believe that the answers to these questions and to why hurricanes sometimes intensify as quickly as Hurricane Wilma did are probably related. And that’s where the Global Hawk may provide new clues to formation and intensification. “If you’re not out there over time,” Halverson observes, “you miss what could be important parts of what happens to cause a hurricane to form or strengthen. With two Hawks, each flying for 25 hours, one can be going out to a storm as the other is coming in. We won’t miss a thing.”

Halverson adds that one of the lures of scholarship is sharing his work not only with other scientists through technical articles for scientific journals, but also with the general public.

“I enjoy enchanting others with science,” he says. And his radio and television interviews for the National Geographic Channel, the Discovery Channel and the Voice of America have been key avenues in doing so. Baltimore area television stations frequently call on Halverson for brief interviews when a hurricane is in the news.

Halverson has written a monthly column for Weatherwise Magazine – a publication targeted at general readers interested in the weather – for seven years. He also wrote the foreword and scientific sections of Stefan Bechtel’s 2006 book Roar of the Heavens: Surviving Hurricane Camille, about the 1969 hurricane that killed 143 people on the Gulf of Mexico’s coast when it came ashore, and 113 more in Virginia, most in Nelson County, where 30 inches of rain on the mountains caused flash floods.

Halverson is also developing a digital museum exhibit on the meteorology of the Hurricane Camille flood in Nelson County for the county’s historical society. It explains in images and words non-scientists can understand how Camille, which was then a tropical depression with winds less than 39 mph, dumped enough rain to cause a level of erosion on some mountains that would normally take over 1,000 years to occur.

In trying to bring weather’s secrets to the wider masses, Halverson says his model is the late astronomer Carl Sagan, who helped popularize science through articles, books and the classic 1980 PBS series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage.

“[Sagan] was one of my heroes,” Halverson says. “I’m part of the generation of kids he inspired. If I can do that, it will be a great service.”

Images courtesy of NASA

UMBC professor of biology Suzanne Ostrand-Rosenberg found a box of faded letters that led her deep into her family’s history­–and led scholars to fascinating new findings in Holocaust studies.

By Elizabeth Heubeck ’91

Suzanne Ostrand-Rosenberg’s mother Marianne came of age as a German Jew during the rise of Nazism and the beginnings of the Holocaust. But she said very little to her daughter about her family’s history during that trying period.

“Growing up in a house where you sort of knew something happened, though it was never discussed—it’s as if those years never happened,” says Ostrand-Rosenberg, who is now a professor of biological sciences and the Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Chair of Biochemistry at UMBC. Her voice trails off as she excuses herself to wipe away some tears.

But Marianne Steinberg Ostrand did have a story to tell her daughter (and others) about those difficult years. As Ostrand-Rosenberg cleaned out her parents’ home in Columbia a few years ago, sifting through drawers, cabinets, and closets and taking stock of a lifetime’s worth of family memorabilia, she spotted a worn brown cardboard box emblazoned with old-style German writing.

The box contained a stack of about 200 wartime letters written by family members, many of them from her grandmother, great aunt and great uncle to her mother. Most of them were dated between 1938 and 1941, after Ostrand-Rosenberg’s mother had left Germany and come to the United States.

More discoveries emerged as Ostrand-Rosenberg dug deeper. “Each day I’d find a whole new stash,” she says.

That correspondence and other documents are now seeing the light of day in a new book, Life and Loss in the Shadows of the Holocaust (Cambridge University Press), co-authored by Rebecca Boehling, a UMBC professor of history and director of the James T. and Virginia M. Dresher Center for the Humanities, and Uta Larkey, an associate professor of German Studies at Goucher College.

Though the story of Ostrand-Rosenberg’s family shares a great deal in common with other narratives of the persecution, exile and attempted extermination of Europe’s Jews in that era, it also holds many surprises and adds new shadings and nuances to the historical record of Nazi Germany and its Jewish population. (See “Between the Lines”)

And as the two humanities scholars helped to tease out the rich narrative contained in the biology professor’s family letters (and also in other family letters, diaries, and interviews with living relatives), the three women formed a close and unexpected relationship—with one another, and with the subjects of the book.

“I think [Boehling and Larkey] know more about my family than I do,” observes Ostrand-Rosenberg.

A Box of Letters

The first brown cardboard box of letters that she found held as many questions as answers about Ostrand-Rosenberg’s family history. But her family’s circumstances left her largely in the dark. Her 91-year-old father was preparing to move to a retirement community mere months after her mother had been placed in an Alzheimer’s care facility.

