Catch the Fever!

The 2009 Homecoming Weekend, “Retriever Fever,” is sure to start with a fire – literally.

On Thursday, October 15, the lawn of Erickson field will be filled with students talking and laughing, reconnecting and waiting to see a flame take fire. The annual Bonfire and Outdoor Movie began five years ago after Thomas Locastro ’09, a student on the First Year Council, sparked the initial idea as a way for students to gather with one another and connect. After he completed the necessary paperwork, a new tradition was born.

And this year, along with favorite traditions of the past – other new traditions will be born.

“We’re a young place, and Homecoming is still a young event,” said Greg Simmons (MPP, ’04), vice president of institutional advancement. “This year we’re building a foundation and a platform so that, through co-programming and collaboration, traditions will give alumni a way to stay connected with UMBC.”

Before the bonfire will be an event that was previously held off-campus in Annapolis: the Alumnus/Alumna of the Year awards. Seven alumni will be recognized at the Albin O. Kuhn Library, 7th Floor, for their professional and personal achievements along with their service to the University. This year’s winners have backgrounds in a number of fields including engineering, the arts and humanities, natural and mathematical sciences and social sciences.

And as the sun sets in the background of the awards ceremony, a glow will reflect from Erickson Field as the Bonfire begins. Many of the events at this year’s Homecoming will be close in time and physical location, creating a vibrant hub of activity – another new tradition for UMBC’s Homecoming.

“This year we thought hard about what was missing from previous years and tried to fill in the gaps,” said Stanyell Bruce, associate director of alumni relations and co-chair of the Homecoming Committee. “Although many past Homecoming traditions remained in the 2009 lineup, a variety of new events have been added to the calendar to ensure there were activities for everyone in the UMBC community.”

From 8 a.m. to 11 p.m. on Saturday, October 17, there will be a string of consecutive events for all members of the UMBC community. Committee members said that most events purposely overlap and are close in location so that individuals can participate in most events. Saturday begins with a 5K race fit for runners of any age or speed followed by the men’s soccer game at 1 p.m.

“I’m encouraging everyone to come out and cheer on the men’s soccer team as they embark on a record breaking year in soccer,” said Kevin Gibbons O’Neill ’86, assistant athletic director for fundraising and Homecoming co-chair.

Around the same time as the game, The Commons will turn into “Retriever Fever Fest” – with family friendly activities perfect for faculty, staff and alumni. Other highlights include the Honors College Reception and the Chapter of Young Alumni happy hour. The weekend will end with a performance by comedian Demetri Martin.

For a list of Homecoming highlights, click here.  

For a complete listing of events, click here.

(10/9/09)

Celebrating Student Research & Creativity

Bringing Jane Austen’s writing to life through dance. The ethics of Wall Street’s shadow markets. Turning algae into green energy. The history of POW war crimes trials. How Pakistani honor killings impact women and men. More accurate friend recommendations for Facebook. How blogging might change Iran.

These are just a few of the topics to be found at two upcoming campus events that put UMBC students’ intellectual curiosity and artistic creativity front and center.

The 13th annual Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day (URCAD)  will be held Wednesday, April 22, followed by the 31st annual Graduate Research Conference (GRC) on Friday, April 24. Both events are extraordinary opportunities to discover original research and to enjoy free arts performances and exhibits.

Led by the Office of Undergraduate Education, URCAD gives students valuable experience preparing for graduate school or future careers, and in many cases, competitive grants of up to $1,500 over an academic year to support selected work. Nearly 200 student participants are involved with 165 scheduled presentations or performances at this year’s event.

“URCAD embodies and celebrates UMBC’s commitment to creativity, research, scholarship and a distinctive undergraduate experience,” said Teresa Viancour, associate vice provost for undergraduate education. “The outstanding professional maturity and social impact of student work presented at URCAD underscores the truly high quality of our students and the substantial commitment of faculty and staff who teach and mentor them. UMBC really is quite a special place.”

The GRC is a partnership between UMBC and University of Maryland, Baltimore and is sponsored by UMBC’s Graduate Student Association (GSA). Through its mentorship, support, outreach, social life and advocacy efforts, the GSA serves the more than 2,600 graduate students on campus. This year’s GRC keynote speaker is Marla Oros, president of the management consulting firm the Mosaic Group. The day will include 72 oral and poster presentations by UMBC and UMB graduate students.

“The GRC gives graduate students a special opportunity to present their research to the entire UMBC community,” said Katisha Smith, GSA vice president and a Ph.D. candidate in mechanical engineering.  “As the biggest fan of UMBC graduate students, the GSA is proud to plan and host the GRC each year. We hope this event help students sharpen their presentation skills and take pride in their hard work, dedication and passion for knowledge.”

