Starbux

Starbucks would love to hear your thoughts. That’s what the customer comment card says. And Christine Ferrera ’10, M.F.A. imaging and digital arts, took them up on their offer.

“I asked myself: ‘what would I naturally say to a friend?’ and began writing,” she said.

Fast forward five years, and you’ll find nearly 2,000 letters from Ferrera to Starbucks – one for every day of every year, ranging from fun and quirky to highly sensitive. In one, she asks, “Has anyone ever fallen in love at Starbucks?” In another, she discusses her pride in buying a new couch. In many she writes about the daily struggles of being an artist.

The project spurred when Ferrera was living in Richmond and taking classes at Virginia Commonwealth University. She was enrolled in an endurance art class and had to undertake a project for one year. The class was asked to do something out of their element, and since Ferrera was a painter, she chose writing.

 “I never placed rules for what I’d write. The only loose rule I had was that this wasn’t going to be some kind of political statement,” she said. “After the year was over, I just started doing it out of habit.”

Within a month, Ferrera started receiving generic replies from Starbucks. Some enclosed coupons. But after six, they stopped sending them. Time went on, Ferrera kept writing and would hear from Starbucks sporadically. They would respond to many of her questions related to the business (saying yes – that some people had fallen in love at the coffee shop). But mostly, the replies were short.

After two years of writing, Ferrera moved to Korea. It was the only time she had to pay for postage. She didn’t hear from them that year, assuming they had lost her address. But when she returned to the states, a surprise was waiting her: a personal letter from a customer service representative at Starbucks, addressing her by name.

“The letter was so direct, so confrontational,” she said. “But it was nice and obvious that she had something to say to me. She had been reading my letters for years and had been touched by them.”

Although Ferrera was appreciative of the reply, part of the cycle was broken.

“Before, the project served as a diary for me, and it was almost like no one was reading,” she said. “This letter assured me that someone had been reading, that my words were out there.”

But that didn’t stop Ferrera. Her daily routine persisted, and she found herself continuing to write – despite knowing that someone was actually reading. Although she doesn’t want to be only recognized for her letters to Starbucks, she notes how important the project is in terms of today’s art.

“Starbucks – and other corporations – are part of our every day landscape. Artists need to react to the times in which they live,” she said. “There may be some kind of shift eventually, and maybe I’ll know when to stop writing the letters. But for now, it is part of my routine, and I’ll keep doing it until there’s a reason to stop.”

Ferrera has considered publishing her letters on a Web site or in a book and is currently weighing her options. 

The Starbux diary project will be featured at the Imaging and Digital Arts M.F.A. Thesis Show, held April 8-24, at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture. Ferrera’s letters will be on display, and she will perform a reading of her letters on April 21, 10:30 a.m., and April 22, 3 p.m, both at CADVC. Work by six upcoming graduates will also be featured including videos, installations and live performances.

For more information about the show, click here.

Ferrera also did a reading of her letters at Baltimore’s Stoop Storytelling Series, an event that gathers seven storytellers who tell stories for seven minutes. Click here to listen.

Click on the thumbnails below to read a selection of Christine’s letters:

(4/2/10)

Chess Powerhouse

Continuing its dominating sweep of collegiate chess tournaments, UMBC’s powerhouse chess team won a record sixth “Final Four of College Chess” April 11 in Brownsville, Texas, at the 2010 President’s Cup.

The annual President’s Cup tournament, which falls just days after the NCAA Division I Basketball Tournament Final Four, determines the top U.S. collegiate chess team in an equally intense round-robin sporting competition.

UMBC defeated University of Texas-Brownsville (UTB) by just half a point to clinch its sixth title in the tournament’s 10-year history. The tournament was hosted by UTB, a newcomer chess powerhouse whom UMBC defeated Dec. 30 to win the 2009 Pan-American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship (the Pan Am). UMBC has won or tied the Pan Am competition a record nine times in the past 14 years, more than any other college in the tournament’s history.