Feeling somewhat overwhelmed by her discovery, Ostrand-Rosenberg shared her findings with colleagues. Phyllis Robinson, a fellow professor of biology, knew Boehling from her work on UMBC’s Gender and Women Studies Coordinating Committee and suggested the historian as a possible resource. Boehling’s areas of academic research include the Holocaust, and she has written a book – A Question of Priorities: Democratic Reforms and Economic Recovery in Postwar Germany (Berghahn) – on the American occupation of Germany.

When Ostrand-Rosenberg and Boehling talked about the letters, it turned out to be fortuitous timing. Deborah Gayle ’02, M.A. historical studies, a trained archivist studying with Boehling, was seeking a meaningful thesis project. Gayle organized the initial set of over 100 letters, photocopied them on acid-free paper and then entered them into a database. To complete her historical studies master’s project, Gayle also prepared a narrative based on the English-language letters and her research on the Holocaust with input from Ostrand-Rosenberg.

Gayle’s work on the letters gave Ostrand-Rosenberg something tangible to share with cousins as far away as Chile and Israel. “When Sue shared the letters with her cousins, they decided they really wanted more,” Boehling recalls.

The cousins also dug out family letters in their possession from the same time period, and the aggregation of family information made Boehling consider writing a book based on the letters. But as she was deeply entrenched in a new study on denazification in postwar Germany, she hesitated to take on another book project by herself.

Enter Uta Larkey. Her husband, Edward Larkey, a professor of modern languages and linguistics at UMBC, had briefly attended graduate school with Boehling. The two scholars lost contact but later found themselves as colleagues at UMBC in 1989, at which point they co-organized a conference on German unification at the university and later team-taught a seminar on culture in Nazi Germany. Occasionally, Boehling socialized with Uta, a native of the former East Germany.

During one of those informal get-togethers, Boehling shared her interest in the letters. “When I talked to Uta about a possible book project, I was thinking out loud. She was starting to do Holocaust storytelling,” Boehling says. “We decided to do it [the book] together.”

Correspondence Course

Co-authorship on the project made sense, given that both women shared a professional interest in the Holocaust. But they did come to the project with different research perspectives and skills.

“Uta came to this project as a non-historian,” recalls Boehling. “She was teaching a Holocaust film and culture course. As a historian, I was learning to be a more creative writer, as she was learning to be more of a historian.”

Blending talents took time, but Boehling and Larkey worked carefully to create a book that would present the family’s personal history within its historical context.

“The voice [of the book] came together through many revisions. After quite a while, we could hear each other’s voice,” Larkey says. The materials from which the authors worked grew significantly as they dove into the project. The authors gleaned information from family diaries and journals; conducted interviews with living relatives; and re-traced the family’s footsteps in Altenessen, the German suburb of Essen where Ostrand-Rosenberg’s mother lived until she immigrated to the United States.

But the letters – personal, eloquent, and hand-written, sometimes several pages long – remained at the heart of the enterprise. “These were not just quick, email-type things. These were real letters,” says Ostrand-Rosenberg.

The vast majority of the letters were written between 1938, when Ostrand-Rosenberg’s mother emigrated from Germany, and 1947. There were scores of letters between her parents and correspondence between Ostrand-Rosenberg’s mother and her grandmother, Selma Kaufmann, her grandmother’s sister, Henny Kaufmann, and with her mother’s siblings: Lotti and Kurt.

The letters provide first-hand accounts of how the family was affected by the political unrest that entered their lives with the rise of the Nazi regime. They also detail the family’s fears about World War II and urgent negotiations over obtaining visas for family members to emigrate from Germany during the war. The letters also give insight into Selma and Henny’s experience as two of the first female business owners in a suburb of Essen (it was highly unusual in that era for women to own businesses), as well as the eventual closure of their business as the Nazi regime passed more and more laws discriminating against Germany’s Jews.

Sorting through the massive amount of correspondence was an enormous task. Ostrand-Rosenberg, Boehling, and Larkey copied the letters together, and collectively built upon the database that Deborah Gayle had begun.

“We had some 600 letters to work with,” Boehling recalls. “One spring break, (Uta and I) spent the whole time going through the letters.”

“We stood at the copy machine at UMBC for hours, copying letters,” Larkey recalls.

Not an Ordinary Research Project

The grunt work of collecting, sorting and copying letters – and pursuing their context through other avenues – yielded a useful and unique contribution to Holocaust scholarship. But it also became a richly personal and moving experience for the researchers and for the woman who first set them on the trail of her family history.

“When I would read a particularly emotional letter, I would find myself in tears,” acknowledges Boehling, who grew so close to the book project she said she began having dreams about its subjects.

