“I just had this feeling that there had to be more to this story,” says Nicolle “Niki” Konkel ’18, on the striking lack of women in her art history textbooks. So, with the support of faculty mentors, in her senior year she embarked on research that has opened new doors in the art world.

Student passion guided by faculty support is part of the fabric of UMBC. Konkel’s experience is one exciting example of how this winning combination can make possible big breakthroughs.

Hearing marginalized voices

Konkel is an art history and museum studies major who came to UMBC after attending Frederick Community College. While at FCC, She worked 30 hours a week in addition to her studies to fund her first trip to the Netherlands, a voyage that shaped her career goals. Now, she is contributing to a new branch of art history research on women of the De Stijl, an early 20th-century avant garde Dutch art movement.

“There’s so much still to learn, and that fuels my passion to go to graduate school and continue this research,” she says. “When marginalized voices can be heard and placed more within the mainstream, I think that’s so important.”

This fall, Konkel was also able to gain professional experience as an curatorial  intern at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. She was part of the curatorial team for an entertainment exhibit that will be on display for two decades.

Konkel says the support of her mentors helped make it all possible, especially her senior thesis mentor, visual arts professor Kathy O’Dell. All of the professors “are so invested in us here. They care a lot about my growth and what I’m going to do afterward,” Konkel says. “They want to help you channel your passion.”

Confidence boost

Alexis Waller ’18, biological sciences, has had similarly powerful experiences with research and mentorship. UMBC STEM BUILD, an NIH-funded initiative to increase diversity in the biomedical workforce, “showed me what research actually was,” Waller says. Before UMBC, she shares, “I’d never been inside a lab.” Now? “I just love being in the lab setting and doing hands-on research.”

In her first year, Waller presented at the UMBC Undergraduate Research Symposium with BUILD. With support from Laura Ott, the active learning coordinator for STEM BUILD, Waller joined Michael Summers’s lab in 2016. The lab’s research focuses on how the HIV-1 retrovirus assembles copies of itself within infected cells, so that the copies can emerge to infect other cells.

In addition to Summers, postdoc Pengfei Ding provides direct research mentorship to Waller. “He has always been very patient and encouraged me to ask questions,” Waller says.

Waller started out in a shadowing role in the lab, but says, “as I’ve gotten more confident and knowledgeable, the more responsibility I’ve been given.”

Now a MARC U*STAR Scholar, Waller is continuing work on her team’s project studying a step in the replication of HIV. By contributing to a better understanding of that step, she’s helping provide the knowledge necessary for other scientists to develop treatments to block HIV replication, preventing spread of the infection.

After graduation, Waller will continue to work in the Summers lab as a research assistant while she applies to Ph.D. programs in microbiology. “Being a part of BUILD and MARC, and working in the Summers lab, has all led to me deciding to pursue a Ph.D.,” she says.

Bench to bedside

Like Waller, Abby Cruz ‘18 is also a biological sciences major and a MARC U*STAR Scholar. When she came to UMBC, she believed science was a solitary pursuit, but that changed after she joined Fernando Vonhoff’s biology lab. “I look forward to going to lab because of the collaboration with other people,” she says.

Cruz has been looking at whether certain genes may be associated with human motor neuron diseases, such as ALS, using fruit flies as a model. Scientists at Yale University will use her results to inform their study of motor neuron disease in human cells.

She also works part time in a neurology clinic, where she interacts directly with patients. “I love it,” she says. “It’s what gets me up every day—that I’m part of a community where I can see the research and the clinical side go hand in hand.”

Cruz reached out to Vonhoff just before she joined UMBC from Howard Community College in 2016, and he’s been a supporter ever since. “If it wasn’t for Dr. Vonhoff I wouldn’t have been able to do everything I did,” she says. “If you’re willing to try and put in the effort, his attitude is, ‘Let’s make it happen.’”

Before starting work in the lab, Cruz was planning on medical school. Now she’s looking toward an M.D./Ph.D. or D.O./Ph.D. (doctor of osteopathic medicine). “Focusing on that connection between the research and the clinic has really solidified my future goals,” she says.

