Helena Mentis

Now more than ever, STEM careers are demanding their workforce keep the social impact of their work at the forefront. Interdisciplinary teams at UMBC are researching methods to support these efforts.

In the past five years, more than 14,000 students in the College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT) took courses in the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (CAHSS), home to many courses that cultivate socially responsible thinking (SRT). At the same time, faculty in COEIT were also incorporating SRT concepts in their classes. This overlap was identified as an opportunity to collaborate, leveraging strengths of both colleges to imbue the STEM curriculum with an SRT approach.

“We want computing and engineering students to have a deeper understanding of the social impact of their work and how they are integrating SRT into their learning,” explains Helena Mentis, professor of information systems. Mentis is the lead investigator in the joint research project between COEIT and the Center for Social Science Scholarship (CS3) titled Identifying an Interdisciplinary Path to Social Responsibility Education Across the COEIT Curriculum.

Felipe Filomeno

Felipe Filomeno, associate professor of political science and global studies and CS3 associate director and co-PI, says that the first step of the project is listening to faculty. “We are not imposing a preconceived approach to how social responsibility should be integrated into a STEM education.” 

Mentis also emphasizes the importance of alumni in this process—their practical experience can provide students with insights into how industry leaders are implementing SRT. Kara Seidel ’18, psychology, now a language, literacy, and culture doctoral student, is a research assistant on the project. “This project is a great way to get my feet wet in all the fields at once,” shares Seidel. “I’m here to learn and help bring all the pieces together so the team can craft and integrate the research in a way that will be most beneficial in the long run.”

UMBC faculty are also working on addressing the negative social impact of existing technologies, such as the ethics in machine learning and data science.

Jordan Troutman ’21, M29, computer science and mathematics—and a valedictorian for the class of 2021—researches how to eliminate bias in algorithms. Troutman won the 2018 Rutgers RISE 5MP for his research, Fairness in Machine Learning, about how the COMPAS algorithm, which is used in the U.S. court system for recidivism prediction, is twice as likely to falsely classify Black men as more likely to reoffend compared to white men.

James Foulds

Troutman notes that people inherently give power to computers when they start to depend on them to make very complex human decisions. He wants computer scientists “to understand the impact of how our program—discriminatory or not—can affect the world we live in.”

Vandana Janeja

Troutman works with James Foulds, assistant professor of information systems, on identifying biases in machine learning technologies. Foulds received the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award in 2021 to develop technical solutions to resolve practical limitations of fair AI techniques. 

Foulds also approaches ethical thinking from the data science perspective with his colleague Vandana Janeja, information systems professor and chair. “Ethics cannot be tacked onto one part of the data life cycle,” says Janeja. “It has to be integrated across the data life cycle and infused into each step of the process of discovering patterns in the data and in context of the data being considered.” 

The goal of all this work, Mentis explains, is “to develop the next generation of technologists who have the framework and vocabulary to address the relationships between STEM and society.”

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Header image: Jordan Troutman ’21 on campus in spring 2021. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11.

Under normal circumstances, print news like UMBC’s student newspaper The Retriever binds the campus community together. College students reach for the paper because they know their friend wrote a feature on the front page, or they spot one of their favorite professor’s research on the second page. In a world that has morphed into a socially distanced, spaced-out reality, it turns out that we’re all still yearning for community.

That was my focus as the editor-in-chief of The Retriever during the 2020 – 2021 school year. Every staff member had to make the UMBC community the priority while reporting on all sorts of serious topics. It was learning on the go. Jokes have roamed Twitter about “BC,” or before coronavirus. “BC” for The Retriever was filled with staff meetings twice a week, production meetings to roll out the paper every other week, and continuous in-person interfacing. When we were forced to scatter up and down the East Coast, our editors continued publishing online and in print. We all worked diligently to produce relevant and informative articles. The staff is filled with resilient and strong people, and I am very proud to have had the opportunity to lead them through this tumultuous time.

Newspaper life is frenetic in general, though, so I was excited to be able to connect with two editors from The Retriever’s past—Juan Carlos Ordóñez ’91, philosophy, and Alex Pyles ’09, English—to get their perspectives. Ordóñez shared his experience leading The Retriever while the paper was daily and production days were filled with all-nighters and lively conversation. Pyles described the impact of the internet and the recession on the paper. Our conversation was filled with friendly anecdotes and plenty of shared experiences even given the 32-year gap between our times of leadership. And though our challenges varied, as did our staffs, we all shared one thing in common: our love for The Retriever and our love for the UMBC community.

DasSarma in front of the A.O.K. Library. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11.

Where are they now?

Anjali DasSarma: Hi, everyone, I’m Anjali and I’m about to hand off the editorship at The Retriever, but I’ve been the editor in chief since last April so I had the pandemic year….I’m going to Brown University in the fall and I’m going to be studying journalism and inequity and community distrust. I majored in media communication studies. Can you tell me about your careers and how you got there?

Juan Carlos Ordóñez: I was editor of the paper in ’89 and ’90, so quite a while ago. It’s before the paper was in any sort of digital form, which is kind of interesting. After leaving UMBC, I attended law school. I went to Harvard and practiced law for about seven years in New York City, where I did commercial litigation. I got tired of the rat race. I left New York City, left the practice of law and moved back to Guatemala, where I was born. I did some freelance journalism; I volunteered in a number of community organizations; and I met my wife who was from Oregon. So, around 12 years ago, I moved to Oregon and I ended up getting a job at a think tank. We do tax and budget economic policy at the state level. And I’m the communications director, a position I’ve held ever since I got to Oregon, so it’s been over 10 years now. And I have to say that each of those steps—since I left UMBC, my experience from the paper, especially writing—has been invaluable. 

Alex Pyles: I’m Alex, and I was the editor of the paper in ’08 and ’09, which was the recession year, which is not a pandemic year, so I’m not comparing the two. But I went from there, and started working in journalism immediately. I was a freelancer for the Wilmington Delaware News Journal and then I went to the University of Maryland to start my master’s degree in journalism. While I was there, I started working for patch.com as a sports editor [and later on] local editor and city editor roles with the same company. I spent a couple of years with Patch and went from there to the Maryland Daily Record where I covered the Maryland State House for two years. I then spent four years at the Baltimore Sun—two years in the sports department, two years in Metro covering as the political editor for Maryland state government in Baltimore City Hall. I left the paper in 2017 to go back to where I got my master’s degree, the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at UMD, where I was the communications director for about two years. And then I joined the faculty and now lecture in the college teaching audience engagement and digital design and editing investigative projects for the Howard Center for investigative journalism. 