A number of the letters are indeed heartbreaking, such as this one that Ostrand-Rosenberg’s grandmother Selma wrote to a friend from a so-called “communal camp” in Cologne in 1942:

Now our fate has also been decided. We will have to move into the barracks on 18 February. I am hoping for a little reprieve (Galgenfrist), but all living quarters have to be vacated by the end of the month. You can imagine our mood, I don’t want to say more about that, but hope that now one won’t lose the nerve to survive this time. Only the hope that it will get better for us…

The research project also galvanized and inspired Ostrand-Rosenberg’s family. Gideon Sella, Ostrand-Rosenberg’s first cousin and a photographer in Tel Aviv, photographed Selma’s letters, then ripped them apart and artistically arranged them into an oversized collage.

Larkey felt “overwhelmed” when Sella shared his artwork—both by the powerful statement it made, and by seeing the handwriting that she had worked with so extensively. Fittingly, the cover of the book contains a piece of Sella’s collage.

Ostrand-Rosenberg feels gratitude at having the story that began with a brown cardboard box told at last. “I will be forever indebted to Rebecca and Uta for giving me what happened,” she says. “I never would have known it otherwise.”

Boehling also sees the book not only as a scholarly endeavor, but as a recovery of family memory. “I think the book won’t be just for her [Ostrand-Rosenberg], but for her children and grandchildren, as a way of getting to know that part of the family that none of them ever shared.”

Kevin Cepelak ’05, political science, has a job that comes with a pass that gets him into any Major League Baseball (MLB) park. And when he gets to his office near New York City’s Grand Central Station each day, he rubs elbows with former greats of the game and a chance to work with former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents and former New York City Police Department investigators. And he spends his days compiling reports that help MLB officials tackle problem issues in professional sports ranging from steroids to gambling.

Cepelak’s work as an analyst for MLB’s Department of Investigations – professional baseball’s internal watchdog on a variety of issues involving the sport’s integrity – is heady and somewhat surprising stuff for a recent UMBC graduate. After all, the sport that Cepelak played as a Retriever from 2002 through 2005 involved sticks, not bats.

“I never thought in a million years that I’d go from lacrosse to working in baseball,” says Cepelak over lunch at an Italian restaurant near MLB’s Park Avenue headquarters.

The MLB department where Cepelak works as an analyst is a key element in professional baseball’s strong renaissance in recent years. Starting with a 232-day player strike that shut down the 1994 playoffs and World Series, and continuing with a string of scandals involving performance-enhancing drugs that tarnished historic achievements (including wildly-popular pursuits of home run records by athletes including sluggers Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds), pro baseball suffered a number of self-inflicted wounds over more than a decade.

The biggest step in the turnaround was a 2007 report on performance-enhancing drugs initiated by MLB commissioner Bud Selig and authored by diplomat and former U.S. Senator George Mitchell. Not only did the “Mitchell Report” help clear the air, but in 2008, Selig acted on the report’s recommendation that baseball create an independent investigations unit to help police the game.

“The main objective of our department is to protect the integrity of the game,” says Cepelak, whose portfolio ranges from diving into MLB’s database to compile research for probes into performance-enhancing drugs and gambling to helping players navigate the increasingly complex and sticky issues of social media such as Facebook and Twitter. He also creates regular reports for the department on broader trends in drug use and gambling across professional sports.

“I enjoy it a lot,” says Cepelak. “The job changes every day. No one case is like another case.”

After graduation from UMBC, Cepelak worked in local government on Long Island for county legislator Jon Cooper as he worked on a master’s degree in criminal justice from Boston University. When the job posting for his current position came onto his radar, Cepelak leapt at the opportunity to work for Major League Baseball.

“I always wanted to work on the investigative side of things,” he says, “whether it be in law enforcement or compliance.” Cepelak also relishes the opportunity to be mentored by a team of seasoned professionals put together by the league to police the game that includes former FBI and New York City Police Department investigators.

“These guys were all-stars at their jobs,” observes Cepelak. “They are the best of the best.”

Sports have always been a big part of Cepelak’s life, and his memories of UMBC center largely on the fellowship that he felt with his fellow athletes – in lacrosse and in other sports – at the university.

“Lacrosse was my big thing,” recalls Cepelak. “UMBC athletics was like one big family. You get to know the people not just in your sport but in other sports. You party together. You see each other on campus. There’s a camaraderie and great friendship that lasts over four years.”

Cepelak cites UMBC’s men’s lacrosse coach Don Zimmerman as a mentor during his UMBC years, and adds that the university’s focus on the “student” part of the student-athlete was a foundation for his success.

“Being a Division I athlete, you have to be focused and prepared to handle the academics and also playing your sport all year round,” he says. “And usually how well you did in academics reflected how well you did on the field.”