“UMBC had to bring their best game ever to win against the strongest field of chess teams ever assembled at any Final Four,” said UMBC Chess Director Alan Sherman. “(UMBC chess) team captain Sergey Erenburg and Leonid Kritz played amazingly to lead their team against such tough competition.”

Competition was so fierce, Sherman said, that UTB hired a top grandmaster consultant who in the months before the tournament helped the team prepare an opening trick designed specifically to trip-up Kritz, who is the highest rated college player in the Pan Am. The trap contributed to Kritz’s third round defeat, but a victory by Erenburg and a draw by UMBC player Sasha Kaplan clinched the team’s victory.

Collectively, the four teams fielded seven international grandmasters, one woman international grandmaster and 10 international masters. In third and fourth place respectively were Texas Tech University and the University of Texas, Dallas.

UMBC’s chess team players are full-time students first and chess players second, Sherman said. Three team players have earned perfect 4.0 grade point averages and team captain Sergey Erenburg is a candidate for valedictorian this May.
UMBC’s championship chess team: Leonid Kritz, a Grandmaster from Russia; Sergey Erenburg, a Grandmaster from Israel; Giorgi Margvelashvili, an International grandmaster-elect from the Republic of Georgia; Sasha Kaplan, an International Master from Israel; Sabina Foisor (alternate), a Woman International Grandmaster from Romania; UMBC Chess Coach Igor Epshteyn; and Associate Chess Director Sam Palatnik.

Listen to Alan Sherman discuss UMBC’s record victory on NPR’s nationally syndicated Tell Me More.

For more information on the tournament: www.collegechess.org.

(4/12/10)

Heritage of Excellence

The UMBC community mourns the passing of Albin Owings Kuhn, a lifelong farmer who rose through Maryland’s university system to become the founding chancellor of UMBC. Kuhn died of pneumonia at his Woodbine farm March 24 at the age of 94.

“Good gracious, we have so much to thank him for. He was a very special man and a giant, and we’re standing on the shoulders of that giant,” UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski III, said in a March 26 Baltimore Sun story about Kuhn.

“Dr. Kuhn was our biggest cheerleader. He believed in us. He’d call me up and tell me how proud he was of our work, and I’d get tears in my eyes,” Hrabowski said.

Kuhn was heavily involved in the initial planning, development, and construction of UMBC. A University of Maryland graduate (B.S., M.S., Ph.D.), he had been professor of agronomy and head of the agronomy department at what is now the University of Maryland College Park, and executive vice president of the University of Maryland, which included campuses in College Park, downtown Baltimore and the Eastern Shore.

In 1965, Kuhn was given the responsibility for creating UMBC as the newest member of the University of Maryland System. He and his family moved into one of the original farmhouses of the campus grounds. This small gray house became the command center – residence, office, architects’ and builders’ outpost, student and faculty way station. Its porch was the catalog center for the library’s nascent 20,000 volume collection. That farmhouse was later replaced by UMBC’s library, named after Kuhn.

Kuhn was officially chancellor of both UMBC and the University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB), a position he held from 1967 until the University’s second commencement in 1971. At that point, as each campus was acquiring individual leadership, he left UMBC to serve as chancellor of UMB.

History professor Joseph Tatarewicz, an old friend and admirer of Kuhn’s, said to the Baltimore Sun that Kuhn was, “Gregarious, yet self-effacing. He took to educational administration almost effortlessly, and by the early 1960s he was the perfect person to lead the development of a new campus, sorely needed due to the baby boomers’ entering college.”

Every year in his Commencement address, Hrabowski quotes the words Kuhn said to the first graduating class in 1970:

“If you bring to the future the same personal qualities and personal commitment you have brought to this campus as students, good and important things will happen to each of you, as well as to those around you … and the university community will be proud to have played a part in your life.”

In lieu of flowers, the Kuhn family suggests contributions to the Friends of the Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery at UMBC. Checks may be made payable to the UMBC Foundation and sent to Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery, Administrative Offices, UMBC, 1000 Hilltop Circle,  Baltimore, MD  21250.