Bridging cultures

When Julian Tash ’18 approached Constantine Vaporis, history professor and former director of UMBC’s Asian studies program, after an art history class one day, he expected a helpful conversation about his career goals. He came away with a game-changing connection to Robert Mintz, the curator of Japanese art at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore.

Tash, a Humanities Scholar, had noticed Asian art was given less attention than Western art in his high school courses. His further exposure at UMBC to the rich traditions found in Asian art, however, inspired him to pursue a double major in Asian studies and history. With Vaporis’s support, he began an internship at the Walters.

Cataloguing Buddhist statuary at the Walters got Tash “interested in the question of how to connect museum visitors with these statues, when they don’t have a background in the culture in which the objects were produced,” he shares. That interest led to a project he pursued with guidance from Vaporis and visual arts professor Preminda Jacob.

Tash received funding from a UMBC Undergraduate Research Award and a Bridging Scholarship from the American Association of Teachers of Japanese to travel throughout Japan and in the U.S. to explore how Buddhist statues are displayed in their native context compared to in American museums. His resulting research paper, which has been selected for publication in the UMBC Review, recommends that U.S. museums use technology to help visitors see more clearly how the statues appear in their original contexts, in Japanese temples.

Tash has already shared his research with curators at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, British Museum, and Freer and Sackler Galleries. He has also presented other work at the Bard Conference on Asia and the Environment, with research partner Jennifer Christhilf ’19, geography and environmental systems. That project was a new direction for Tash, exploring the impacts of dam construction projects in China and downstream countries such as Vietnam and Cambodia.

“Working with someone in the sciences is really emblematic of UMBC, because we’re bringing it all together, in a way that’s vitally important to this region,” says Tash. “That was a great experience and it got me thinking about the intersection of the humanities and policy.”

Although he’s graduating, collaborations Tash has helped build will continue at UMBC, including a Perspectives on Asia conference that will be co-sponsored by Johns Hopkins University.

Tash has applied for a Fulbright Fellowship to conduct research in Taiwan as well as graduate programs.

Like Konkel, Cruz, and Waller, when Tash reflects on his UMBC experience, it all comes back to mentorship and support. “Even though these professors all have really busy schedules, I would go to them with an idea, and even if it wasn’t in their immediate area of study, they all made such phenomenal efforts to support me,” he shares.

“UMBC put the resources in front of me,” Tash says. “I just thought, I could do all these things—I just have to try to pursue them.”

December commencement ceremonies will be livestreamed through both the UMBC Commencement website and UMBC Facebook page. Share well wishes for our grads using #UMBCgrad and #UMBCproud.

Banner image: Alexis Waller ’18 and her mentor, Pengfei Ding, at work in the lab. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

by Felipe A. Filomeno, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Global Studies, UMBC

President Donald Trump tends to portray migrants as a foreign problem that has suddenly – and unfairly – been “dumped” at America’s doorstep.

Migration “is a way they get certain people out of their country and dump in U.S.,” he wrote on Nov. 25 about a caravan of mostly Honduran women, children and young men seeking asylum in the United States.

He is not alone. The flow of refugees and asylum-seekers from poor countries to the United States border is often attributed, incorrectly, to domestic unrest in a far-off nation. Some Americans blame far-off governments for not being “willing to take care of their own country’s problems,” as one New York Times reader commenting on the migrant caravan put it recently.

This one-sided view of migration ignores the global forces that bind our world together, my research on immigration policy shows.

The extreme violence, environmental disasters and grinding poverty that drive people from places like Guatemala, Honduras and Afghanistan are largely the result of global phenomena like colonialism, climate change and trade.

Seen through an international lens, both migrant-sending and migrant-receiving countries share responsibility for the people displaced by globalization.

Colonialism and its consequences

It’s no coincidence that immigration routes today follow the same path European colonizers did – but in reverse.

France invaded Algeria in 1830 and kept it as a colony until 1962. Today, the largest immigrant group in France is Algerians.

And while Britain today may wish to close its borders, in 1948 it invited citizens of former British colonies into the country to help the United Kingdom rebuild after World War II. Indians and Pakistanis are now the second- and third-largest immigrant groups in the United Kingdom, after Polish people.

The Central Americans looking to the United States for refuge are following a similar historical pattern.