While Cepelak is understandably tight-lipped about professional baseball’s sensitive internal investigations, he does mention that the Dominican Republic’s baseball industry is much of his work and that of the department. Steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs are largely unregulated in that country, he observes, and young players are often exploited by unscrupulous trainers and other professional scouts.

“You can get steroids over the counter,” Cepelak notes. “And you have trainers down there who are injecting players [with them], and the players don’t know what they’re being injected with.”

— Richard Byrne ’86

The academic landscape is perpetually shifting, and UMBC is reshaping existing departments and introducing innovative new programs to stay ahead of those changes. The transformations often bring opportunity as well – especially in UMBC’s ability to attract talented researchers.

Two recent changes – a merger in the College of Engineering and Information Technology to create a new Chemical, Biochemical, and Environmental Engineering Department, and the introduction of a new interdisciplinary Asian Studies major – offer new vistas for Upal Ghosh, currently an associate professor and graduate program director in the department of civil and environmental engineering and Meredith Oyen, an assistant professor of history.

Ghosh arrived at UMBC nine years ago, and researches the environmental effects of toxic chemicals. Oyen, who studies U.S./China relations, arrived in September 2010. UMBC Magazine talked with them about the curricular changes and their own research.

Why come to work and teach at UMBC?

Upal Ghosh: I was a research associate and lecturer at Stanford University. What attracted me was that I was called in to start a new department. So that was a challenge, and somewhat intimidating at that stage of my career. But I thought it was an opportunity… to address emerging environmental problems in the field. It’s always difficult to change an established department. Here, we were starting from scratch, buying new equipment and had a clean slate to build new laboratories. It really gave me a feeling of excitement.

Meredith Oyen: What was appealing to me was that they were already talking about the Asian Studies program. It had been in the works for a long time. And what that means for me is that I get to have one foot in each field. I get to teach U.S. history. I get to teach U.S. diplomatic relations. But I also get to teach about Asia as well.

How will the new programs advance your own professional aspirations and research?

Upal Ghosh: Two opportunities come up with this merger. The first is that we can do something that we have not done: create an undergraduate program with an environmental focus. That’s very exciting, especially because there is such great demand. Industry wants graduates with an environmental engineering degree. And there is great demand from the students themselves, too… Students are smart. They know what they want to do, based on job prospects and what excites them in life and in pursuing a career.

My personal motivation in all this is that it brings me full circle. I started off as a chemical engineer and got interested in the environmental field and applied chemical engineering principles to my research, but I’ve been doing that in a civil engineering department. This brings me back in track more closely with my chemical engineering roots.

Meredith Oyen: One thing that excites me about the Asian Studies program is the focus on Asian languages and on taking them as an undergraduate. My greatest regret as an undergraduate looking back is that I didn’t take Asian languages until I got to grad school. If students have an interest in Asia – in industry or in NGOs or in government – having an exposure to its languages and its history and its economics and its politics is very important.

Before coming to UMBC, I taught for two years at the Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies, and much of what they were doing was training up the American half of the program in Chinese language and culture and history – so that they can do anything China-related. That’s my hope for this program as well.

I see my own research – U.S./China relations – as a field that’s forward-looking and backward-looking. There is a long history in U.S./China relations, and that has a lot of implications for the future. I am looking forward to incorporating my own research into teaching U.S./East Asian relations.

— Richard Byrne ’86

With Dr. Jay Freyman, Associate Professor, Department of Ancient Studies

Picture yourself trapped on a desert island. What book or books would keep you best occupied for, say, the rest of your life? Dr. Jay Freyman’s answer is simple: The Oxford English Dictionary (or OED for short). At a time when fewer and fewer of us are cognizant of the history of the words that surround us, Freyman argues that this hefty tome (or the two-volume shrunken print version with magnifying glass) teaches not only the story of human language, but of humanity itself.

English is a hodgepodge of languages – some of them ancient tongues no longer in active use. Dig into the foundations – as each entry of the OED does – and you discover that these languages live on in our own.

Aside from burying your nose in a multivolume dictionary, Freyman has some other easy ways to reconnect the English of the 21st Century – and those who speak it – to its roots in history.

— Jenny O’Grady

Step 1:
Embrace Your Alma Mater

If you graduated from UMBC in the last five years or so, you likely sang the school’s alma mater. You also likely framed your diploma, hung it on the wall – and forgot about what it says. But Freyman says the language used in academia – and the fine print of your degree – is a link between old-school language and the higher education of today.