Selected highlights of 2009 URCAD and GRC presentations and performances include:

• A team of economics and philosophy students analyzed the business ethics of Wall Street’s “shadow market,” the unseen transactions of credit default swaps, hedge funds and other speculative products that contributed to the current economic crisis.

• “Letters from Jane,” by senior dance and English major Mary Rzasa combines literary history with choreography to bring Jane Austen’s letters to her elder sister Cassandra to life. Rzasa worked with UMBC dance alumna Elena Consoli ’07 to combine voice, music and dance sequences based on Austen’s life and filmed on location at historical sites in Hampshire, England into a 20-minute video.

• Autumn Marie Reed, a graduate student in Language, Literacy and Culture, studied honor-related violence in Pakistani culture. She will also present on this topic later this year at the annual conference of the International Society for Language Studies.

• Sophomore interdisciplinary studies major Yelena Dewald examined how the Internet and blogging are impacting youth culture, dissent and tradition in Iran, where the majority of the population is under 30 years old.

• A team of chemical and biochemical engineering students developed a design for an industrial-scale plant to produce biodiesel and ethanol biofuels from algae.

• Senior computer science major Roger Guseman worked with faculty and doctoral student mentors to create algorithms that could help social networking sites like Facebook increase accuracy when recommending potential new friends for their users.

• Information systems graduate student Huimin Qian is working on touch-based mobile phone technologies to help provide sighted tech users with safer driving directions and to improve mobile tech interfaces for the blind.

URCAD will be held on Wednesday, April 22, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the University Center and Fine Arts Building. In addition to a morning session devoted to live dance performances, an afternoon session will focus on video and animation. For more information, visit the URCAD Web site.

The 2008 Graduate Research Conference will be held on Friday, April 25, 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. at the University Center. For more information, please visit the GSA’s Web site.

(4/16/09)

© 2007-08 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �

Celluloid Deities

Can street paintings and advertisements be studied as art? And can examining other cultures inform our answer to that question?

Preminda Jacob, an associate professor of art history and theory in UMBC’s Department of Visual Arts, replies in the affirmative to both questions. In her new book, Celluloid Deities (Lexington Books), she examines the collision of cinema, politics and religion in South Indian culture at street level. Movie posters in the city of Chennai, she found, not only advertise a film – they can also be improvised into religious shrines or impart a political message.

“The street is a great equalizer of the visual experience,” she told an attentive crowd at a presentation of her research at UMBC. Jacob also created a Web site, www.celluloiddeities.com, that extends her research on what she calls the “multitudinous signs that jostle for attention” into startling images and video.

Jacob has received several fellowships to support her research, including a J. Paul Getty Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the History of Art and the Humanities and a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship from the Center for Media, Culture and History at New York University.

Slideshow: Celluloid Deities

Video: UMBC mathematics professor and author Manil Suri interviews Preminda Jacob on UMBC’s “In the Loop.”

This story appears in the Winter 2009 issue of UMBC Magazine.

(10/2/09)

Chemistry Discovery Center Serves as Model for Physics, Math

Watch a video on UMBC’s Chemistry Discovery Center:

Created by Professors Ralph Pollack and William LaCourse, the multi-faceted Chemistry Discovery Center has spurred similar tutorial-style environments in the Departments of Physics and Mathematics and Statistics.

Both interested in modernizing curriculum in physics, Lecturers Eric Anderson and Lili Cui wanted to better engage students in introductory courses. In the fall of 2007 they established a tutoring center in the Physics building where students perform experiments, complete worksheets and problem solve in group settings. Students spend two hours in the tutorial room three times a week for a four-credit class. They receive support not only from a faculty member but from a teaching assistant and two learning assistants.

“A lot of our teaching and learning assistants want to be physics teachers,” said Cui. “They have teaching in mind from the start and really encourage the students.”

“There’s someone there supporting the students, giving them positive feedback and helping them work through problems,” said Anderson. “The students work really hard and bond with the assistants easily.”

The Math Center, though different in terms of tutorials, has a similar approach when it comes to assisted teaching. The Center, which opened in late fall 2008, employs both tutors and teaching assistants who specifically want to become teachers.

“Math majors who want to be teachers are ideal for these positions,” said Nagaraj Neerchal, chair and professor of Mathematics and Statistics.

Neerchal hopes to offer a hybrid version of the traditional Math 106 course that will include both lecture and computer time, specifically using the tutoring program ALEKS. The program will tackle algebra, a subject in which many students struggle.