Deadlines and all nighters

DasSarma:  It’s really helpful to see the framework of where you guys went after the paper. Now, I’d like you both to think back on some of your achievements, or things that really stuck out to you, during your time as an editor. 

Ordóñez, tutoring a school child in a 1987 issue of The Retriever.

Ordóñez:  This may sound sort of mundane, but I don’t think we ever missed a deadline in terms of publishing the paper or getting the paper out on time. I don’t know how often the paper comes out these days, back then we were weekly.

DasSarma:  Well it was bi-weekly before the pandemic and in print, and then I had to make some adjustments given that no one was on campus.

Ordóñez: I can only imagine the obstacles. I just remember we would pull all nighters. Back then we would have to lay it out by hand. We would have to cut it and lay out the whole thing on these big boards because it was a broadsheet. And I remember all nighters on weekends and we would get the paper to the printer early Monday morning and, yeah, I don’t think we ever missed a deadline. So that was kind of an achievement, I would say.

Pyles:  I had been the sports editor for two years before I became the editor in 2008. And my memory is a little bit foggy, and I don’t want to take credit for something that I didn’t do, but I remember us more or less redesigning and relaunching the website sometime during my years. When I was editor of the paper we were thinking a lot more about putting more things online but we were still thinking about the website as this place where we just sort of dumped the stories that were in the paper, and we more or less just did it whenever the paper went to production. 

DasSarma: I definitely built off of what you guys built, especially with digital. Obviously during the pandemic I had grand plans for cultural changes and inviting people to gather more as a group, but obviously that all disappeared when the pandemic hit. But during the summer, I worked at the Baltimore Sun as the editorial intern and then in the evenings I worked on a contingency plan for Retriever to sort of move to digital and how we would [meet as a staff]. In January the pandemic started getting wild, so we created these regularly branded social media channels to share the things that you really need now. And we publish digitally every day now. And I also created the advisory board, which has some local journalists and local media experts and then we also hired a media lawyer. I think if you’re doing good journalism you’re going to make some people angry. So I wanted to have a lawyer on our side especially as we covered some more sensitive topics.

Challenges faced

DasSarma:  So that sort of segues into my next leading question, which is, what are some of the biggest challenges that you all faced? And then how did you overcome them?

Ordóñez: I was managing editor my junior year and I had sort of a fallout with the then-editor. And so I ended up leaving and then at the end of my junior year I applied to be the editor against the incumbent and I prevailed. So I came in and some people left, but I actually managed to retain most of the existing staff. But one of the challenges was that they had ordered this new machine… this massive computer. I mean, it was like three big desks put together where you would sort of type in your stories and it would sort of print out these sheets that you would actually cut out and then lay it out…I was sort of handed the keys and given the password for this brand new machine and it was like, here you go, go figure it out. And fortunately I had a brother who was very tech savvy and helped me through it.

DasSarma:  Where was The Retriever located at that point? Has it always been in the University Center for you all?

Ordóñez: I mean, I don’t know if the University Center has changed since then, but we were where there was a cafeteria down below and upstairs were some administrative offices, and we were just right on the very end. And there was kind of a big open space. We had a dark room back then, I mean, that’s not something that you would need these days. So I don’t know what happened to that space.

Pyles in front of M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11.

Pyles:  I can tell you what happened to the dark room because I was there when we took it out. It became the business office. Is it still the business office?

DasSarma:  Yes it is.

Pyles: And technology is still right next door?

DasSarma: Yes.

Pyles: All right. And then production sort of down the hall to the right, if you’re walking out of one of those offices?

DasSarma: Yes. So I didn’t even get to have the editor in chief office; our ceiling fell down actually. There was water damage and some of it went into the editor in chief office. I imagine it would have been nice to have an office.

Pyles: It was pretty cool at 21 to have an office, like oh, ‘I’m an adult now with the rickety torn chair.’ So I mentioned I was editor as the recession started. In the years when I was the sports editor, the editor in chief at the time said, “My goal is that the Retriever can be independent from the university, accept no SGA funding.” We weren’t close at the time, but working toward it. And the fall of my senior year when I was the editor, there was still national advertising coming in from Verizon and large companies. And we were getting large print advertising in the newspaper and then it just dried up, just like that, it was just gone. And I remember really arguing over a $100 here and there in the budget when we went to submit the next budget to the SGA. I know the paper struggled financially for years after that. So I didn’t solve that problem, and I just got to walk away. But it was stressful and it was sad because it felt like we were moving toward independence and it was taken away.

DasSarma: Yeah. I mean, if it makes you feel any better, we’re definitely on better financial standing, I mean, guess it’s bittersweet, right? Because we’re nowhere near being independent. I don’t know Juan Carlos, if you guys ever discussed anything on those lines.

Ordóñez:  Our finances were in pretty good shape. I mean, it’s kind of funny that on paper we were doing great, with a lot of advertising. As editor in chief you’re both responsible for the content and managing staff and then you’re ultimately responsible for the business end of it. So you’re handling all these responsibilities for which you were never really trained and you’re sort of learning as you go. And my strength was definitely as the news editor and then managing editor for a time, and so it was really on the content side where my strengths were. And then on the business side on paper, wow, it looks great. And then only towards the end of the year did it really dawn on me, well, we just haven’t been collecting a lot of that revenue, I mean on paper, it’s supposed to be coming in. So it was more of a shortcoming, I guess, on my end of not staying on top of it.

DasSarma: We haven’t been able to have advertising similar to Alex. People haven’t been spending money right now and especially local businesses; it would have been nice. And I think our advertising has not been our priority. The previous editor in chief trained me as much as she could but also I was inheriting a completely different world. I could go on and on about the challenges, but I also feel really lucky that my staff has been super self-sufficient. I gave them a lot of autonomy in terms of meetings. We do weekly editorial meetings on Zoom but I don’t ever really see the writers anymore. I did one general body meeting at the beginning of the year, last semester, and then one during this semester. But it doesn’t make sense to have everyone in the same room anymore because it’s kind of a waste of time for them. 