“The words alma mater in Latin mean ‘nourishing mother,’” says Freyman, who points to other Latin phrases such as in loco parentis (or “in the place of the parent”) as indicators of the university’s role as a parent, of sorts, who teaches, guides and protects the young academic.

Upon graduation, the diploma declares levels of achievement, including magna cum laude and others indicating levels of “high praise.”

“I believe most people are familiar with the terms, but not necessarily aware of what they mean,” says Freyman. “Even so, they know it sounds like an honor, it sounds good…and you know you’ve done something special to have earned it.”

Step 2:
Be (Smartly) Entertained

Sometimes, a society has so much entertainment at its fingertips, it can be difficult to choose how to spend a Wednesday evening. Not surprisingly, some choices are better for the brain – and for our purpose of exploring ancient words and ideals.

Choosing to read a book or to see a live performance like a play can feel like a step back in time. Reading a book allows you make connections between words of the past and present in a way that humans have done since ancient Egypt. And watching a play brings you in touch with centuries-old words in a way that nothing else can. Even reality television.

“It’s simply incredible to watch a play,” says Freyman. “You become a part of it. It makes you think. There’s nothing like it.”

Step 3:
Embrace Ancient Ideals

If you want to truly appreciate the ancients, you should probably try thinking like them, too. That way, if someone asks, “Why should I care about old words and ideas?” you can prepare yourself with a few answers.

“A society needs to challenge and treasure memory,” says Freyman. With the Internet at the ready with answers to everyday questions, we just don’t commit as much information to memory as citizens of the past did. Dissolving the link between memory and knowledge means we can miss lessons the past wants to teach us.

“Memory is like a muscle. If you don’t use it, it atrophies, you lose it,” he says. “Without it, we forget what brought us to where we are today. We are in danger of losing so much.”

Another ancient ideal worth adopting: improving the mind benefits the individual, which benefits society.

“If you have an idea of what a human being was meant to be…well, that’s an end in itself,” he says. “This is very corny, and it won’t sell…but that’s the best reason in the world. It simply makes you a better human being.”

* * * * *

What’s in a name?

Having a degree from UMBC is one thing, but knowing the proper usage of the word “alumni” will make you seem extra smart.

The word alumnus is used to refer to one male graduate; alumna refers to one female graduate. The word alumni is used when referring to a group of male graduates, however it is also used as a collective term for alumni of both genders. Alumnae is used in referring to a group of exclusively female graduates.

Watch our video to see these words put to use by UMBC’s on-campus alumni!

MERGERS AND MAJORS

When it comes to shifting tides in disciplines from the social sciences to the humanities to engineering, UMBC’s academic leadership and its scholars aren’t standing still. They’re exploring new vistas that respond to the challenges of our moment.

The growing importance of Asia in world affairs, for instance, has led the university to create a new interdisciplinary Asian Studies major, minor and certificate program. The effort was spearheaded by professor of Japanese and East Asian history Constantine Vaporis, who has pursued the new program since 1993 and finally achieved his goal.

“What seemed like a prohibitively expensive program to create in 1993 has become far more affordable today, due to things like the strategic hiring of professors with expertise in Asian affairs over the past few years,” says Vaporis.

Melding disciplines into a coherent course of study in Asian affairs was key. “We wanted the major to be broad-based and interdisciplinary in nature, and to strike a balance between language and area study,” observes Vaporis. “This entails a bit of a balancing act, which is why the major is structured the way it is, with five electives in at least three different disciplines (in addition to the two required courses and minimum two years language study). We felt that this broad-based curriculum would prepare students best for the various professional paths related to Asia, such as advanced academic research, international relations, international business and trade, government service and international law.”

And as America’s citizens, its government and its industry become increasingly concerned with climate change and its effects, turning the good intentions of sustainability into concrete achievements requires a new generation of engineers to assess environmental challenges and solve them.

To help train that generation, and to help them get started sooner in their academic careers, the College of Engineering and Information Technology has merged its chemical and biochemical engineering department and its civil and environmental engineering departments into a new chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering department.

Julia M. Ross, professor and chair of the new department, says the merger “allowed us to build on the existing research synergy and develop an undergraduate track in environmental engineering and sustainability that leads to the B.S. in chemical engineering.”

Combining the departments, she adds, also “provided an opportunity for growth and increased stability.”

That research collaboration is key, continues Ross. “In the former civil and environmental engineering department,” she says, “much of the environmental research being done overlapped core areas in chemical engineering such as fluid mechanics, mass transfer, reaction kinetics and separation processes. Similarly, the research in chemical and biochemical engineering focused on bio-related areas, often on problems related to these same core areas in chemical engineering.”

