***I-695 TRAFFIC ALERT***

EIGHT MONTH RAMP CLOSURE AND DETOUR FROM OUTER LOOP (SOUTHBOUND) I-695 TO MD 144 (FREDERICK ROAD)

Long-Term Closure and Detour Begins Monday Night, August 5

(July 30, 2019) – Beginning Monday, August 5 at 9 p.m., the Maryland Department of Transportation State Highway Administration (MDOTSHA) will close and detour the ramp from the outer loop (southbound) I-695 to MD 144 (Frederick Road) for eight months.  The work is part of the $68 million I-695 Southwest Outer Loop project and is necessary for crews to reconstruct and widen the ramp to meet the new alignment of the outer loop/southbound I-695.

Motorists traveling from the outer loop/southbound I-695 to MD 144 will be detoured one mile south to the MD 372 (Wilkens Avenue) interchange. Motorists will use the ramp system to access the inner loop (northbound) I-695 back to the I-695/MD 144 interchange.

Digital message signs at the MD 144 and MD 372 interchanges will alert travelers of the temporary ramp closure and detour. Weather permitting, the ramp will re-open in April 2020. 

The entire I-695 Southwest Outer Loop widening project is scheduled to be complete late fall 2021. For project information, click here.

REVISED (MDOT SHA graphic: Outer loop I-695 ramp to MD 144 (Frederick Road) closure and detour map.)

MDOT SHA works hard to maintain safe traffic mobility in work zones for our crews as well as our contractor. Drivers need to stay alert, focus on the road and look for reduced speed limits, narrow driving lanes and highway workers. Drive like you work here and slowdown in construction zones.

For a list of all major MDOT SHA projects, click on Road Ready, MDOT SHA's electronic construction brochure. For a look at real-time commute conditions, log onto md511.maryland.gov

Every student deserves a champion, and every college graduate can be one with iMentor

iMentor is teaming up with Baltimore City Public Schools to match first-generation high school students with college-educated mentors who help them navigate the journey to and through college and other post-secondary career pathways. iMentor believes that every student deserves a champion and is looking for mentors like you. We make it easy for busy professionals to mentor by providing a guided playbook, time-efficient communication resources, and staff support along the way.  

Mentor Time Commitment:  

Volunteers are matched with one high school student over a three-year period.  

Volunteers send one weekly email to their mentee and attend one monthly, in-person pair event at their mentee’s school during the academic school year. Pair events are hosted in the evening after normal business hours.  

To become a mentor, visit baltimore.imentor.org to start your mentor application, attend an upcoming new and prospective mentor Orientation or email baltimorevolunteer@imentor.org .  

Please note: Mentors must have completed a 2- or 4-year college degree and be 21 years of age and older. 

There are 2 rooms and basement space available, rent ranging from $525-$550 per month

• Single 4 bedroom house and a large finished basement. 
• 1.8 miles from UMBC. UMBC arbutus shuttle stop two blocks from home.

• Free utilities and high speed internet

• Inner harbor, grocery stores, Arundel Mills are nearby and can be reached by public transportation. 

• Free parking spots
• Six month or year lease available
• email me at alinam1@umbc.edu if you are interested !

UMBC’s Qianqian Song has just received the Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) Fellowship⁠—one of just 59 such fellowships granted nationwide this year. The award provides $45,000 per year for three years for her to continue her studies at UMBC with Zhibo Zhang, associate professor of physics.

Song, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in atmospheric physics, is studying how dust above clouds affects the global climate. Large amounts of dust enter the atmosphere when strong winds blow across dry areas, such as the Sahara Desert. Previous research from the Zhang lab showed that this dust travels thousands of miles and provides critical nutrients to the Amazon rainforest. Other studies have suggested that the dust has an overall cooling effect on climate, by blocking short-wave radiation coming from the sun. “But they were neglecting the long-wave effect,” says Song. This is where her innovative work comes in.

As long-wave radiation rises into the atmosphere from Earth’s surface, dust can block it from exiting the atmosphere, producing a warming effect. “In our research we found that the dust’s long-wave warming effect cancels about 30 percent of the short-wave cooling effect,” Song explains. Incorporating this new understanding into climate models could have a significant impact on the models’ predictions.

