UMBC’s communications team has earned an Excellence in News Writing Award for research, medicine, and science news writing from the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE). UMBC was one of just two universities to receive the award in the mid-Atlantic, CASE’s largest district, representing 700 U.S. and Canadian colleges and independent schools.

The UMBC entry, “Big Reach, Big Impact,” focused on how writers in UMBC’s Office of Institutional Advancement collaborate with partners across the university to produce and distribute stories that resonate with broad audiences. While Retriever Nation is a core audience for UMBC News, articles also often reach news media, organizations that support research, and prospective students, faculty, and staff, who are still getting a sense of what UMBC is all about.

Using new tools to understand nature

“Big Reach, Big Impact” included four articles from diverse research fields.

Sarah Hansen

“Two species of ravens nevermore?”, written by Sarah Hansen, M.S. ’15, biological sciences, highlights a groundbreaking study, almost 20 years in the making, on “speciation reversal” in ravens. This term describes two distinct lineages hybridizing and eventually merging into one.

“We examined genomic data from hundreds of ravens collected across North America,” says Anna Kearns, the study’s first author. She’s a former UMBC postdoc who is now at the Smithsonian Center for Conservation Genomics.

Kearns explains that advances in next-generation genomics have made new findings possible, but there are still major hurdles. She shares, “Integrating all of the results across so many individuals, and from such diverse datasets, has been one of the most challenging aspects of this study.”

Two ravens preening. Photo by John Marzluff.

Joining Kearns in authoring the Nature Communications paper were PI Kevin Omland, professor of biological sciences, and researchers from multiple universities in the U.S. and abroad. In the typical UMBC way, undergraduates played an important role in the research, analyzing mitochondrial DNA. Both Jin Kim ’16, biological sciences, and Hayley Richardson ’17, statistics, are coauthors on the study.

“The bottom line is [speciation reversal] is a natural evolutionary process, and it’s probably happened in hundreds or almost certainly thousands of lineages all over the planet,” explains Omland.

He notes, “One of our biggest goals is to just have people aware of this process, so when they see interesting patterns in their data, they won’t say, ‘That must be a mistake,’ or, ‘That’s too complicated to be correct.’”

The Washington Post, The Guardian, National Geographic, Atlas Obscura, Science Magazine, and several other news outlets covered this research.

UMBC’s CASE award entry also included an article by Hansen on how UMBC physicists discovered that African wildfires are impacting climate in unexpected ways. The study was the work of Zhibo Zhang, associate professor of atmospheric physics, Ph.D. students Chamara Rajapakshe and Zhifeng Yang, and collaborators from across the U.S. and China.

The team examined what happens in clouds when smoke from fires in central and southern Africa is swept westward over the Atlantic Ocean. They used data from a LiDAR system on the International Space Station to solve this highly complex puzzle.

View from a data-collecting aircraft over the Atlantic Ocean, where a layer of smoke is visible above the clouds. Photo from NASA/Kirk Knobelspiesse.

Honoring a collaborative community of scholars

Catalina Sofia Dansberger Duque

Another article in UMBC’s winning entry highlights the research achievements of several history faculty. Written by Catalina Sofia Dansberger Duque, the piece opens by introducing Christy Ford Chapin, associate professor and author of Ensuring America’s Health. After writing her in-depth history of the U.S. health insurance system, Ford Chapin received a Kluge Fellowship to immerse herself in the banking and finance collections of the U.S. Library of Congress.

The article describes that Chapin “loves how historians seek answers buried in documents, archives, museums, libraries, basements, attics and forgotten filing cabinets.”

“We have to be like private investigators,” Chapin told Dansberger Duque. “I was really intimidated by the research aspect early on in my graduate career, but then I fell in love with the hunt for primary sources and the process of putting together pieces of the evidence puzzle.”

Also featured in the article is Meredith Oyen, associate professor, who held a U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Fellowship, studying the resettlement of refugees in China after WWII. Oyen followed a paper trail from Shanghai to Taipei, London, and Washington, DC to gather clues on what occurred.

