Baker Artist Awards 2015 at the Baltimore Museum of Art

September 16 — November 15, 2015

Associate professor Eric Dyer was named a 2015 winner of the prestigious $25,000 Mary Sawyers Baker Prize, and he will present his art works at the Baltimore Museum of Art from September 16, 2015 - November 15, 2015.

IMDA MFA program alumna Dominique Zeltzman will join Dyer in the exhibition, as one of the recipients of a $5,000 b-grant .

The Baker Artist Awards were created to support artists and promote Baltimore as a strong creative community. Through a sophisticated online portfolio of artists’ work and significant monetary prizes to award the winners, the Baker Artist Awards serves artists of all disciplines who live and work in Baltimore City and its five surrounding counties. The website and awards were established by the William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund in 2008, and are a program of the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance. The exhibition is generously funded by The William G. Baker, Jr. Memorial Fund.

http://www.bakerartistawards.org

Hi Everyone,

This recently came to my attention. The application for the White House Internship Program will close on Sunday, September 13, 2015 at 11:59 PM EST.

White House Interns dedicate their time, talents, energy, and service to better the White House, the community, and the nation. They are a part of the White House team, and the assignments given to an intern on any given day could include conducting research, managing incoming inquiries, attending meetings, writing memos, and staffing events. They also participate in a speaker series with senior staff members and small group meetings exploring different policy aspects of the Executive Office of the President through speakers, discussions, and service projects.

Please visit www.whitehouse.gov/internships for more information about the program, the application process, a timeline with deadlines, and the departments that participate in the program.  A complete application includes: short answers, two essay questions, a one-page resume, and two letters of recommendation. Again, the deadline to apply for the spring 2016 program is  Sunday, September 13, 2015 at 11:59 PM EST.

The film Dear White People follows the lives of four black students at an Ivy League college. Director and writer Justin Simien says, “My film is about identity. It’s about the difference between how the mass culture responds to a person because of their race and who that person understands themselves to truly be. All explored through the microcosm of a success-oriented Ivy League college.” After the screening, join us for a public conversation with featured speakers, Kimberly Moffitt and Damon Turner.

Sponsored by the Dresher Center for the Humanities; the Africana Studies Department; the American Studies Department; and the Student Life’s Mosaic: Center for Culture and Diversity.

Hi Poli Students!

The Political Science Department is accepting applications to the the 67th Annual Student Conference on U.S. Affairs (SCUSA) at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York. This is an excellent opportunity to get involved in international and security debates with a large number of students and experts from around the country.

Every year, the Department sends two students to represent UMBC at this conference. The Department covers registration fees and transportation to West Point, while the conference organizers provide room and board while there. If you are interested, please send a brief (one paragraph) letter of interest, including why you would like to go, what makes you qualified to represent the Department and your GPA to: Dr. Brian Grodsky, bgrodsky@umbc.edu. All applications must be received by September 18.

For more information, see below.

On behalf of Colonel Cindy Jebb, the head of the Department of Social Sciences, I would like to extend an invitation to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County to send two student delegates to participate in the 67th Annual Student Conference on U.S. Affairs (SCUSA) at the U.S. Military Academy, West Point, New York. The conference meets from November 4th through November 7th, 2015.

West Point hosts SCUSA every fall. It is the oldest and largest undergraduate conference of its type in the world. Approximately 200 undergraduate students from over 100 colleges and universities worldwide attend SCUSA. Throughout the conference, the student delegates and cadets debate and formulate policy recommendations that realistically model American strategic responses to significant national and global challenges. The highlights of the four-day conference include the opening senior panel discussion on the evening of November 4th, an evening keynote banquet address, four roundtable sessions, and a closing-report session on November 7th. Recent keynote speakers have included Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, Ambassador Thomas Pickering, Dr. Leslie Gelb, Admiral James Stavridis, Dr. Rajiv Shah, and Ms. Susan Eisenhower.

Our organizing theme this year is "Confronting Inequality: Wealth, Rights, and Power."  We challenge students to consider how inequality, in all its manifestations, influences US foreign Policy. Which inequalities are likely to increase and which might decrease as global development proceeds?  Are some forms of inequality inevitable or justifiable, and do any serve U.S. national interests?   How should U.S. foreign policy respond to an increasingly prosperous world in which material wealth is unequally distributed?

Take Care!

In an in-depth Seattle Times story about the difficulty in finding employment that women in immigrant tech communities experience, Amy Bhatt, an assistant professor of gender and women’s studies, was quoted in the article and provided perspective on many of the harsh realities that women in such communities encounter.

“It’s very challenging for many of the women who come here as spouses,” said Bhatt, who did her Ph.D. research at the University of Washington on high-tech immigrant communities in the Seattle area. “They are a highly educated group of women, trained in fields like engineering and computer science, coming to what they think is the land of opportunity and equality. They come here and they’re relegated to the status of being a housewife. For some, there’s real anxiety and depression.”

Bhatt researches global studies of gender, families and social reproduction, contemporary and historical ethnic formation, and globalization and transnational migration. She is co-author of Roots and Reflections: South Asians in the Pacific Northwest. 

William Blake, a new assistant professor in the political science department, was quoted in a recent New York Times article about a study he conducted with two colleagues that investigated why the Supreme Court grants a smaller percentage of cases during the first conference of its term compared to others throughout the year. The research points to new law clerks as the reason because they receive limited training and are reluctant to provide recommendations due to reputation concerns.

For the study, Blake and his colleagues analyzed clerks’ pool memos from 1987 to 1994 that were released as part of Justice Harry A. Blackmun’s papers. “The bottom line, the study said, is that ‘litigants face an arbitrary and legally irrelevant disadvantage that is empirically attributable to the clerks’ initial hesitation to recommend grants,’” stated theNew York Times article.

The study suggested additional training for law clerks to recommend granting more cases from the start. Blake said it wouldn’t be feasible to add more conferences during the summer for justices to consider cases.

“I don’t think we’re going to tell the justices to cut their vacations short,” he said.

Professor Blake’s research interests are in public law and the U.S. Supreme Court and state supreme courts.