Now Song wants to learn more about how the dust interacts with nearby clouds: How does it affect the size of water droplets in the clouds, or how densely the droplets are packed together? Massive amounts of data obtained by NASA satellites and aircraft and powerful computational tools will assist Song as she works on answering these challenging questions.

Embracing change at UMBC

Qianqian has come a long way since her 2014 arrival in the U.S. from China with her husband, who had obtained a student visa to pursue a Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Coming to the U.S. “was a big change,” she says. For one, “When we came, our English wasn’t good. It was hard. But now it’s much better.”

After a year, Song decided to pursue her own Ph.D. “When I visited UMBC, I felt like everyone knows each other and supports each other in the physics department,” she remembers. “That’s why I chose here.”

However, the visa process proved challenging, and she thought she would have to postpone her enrollment another year. But physics graduate program director Todd Pittman stepped in. “He talked to the whole department,” Song says, and got department chair Michael Hayden’s support for a special, temporary scholarship for Song to initially join the UMBC community as a part-time student. She dived into her courses and research rotations, and the next semester Song was able to finalize her visa and begin her full-time studies.

A rotation in Zhang’s lab sparked Song’s interest in atmospheric research. “Before I came here, I did my master’s degree in Beijing. The pollution there is very severe,” Song shares. “So since living there, I am interested in atmospheric science. When I did a rotation with Dr. Zhang, I did research on dust aerosols, and I got very interested in learning about their role in climate change.”

Pursuing her dream

Now, Song is excelling. “I think she is rising to become a future leader in our field,” says Zhang. 

Song shares that UMBC’s supportive network has had a major impact on her experience. “Dr. Zhang is an excellent adviser. He teaches us communication skills and helps us a lot in our research,” she says. “In this research group everyone helps each other, not only on our research but also in our personal life.”

That’s been important for Song, who recently welcomed her first child. The flexibility to work and participate in meetings from home, when needed, allowed her to continue her research at full speed while she was pregnant and now, as she raises her baby with her husband. “I was in my third trimester when I was writing the fellowship proposal,” she shares.

Song plans to pursue a career in academia after her Ph.D. “That’s my dream,” she says. With the support of the fellowship, her lab group, and her family, Song will pursue it with confidence.

Banner image: Qianqian Song discusses her research findings with her lab team. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Over the course of seven seasons, the Netflix series Orange Is The New Black (OITNB) has taken viewers—and its characters—on a roller coaster ride within the confines of a fictional minimum security women’s prison. The series has become a favorite of fans and critics alike, garnering numerous award wins while pushing the boundaries of television storytelling, casting, and directing. As the series wraps up its final season, April Householder ‘95, Director of Undergraduate Research and Prestigious Scholarships, and co-editor of Feminist Perspectives on Orange is the New Black, shares some thoughts on the lasting impact of this groundbreaking show.

What was it about OITNB that made you want to pursue a book about it?

In 2013 when the show premiered, I was teaching courses in the UMBC’s Gender and Women’s Studies department such as Gender, Race, and Media, and Queer Representations in Film and Television, and students were excited to discuss the show, so it started showing up on my syllabus. The problem was that there were no academic texts to assign for students to read, so I decided to write a book myself!  I had just published a chapter about the HBO show, Girls, in a book on feminist theory and popular culture, so I reached out to my colleague, Adrienne Trier-Bieniek, who was the editor of that book, and we sent out a call for papers for a feminist collection on OITNB.  We got an overwhelming response, with writers addressing everything from the prison industrial complex to the meaning of the character Pennsatucky’s teeth as they relate to race and class issues.  It was exciting to see that the show struck a nerve with so many pertinent cultural issues, and that it continues to do so today.

What questions and themes does the series bring up that most excite you as a researcher?