Ross says that the new department will “target research areas at the interface between environmental engineering and biochemical/biomedical engineering – environmental microbiology, environmental chemistry, environmentally sustainable energy processes, biofuels and multi-scale modeling.”

— Richard Byrne ’86

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

Commercials will tell you to blame your cell phone carrier for problems with reception. They’re partly right, though location also plays a role — a Metro train might not be the best place for a heart-to-heart with a loved one.

But a seldom acknowledged source of bad reception comes from a basic challenge of signal processing. Cell phones convert data from two distinct channels of radio waves into information that can be used and understood. The same signal processing challenge applies for a wide range of devices used in communications, medicine and other fields.

For decades, engineers made various assumptions to simplify the data so they could design devices efficiently. They traded clarity for speed, reducing costs but also leaving us with garbled phone calls and reduced precision for some medical tests.

Now researchers at UMBC are receiving wide recognition for describing a mathematical technique that allows researchers to avoid this tradeoff.

“People have been making simplifying assumptions that don’t make good use of the data,” explains Tülay Adali, a professor of computer science and electrical engineering. “With the framework we developed, researchers don’t have to do that.”

The technique is not technically new. The researcher D.H. Brandwood described similar ideas in a 1983 paper. But Adali describes a “lightbulb” moment in 2006 when she was discussing that paper with Hualiang Li ’08, Ph.D., electrical eningeering, who has since become a research assistant professor at UMBC.

The two researchers realized the technique could be applied broadly to process a range of data without having to simplify those assumptions.

“People had missed that one elegant, simple point,” Adali says.

Subsequent research at UMBC linked the technique to work published in the early 20th century by the Austrian mathematician Wilhelm Wirtinger. Adali and Li, along with Mike Novey ’09, Ph.D., computer science, and French researcher Jean-Francois Cardoso, described the technique and developed a framework for applying it to a range of problems in “Complex ICA Using Nonlinear Functions,” a paper published in IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing in 2008.

The four researchers were honored in May with the 2010 IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award, presented in Prague at the 2011 International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing. Given annually, the award recognizes up to six recent papers with significant impact on the field.

While cell phone reception problems frustrate many consumers on a daily basis, the same challenges present themselves in satellite communications, acoustics, radar, medical imaging and other fields. Adali’s research now focuses on an analysis of medical data from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and other sources. Researchers often use fMRI to see what is happening in subjects’ brains while they are at rest or performing tasks such as driving or solving problems.

Applying Wirtinger’s techniques to analyze fMRI data, Adali and her colleagues have shown, on average, a 20 percent improvement in sensitivity detecting brain activity. The technique also does a better job highlighting which brain regions are involved in certain tasks, providing insights that can be used to more accurately diagnose mental disorders.

It’s a discovery that translates into shorter, more accurate tests and, for the broad field of signal processing, a more effective and efficient way to use data.

— Anthony Lane

BUILDING A TRADITION

The path to preserving Maryland’s traditional arts and culture sometimes begins when a jazz musician walks through an unlocked door in UMBC’s Fine Arts building.

One of Baltimore’s master jazz musicians, Lafayette Gilchrist ’92, Africana studies, was taking a summer class before his freshman year when he discovered that the building’s piano rooms were left open in the evening. One night, he finally gave in to temptation.

“The very first piano I played was this nine foot Steinway grand piano,” recalls Gilchrist, who had taken no formal lessons before coming to UMBC. “People think I’m lying when I tell them this, but the piano was in a concert hall, all the lights were off and there was a spotlight on it,” he said. “I fell in love. The music moved directly from my body to the instrument and into the air.”

Gilchrist audited composition classes during his time at UMBC and he was even hired to play at campus events. His musical passion and skill also eventually led him to Maryland Traditions – a statewide program that supports efforts to find, share, preserve and sustain traditional arts and culture.

Over the past academic year, Maryland Traditions has forged an exploratory partnership with UMBC that has not only brought Gilchrist back to campus for a March 30 event centered on introducing the program’s artists to the UMBC community, but created classes and events throughout the year.

The university installed Elaine Eff, the program’s co-director, as a folklorist-in-residence in the American studies department. In that role, Eff has connected UMBC students with internship opportunities, created a film series for campus and co-taught a humanities scholars class on Maryland’s traditions with Nicole King, an assistant professor of American studies.

“Elaine is such a force,” observes King. “She’s bringing the energy of the public programming realm here to the university.”

One of Maryland Traditions’ cornerstones is a Master-Apprentice program in which Gilchrist has been working. He first served as an apprentice to jazz saxophonist Carl Grubbs, and now Gilchrist is a mentor himself – advising pianist Ethan Simon (son of The Wire’s creator David Simon.)