“Students who have trouble with the traditional Math 106 course will continue to have difficulty in subsequent classes,” said Neerchal, “The hybrid course will be the best of both worlds.”

The Chemistry Discovery Center continues to flourish with a retention rate of 96 percent in fall 2007 and 97 percent in spring 2008. Eighty-four percent of students in Chemistry 102 now have a C or better. With an increase in students, the bar is also starting to rise higher. Students who were getting Bs are now getting As.

The method behind the Chemistry Discovery Center allows each student to be an active participant in a group without the use of technology.

“There are no paper or pencils – all white boards,” said LaCourse. “We use this method so the students depend on someone. It generates people working together as a team, learning competence and how to trust.”

The real-world approach of the Chemistry Discovery Center requires students to be accountable for their own work and those in their group. This gives students the opportunity to learn in a community-based setting, an option not always available in lecture-style classes.

“This is a new method of learning often done at small schools,” said LaCourse. “We’re taking the entire chemistry class and catching mistakes early on before they’re engrained.”

(2/20/09)

© 2007-08 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �

Chess Champions

The UMBC Chess Team captured first place at the Pan American Intercollegiate Championships held in South Padre Island, Texas, December 27-30, beating rivals University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) and the University of Texas at Brownsville (UTB). UMBC placed ahead of 27 other teams including Yale, Princeton, Stanford and New York University.

UMBC has now won or tied a record nine Pan-Am titles and is ranked among the best college teams in the country. UTD challenged UMBC in the past, winning the championship in both 2007 and 2008 � but not this year.

UMBC beat UTD 3-1 on Tuesday, December 29, followed by a 2.5-1.5 win over UTB later that day. Top-ranked college players Leonid Kritz ’12 and Sergey Erenburg ’11, both grandmasters, helped the team advance throughout the tournament.

�This may be the greatest chess accomplishment for UMBC because it came against the strongest competitive field ever assembled on college chess,� said Alan Sherman, director and founder of the chess program and associate professor of computer science.

Other members of UMBC�s A team are Giorgi Margvelashvili ’12, Sasha Kaplan ’11 and Sabina Foiser ’12. Many of the players attend UMBC on chess scholarships, playing at least two hours a day. Three of the top four have 4.0 grade point averages.

The Pan-Am is the most celebrated intercollegiate chess tournament in the Western Hemisphere The Retrievers won their first Pan-Am title in 1996. They embarked on a five-year championship streak from 1998 to 2002. Since its 1946 inception, dozens of universities throughout the Americas have participated. The tournament is open to any college or university team from North, South, or Central America.

For more information, click here.

(1/4/10)

Connecting Students to Video Game Pros

It seems like a college student’s dream come true: get paid to immerse yourself in video games.  But a gaming career requires more than having logged the dorm top score for “Halo” or “Rock Band.” If you want to make video games your career, UMBC offers tracks for juniors and seniors that combine strong fundamentals in computer science, visual arts and teamwork.

Thanks to UMBC’s Games, Animation and Interactive Media (GAIM) program, a growing number of alumni have built careers at top Maryland gaming companies. The UMBC student Game Developer’s Club will put that talent pipeline and career mentoring network center stage at the fourth annual Digital Entertainment Conference (DEC), Saturday, April 25, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. in Lecture Hall 2.

The DEC is free and open to students from UMBC, other universities, high schools and anyone else with an interest in a behind-the-scenes look at how games are created and advice on breaking into the industry. Speakers from top Maryland gaming companies like Firaxis and Big Huge Games will discuss how games are conceptualized, designed, programmed and produced.

“The DEC brings students face-to-face with game industry professionals,” said Lesa Wilcox, a senior in the GAIM track and president of the Game Developer’s Club (GDC). “It’s an exciting opportunity to learn about how games get made and how you can get a job making them.”

In 2007, gaming industry revenues outpaced those for movies and music combined. Thanks to hit titles like “Guitar Hero,” the game industry continues to be strong, with sales of over $22 billion in 2008.

The GDC was founded by Eric Jordan ’08, who now works as a programmer at Firaxis and will speak at the DEC. “The GDC and the GAIM program both provide students with the opportunity to gain invaluable experience and network with industry professionals,” he said.

Katie Hirsch ’04 was a trail-blazing double major in computer science and imaging and digital arts while at UMBC. She is now a user interface programmer for Firaxis and has taught a course for the GAIM program.

According to Hirsch, the serious skills required to make games can also be attractive to other career fields. “Game development incorporates some of the most challenging and complex aspects of art and computer science,” said Hirsch. “Students who are prepared to make games will also be prepared for almost any other opportunity available.”