Meredith Oyen in the UMBC Commons.

Marjoleine Kars, associate professor and chair, and Kate Brown, former professor, who is now at MIT, completed Braudel Senior Fellowships at the European University Institute. While there, Kars worked on her book about one of the largest rebellions of enslaved people in Atlantic history. Brown continued her research on the lasting impacts of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.

What made these faculty fellowships possible? Kars shared, “One core aspect of UMBC comes to mind: our collaborative community of scholars. This is what makes it possible for us to explore unique research opportunities around the world, and what draws us back to UMBC each time, to share what we’ve learned.”

Building international cybersecurity connections

Megan Hanks Mastrola

A series of articles on UMBC’s research impact would be incomplete without highlighting the bwtech@UMBC Research and Technology Park. An article by Megan Hanks Mastrola announced UMBC’s new iCyberCenter, designed to help international cybersecurity companies establish a U.S. presence.

Maryland Governor Larry Hogan announced plans for the center during a trade mission to the United Kingdom in 2017. The iCyberCenter later launched with a focus on intensive training for the executives of select international companies seeking to connect with the U.S. market. The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore Business Journal, and Technical.ly Baltimore covered this important news and later developments in UMBC’s cybersecurity collaborations.

UMBC Pres. Freeman Hrabowski announces the launch of UMBC’s iCyberCenter@bwtech.

Always more stories

Dinah Winnick

Dinah Winnick, director of communications and content strategy and UMBC News editor, accepted the award on behalf of UMBC at the CASE District II conference in Philadelphia earlier this spring. The communications team previously received an Excellence in News Writing Award in 2017 for a series of stories demonstrating UMBC’s joint commitment to research and teaching.

2018 CASE Achievement Awards included articles written through June 2018. Since then, UMBC News and UMBC Magazine have published dozens more articles highlighting a remarkable diversity of UMBC research projects.

Among popular pieces in the last few months are articles on faculty mentors helping undergraduates build their research skills, award-winning aquatic research by Ph.D. students, more inclusive scholarship on medieval women, and laser-based IED detection technology for combat zones.

Sign up on UMBC News to receive UMBC’s weekly Top Stories email.

Featured image: UMBC’s campus in spring 2019. Photos are by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC, unless otherwise noted.

This session explores the basic principles of mindfulness and discusses the positive impact it has in different aspects of one's life. It also gives participants some basic mindfulness techniques that they can start adopting immediately in their everyday activities, as well as some exercises that they can start using.

Join Inova EAP for this FREE Webinar on June 18th!  

Visit:  www.inova.org/eap 
Member Login User Name:  UMBCEAP
Password: 360231

Once logged in, click on 'Online Seminars' - click on 'View All' - title ‘Mindfulness Matters.'

SUMMARY:

The COEIT Celebration has quickly become a defining annual event for the community of faculty, staff, and students in UMBC’s College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT). The celebration showcases the achievements of COEIT’s numerous highly active student organizations and senior capstone projects. It’s also an opportunity for COEIT Dean Keith J Bowman to reflect on the year and to honor those whose work has been essential to the College’s impact and growth.

Throughout the year, innovative research and strong teaching have contributed to student success, and have also helped faculty establish new connections and opportunities. “The COEIT Celebration allows our community to acknowledge the tremendous accomplishments of our faculty, students, and staff at all levels,” Bowman says.

Student achievements

Each academic program recognized students who have demonstrated strong leadership during their time at UMBC.

Information systems recognized Victor Cho and Musarrat Khan as Superior Students. Noah Owens and Michael Piccinini, both in business technology administration; computer science’s Aditya Kaliappan; and Edward Hanson, computer engineering, received Student Leadership Awards. Chemical, biochemical and environmental engineering (CBEE) recognized Elizabeth Tan and mechanical engineering honored Shannon Clancy with Student Leadership Awards as well.