Excerpt from 1994 interview with Albin Kuhn:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSfE7yCxcEQ

UMBC Heritage of Excellence video featuring interview outtakes with Albin Kuhn:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiL-_-Rlf8A

(4/6/10)

What’s in Your Dinner?

Where do UMBC graduate research and local high school students meet? Over slices of caribou.

Mix together graduate students from UMBC’s civil and environmental engineering department (CEE), samples of pike and caribou from the Arctic, and a handful of inquisitive high school students, and you get one big prize: The Best Poster Award at the annual meeting of the International Society for Risk Analysis (SRA). The SRA is more than your average high school science fair. This unique group of students was competing with other Ph.D. students at an internationally recognized competition. 

In 2009, Upal Ghosh, CEE associate professor and graduate program director, was already deep into a study with the Maryland Department of the Environment when he was approached by Julie Rogers, a Park High School teacher, about a partnership. Rogers was taking a trip to the Arctic Research Center and wanted to bring back a few wildlife samples for her students to analyze, but needed some help from the UMBC labs.

Piggy backing on the study already in progress with the UMBC CEE program, both sets of students combined forces. The high school students were responsible for designing the study (goals, questionnaire, plans for sample shipping) and getting approvals. In addition, they used the data generated from the samples to conduct a human health risk assessment. The UMBC graduate students were responsible for the lab work, analysis, data, and project oversight. All of this combined would help to determine if there were hazardous legacy chemicals present in Arctic samples. Legacy chemicals are ones that may take more than 30-40 years to enter into the food supply depending on how they move through the environment.  The Inuit tribes may be ingesting chemicals from wildlife that may have taken 40 years to get there, but might be immediately dangerous to their health.

Although the analysis found that there were no chemicals present in the samples of fish and caribou collected, both sets of students found the study especially rewarding. Ghosh is excited about an opportunity to continue to pursue research collaborations with his graduate school students and high school students. Piuly Paul, one of the CEE graduate students, was especially excited about the collaboration. Paul explains, “You could show the high schoolers what we do in a graduate lab. It was exciting to see the curiosity that you generate in them. ”

Through a combined learning experience, the UMBC graduate students were able to expand their study of the Chesapeake Bay fish to the arctic. The Park high-schoolers got to partake in research that won them a major award and observe real research students in a real lab. Josh Naiman, one of the Park High School seniors, says, “It was a rewarding experience working with grad school students.” He hasn’t officially decided if environmental science is where he is heading, but this experience has him strongly considering it.   

 While these collaborations provide great opportunities, it’s the efforts of these students to keep our waters, and dinner, safe that really matters.

(4/2/10)

Asian Influence

UMBC’s faculty experts on Asian cultures are extending the university’s reach across the Pacific.

Two books written by UMBC Faculty are currently being translated to Asian languages.  Tour of Duty: Samurai, Military Service in Edo, and the Culture of Early Modern Japan, is by Constantine Vaporis, professor of history, and examines the cultural aspects of Samurais’ tours of duty while in the employ of Japanese war lords.  That book is currently being translated to Japanese, and will be released in Japan in May.

Anna Shields, director of the honors college, also has a book in translation. Crafting a Collection: The Cultural Contexts and Poetic Practice of the Huajian ji, examines the social and literary origins of Chinese love song lyrics from the 10th Century and is being translated to Chinese.  The book was released in English in 2006, and will be released in China in 2011.

Neither author wrote their book thinking that it would be translated, and they agreed that the process is more complicated than simply handing their work over to the translator. “I have to track down the original source notes and interpret them for the translators,” said Vaporis. The English version of his book was released in 2008 and chosen as a Choice Outstanding Academic Title for 2009 by the Association of College and Research Libraries.

Shields pointed out that cultural as well as linguistic differences between her scholarship and Chinese norms complicate the process. “I take an approach that isn’t necessarily identical to the one that Chinese scholars would use, so I need to be sure that the particular perspective I use on a problem is correctly translated,” she said.