Ordóñez:  Yeah. It must be tough because I mean, one of the things that I remember most about the paper was sort of that social aspect of being in the same room and that sort of comradery, it’s hard to replicate it online.

DasSarma: A lot of our staff is very new and so all they know is the Zoom newsroom. But there is camaraderie. I remember we were even sitting in the newsroom when the WHO declared it a global pandemic. And we were all like, oh no, because I sort of sniffed it out early on and I had been working with administration and requesting our pandemic plan and everything and then we got sent home and the previous editor in chief had to sort of clean up. And then I took over in April and then I was like, oh no, we’re not ready for the next year. But all negatives aside, I want to hear your favorite part of the job or favorite parts.

The bright side

Ordóñez’s headshot courtesy of the Oregon Center for Public Policy.

Ordóñez:  I mentioned it already, but those all nighters that we would pull together, I still remember them really fondly because I was with some of my closest friends in college working together on a deadline so it was work but it was fun at the same time. And that’s really one of the things that I most remember from college actually and I look back fondly. I mean, the Retriever office was where we got our work done but it was also the place we would hang out between classes.

Pyles: When I was a senior the men’s basketball team went to the NCAA tournament for the first time and we covered that. I drove two sports writers and a photographer to Raleigh, North Carolina, to cover the game and the tournament and it’s a memory that I’ll never forget. There was just something about knowing that you have that place to go and to learn and to be around people who talk seriously about how to tell stories. That was really fun and I think that experience helped me realize what I wanted to do for a career.

DasSarma: I’ve always loved talking to people and journalism makes a lot of sense, for people who want to listen to other people and hear their stories. And I think one of my favorite parts is just talking to my editors. I think that they’re the most brilliant people in the world. And when I say I’m editor in chief of this paper, I think so much of this role is so managerial and delegating and talking to everyone.

Lessons learned

DasSarma: What are some lessons that you learned as editor in chief and how have you taken those with you where you’ve gone?

Pyles: I think this is where I really learned how to be a good manager, to be able to work with people and get them to work with me. I remember very early on losing my temper with a writer who had missed deadline after deadline. They happened to be a friend and I lost my temper with them and the story got filed but then we had a conversation later on and he said something that is probably pretty obvious, but I couldn’t see it in my anger. I felt betrayed—how could a friend be missing a deadline? And he said, you’re going to be able to work with people much more effectively if you don’t lose your cool. If you’re able to lead with understanding and kindness and ask more questions than make statements. 

Ordóñez:  I would share something similar. I think it’s sort of learning from the mistakes I made back then. As a news editor I dealt with just a few reporters; I would give them assignments and then we would talk about the edits and whatnot. But really managing a staff was a whole other ball game for which I was not trained and sort of had to figure out on my own and I made a lot of mistakes in that process. I remember not doing it well, not communicating it well at all, and that was a real learning experience for me. And then another positive experience was just learning how to stick with it. Sometimes it really seemed impossible that we were actually going to get the paper out and as a team we really pushed forward and we always got the paper out on time. 

DasSarma: I feel like resiliency is something that I’ve learned in addition to understanding. I think I hold myself to extremely high standards and I learned that people have things going on in their personal lives that are outside of the newsroom, and you have to learn to be more understanding, which is just echoing what you guys are saying. And then of course resiliency and understanding people’s limitations….And responsibility, too, like learning how to stay organized for 40-something people and making sure that things get done on time. And when things go wrong, I take responsibility for everything.

Ordóñez:  Well, when I look back at my time in college…without a doubt, my experience at the Retriever was by far the most enriching part of my college experience. I mean I loved my classes, I had a great time and did well. But what I learned for the paper, that practical experience and learning how to write, has carried through my whole life.

Pyles:  We talked about some of it certainly, but going through the adversity, not only of the business issues, and you’re trying to think about what a budget looks like, and how to adapt to changing circumstances that are beyond your control, and how to deal with different kinds of people while still putting out a good product. And I think one of my favorite parts of the job was getting to talk to Christopher Corbett—he was faculty advisor—every week. I just loved doing that.

DasSarma:  The paper really connects you to the campus, too, in a way that I think it’s totally unique. Having to keep track of everything that’s happening. I think this will probably be my favorite part about being at UMBC. 

UMBC students and staff have shown their resilience in myriad ways during the pandemic, but maybe nothing showcases the Retriever spirit more than the volunteer hours put in to assist in the region-wide vaccination challenge. 

Vaccine hunters Jen Dress, associate director of Campus Life, and Candace Martinez-Doane, assistant director of Leadership and Government, started their journeys by finding appointments for people within their immediate circles. As more people became eligible for vaccines, those circles widened to include more than 600 people they’ve helped register.

Part of their efforts focused on frontline UMBC community members, including over 30 ABM staff, who help maintain and clean UMBC facilities and residential buildings. Dress and Martinez-Doane partnered with UMBC Transit to organize UMBC coach buses to transport the ABM workers to and from their vaccine appointments. Next up on their list is helping 60 Chartwells dining staff members be successfully vaccinated to prepare for fall 2021 operations on campus.

UMBC students are also going above and beyond to volunteer their time. Of students in the University System of Maryland, Retrievers led the way attending 30 volunteer shifts at the M&T Bank Stadium mass vaccination site, giving approximately 175 hours of their time. According to Chris Bankert of the State of Maryland’s COVID-19 response team, “UMBC has been doing fantastic work at M&T Bank Stadium, and I have been hearing great feedback from the management staff on site.”

In mid-April, UMBC leveraged its long term partnership with the Lakeland community in south Baltimore to co-sponsor a pop-up vaccine event to serve 100 members of the community. “With deep community connections and strong partners like Casa de Maryland, we were ready to bring health resources to the community,” says Joshua Michael ’10, political science, director of the Baltimore School Partnerships and the Sherman Scholars Program,.

In other ways, Michael notes, Retrievers have adapted to meet the opportunity of the moment.  In summer 2020, 15 Sherman Scholars taught math online to 150 Lakeland students. And this fall, 30 UMBC students will provide additional support in mathematics through evening tutoring. “At UMBC,” says Michael, “our humanity has guided us to meet this moment.”

— Morgan Casey ’22 and Randianne Leyshon ’09

A version of this story was originally published by The Retriever.