I am very interested in the ways in which media and popular culture both reflect and construct ideas, identities, and politics. As a feminist researcher, this show touches on so many important intersectional issues—race, class, gender, sexuality, power and privilege, abuses of the criminal justice system, disability and ableism, queer and transgender representations, immigration/ICE, mental illness, motherhood, rape, drug addiction… The show was nominated for twelve Emmy awards in its first season because it pushed the boundaries of how women have traditionally been represented on television. It develops complex characters, with emotional backstories and narrative arcs that show them as full human beings whose lives intersect with patriarchal institutions in unjust ways. They aren’t just one-dimensional characters who serve as a backdrop for male protagonists, and they don’t fit neatly into stereotypes. The show isn’t without its compromises (the problematic women-in-prison genre has been around for a long time), but in general it challenges mainstream depictions of gender and humanizes female prisoners in a way that is very subversive when it comes to the televisual format. And that’s just in front of the camera!  There is another story to be told about the showrunner, Jenji Kohan, and the mostly female writers (including Piper Kerman, who wrote the memoir on which the show is based, and serves as an executive consultant on the show) and female crew behind the scenes. The show has given a voice (and jobs) to women and proven that there are both critical and popular audiences for these stories. 

How do you feel OITNB has changed the landscape of television most? And the media landscape in general? Why is this sort of storytelling possible now?

It may seem very natural now, but OITNB was one of the first shows to usher in the phenomenon of “binge-watching.” The show has a long list of TV “firsts” but this new way of watching was very ground-breaking. The show is arguably made by, about, and for women—and the binge format shares an addictive quality that ties back to the women’s soap opera and the Victorian novel (cliffhangers, sprawling cast of characters, multiple overlapping serial plots, and high melodrama). So it centralizes women even in its reception practices. Netflix is one of the online formats that has challenged network television and has been able to experiment with their content because they are not beholden to advertisers who could pull their funding if they feel that the show doesn’t align with their company’s image. Pay services like Netflix have opened up the narrative possibilities of televisual programming, and now we see that trickling back into mainstream TV, with shows like Black-ish, Will and Grace, Modern Family, Empire, and the TV domination of Shonda Rhimes. Lots of shows are following in its footsteps, such as Killing Eve, The Handmaid’s Tale, and the reboot of The L Word.

Every sentence has led to this. The final season of Orange is the New Black is now streaming. #OrangeForever pic.twitter.com/mSP0jFUz6Z

— Orange Is the New Black (@OITNB) July 26, 2019

For someone who hasn’t seen OITNB, is there a particular episode you’d recommend as particularly groundbreaking?

Watch the first episode and you will be hooked! The characters are infectious and real. You have to kind of go on the journey with them to fully appreciate the show. The season 3 finale is particularly moving. The inmates spot a hole in a fence and escape to a nearby lake for a symbolic baptism. It’s one of the few moments we see them breaking free and existing outside, in nature. The season 1 episode 9 story is also one of my favorites because it features lesbian sexuality in the prison as a way for characters to feel alive and to buck the system that is essentially trying to slowly kill their humanity. And the series finale will have you in tears!

Your book covers seasons 1-3. Are there topics that have emerged in more recent seasons that you would like to explore?

It amazes me how forward-thinking the writing on this show has been. Season 7 concludes with storylines around the treatment of immigrants at detention facilities, something that was written and filmed before we were having a national conversation about the Trump administration’s border crisis. Episode 3 of the final season is entitled “Brown is the New Orange,” and it highlights the similarities between U.S. immigration facilities and the injustices of the corporate-owned prison industrial complex (“PolyCon Detention Center” in the show.) We see the character Maritza picked up at a nightclub during a raid for not having her ID, and sent back, this time to Litchfield’s ICE facility. Blanca is also there as an undocumented immigrant, and her boyfriend gets deported when he visits her for not having his green card. This is a new definition of “recidivism”—one where incarceration for people of color has nothing to do with their criminality, but rather the policies that target them. We see the struggles of Latinx characters to find legal representation, connect to the outside world, and to live in humane conditions.  At one point, they remark that the detention facility is worse than the prison. This is one narrative arc that shows Kohan’s commitment to making the show more than just about entertainment. She is changing public consciousness in her work.

Any thoughts on the final season?

Look for some cameos from beloved characters, expect some heartbreak, but also know that the show ends with a lot of hope and love. After seven years, the show is still as relevant as ever. 

Check out Householder’s book, Feminist Perspectives on Orange Is The New Black: 13 Critical Essays (McFarland, 2016), here.