Maintaining the perspectives in these two books is crucial, because both authors look at their subject in a unique way. “There are lots of studies in Japan that look at [the tour] as a control mechanism, but none that look at it from a cultural perspective,” Vaporis said. Shields tackled an art form and period that has not been widely studied.

Both authors expect that the translated version of their book will be popular, because the subjects are familiar and interesting to the people where they will be released. “Think about how many books are published here on Shakespeare in a given year,” Shields explained.

In addition to reaching a Chinese audience through her scholarship, Shields will head to China this month to talk with high school students about attending UMBC. UMBC is also the home of Asian scholars; Warren Cohen, professor emeritus of history, recently released the fifth edition of his book America’s Response to China: A History of Sino-American Relations, and Ka-che Yip, professor of history, was named a 2010-2013 UMBC Presidential Research Professor for his work in modern Chinese history and public health.

“I think there are all kinds of opportunities for UMBC to begin building real connections in China,” Shields said.

(3/12/10)

High Hopes

Meghan “Meg” Colabella ’10, history, is about to do what few other athletes have done. She’ll be graduating within three years, all while playing on the basketball team, earning a 3.88 GPA (and writing a time-intensive capstone) and participating in a number of service projects.

Originally from Montclair, New Jersey, Colabella played basketball at an early age and up through high school. Recruited by UMBC, she chose the school not only because of the team but for UMBC’s strong academic stance on education. Although most of her time is taken up by basketball, she tries her hardest to engage in a number of activities.

“They key is not cutting anything but just prioritizing better,” she said. “I try hard not to procrastinate and really manage the important stuff.”

Prioritizing her studies in history helped Colabella earn recognition on America East’s five-member Scholar-Athlete team last season. This year, she’s working on a capstone paper with a cross-cultural look at the relationship between early France Jesuits and Native Americans. She hopes to continue these studies in graduate school at UMBC, where she will focus on China and the Middle East, all the while competing as a graduate student athlete in 2010-11.

“Meg has a great passion for both the game of basketball and her studies,” said Jessica Bernheim, assistant director of athletic communications. “She is always the first player on the court shooting around before each game, and when I see her around campus or even on road trips, she always has some sort of textbook or notebook with her. I know she has been working very hard to be able to graduate this May after just three years, and to be able to do that while also playing a sport with such a demanding schedule is extremely impressive.”

In addition to basketball and school work, Colabella is the basketball team’s representative to the Student-Athlete Advisory Council, and she’s in a number of honor societies, including the National Society of Collegiate Scholars, Sigma Alpha Lambda and Phi Kappa Phi. She’s also on the president’s scholarship list. Service is equally important to her, and she’s done a number of projects including helping out at My Sister’s Place Women’s Center, Race for the Cure, school visits, clinics and “safe trick or treat” and the Children’s Home.

Baltimore seemed like the perfect place for Colabella in terms of her sport, academics and service learning.

“It’s not a terribly big place, but it’s not too small either so there are plenty of opportunities,” Colabella. “I’ve had nothing but good experiences with the people I’ve met, and I’ve made some of my best friends through UMBC.”

Colabella has high hopes for the women’s basketball team.

“Things are looking pretty good for next year. Most players from this year’s team will be back, with four new people on the roster. It’s going to be a good season.”

(3/12/10)

Lucky Number Seven

The UMBC men’s swimming and diving team has won its seventh consecutive America East Championship and 13th straight conference title overall after finishing with 926.5 points Sunday, February 28, in Boston. The women finished second for the second year in a row, scoring 681 points.

“We are very proud of our men and women. They performed with confidence and pride,” said Head Coach Chad Craddock ’97, who took over at the helm of the swimming and diving teams in 2001. “Our men were the clear underdogs going into the meet and came out proving they are champions.  Our women’s determination made for a great competition. “

Senior Matt Mattingly broke the school record in the men’s 200 breast and earned silver in a time of 2:00.90, over four and a half seconds faster than his prelim time.