Each week of the 2020 athletic season, Retriever athletes, coaches, and fans held their breath to see what games would be cleared to play. After making it through 2020 with men’s and women’s basketball holding down the proverbial fort, 2021 marked a new year and new development for UMBC sports—all unplayed fall and spring sports would return to action in spring 2021. 

Though there was no shortage of challenges when it came to playing in a pandemic (diligent symptom monitoring, regular testing, periods of isolation), student-athletes rose to the occasion and added several new chapters to UMBC record books this year. 

Serving success

For the first time in program history, UMBC women’s volleyball earned a share of the America East regular season title, splitting the honor with UAlbany. Then, on April 2, the team traveled to Albany to take on the Great Danes for the America East Championship, and they delivered, winning their first America East Championship in program history.

“The first day we met UMBC’s then-new athletics director, Brian Barrio, in 2020, he showed us an empty photo frame on his wall,” says Anouk Van Noord ’21, psychology, a right side hitter. “He told us that he was saving it for when we win the America East championship. I am so proud to graduate from UMBC in May with that spot filled on his wall.”

The Retrievers competed in the first round of NCAA tournament play and ultimately fell to Pepperdine, but they’re just getting started. 

“My goal when I took over this program was to establish this program as a perennial America East championship contender and that is what we are building here,” says head coach Cristina Robertson.

Shooting for a win

For the first time since 2007 – 2008, UMBC men’s basketball nabbed the America East Regular Season Title, sharing it with the University of Vermont. UMBC finished the regular season with a 10-4 conference record. The Retrievers ultimately fell during America East playoffs, but the team collected numerous honors on and off the court. Several players were named to All-Conference teams, and Keondre Kennedy ’23, media and communication studies, was named Sixth Man of the Year, the first awardee in program history. Kennedy’s contributions coming off the bench, playing in all 19 games, but starting just two, landed him this honor.

Ryan Odom ended his coaching career at UMBC on a high note, earning the America East’s Coach of the Year honor. Odom announced in early April that he’s continuing his career at Utah State, and Retriever Nation welcomed Jim Ferry from Penn State as UMBC men’s basketball new head coach. 

“The sincerity and the love for this place, it just came through,” says Ferry. “This is one of the fastest-growing universities in the country and I’m excited to be a part of this family and such an outstanding basketball program.”

Netting a legacy

Coach Pete Caringi, Jr. has been a force at the helm of UMBC men’s soccer for 30 seasons and to mark such an impressive tenure, his players decided to give him a very appropriate gift— his 300th win. In a double-overtime win against George Washington in February, Caringi improved his overall mark to 300-186-75, a winning percentage of better than 60 percent.

“He is one of the most respected coaches in Maryland, and there’s a reason for that,” says goalkeeper Quantrell Jones ’22, sociology, who was named to the America East Conference Men’s Soccer Second Team in 2021. “He wants to make the players better and wants to win championships, and that all I’ve ever wanted to do.”

Lapping the competition

Though they fell just short of defending their America East Title, UMBC men’s swimming and diving performed impressively at this year’s competition. Niklas Weigelt ’23, economics, was named Most Outstanding Swimmer of the Meet, and Kai Wisner ’21, mechanical engineering, earned the David Alexander Coaches Award. 

Women’s swimming and diving also captured second at this year’s America East tournament. Natalija Marin ’21, mechanical engineering, closed out her senior year on a high note, earning the David Alexander Coaches’ Award for accruing the most points over the course of the four America East Championship meets.

Senior captains Vanessa Esposito ’21, psychology, and Abbey Farmer ’21, health administration and policy, share, “This year has thrown so many challenges our team’s way.  Just a few weeks ago we did not think we would be competing at our conference championships. To climb all the way up to finish second overall is truly a testament to our women’s team.”

The Retriever swimmers and divers also welcomed new head coach Matt Donovan, former head coach at Long Island University, this spring. 

“Matt brings the experience, work ethic, and integrity that this program will need to continue its growth into national prominence,” saysBarrio, director of athletics. “He is a great fit for our UMBC community and I’m excited to connect a leader like Matt with the superb student-athletes we have at UMBC.”

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Volleyball photos courtesy of America East.

During the pandemic it has become even more important to find ways of engaging students in learning activities beyond the classroom. Fortunately, we have Courtney C. Hobson, M.A. ’14, historical studies, program coordinator for the Dresher Center for the Humanities, to help make these special moments happen.

What is your favorite thing about the work you do at UMBC and why?

As program coordinator, I do exactly what the title says—COORDINATE. This covers a multitude of things such as maintaining budgets, crafting social media posts, and other various administrative tasks. My favorite part of my job is helping to plan and coordinate the Humanities Forum, our free public lecture series. I essentially have a wish list of different artists, professors, writers, etc. who I would love to hear from and/or meet; through the Humanities Forum, sometimes that gets to happen! But mostly, I get to constantly learn new ideas and hear from different perspectives, which has been an enriching experience.

Tell us something people don’t really know or understand about your job.

Coordinating events or programs requires so much multitasking, juggling—any euphemism that you want to apply. It requires the ability to think about both the smaller and bigger picture and prepare for contingencies. You also have to be aware of the various people or groups that you interact with and anticipate their potential needs. Doing all of this and making the experience appear to be seamless is also a skill.

Is there someone in the campus community who has been particularly supportive? 

I can’t really pick out one person in particular because I have so many wonderful friends and colleagues at the university. As an alumna of the university, it’s a unique experience to transition from student-professor relationship to colleague or even friend with some of the professors in the History Department; they were my cheerleader when I was a student and continue to be so now.

Learn more about the Humanities Forum at https://dreshercenter.umbc.edu/humanities-forum/current/.

Header image: Hobson works with faculty members during an Humanities Teaching Lab. Both photos courtesy of Hobson.

Since 2009, as part of its Alumni Awards celebration, the UMBC Alumni Association names one “Rising Star” recipient each year who exemplifies early career and professional achievement. In the coming weeks, we will spend some time with awardees from the past decade to see where they are now—and how they’ve grown in their fields while maintaining ties to UMBC. In this installment, UMBC Rising Stars Isaac Kinde’05, M13, biological sciences, and Christopher Valentino ’02, M.S. ’06, information systems,discuss their roles in the healthcare and defense industries, respectively. Both alumni discovered their passion for their work while at UMBC and aim to harness technology to protect us from disease and cyber warfare.