Technically, the United States was never an empire. But its government consistently intervened in Latin American domestic affairs during the late 20th century, installing and even removing leaders across the region.

In the 1980s, hoping to beat back Communism, the U.S. funded and armed authoritarian regimes in Central America as they battled leftist guerrillas. These decadeslong civil wars killed thousands and displaced hundreds of thousands.

War also killed the region’s economy. Average income in El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua was actually lower in 1990 than it had been in 1980.

Regional instability caused mass migration to the United States. Between 1981 and 1990 almost 1 million Salvadorans and Guatemalans entered the United States clandestinely.

Trade, poverty and cheap immigrant labor

Economic links between richer and poorer countries have also spurred mass migration.

More international trade in recent decades has brought jobs and improved living standards in some countries – among them Chile, China and South Korea – preventing migration by creating the economic conditions that allow people to stay put.

Strategic agricultural aid to developing countries, too, has reduced emigration from some rural countries, according to a recent study in the journal World Development, which analyzed data from 103 countries that received aid from 1995 to 2010.

But international commerce has also unleashed migration elsewhere.

Mexican immigration to the U.S. surged after the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect in 1994. The deal increased Mexico’s manufacturing sector substantially – but it hurt farmers by opening Mexican markets to subsidized U.S. agricultural products.

Unable to compete with these cheap imports, hundreds of thousands of Mexican farmers lost their jobs. By 2006, an estimated 2 million peasants had been pushed out of rural areas in Mexico. Many of these displaced farmers migrated to the U.S., where they found jobs in the construction, agricultural and restaurant sectors.

Today, Hispanics make up around a quarter of workers in those industries. The same low-wage immigrant labor helps to keep manufacturing afloat in the U.S. despite the otherwise high costs of doing business.

Trump insists only that cheap imports from developing countries threatens U.S. industry. The realities of migration are more complex and nuanced than that.

Climate refugees

Climate change is another global problem contributing to the migration crisis.

Global warming-related problems like rising sea levels and extreme weather have their origins in the Industrial Revolution in Europe 150 years ago. But their impacts are hitting poor countries first and hardest.

Residents of small Pacific islands such as Kiribati and Tuvalu must abandon their homes because coastal erosion is pushing people inland, creating conflicts over the scarce remaining dry land.

Even Central American migration is linked in part to climate change. Changes in temperature and rainfall across the region have damaged the coffee and maize crops over the past decade. Some farmers who’ve lost their rural livelihood joined the caravan earlier this year.

And though China has surpassed the United States as the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, people in rich countries still use a disproportionate share of global resources.

Per capita carbon emissions in high-income countries is about 30 times higher than in low-income countries because people in the richer countries have bigger and more air-conditioned homes, eat more meat and drive and fly more.

Such statistics raise serious doubt about who, exactly, should take responsibility for modern climate refugees.

Stopping migration before it starts

Rich countries are not to blame for every problem that drives migration from poor countries.

Corrupt, predatory and violent leaders in Central America, Syria, Pakistan and many other places are also accountable for creating hazardous conditions in their countries.

And Haiti’s devastating 2010 earthquake, which destroyed the nation’s capital and sent thousands fleeing for their lives, had nothing to do with climate change.

Still, too much political rhetoric out of Washington offers a simplistic, one-sided view of migration. A more balanced debate might help policymakers take measures that might actually address the problem, rather than just casting blame on poor countries and closing borders.

Other countries increasingly agree. On Dec. 10, 164 nations signed the Global Compact for Migration, the world’s first-ever comprehensive international agreement. It assigns shared responsibility for hosting migrants in ensuring their human rights are respected and addressing the root causes of displacement.

The United States was not one of them.

* * * * *

Felipe A. Filomeno, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Global Studies, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Header photo by Andrew Stutesman on Unsplash

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

Hulon Morgan ’18, graduating from UMBC this month with a degree in psychology, remembers growing up seeing his mother’s commitment to helping her congregation. He learned how to reach behind him, in front of him, and to the side to help as many people as possible. And he carried those values of service and connection when he enlisted in the Air Force and throughout his college career.

Morgan is one of many UMBC students graduating this December who exemplifies the Retriever spirit of building connections and community by offering a compassionate ear, a helping hand, and a voice of support when it is most needed. Together, these students have created a more inclusive, accessible, and supportive UMBC for everyone, and they continue to reach together to help UMBC grow.