Junior Brad Reitz won the gold in the men’s 200 fly in an NCAA-provisional qualifying time of 1:47.81. Freshman Sandy Haibel earned the silver in a time of 1:51.94.

Sophomore Abbey McKenney broke the school record and earned gold in the women’s 100 free in an NCAA-provisional qualifying time of 50.17.

In their final events for UMBC, senior Tina Cantwell earned silver in the women’s 200 breast in 2:17.09, while fellow senior Tereza Kaplanova touched third in 2:18.74.

The Women’s Most Outstanding Rookie of the meet was awarded to Morrissette, who earned bronze in both the 200 and 400 IM and fourth in the 200 fly. UMBC’s coaching staff was named Co-Men’s Coaching Staff of the Year.

More information about the championships is online.

(3/1/10)

Science from the Start

An interest in science began early for Benyam Kinde ’10.

As a child, he spent weekends with his father, a veterinarian and microbiologist, performing necropsies (animal autopsies) in a lab. When his mother, dean of mathematics at San Bernardino College, couldn’t find a babysitter – she brought him into the classroom, and he performed basic math problems in the back. These moments had a considerable amount of influence on his career choice, said Kinde, but his experience afterward – specifically with UMBC’s Meyerhoff Scholars Program – transformed his early fascination into a research career. 

“Coming to UMBC was the best decision I could have made for a career as a reseacher,” said Kinde.

Born and raised in Southern California, Kinde learned about the Meyerhoff Program, which was established to increase diversity among future leaders in science, technology, engineering and related fields, from his brother Isaac Kinde ‘05, now a 5th year M.D./Ph.D. student at the Johns Hopkins University.

Since enrolling in the program, Benyam Kinde has been able to pursue research opportunities he hadn’t imagined – which are now leading him to Germany. This summer, he will attend the 60th Interdisciplinary Meeting of Nobel Laureates. Selected from a pool of more than 20,000, he’ll join 500 young researchers and network with leading scientists in the fields of medicine or physiology, physics and chemistry. Kinde was nominated to attend by Peter Agre, a medical doctor, professor and molecular biologist at Hopkins who was awarded the 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and received an honorary degree from UMBC in 2009.

“I’m excited to have been selected for such intellectual fellowship. This honor is a testament of the research opportunities and academic preparation available for UMBC students,” he said.

Kinde’s experience with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) has provided a solid background for his research. Under the guidance of Michael Summers, HHMI investigator and professor of chemistry and biochemistry, Kinde is conducting leading research on HIV, developing protocols that allow for the elicitation (drawing out) from large RNAs (similar to DNA, a molecule called ribonucleic acid). This research provides insight into the life cycle of the virus and an understanding about where the virus spreads.

“Dr. Summers is more than just a powerhouse in the field of NMR spectroscopy; he also finds the time to be a fantastic mentor to his students with an office door that is essentially always open,” Kinde said.

In addition to his research at HHMI, Kinde performs research at the University of Maryland, Baltimore, where he studies neurophysiology and the importance of circadian rhythm – which allows us to wake and sleep. He will continue his work deciding between combined-degree M.D./Ph.D. programs and leaning toward Johns Hopkins. Kinde plans to specialize in neurology and continue to conduct research in the field of neuroscience.

Active on the UMBC campus, Kinde belongs to the Golden Key International Honor Society (serving as president), Minority Access to Research Careers Undergraduate Student Training in Academic Research (MARC U STAR) and Getting Everyone to Unleash Potential (GET UP! – founding member). He also volunteers, tutoring genetics in the Department of Biological Sciences, among other activities.

(3/12/10)

Good to be Green

Walk past the marquee in The Commons, and you’ll see some new words on the board…. “The hero UMBC deserves. The one it needs. GREEN MAN.” This new mascot is recycling his way through campus, earning popularity, admiration and even respect from students. But the question everyone’s dying to know � who is he?