As we embrace life in a technologically immersive world—scrolling out of habit or relying on a life-saving medical device—there’s a common question many of us have about the tech we’ve come to depend on: How can we best harness it to protect us? From malware and scams, but also from disease and unnecessary pain?

Two UMBC graduates, who previously received Rising Star alumni awards, are diligently working to create and influence technology that innovates and protects us.  

Protecting lives with early detection technology

Isaac Kinde ’05, M13, biological sciences, is advancing healthcare technologies that work to protect people from possibly fatal diseases. Kinde is co-founder and vice president for technology assessment at Thrive, an Exact Sciences Company. Thrive was recently acquired by Exact Sciences for up to $2.15 billion assuming successful completion of certain milestones, says Kinde. He and his team work to save lives threatened by cancer by creating early detection technologies.

Kinde at work in his lab at Thrive Early Detection in Baltimore, Maryland. Photo courtesy of Kinde.

“There’s two million cancer cases in the U.S. annually and 70 percent of those cases don’t have a screening test available,” says Kinde. “If you can find cancers earlier, particularly in the earliest stages, survival can be as high as 90 percent or greater. The technology that my company is developing really leverages decades of research into how cancers work, their biology, as well as method developments in order to exploit that biology.”

Getting an early start

Since being named a Rising Star alum in 2014, Kinde received his M.D.-Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He was named one of Forbes magazine’s 30 under 30 “Rising Stars Transforming Science and Health.” Kinde also received The Daily Record’s Innovator of the Year award in 2015.

While at UMBC as a Meyerhoff Scholar, Kinde’s appreciation for research blossomed. He said that his first research mentor, Michael Summers, a professor in the Chemistry and Biochemistry department, influenced his love of research after spending a summer in his lab. “I just got hooked and I just didn’t stop doing research. It was a continuous effort until I graduated,” Kinde recalls.

Kinde speaking at the 2014 Alumni Award ceremony, and pictured with President Hrabowski, Mike Summers, and Kenneth Pittman ’80. All photos courtesy of the Alumni Association, unless otherwise noted.

It was his doctoral work at the Vogelstein Lab at Hopkins that helped to propel the technological initiatives at Thrive. “We set out to apply the latest and greatest technologies to identify cancers in their earliest stages. It took new method creation. We had to develop new technologies in order to find the earliest signs of cancer in routine clinical specimens,” Kinde says.

The future of cancer detection technology 

Thus, came about the creation of CancerSEEK, a blood test that has shown the ability to detect 65 percent of cancers prior to clinically evident metastasis in individuals without any history of the disease. Kinde noted that a test like CancerSEEK can detect multiple cancers from a single test and do so in real time.

“There was the prototype version [of CancerSEEK] that our academic lab published. Then there was another prototype version that our company collaborated with Hopkins in order to demonstrate how we could work in a real-world setting,” says Kinde. “It’s the first of its kind to demonstrate real world detection and intervention of cancers. We’re preparing to get FDA approval, to do the full clinical validation of the CancerSEEK test.”

Kinde, second from left, with his roommates Andy Windsor, Seth Miller, and Kenneth Gibbs, all fellow Meyerhoff Scholars, at a graduation celebration in 2005. Photo courtesy of Kinde.

Kinde recalls the moment he saw successful Black Americans who were in the top M.D.-Ph.D. programs and top graduate programs while he studied at UMBC as an influential factor in his career progression. In fact, UMBC undergraduate alumni who identify as African American have gone on to pursue and earn more M.D.-Ph.D.s than alumni from any other institution across the country, largely in thanks to the support from the Meyerhoff Scholars Program.

“To me, that said, ‘well, why can’t I do that too?’ As I’ve progressed in my career, it’s the lesson that I remember. It’s something that I want to help future generations of people by being that example that they can look to.”

Valentino with his family at the 2012 Alumni Award ceremony.

Cybersecurity at the highest levels

Christopher Valentino ’02, M.S. ’06, information systems management, has more than two decades of expertise in domestic and global cybersecurity, which began during his undergraduate tenure at UMBC. Valentino spent 24 years working with Northrop Grumman Corp., a global aerospace and defense technology company, and its predecessor companies. 

He started working at Northrop as an intern—working in what he called the “cyber mailroom”—and worked his way up. When he received the UMBC Alumni Association’s Rising Star award in 2012, Valentino was the then-director of contract research and development at Northrop.

“I had a parallel experience of working and going to school at the same time,” says Valentino, “while I was also starting a family. There are things I learned at UMBC as a student that I would not have learned anywhere else. The bottom line is UMBC is a really hard school. And it’s very underappreciated until you actually show up and become part of the institution, and go through the rigor that’s there.”

A leader in influencing cyberspace infrastructures 

Nearly 10 years since being named a UMBC rising star, Valentino now serves as the chief strategy officer at Peraton, a next-generation national security company that provides technology solutions to space and intelligence, cyber mission, defense and security, and civil and health customers. Peraton acquired Northrop’s IT services business in February 2021 when Valentino transitioned into being the point person for shaping the future of the company.

“Peraton is a national security company focused on providing capabilities and solutions across the Department of Defense intelligence community—federal, civilian, and Homeland Security. I am responsible for operationalizing our strategy across those businesses,” Valentino says.

Valentino’s work emphasizes the importance of cybersecurity protection at the highest levels. While in his role as vice president of information warfare and cyber survivability at Northrop, Valentino shared insight on how some of the most powerful warfare structures in our country, such as the military and aerospace defenses, work to approach information warfare and how they keep our protections secure in the face of international threats on the Defense & Aerospace Report Podcast last June. 

Valentino speaks at the 2012 Alumni Award ceremony.

“You train as you fight. In this domain, things move fast and things can change. You have to know the right environments to be able to train your mission operators,” Valentino told podcast host Vago Muradian. “From an exercise perspective, you would always go out and train, train, train and then execute. It’s the same thing in information warfare.”

The past, present, and future of tech 

In his long tenure in the cyber security field, Valentino is able to appreciate innovative technological protections while understanding that these advancements are interconnected with all the efforts of past researchers.

“The one thing that I can appreciate from being in the industry now for over two decades is that there’s repetition and then there’s innovation in the seams between the repetition,” says Valentino. “There’s a lot of concepts that were new 20-plus years ago that will still be new 20 years from now. Artificial intelligence is probably one that I would point to and say, 20 years ago, we were doing research and trying to apply technologies, and two decades later, we’re still working to operationalize that technology.”