Two departments also presented special named awards. Information systems honored Jana Burns with the Vijay Jose Award for exceptional involvement in student life. CSEE presented Emily C. McGovern with the Manoharshyam Joshi Award for a computer science student who has demonstrated exemplary achievement in a multitude of areas across academics, service, and leadership.

Beyond these specific awards, the College and Provost’s Office recognized nearly a hundred graduating seniors for their outstanding achievements in academics and research.

Faculty and staff honors

During the COEIT Celebration, the Provost’s Office presented five COEIT faculty members with awards for their commitment to excellence. Jeffrey Ray, a graduate faculty member in the systems engineering program through the Division of Professional Studies, and William Ryan, an adjunct faculty member in information systems, received Adjunct Faculty Excellence Awards.

Jianwu Wang, assistant professor of information systems, received the Early Career Faculty Excellence Award, and Carolyn Seaman, associate professor of information systems and interim director of UMBC’s Center for Women in Technology, was presented with the Mid-Career Faculty Excellence Award. During the Celebration, Mariajosé Castellanos, senior lecturer in CBEE, was recognized for her innovative pedagogical approach with the Excellence in Teaching Award.

The COEIT Dean’s Office also honored staff members for their dedication and service. Joshua Abrams, assistant director and advisor of COEIT’s Undergraduate Student Services; Lina Chung, program management specialist in information systems; and Michael Frizzell, engineering technician in CBEE, were recognized with 2019 Staff Awards for Superior Service.

“The COEIT Celebration is a day of fun for students, faculty, and staff. It is truly a celebration, and a chance for graduating students to share the festivities with family, friends, and mentors,” says Catherine Bielawski, assistant dean for undergraduate student services in the College. “This annual spring event exposes underclassmen to the breadth of opportunities offered at UMBC.”

Read more stories of COEIT student achievement on UMBC News, on students who have had transformative study abroad experiences; who have created their own highly unique UMBC paths; who have found inspiration in their life experiences; and who have come to UMBC from abroad and found meaningful personal connections on campus.

All photos by Chris Ferenzi Photography.

Written by Women’s Center Coordinator Amelia Meman, ’15.

With the recent opening of UMBC’s first ever multi-user/stall all-gender restroom, I have become incensed to finally publish this very argumentative blog on all-gender restrooms. In this piece, I’m trying to deconstruct all of the myths, misgivings, and misinformation surrounding all-gender restrooms, and offer some ways of seeing (and potentially peeing) differently.

The MYTH of All-Gender Restrooms: Creating all-gender restrooms is dangerous because it provides an opportunity for sexual predators to attack vulnerable populations (women and children).

The REALITY of All-Gender Restrooms: They exist and have existed for a while through anti-discrimination protections and there is literally no evidence that these policies and the creation of all-gender restrooms lead to more attacks on anyone.

The REALITY of All-Gender Restrooms, Pt. 2: In creating and actualizing discriminatory policies that relegate particular people to particular bathrooms, we increase the likelihood of violence against vulnerable populations–in this case, trans and gender non-conforming folks.

We’re a STEM-heavy school, so let me put it this way: there is absolutely no empirical evidence that would support the hypothesis that increasing access to all-gender restrooms also increases violence against vulnerable populations like women and children.

Fine, done, end of blog.

Just kidding.

I want to continue deconstructing this myth and how damaging it is to the transgender folks in our world—and subsequently, how the perpetuation of this myth is totally antithetical to UMBC’s values of inclusive excellence, diversity, and social justice. So let’s dive in:

The myth of all-gender bathroom bills promoting violence against women and children implies two other dangerous notions that need be dispelled:

1. Trans people = sexual predators
2. Transgender people do not have the “correct genitalia” to use with their respective gender’s restroom (“if you have a penis, you need to use the men’s restroom”)

First: Who are the “sexual predators” we keep referring to?

Let’s take this first one apart, “trans people = sexual predators.” This line of thinking stems from the (not so distant) historical pathologization of people who don’t conform to socially constructed gender roles; AKA “trans people are crazy and dangerous.”