“He’s just like any mascot,” said Donna Anderson, manager of landscape and grounds in Facilities Management. “He can’t speak with you directly, and his identity will remain a secret until the end of the competition.”

Green Man is helping get the word out about the 2010 Recyclemania challenge, which began in January, and he’s not the only change with this year’s recycling initiative. Student organizations from all across campus are getting involved.

“Several organizations have committed to sponsoring activities throughout the eight weeks of the competition, and our team hopes to see everyone participate in those events,” said Anderson.

One of those activities is capturing Green Man’s presence on campus. If you spot him on campus, take a picture and send it to recycle@umbc.edu. A winner is chosen weekly, and that name will be entered to win a grand prize on March 27, the final day of Recyclemania. 

UMBC has had successful Recyclemania competitions in the past, and Green Man – and his team – are hoping to make this year the best yet. In 2009, the campus captured two second-place awards and was also among the six universities with improved scores with a nine-percent increase in recycled goods from 2007.

“Recycling is so important to this campus, because it helps to keep the campus clean, green and spend less money than if we send to the landfill,” said Anderson. “Recyclemania is a perfect opportunity to really stress the importance of this across campus.”

On Wednesday, March 10, Green Man and fellow students, faculty and staff marched in a parade in honor of Recyclemania. President Freeman Hrabowski marched along the parade route, which went from Albin O. Kuhn Library to the Retriever Activities Center. To see pictures from the event, visit the Sustainability Web site’s Flickr stream.

For more information on the competition, visit www.recyclemania.org.

(2/19/2010)

�Our Civic Voices� Gives Students Chance to Speak

College now feels attainable to students at Federal Hill Preparatory School in Baltimore, thanks to a UMBC afterschool program focusing on social studies. Assistant Professor of Political Science Tyson King-Meadows and students from his class, “Our Civic Voices,” visited Federal Hill Prep biweekly in spring 2009, engaging students in activities surrounding civic issues and self-governance.

The students at Federal Hill Prep, a school that does not have any social studies teachers, had mixed academic levels. That mix was not expected in the initial planning stages of the project.

“It was a task for us,” said King-Meadows, “because we hadn’t originally intended on Federal Hill Prep being the site for this project.”

For months, King-Meadows, his student assistant and The Shriver Center had designed a curriculum based on another school’s needs. That school had a dedicated social studies teacher. When that school canceled at the last minute, Lori Hardesty, program coordinator of Service-Learning/K-16 Partnerships at The Shriver Center, connected UMBC with Federal Hill Prep. That connection proved to be the perfect match.

“One of the goals of The Shriver Center is to be a resource to UMBC faculty, to help connect their students with more applied learning experiences into their courses/curriculum which could come in the form of  service-learning, internships, performance,” said Hardesty.

The project was divided between readings and discussions and special events. Students were asked to read specific books throughout the semester and the Civic Voices team then engaged the students in class discussion. Each activity was geared toward a particular lesson or situation.

 “The experience empowered students, and real bonds were formed. They felt comfortable talking about their concerns, and asking UMBC students what they cared about,” said Katie Dix ’10, political science major and student leader.

Several special events included “I AM speeches,” in which students gave presentations in a UMBC auditorium. The Federal Hill Prep students also took two field trips, one to UMBC for a college visit day and another trip to Washington, D.C., where they received a tour of the capitol.

“Everyone was glowing after giving their speeches,” said Sherry Barr, Federal Hill Prep teacher. “They really enjoyed talking about who they were, where they were from and something that concerned them. The list ranged from trash, gangs and drugs to homework.” 

When asked why such a program is important, King-Meadows spoke emphatically about the quality of political participation among America’s youth.

“We do young people and the political community a disservice by not enhancing their preparedness for civic activity. To me, America must prepare its citizens for self-governance at a very early age,” said King-Meadows. “If a child can learn to tie a shoe, he or she can learn that government officials determine the quality of the roads and sidewalks those shoes will walk on.”

For more information on the Our Civic Voices project, contact Tyson King-Meadows at 410-455-2194.

(7/2/09)

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