Who I am

After attending Howard Community College, Morgan came to UMBC with a sense of possibility, but also uncertainty. “I didn’t know what I was going to do,” the psychology major recalls. “UMBC had a lot of freedom. It was a culture shock for me.”

To find his grounding, Morgan turned to a meaningful constant in his life: building a supportive community. He focused on helping peers in crisis, offering education and intervention on mental health issues, and becoming a leading advocate for suicide prevention.

Morgan volunteers as a crisis counselor for Crisis Line, a nationwide text hotline, and has already managed over 100 crisis texts this year. He also planned and led UMBC’s 2018 Out of the Darkness Campus Walk for suicide awareness and prevention. Organizers started with a goal of raising $2,000 and getting 50 participants. Ultimately, says Morgan, “We raised over $5,000 with the American Foundation of Suicide Prevention and had over 100 people attend.”

While at UMBC, Morgan has also worked as a peer health educator, leading workshops and providing resources on sexual and mental health for peers across campus. When he began this work, Morgan didn’t realize service would help him find a passion for health education and promotion. He says, “I just knew that I wanted my time at UMBC to count.”

Jasmine Abrams, assistant professor of psychology, has seen Morgan’s drive first-hand, through his time in her lab. “He always showed up to his community work with passion, enthusiasm, and thoughtful curiosity,” she says. “I have no doubt that he will be a strong contributor to health promotion and equity in the coming years.”

Morgan, an Honors College student, has also taken the time to connect with prospective and incoming transfer students, sharing his experience at university events and one on one. “I want other students to know that they don’t have to go through the same culture shock,” he says. “UMBC has a lot of resources for them.”

Soon, Morgan will return to full-time status in the Air Force as an education and training manager. Like his fellow Retrievers, he expects to continue reaching out and building community beyond UMBC. “If someone needs help, I’ll be there,” he says. “Sign me up. It is who I am.”

“Why not?”

If you ask Shannon Cole ’18, biological sciences, why she has focused so much time and energy on community work for nearly a decade, she will smile shyly, shrug her shoulders, and ask you, “Why not?” After a pause, the Sondheim Public Affairs Scholar and Honors College member shares, “I am drawn to building relationships and understanding others. Volunteering is not something I plan.”

Beyond her academic work, Cole has participated in the Global Brigades student organization and in the College Journey Upward Mentoring Program (College JUMP), which is a partnership between the Refugee Youth Project and UMBC’s Shriver Center.

With Global Brigades, Cole traveled to rural Nicaragua and helped set up medical clinics, drawing on her rigorous attention to detail, organization, planning, and research skills. The experience had a profound impact on how she understands disparities in access to medical care. “It gave me a new perspective on healthcare access,” she says, “serving people who walked 30 miles to reach our clinic because there was no regular access to healthcare.”

Through College JUMP, which supports refugee youth in Baltimore, Cole mentored two young women from Burma as they prepared to apply for college. “I enjoyed connecting with them and learning about their culture and getting a different perspective,” she shares. “I remember struggling when I applied to college. I am glad I could help.” The young women were both successful in their applications, earning admission to the University of Baltimore and Community College of Baltimore County.

College JUMP also offered Cole an opportunity to continue working with the program as a fundraising specialist in her last semester. “She has truly helped College JUMP, which is only in its fourth year, grow stronger,” says Eloise Grose, assistant director of applied learning and community engagement in the Shriver Center.

After graduation, Cole will continue research and data analysis work at the Food and Drug Administration.

Meaningful connections

For economics major Charra Wudtee ’18, coming to UMBC was an opportunity to grow in new directions, and building community became a big part of that. “I wanted my college experience to be drastically different from my high school experience,” she explains, “I wanted to connect with as many people as possible.”

Wudtee, a member of the Honors College, has built a vast network of peers, faculty, and staff members all committed to growing supportive communities, both on and off campus. Her desire to make meaningful connections led her to teach English and literacy to immigrants through Baltimore’s Esperanza Center, serve as an eco-ambassador for UMBC sustainability programs, and establish a day of service for freshman in the Honors College, in partnership with Civic Works.

