Assistant Professor Gary Rozanc was awarded funding from the prestigious AIGA DEC Design Faculty Research Grant program. Professor Rozanc’s grant project is “Web Designer Competencies Inventory and Recommendations for Inclusion in Design Curricula.”

His research will help identify and validate sets of core competencies that need to be effectively taught to students preparing to pursue careers as interaction and user experience designers. He will interview a select group of interaction design educators and professionals to determine, contextualize and prioritize these competencies.

Gary Rozanc is an Assistant Professor in the Graphic Design emphasis, in the Department of Visual Arts.

CBS Sunday Morning, The Baltimore Sun, and the Baltimore Jewish Times have run features on Project Mah Jongg, now appearing at the Jewish Museum of Maryland and is on view in Baltimore through June 29, 2014.. 

The show, which originated at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, NYC has also garnered notice in the New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The LA Times. The show has travelled to Portland, Cleveland, LA, Miami Beach, Atlanta, and will continue on to San Francisco this summer.

CIRCA Director Timothy Nohe produced sound designs for three "Muji" players, documenting games in Chinatown and the Upper East Side. The sound work was invited by curator Melissa Martens Yaverbaum. Abbot Miller, a partner at Pentagram Design, designed the exhibit to highlight the intriguing objects and imagery surrounding the game. Original works by fashion icon Isaac Mizrahi, and renowned illustrators Maira Kalman, Christoph Niemann, and Bruce McCall pay homage to the influence mah jongg has had on design and contemporary artists. The exhibition's sumptuous companion publication "Mah Jongg: Crak, Bam, Dot," was edited by Abbott Miller and Patsy Tarr, and published by twice books.

Interdisciplinary Studies at UMBC invites undergraduate students of engineering, visual arts, environmental science, journalism, and interdisciplinary studies to submit a design proposal for a kinetic sculpture (a bicycle powered work of art).

Interdisciplinary Studies will offer a $250 prize to the winning design for a kinetic sculpture that will be built by a UMBC team of students and entered into the Baltimore Kinetic Sculpture Race. To explore themes of sustainability, the working title for the kinetic sculpture is the “Trashmonster Upcycle.” Our goal is to put the notion of upcycling ("converting waste materials or useless products into new materials or products of better quality or for better environmental value") into motion by collecting discarded materials (also known as trash) that could be used as part of a bicycle powered sculpture.

For more information, please visit the UMBC Kinetic Sculpture Race blog at http://kineticumbc.blogspot.com and the Baltimore Kinetic Sculpture Race web site at http://www.kineticbaltimore.com/.

RFP guidelines:

Please submit a description of up to 300 words and a detailed sketch for a kinetic sculpture powered by either 2 or 4 cyclists. The narrative must address the following questions:

1. What are the overall dimensions?

2. What are primary construction materials?

3. Do you propose incorporating regular bicycle frames or starting from “scratch” in a recumbent rider position?

4. How will the vehicle navigate roads, water, and mud?

Materials that could be used for aesthetic, structural or flotation purposes include:

• water cooler bottles
• buckets
• PVC pipe
• discarded lumber or shipping pallets
• old bicycle frames/wheels/ gears
• renewable materials such as bamboo