For more information on the 2009 Digital Entertainment Conference, visit the event’s Facebook page.

(4/22/2009)

© 2007-08 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �

Crazy for Politics

Do you find news and current events dull, boring and confusing?

Too many young people answer yes to that question, says political cartoonist Kevin “Kal” Kallaugher, who has launched a new political news blog aimed at getting high school students to tune-in to current events by using the humor and spirit of political cartooning.

The Web site, www.USDemocrazy.com, is a daily news roundup edited by Kallaugher and staffed by a team of student bloggers at UMBC. Kallaugher, an award-winning, internationally syndicated editorial cartoonist for publications such as The Baltimore Sun and The Economist, conceived the site as an artist-in-residence at UMBC’s Imaging Research Center.

Using editorial cartoons, digital animation, videos and humorous blog posts about the daily news, USDemocrazy is designed to engage high schoolers in current events, Kallaugher said. Many posts are interactive and allow comments and the blog’s text is optimized so students can easily read it when projected on a large screen.

“We want to create a daily package where teachers can flip on our Web site for just a couple minutes each day and find engaging, unpredictable, accessible and fun material that can help make subjects like social studies more entertaining,” Kallaugher said.

The site launched publicly in October with a visit by Kallaugher to Wheaton High School in Montgomery County, Md., where social studies students have been the first in the nation to test USDemocrazy in the classroom.

Wheaton’s Social Studies Head David Shaffner said the multimedia Web site comes at a perfect time for social studies teachers. Schools across the country are struggling to make social studies relevant in an age of high stakes testing in reading and math and increasing emphasis on science and technology, he said.

“Students today are plugged-in to a more visual, media-rich environment,” Shaffner said. “We need new tools to help us un-lock those brainwaves.”

Kallaugher presented USDemocrazy as the feature speaker at the 2009 National High School Journalism Convention in Washington, D.C. this November. He plans to make presentations to the National High School Model United Nations and the National Council for the Social Studies annual meetings in 2010 to reach more teachers and students. USDemocrazy will also be introduce into the classroom this spring at Kallaugher’s alma mater, Fairfield Prep in Fairfield, Conn.

Kallaugher said the blog’s also a rich education tool for college students.

His team of student writers – which he calls his “vagabonding bloggoteers” – are tasked with populating the blog with daily posts and weekly features.

“I never used to think about getting information from blogs and used to scoff at Twitter,” said UMBC junior Marc Zerfas, a financial economics and statistics major. “Now we pride ourselves as being a sort of gateway drug to current events for people who would never read the news normally.”

Features include a daily cartoon, “What’z Up Today” news roundup and feature story; a weekly “Film Festival” roundup of videos; a weekly humorous photo “Caption Contest”; and a new feature called “Three-and-a-half Questions” highlighting the expertise of people “who are smarter than us,” Kallaugher said.

“We ask a current events expert three questions in their field of interest, plus one extra credit question in an unrelated area,” Kal said.

UMBC political science professor Tom Schaller was the latest expert to answer three-and-a-half questions, featured in an audio slide show at www.usdemocrazy.net/2009/12/14/time-to-listen-to-an-expert/.

Interviewed recently in UMBC Magazine, Schaller said that USDemocrazy “is classic Kal: very cheeky, very fun, very visual, and very colorful. Anyone who’s been around Kal for five minutes knows he’s all those things.”

(12/14/09)

Diving into the Dark

Theatrical stories are often told through a series of dialogue between actors. But what if they were told only through sound and physical action? 

This idea is captured in the “Crystal Egg” production, set to run December 2-5, 10-13, in the UMBC Theatre. However, the movements are not made by actors – but handcrafted and manually operated puppets. And the sounds are not only made by instruments – but everyday objects such as wine glasses or children’s toys.

The production is a collaborative effort between theatre students and Imaging Research Center (IRC) Fellows, spurred from a discussion between Colette Searls, director of the “Crystal Egg” and associate professor of theatre, and Tim Nohe, associate professor of visual arts.

“I had worked with the IRC before and was already extremely interested in computer puppetry,” said Searls. “When Tim approached me about the project, I decided to conceive a new play that integrated traditional hand-manipulated puppets with animated characters.”

An original piece of science-fiction theatre inspired by H.G. Wells’s “Crystal Egg” story, the “Crystal Egg” is about a man who discovers creatures from another dimension inside an antique crystal egg. The play combines puppetry and live-action animation.

“The majority of the semester has been spent conceiving, designing and programming the animated creatures that escape from the egg,” said Searls. “This has required a team-based approach to artistic and logical problem-solving.”