Making strong connections is a key to the collaboration’s success. King says that Eff’s connections are invaluable to an American studies department, which has aspirations (especially with the recent establishment of its Orser Center for the Study of Place, Community & Culture at UMBC) to become a center for Baltimore area community studies.

“If we have these relationships with outside organizations and people,” King adds, “we don’t have to re-invent the wheel every time we go to work with the community.”

Eff says that the benefits of UMBC’s own pre-existing networks can’t be overstated. The university’s reach has allowed her to recruit interns for Maryland Traditions, inspire students to turn an analytic eye honed in campus classrooms to their own communities, and tap into the cultural knowledge of UMBC’s ethnic student organizations.

Who knows? Eff may find the next Lafayette Gilchrist practicing in the Fine Arts building after hours. “Every accomplishment we have here has tremendous value in building towards the future,” she concludes.

— Chelsea Haddaway

WE ARE THE ’80s?

Those who study 20th century America can point to many decades as culturally pivotal time spans. The boom and bust Jazz Age of the 1920s. The “Greatest Generation” and its role in World War II and the Cold War dominated the 1940s and 1950s. And the vast upheavals of the 1960s have made it perhaps the most written-about decade in all of American history.

But what about the 1980s – which began with the election of Ronald Reagan and ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall? The decade has attracted the attention of Kimberly R. Moffitt, assistant professor of American studies, and Duncan A. Campbell, lecturer in American studies, who have collaborated on an edited collection of essays: The 1980s: A Critical and Transitional Decade (Lexington Books).

Campbell points out that Reagan was the decade’s key political figure – and that with “the 30th anniversary of his inauguration and centenary of his birth, there’s been a bit of a Reaganesque revival” that is not limited to conservatives who shared the Gipper’s views.

But as a skeptic of the “great man” school of history, Campbell and his co-editor Moffitt also “seek to question just how much of what is classified as ’80s culture could be attributed to Reagan in either a positive or negative sense…. Reagan was very much a product of his time and the circumstances preceding and surrounding it.”

The essays collected by Moffitt and Campbell span the era’s politics and the culture, and the book teems with pieces that tackle the politics of AIDS and apartheid, as well as the triumphs of MTV and Bill Cosby.

Moffitt says that the significance of major black artists such as Cosby and Michael Jackson was that they “were able to broaden our understanding of this culture in ways that resembled the familiar for most Americans; hence their successful crossover appeal. This was a major shift or transition from previous decades in which we saw most black performers catering to all-black audiences or television programs and films with majority slack casts that featured the downtrodden, poverty-stricken, and racially segregated realities of a people.”

These successes, as well as the pervasive influence of hip-hop, she adds, “is paramount in that black culture received a platform, even in the midst of the conservatism of Reagan, to be seen by America (and the world) in a new perspective and embraced as instrumental to the creation of much of the pop culture of the ’80s and beyond.”

The ’80s also saw the rise of the machine that now dominates our lives, says Campbell. “Our wired world simply wouldn’t have taken the form it has without the personal computer,” he observes. “Few people used computers either at work or for play prior to 1980. By 1989 most middle-class Americans almost certainly did. We’re still in the middle of this revolution – and thus for the end results, in the words of Zhou Enlai on the French Revolution, it’s too soon to tell.”

— Richard Byrne ’86

STEPPIN’ WITH A STAR

Rap legend Snoop Dogg can usually be found selling out huge venues such as Madison Square Garden or the L.A. Coliseum, so the hip hop star’s late April performance at the UMBC’s Retriever Activities Center was a unique event. What made it even more special? Step performers from a few UMBC fraternities and sororities can now brag that they opened for Snoop Dogg.

UMBC Greek organizations entertained the 2,500 people waiting for the headliner with a step show competition encompassing styles from shimmy to stomp. UMBC’s Kappa Alpha Psi walked away with top honors at the show by combining both styles and breaking out their fraternity’s traditional “cane step” – giving them a dimension that none of the other performers possessed.

Senior Kappa Alpha Psi stepper Bakari Smith credits demonstrating a variety of moves as the key element in their winning performance. “We just thought a complete show that touched all aspects of the scorecard would give us a good chance to take the crown,” he says. “When we slowed it down with our kick, then [our] shimmy, I heard the screams and knew right then we killed the show.”

You might think opening for a legend would make student performers nervous, but Smith says sharing the spotlight with Snoop Dogg provided more incentive than inhibition.

“There was a lot of pressure, but we used it to keep us pumped up to perform well,” says Smith. “Our fraternity’s fundamental purpose is achievement, so we are always under pressure to perform at a high level – regardless of the endeavor.”