Valentino with Provost Philip Rous, Aryya Gangopadhyay, information systems chair, and Bennett Moe ’88 at the 2012 Alumni Award Ceremony.

Threat protection

Valentino and Kinde’s efforts have created an impactful ripple effect in our understanding of how technology can protect us from threats. Kinde’s work in early detection technology is on track to save more lives ahead of a cancer diagnosis that can be fatal. One blood test may have the potential to accurately detect a variety of different cancers. Valentino, on the other hand, is continuing to fortify the infrastructure and systems that protects our land, air, space, and digital domains from threats. 

Whether it be a threat against our immune systems or a threat to our cyber safety, these former UMBC rising stars are raising the bar and redefining what protections in technology look like. 

— Adriana Fraser

Read more about other Retrievers rising together and stay tuned for more information about UMBC’s 32nd annual Alumni Awards in October.

By Priyanka Ranade, doctoral student in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering (CSEE), UMBC; Anupam Joshi, professor, CSEE, UMBC; and Tim Finin, professor, CSEE, UMBC

If you use such social media websites as Facebook and Twitter, you may have come across posts flagged with warnings about misinformation. So far, most misinformation – flagged and unflagged – has been aimed at the general public. Imagine the possibility of misinformation – information that is false or misleading – in scientific and technical fields like cybersecurity, public safety and medicine.

There is growing concern about misinformation spreading in these critical fields as a result of common biases and practices in publishing scientific literature, even in peer-reviewed research papers. As a graduate student and as faculty members doing research in cybersecurity, we studied a new avenue of misinformation in the scientific community. We found that it’s possible for artificial intelligence systems to generate false information in critical fields like medicine and defense that is convincing enough to fool experts.

General misinformation often aims to tarnish the reputation of companies or public figures. Misinformation within communities of expertise has the potential for scary outcomes such as delivering incorrect medical advice to doctors and patients. This could put lives at risk.

To test this threat, we studied the impacts of spreading misinformation in the cybersecurity and medical communities. We used artificial intelligence models dubbed transformers to generate false cybersecurity news and COVID-19 medical studies and presented the cybersecurity misinformation to cybersecurity experts for testing. We found that transformer-generated misinformation was able to fool cybersecurity experts.

Transformers

AI can help detect misinformation like these false claims about COVID-19 in India – but what happens when AI is used to generate the misinformation? AP Photo/Ashwini Bhatia

Much of the technology used to identify and manage misinformation is powered by artificial intelligence. AI allows computer scientists to fact-check large amounts of misinformation quickly, given that there’s too much for people to detect without the help of technology. Although AI helps people detect misinformation, it has ironically also been used to produce misinformation in recent years.

Transformers, like BERT from Google and GPT from OpenAI, use natural language processing to understand text and produce translations, summaries and interpretations. They have been used in such tasks as storytelling and answering questions, pushing the boundaries of machines displaying humanlike capabilities in generating text.

Transformers have aided Google and other technology companies by improving their search engines and have helped the general public in combating such common problems as battling writer’s block.

Transformers can also be used for malevolent purposes. Social networks like Facebook and Twitter have already faced the challenges of AI-generated fake news across platforms.

Critical misinformation

Our research shows that transformers also pose a misinformation threat in medicine and cybersecurity. To illustrate how serious this is, we fine-tuned the GPT-2 transformer model on open online sources discussing cybersecurity vulnerabilities and attack information. A cybersecurity vulnerability is the weakness of a computer system, and a cybersecurity attack is an act that exploits a vulnerability. For example, if a vulnerability is a weak Facebook password, an attack exploiting it would be a hacker figuring out your password and breaking into your account.

We then seeded the model with the sentence or phrase of an actual cyberthreat intelligence sample and had it generate the rest of the threat description. We presented this generated description to cyberthreat hunters, who sift through lots of information about cybersecurity threats. These professionals read the threat descriptions to identify potential attacks and adjust the defenses of their systems.

We were surprised by the results. The cybersecurity misinformation examples we generated were able to fool cyberthreat hunters, who are knowledgeable about all kinds of cybersecurity attacks and vulnerabilities. Imagine this scenario with a crucial piece of cyberthreat intelligence that involves the airline industry, which we generated in our study.

An example of AI-generated cybersecurity misinformation. The Conversation, CC BY-ND

This misleading piece of information contains incorrect information concerning cyberattacks on airlines with sensitive real-time flight data. This false information could keep cyber analysts from addressing legitimate vulnerabilities in their systems by shifting their attention to fake software bugs. If a cyber analyst acts on the fake information in a real-world scenario, the airline in question could have faced a serious attack that exploits a real, unaddressed vulnerability.

A similar transformer-based model can generate information in the medical domain and potentially fool medical experts. During the COVID-19 pandemic, preprints of research papers that have not yet undergone a rigorous review are constantly being uploaded to such sites as medrXiv. They are not only being described in the press but are being used to make public health decisions. Consider the following, which is not real but generated by our model after minimal fine-tuning of the default GPT-2 on some COVID-19-related papers.

An example of AI-generated health care misinformation. The Conversation, CC BY-ND

The model was able to generate complete sentences and form an abstract allegedly describing the side effects of COVID-19 vaccinations and the experiments that were conducted. This is troubling both for medical researchers, who consistently rely on accurate information to make informed decisions, and for members of the general public, who often rely on public news to learn about critical health information. If accepted as accurate, this kind of misinformation could put lives at risk by misdirecting the efforts of scientists conducting biomedical research.

An AI misinformation arms race?

Although examples like these from our study can be fact-checked, transformer-generated misinformation hinders such industries as health care and cybersecurity in adopting AI to help with information overload. For example, automated systems are being developed to extract data from cyberthreat intelligence that is then used to inform and train automated systems to recognize possible attacks. If these automated systems process such false cybersecurity text, they will be less effective at detecting true threats.

We believe the result could be an arms race as people spreading misinformation develop better ways to create false information in response to effective ways to recognize it.

Cybersecurity researchers continuously study ways to detect misinformation in different domains. Understanding how to automatically generate misinformation helps in understanding how to recognize it. For example, automatically generated information often has subtle grammatical mistakes that systems can be trained to detect. Systems can also cross-correlate information from multiple sources and identify claims lacking substantial support from other sources.