Some students have worked as lead 3-D artists, perfecting the character and appearance of the puppets, while others have programmed actions to make them appear life-like and spontaneous. Along the way, the students discovered a method that would allow the puppets to be operated in real time, through use of video game controllers.

When it comes to the sound score for the “Crystal Egg,” the composition is a mix of traditional instruments of the orchestra (like the viola and harp) with everyday objects. The harp is performed by an undergraduate student, and the strings are performed by Professor of Mechanical Engineering Tim Topoleski. Other instrumentation is done by Nohe and the Imaging Research Center Fellows.

“They are all intermixed and radically transformed in a laptop to produce undercurrents of surreal darkness,” said Nohe.

That darkness translates not only from the stage but also from the conception of the collaboration. The “diving into the dark” experience was new for almost everyone involved, according to Searls.

A performance schedule and ticket information are available online.

(11/20/09)

Erickson School Comes of Age

For a U.S. population that is living longer and healthier, the Erickson School at UMBC is “the right school with the right topic in the right location,” said Erickson School professor Joseph Gribbin.

Combining the study of aging with courses on management and policy means the school’s 341 undergraduate and graduate students receive a multidisciplinary education that is a model for other colleges and universities.

“Aging isn’t a bubble,” said Judah Ronch, who was recently named interim dean of the Erickson School. “This program requires multiple perspectives and collaboration. Students enrolled in our courses don’t have to major in the subject. It’s just about opening our eyes to major social issues.”

UMBC’s leadership position in aging studies was sparked by John Erickson, the founder and chairman of Erickson Retirement Communities. Five years since launching with a $5 million gift from Erickson, student enrollment in all the school’s programs is strong and growing.

The school is offering new courses in entrepreneurship, diversity, mental health and increasing use of online resources. An online version of Aging 100 was launched this fall, and Aging 200 and Aging 300 will be online by spring 2010. And the school’s graduate program is now eligible for financial aid.

The school’s fall executive education offerings also have been re-tooled for a broader market – from junior management to upper level executives. And the most popular executive education offering, Business and Finance, will address immediate economic realities in the seniors housing and care markets.

Another nontraditional key for growth at the Erickson School is its use of social media as a recruiting tool, weaving blogs and video into more traditional media outreach.

“Our blog, ChangingAging.org, gives us a global presence and uses a variety of multimedia,” said Bill Thomas, a professor at the school. “It’s driven by what we think is going on and how it’s going to play out.”

The school’s new leadership is ready to capitalize on its momentum and the power of the nation’s changing demographics. Aging studies presents “the greatest opportunity of the century,” Thomas said. “I foresee a day when UMBC is known for [aging studies] like it is for science, engineering and technology.”

For more information on the Erickson School, visit http://www.umbc.edu/Erickson.

This story appears in the Fall 2009 issue of UMBC Magazine.

(9/11/09)

Faculty-Student Teamwork

E. Michael Richards, professor and chair of the Department of Music, and Michelle Ko ‘10 will travel to Sacramento, California, this November to perform at the Festival of New American Music. They’ve been performing for more than a year together – one of the many professor-student mentorships in the music department at UMBC.

“Music is a field where myriad collaborations like these are essential to artistic growth,” said Richards.

Playing the clarinet and flute (respectively), Richards and Ko will perform an experimental set that incorporates various technologies. Through the exchange of “musical ideas and expressions,” the duo has found a niche in music technology, an often underrepresented style of contemporary music. In addition to playing their own instruments, Richards and Ko also control computer generated sounds through the use of a foot pedal and interface, designed by Alan Wonneberger, director of recording in the music department. This hybrid was created for new works they commissioned by American composers.

Through these faculty-student partnerships, students are not only achieving success through performance – they are growing as artists. Music faculty and students both “undertake and develop shared research everyday,” said Richards.

“It’s important for students to collaborate with faculty because we’re aspiring performers, teachers and professionals,” said Ko. “College is a time to find our voices and have our eyes opened to new ideas.”

The partnership has not only allowed time for learning, it’s opened up doors for performance opportunities. Richards and Ko have participated in festivals ranging from new American music to electroacoustic music. Through these festivals, they’ve been able to network and meet others in the industry, helping them develop their skills in this genre of music.  

“Contemporary music is like learning a new language,” said Ko. “You need to have an open mind and heart, to allow it sink in and find a personal connection with it in order to have a full understanding of it.”

For more information about the Festival of New American Music, click here.

More information about the Department of Music is available at www.umbc.edu/music.

(10/23/09)