— Corey Johns ’11

MIND OVER MATTER

The tough-minded attitude that pitcher Jay Witasick ’93, learned on the way to the major leagues served him well during a 12-year career there – and informs his work these days with TWC Sports Management in Timonium.

“I was mentally tough,” says Witasick. “No matter what happened in the game, I was ready the next day. When the game was over, the game was over. Even today in business, I never let any one game or one out define a whole career.”

As a transfer to UMBC as a rising sophomore, Witasick posted a 7-5 record for the Retrievers over two years. He was 4-1 with four complete games in 1993 and finished second in the nation with 12.3 strikeouts per game. He signed a professional contract with the St. Louis Cardinals, who picked him in the second round of the 1993 draft.

Witasick finally broke into the major leagues with the Oakland A’s in 1996 and pitched for seven teams over 12 years. A starter early in his pro career, he then shifted to the bullpen – from which he made 349 of his 405 appearances and retired with a 32-41 record and a 4.64 ERA.

Today, Witasick guides a new generation of players – both at TWC and as an assistant baseball coach at Harford Community College. Players under his tutelage benefit from the experiences of his battling baseball career, but his own memories center on the joys of that life in Major League Baseball.

“I enjoyed every day I played in the big leagues,” says Witasick, who played in two World Series. “I felt like a kid for 15 years straight. It’s fun. That’s the way it should be.”

— Jeff Seidel ’85

GAG REELS

Aspiring actors and videographers often yearn to be discovered. But three recent UMBC students and alumni aren’t waiting around for a big break. They’ve made their own success by collaborating on a comedy web series called Monday Wednesday Friday (www.facebookwastaken.com).

The skits are performed by former UMBC student Darrell Britt-Gibson (who also appeared as “O-Dogg” in HBO’s The Wire) and Joe King ’09, mechanical engineering, and produced by Tal Levitas ’08, political science and media and communications studies. Each episode is a freestanding story, but there are running themes to the sketches, with Britt-Gibson and King appearing as pilots, sportscasters, CIA agents and even wild animals.

“For the animal shoots, we had to be in make-up for twelve hours,” quips King.

The team for Monday Wednesday Friday is based largely in Los Angeles, the better to be close to the entertainment industry. The series started in January and recently wrapped up its third season of videos, but they are already drawing in other UMBC alumni to the process – including Adam Kurtz ’09, visual arts, who designed the show’s Tumblr website.

The Monday Wednesday Friday trio is also garnering kudos from even better-known UMBC alumni such as Ace of Cakes star Duff Goldman ’97, history, who gave the show a shout out in a recent appearance at Auburn University.

Levitas says that the Monday Wednesday Friday team wants “to create sharp, funny comedy that is written, acted and produced well. We don’t want to present slow, long performances and we’re really serious about tackling this in a new modern medium.”

— Monica Berron ’12

STERN COMPETITORS

In early May, UMBC invested in the recent success of its women’s basketball program by signing Phil Stern to a new six-year contract that will keep him coaching at the RAC through the 2016-17 season.

UMBC’s women’s hoops team has just completed one of its best seasons in recent memory – vastly exceeding preseason expectations in which the team was forecast to finish fifth in the America East conference.

Stern’s squad won the conference’s regular season title and accumulated 20 wins for the first time since the 1985-86 season. He also led the team to its second post-season berth – a spot in the Women’s National Invitational Tournament – in the last five years. (The Retrievers stormed into the NCAA Women’s Tournament in 2006.)

This year’s overachieving squad featured senior forward Meghan Colabella (who reached 600 career rebounds) and senior point guard Michele Brokans (who tallied more than 300 career assists). Next year’s prospects may be even brighter, as the team will be led by a talented tandem including center Topé Obajolu, forward Erin Brown and guard Michelle Kurowski. Kurowski finished the season ranked sixth in the NCAA with an .894 free throw percentage – a school record and the third-best ever in the America East. She was also named as America East Scholar-Athlete for women’s basketball.

Continuing that combination of skill and smarts is one of Stern’s highest priorities. “We will continue to bring in quality young ladies,” he says, “who embody the true definition of the term ‘student-athlete.’”

— Richard Byrne ’86

Shannon Young, who received her M.F.A. from UMBC in 2008, is one of several area artists included in “Eat Your Words,” the second exhibit presented by the Porch Project in Washington, D.C.

According to the Porch Project site, “Taken together, these artists’ works will help viewers examine their own complex relationships with food, and how the acts of preparing and consuming a meal link us all to each other and the larger world.”

There will be an opening reception for the show on May 21, and an artist discussion on June 4. For more information, click here.

You can see more of Shannon’s work at http://shannyoung.wordpress.com.