Ultimately, everyone should be more vigilant about what information is trustworthy and be aware that hackers exploit people’s credulity, especially if the information is not from reputable news sources or published scientific work.

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Header image: It doesn’t take a human mind to produce misinformation convincing enough to fool experts in such critical fields as cybersecurity. iLexx/iStock via Getty Images

Priyanka Ranade, PhD Student in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Anupam Joshi, Professor of Computer Science & Electrical Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Tim Finin, Professor of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Today, the University Innovation Alliance (UIA) announced UMBC as its newest member. The pioneering consortium of public research universities boosts student success through sharing and scaling approaches that work. UMBC and North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University (N.C. A&T) are the first two universities selected to join the network since its founding in 2014.

Increasing graduation rates

During President Barack Obama’s College Opportunity Summit in 2014, the UIA’s eleven founding institutions set a target of graduating 68,000 additional students over ten years, including half from low-income backgrounds. In just six years, they have already exceeded that goal. Together, they have graduated more than 73,000 additional students, increasing graduates from low-income backgrounds by 36 percent and graduates of color by 73 percent. 

Now, the UIA is on track to reach double its original goal by 2023. Supporting this increase will be fresh, data-driven ideas from UMBC and N.C. A&T. 

Both institutions have a long history of supporting students from underrepresented groups, including low-income and first-generation students and students of color. In ten years, UMBC increased its six-year graduation rate for full-time freshmen from 55.7% for the fall 2005 cohort to 69.2% for the fall 2014 cohort.

“We have seen very positive trends in UMBC’s student retention and graduation rates, but this is an important opportunity to dive deeper into our data, and to look at how we can better support students who are struggling,” says Katharine H. Cole, UMBC’s vice provost and dean of Undergraduate Academic Affairs. “It’s our responsibility to understand the challenges students face at the most granular level possible, and to provide resources to help them reach their goals.”

Leaders in student support and achievement

In the next phase of its work, the UIA will focus on eliminating disparities in educational outcomes based on race and ethnicity, in addition to disparities by income, first-generation college student status, gender, and geography. The UIA has described the addition of “like-minded institutions” UMBC and N.C. A&T as core to this expanded focus.

UMBC opened in 1966 as the first public university in Maryland to include students of all races, and is federally designated as a minority-serving institution. The university prioritizes experiential learning opportunities, including internships, service-learning, and research. Eighty-seven percent of UMBC graduates head directly into a job, advanced degree, or both. A majority of those employed interned or worked for their employer as UMBC students. 

Yvette Mozie-Ross. Photo courtesy of Mozie-Ross.

“As a historically diverse institution that has had success in supporting and promoting underrepresented student achievement, we look forward to bringing our experiences and insight to this critical work as part of the UIA collaborative,” says Yvette Mozie-Ross ’88, UMBC’s vice provost for Enrollment Management and Planning.

N.C. A&T is the nation’s largest public Historically Black College and University (HBCU). The university graduates large numbers of Black students in mathematics, statistics, engineering, and agriculture. 

U.S. News & World Report has named both UMBC and N.C A&T leaders in innovation and in undergraduate teaching. According to the National Science Foundation, UMBC and N.C. A&T are also the #1 and #2 universities in the nation, respectively, in producing Black graduates who go on to earn a Ph.D. in the natural sciences and engineering.

Sharing insights and tools

“When thinking about the next chapter of the UIA, we reviewed the outcomes and mission of every R1 and R2 institution in the country,” says UIA Executive Director Bridget Burns, referring to U.S. universities with top Carnegie Classifications for research activity. “A&T and UMBC immediately stood out for their leadership and demonstrated commitment to student success,” she notes.

Living out this commitment through the UIA will include sharing data on the efficacy of different approaches to supporting students. It will also include sustained focus to implement, test, and refine strategies to remove impediments to student success.

“I have long admired the ambitious work of the University Innovation Alliance,” says UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski. “Over the last two decades we have worked tirelessly to create a culture that is committed to innovative teaching, relevant research, and creating a supportive community to help inspire students, and we are excited to share our insights and tools with the UIA community.” 

Featured image: Amanda Knapp and Katharine Cole speak with students in UMBC’s Academic Success Center, 2019. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 unless otherwise noted.

Helm, Roswell, and Izat in an undated photo.

Louise Goodrich Izat ’70 and Donna Helm ’70 met their first week of classes in 1966. As French majors, they enjoyed many classes together with May Roswell, a professor of French and German and a founder of UMBC’s modern languages department. “May Roswell was a wonderful professor,” remembers Izat. They remember her as a dedicated and inspiring teacher. Now, more than half a century later, the two friends who share a love of words, have come together to create the Childhood Literacy Scholarship Endowment in honor of Roswell.

Izat has been a volunteer at a reading camp in her community for six years. Her experience has made her aware of how many children need additional reading support to move beyond decoding to comprehension and develop a lifelong love of reading. Helm has always been proud that she comes from a family of avid readers and has seen the positive impact strong reading skills can have on a career. After learning what work UMBC faculty and students are doing in the work of childhood literacy, Izat and Helm decided to combine their love of the written word to support early literacy work. 

The scholarship is awarded through The Sherman Center for Early Learning in Urban Communities (the Sherman Center). “With this Childhood Literacy Scholarship, our goal is to provide financial aid to promising undergraduate students committed to early childhood literacy development,” says Izat. Izat and Helm’s $25,000 endowment will support a different UMBC student each year with a scholarship of $1,000 or more for educational and research expenses. 

Supporting the next generation of educators

By focusing on childhood literacy, Helm and Izat’s endowment will help a burgeoning education professional continue to focus on their research and community-engaged work.

Ayodélé La Veau ’21, psychology and theatre, the first recipient of the scholarship, has been an active volunteer in the Sherman Center’s Literacy Fellows Program at Bay-Brook Elementary/Middle School in Baltimore City. The program pairs college students with a Baltimore City elementary school. Fellows visit a classroom and work with a teacher throughout the semester, helping students develop reading and writing skills. 

Headshot courtesy of La Veau.