Not to totally historicize this issue because it is still a present challenge, but in the past, any and all people with non-heterosexual, non-traditional gender conforming identities were considered sexual deviants. In the early 20th century, a sexual revolution in Europe was pushing the boundaries of the way these “sexual deviants” were understood, especially through a medicalized and scientific lens. A cure to deviancy was no longer about keeping problematic individuals away from the public, but around diagnosis and treatment.  

Time rolls on and we move through many sexual revolutions, progress, trans and LGB icons, marches, revolutions, etc.. If you were transgender in this time, then you had “gender identity disorder,” a mental illness through all of the American Psychological Association’s (APA) editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders through the Fourth Edition (DSM-IV; AKA the Bible of psychiatry and other mental health practitioners). Thus, the idea of transgender people as those who are mentally ill is cemented by The Experts.

Fast forward to 2013: the DSM-V (the fifth edition of the DSM published by the APA in 2013) now uses the term “gender dysphoria” to describe the distress associated with not being able to be the gender we are. The difference here is very nuanced but important. To quote the APA, “gender nonconformity is not in itself a mental disorder. The critical element of gender dysphoria is the presence of clinically significant distress associated with the condition.” In other words, it’s not that being trans or non-binary is crazy. It’s that not being able to be the gender you are (and the barriers society constantly throws up) results in gender dysphoria.

We need to dislodge the synonymity between “transgender” and “problem,” because people are not problems; gender is not a problem. The barriers that we have put up between people accessing (or even just experimenting with being) our truest selves, is the problem.

Second: “But what if a man in a dress uses a women’s restroom”

This is the token visual that opponents of all-gender restrooms look towards. We’ve all seen and experienced this joke: a big burly masculine man is in a hyper-feminine outfit. We’re made to laugh at how these two things don’t go together—but this “joke” is founded on the idea that people who look particular ways have to also act and present themselves in a way that matches our assumptions. This is what we like to call “gender essentialism.”

Gender essentialism/biological essentialism is the idea that there is a particular set of female or male genitalia that indicates your gender (e.g. penis = man; vagina = woman), and therefore should be the criteria by which people act, dress, use a bathroom, etc. The insistence that people with certain biological criteria or physical characteristics are particular genders is an essentialist way of thinking–and it’s also a restrictive way of thinking.

Most of us grow up learning to think as biological essentialists. We’re often taught about sex/gender binaries in our health class or with our parents, right? We’re taught that women, girls, females have vaginas, breasts, hips, higher voices, XX chromosomes; men, boys, males have penises, testes, facial hair, lower voices, XY chromosomes.

Biological essentialism rules the rhetorical roost of how we think about gender and sex; however, a different way of seeing gender and sex is to understand both as “socially constructed.” This is not to say that gender or sex is something we, as a society, have made up; rather, the meanings we ascribe to each of these things has been made through social patterns, behavior, etc. that are continually repeated until they read as fact. Fact becomes synonymous with objectivity and truth. I’m not trying to get into a philosophical discussion of what social constructionism is and how we should unlearn the meanings we learned about in school (if you want to get into that, see my office hours), but what I’m trying to get to is that biological essentialism is not the only way of seeing the world. We can see through a lens of social constructionism which enables us to do more questioning about the conclusions that we come to.

A conclusion you could (should) question (always) is how we police gender and sex by creating rules around what each of these is defined as. Not every woman has a vagina. Not every person with a penis is male. People with XY chromosomes can be any gender in their lifetime. People can have a variety of different biological sex characteristics that do not align with the sex or gender they were prescribed at birth.

To go all the way back to that initial worry that a “man in a dress” will pee next to your daughter or your grandma or you, we can use a more inclusive lens for thinking about this scenario: three people have to pee. There are three private stalls in which they can do their business. These three people pee however it is they do so, and they simultaneously respect each other’s privacy. These three people might look all different sorts of ways, but it doesn’t matter because they came into the bathroom with the same goals–and having completed those goals, wash their hands, and exit in peace and respect.