La Veau was able to be a part of a transition period with Bay-Brook Elementary/Middle School when they opened their new building. She saw how the combination of entering into a new building and having a more equipped teacher in their new learning environment made students more willing to learn and excitement to improve their literacy skills. “I believe in the impact of showing children the possibility and importance of their growth and development,” shares La Veau. “Not only through verbal affirmation but through proper guidance and access to resources.”

In 2020, La Veau earned a UMBC Undergraduate Research Award to study the use of the creative process as a means to teach and explore social-emotional learning using data from public secondary schools and creative arts programs within Baltimore City. The pandemic did not permit her to begin the research. Instead, she shifted her attention to supporting local communities digitally.

In addition to the academic and mental health needs of young people, La Veau is equally adamant about food equity and its impact on both. She currently serves as the vice president of the board of directors for The Plantation Park Heights Urban Farm which grows healthy food to help feed people facing food insecurity in Baltimore.

“My work allows me to witness the effects of investing in children’s lives through healthy and safe learning environments,” shared La Veau. “The Childhood Literacy Scholarship is so wonderful and has been a major blessing for me.” La Veau’s zeal is not an exception but an example of the various committed students the Sherman Center supports. 

Part of the solution

Izat and Helm are excited that the scholarship will help La Veau continue her work with young children and her research. “We want to support students who will become part of the solution to the childhood literacy problem in our country,” share the two donors. “We are delighted that Ayodélé La Veau is our first recipient. She has a lot of energy, is an amazing young woman, and her work will have a positive impact on the lives of children.”

Sherman Center Director Mavis Sanders, in yellow, at the 2018 Teacher Summer Institute, which provides early childhood educators with information, resources, and collaborative planning time. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11.

Izat and Helm’s endowment supports the mission of the Sherman Center “to build a strong foundation for lifelong learning among young children in Baltimore City and develop best early childhood education practices for urban schools.” Now in its third year, the Sherman Center has become the hub of early childhood education, research, and practices, not only for Baltimore City but also for Maryland. 

“There is something special about UMBC students, past and present, and it is great when they meet around shared commitments,” says Mavis Sanders, professor of education and the inaugural director of the Sherman Center. “I am grateful to be a part of the Childhood Literacy Scholarship and assist alumni, like Louise Izat and Donna Helm, to support Retrievers who share their passion for helping children discover the joy and power of reading.”

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Header image provided by Donna Helm and Louise Izat.

As children, Andy Stack and his older brother Dan listened to Miles Davis as they fell asleep each night in their Catonsville home. His brother had an affinity for Sketches of Spain on repeat, and Stack ’10, music, listened with the hopes of being a great jazz composer like Davis. He started to play any available instrument—steel drums, saxophone, guitar, piano—each one telling a different story; that’s what Stack loved.

The musical layering that fascinated Stack at such a young age found ground to flourish in “the old Fine Arts building,” says Stack, who, after a brief time at the Berklee College of Music, shifted away from jazz composition and returned to Catonsville to finish his degree in music technology at UMBC. “The recording program at UMBC proved to be a really powerful tool to develop my interest and springboard my career.”

In Wye Oak, Stack provides drums, keyboards, and backup vocals. Photos courtesy of Stack, unless otherwise noted.

At UMBC in 2007, Stack began collaborating with high school friend and fellow Retriever Jenn Wasner to form Wye Oak, an indie rock/dream pop duo whose name pays homage to Maryland’s state tree. The duo found praise and a national audience early on. Reviewing their first album, If Children—produced at UMBC—Pitchfork lauded the 2007 debut, “Vocals trade between Wasner and Stack; her voice bears more sweetness, but the light variety is a palette cleanser. Their total defiance of novelty is almost minimalistic; it’s a reminder that someone who understands food can make a good dish with three or four ingredients.”

Reaching a wider audience

“Wye Oak is really a recording project,” Stack says. Using foundational theory he learned at Berklee and the music technology skills from UMBC, Stack and Wasner find a lot of their excitement in the recording process and on-stage experimentation. During their 2010 NPR Tiny Desk Concert, Wasner opens with the title song from Civilian, their third album,and says that it came up in the studio with all the tools at their fingertips. “We just figured out how to do it live,” Stack says of the result.

Wasner and Stack started collaborating musically in high school. Photo by Lissa Gotwals.

Since the days in Fine Arts, the band has played around the world. They’ve also collaborated with groups like the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Future Islands, and Wasner has been touring with Bon Iver. Their music has been used in films and TV shows like Gossip Girl and The Walking Dead. 

Stack and Wasner recorded their first two albums (If Children and The Knot) using student resources available to them on campus. Keeping connected to his Retriever lineage The Knot, which served as Stack’s senior thesis project, featured a cover image that Stack’s father had taken as a photography student at UMBC in the 1970s.

Catonsville connections

Rooted is the word that begins to describe Stack’s connection with UMBC. Every member of the immediate Stack family attended UMBC, including his brother, Dan Stack ’10, visual arts, his sister-in-law, and more than several cousins. Stack credits a lot of his success to his parents, William Stewart Stack ’78, interdisciplinary studies, and Anne Brant Stack ’72, English, for their support and involvement in the Baltimore film community—the family runs Serious Grip & Electric, a local user friendly grip and lighting rental house.

Stack with members of his immediate and extended family, all fellow Retrievers (or future Retrievers).

While still at UMBC, Wye Oak’s work found its record label home in Merge Records. This didn’t change a lot of things for Wasner and Stack, but it did mean more tours in places like New York, Philly, and Boston. Stack says his professors in the music department were supportive of the touring and worked with him to make sure he was able to finish course work.

Alan Wonneberger, director of the recording and music technology program at UMBC, remember enjoying Stack’s contribution to all his classes. “He was a great student, and is a wonderful musician. He excelled at music technology, where he used his musicianship to great advantage,” says Wonneberger.

Still telling stories

Both members have solo projects of their own that add strength to their collaboration. Alongside Wye Oak, Stack tours with bands around the world, and in 2019, he released solo work under the name Joyero.

In a recent song, “AEIOU,” Wye Oak collaborated with the Brooklyn Youth Chorus. In the song the chorus is at the forefront with quiet, small voices beatboxing or scatting A-E-I-O-U throughout. The song is majestic and sprawling, using musical tools and techniques to evoke emotion and story, building on what Stack had begun to explore listening to Sketches of Spain to fall asleep.

— Imani Spence ’16

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Header photo by Kendall Atwater.