My final word on this (as if I haven’t had enough already): If you dream of world peace, consider also dreaming of world where all people pee in peace. 

Fact Sharing

Okay, so I hope my mythbusting was validating, revelatory, or rote for you. Either way, here’s a fact that I want to share to displace the ugliness above that many opponents like to spread.

FACT: All-gender restrooms are an issue of discrimination and access.

Let’s break this down the same way we did the myth:

First: All gender-restrooms undoing discrimination

When we tell particular people that they are too different to use the bathroom they feel comfortable using, we are ultimately telling people that they are not, in some way, worthy of being in the space they deserve. This is discrimination.

Some folks in this world believe that by pressing for progress in trans rights, we are, among other misguided notions, setting a bad example for our children. But here’s the thing—the more we repress gender fluidity and multiple ways of being, the more undue violence we are perpetrating against children as they understand themselves as individuals. The tangible effects of discrimination do not come in the form of less trans people; rather, trans people will always exist, have always existed, but they will continue to meet a negative message that causes mental, psychological, and social distress. Not allowing transgender children to live their gender identity is harmful and potentially deadly. When you’re constantly met with the message that you’re too different to belong, you begin to face the alternative of belonging… which is shame and isolation.

We combat discrimination and its effects through inclusive access and affirming care. Hence, the importance of all-gender restrooms and ensuring their creation.

Second: All-gender restrooms as practical solutions to access issues

I want to bring this back to UMBC for a second with a little test: Do you know where the closest all gender restroom is?

If you do, congratulations. If you don’t, you’re not alone.

In total, there are almost 60 all-gender restrooms on our campus.

In the Commons? Two.

In the University Center? One.

And these are all just single-use restrooms.

Regardless of what you think in terms of trans rights or issues of identity, it’s a fact that UMBC is home to folks who live outside of the binary and those who are not cisgender. Whether they identify as trans, nonbinary, genderqueer, etc., they should be able to use a bathroom without having to search an entire building for the one restroom that exists.

The Williams Institute performed research on how transgender students with limited public restroom access were impacted by these restrictions. In their study, they found that those who experience problems accessing restrooms consistent with their gender identity report greater absenteeism, poorer school performance, withdrawing from public spaces and events, physical and mental health impacts (such as bladder infections, discomfort, and anxiety), having to change schools, or dropping out.

Wrapping Up

Did you read Everyone Poops? Truly a seminal piece of children’s literature, the message rings true even in today’s modern world. Everyone poops. Everyone needs bathrooms. As teachers, workers, students, people living in this world in the soft fleshy body we call Homo sapien—we need to have an efficient, clean, accessible method for disposing of our waste. We have actually found the key in publicly available toilets and bathrooms. As a frequent user, I endorse that they’re pretty fantastic in a pinch, even if they’re stinky or crowded or awkward.

If I’m dreaming, I believe that one day, maybe we will find the technology that allows all people on this earth to shirk public restrooms, but until that day… please just let people use the toilet in peace—and if you’re feeling fired up about ensuring other people’s access, see the resources below for ways you can help out.

Finally, if you don’t like all-gender restrooms, you don’t have to use them. But as our campus and many other places progress in ensuring broader access to all-gender restrooms, it might be a nice experiment in perspective building to go in search for that rare one gender bathroom all the way across campus that affirms your identity, that you feel totally safe in, and in which you can use the bathroom however you need to.

See what I did there?

Student leader, Autumn, standing with a balloon arch we made to celebrate the opening of UMBC’s first multi-user all-gender restroom.

Resources and further reading:

UMBC All-Gender Restroom Map (2019)

UMBC Community News Message on All-Gender Restrooms from President Hrabowski and Provost Rous

GLAAD Report: Debunking the Bathroom Bill Myth (2017) 

Williams Institute Study – Gender Identity Nondiscrimination Laws in Public Accommodations: a Review of Evidence Regarding Safety and Privacy in Public Restrooms, Locker Rooms, and Changing Rooms

Transgender Rights: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Breakdown of Transgender bathroom laws in the United States