Wudtee has also felt connected and inspired through relationships she has built as an orientation peer advisor and resident assistant. She shares that deep, meaningful, and difficult conversations with others have helped her feel successful and supported, even when coping with challenges or failures along her journey. She has channeled this feeling into supporting incoming Retrievers, saying, “I wanted students new to campus to know that someone remembers, knows, and supports them.”

Wudtee will next join Morgan Stanley as an operations analyst.

Legacy

Daniel Willey ’18, a third-generation Retriever, is a leading advocate for helping all students feel included and supported in being their authentic selves at UMBC. But just six years ago, they couldn’t have imagined the path they’d take to get here.

“I never met a gay or trans person before UMBC. Where I come from if you were gay you didn’t tell people,” says Willey. “My first year at UMBC was my first time living as an out person. I was in the process of forming my identity and choosing my pronouns. It was terrifying but I had to do it.”

Willey found a supportive community that welcomed their voice through their work as part of the executive board of the Freedom Alliance, QUMBC, and serving on the Queer Leadership Council and the Campus Climate Workgroup. Through those leadership roles, they identified opportunities for the university to improve inclusion and support for transgender and non-binary students, such as through improving access to all-gender bathrooms.

“When you are worried about how people are going to perceive you, the safety of the situation, how comfortable you will be, using the bathroom becomes something you worry about,” explains Willey. “If I go into the women’s bathroom, are they going to tell me I’m in the wrong bathroom? If I go into the men’s bathroom, am I going to be unsafe?”

As an intern at the Women’s Center, Willey helped facilitate Rebuilding Manhood, a group for men to explore ideas about manhood and to analyze cisgender privilege. They also facilitated Spectrum, a group for transgender and non-binary students.

“I wholeheartedly believe the Women’s Center would not be the community space it is today without Daniel’s legacy of courage and accountability,” says Jess Myers, director of the Women’s Center. “Daniel constantly embraces courage, authenticity, and accountability in themselves, and it’s impossible not to embrace those same qualities after working with them.”

Beyond community groups, Willey, a gender, sexuality and women’s studies major and a member of the Honors College, also encourages students to take the time to explore these issues in the classroom. “I tell everyone I meet to take gender and women’s studies class before graduating. You can’t walk away from that class the same person you were when you walked in.”

Willey who looks forward to continuing a career as an early childhood educator. “I take with me the support of a community that helped raise me,” they say, “and the skills it equipped me with to continue to create change in any community I am part of.”

December commencement ceremonies will be livestreamed through both the UMBC Commencement website and UMBC Facebook page. Share well wishes for our grads using #UMBCgrad and #UMBCproud.

Banner image: Hulon Morgan talks with peer health educators at a UMBC workshop. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

With Susan Graham ’98, VPA & Anthropology, Special Collections Librarian at UMBC

Since the early 1900s, fans of science fiction and fantasy have produced thousands upon thousands of “fanzines” to showcase writing and art, discuss literature and politics of the era, and build community among fellow fans. Often produced by amateur editors, they have titles like Janus and Mirage and If!, and many are stapled together, copied by mimeograph, or even colored by hand. Many are filled with in jokes and turns of phrase meant to delight and engage a very specific — and passionate — readership.

These publications are unique, fun, and meant to be enjoyed. But, if you’ve never tried reading one, much less becoming an honest to goodness fanzine fan, where do you begin? Well, it just so happens that the Special Collections department of the Albin O. Kuhn Library houses the Coslet-Sapienza Fantasy and Science Fiction Fanzine Collection, which contains tens of thousands of amateur press science fiction and fantasy magazines produced from 1937 to 72. Among the collection you can find early works by famous authors like Ray Bradbury and Isaac Asimov, as well as undiscovered talents from across the genres.

Special Collections librarian Susan Graham ’98, is here to walk us through a few easy steps anyone can take to blast warp speed ahead into this exciting new (old, really) universe of literature. The key, of course, is knowing what to ask.

TOOLS OF THE TRADE

1. A friendly librarian — like Susan!
2. A section of great zines — like UMBC’s Coslet-Sapienza Fantasy and Science Fiction Collection.
3. A bookish sense of adventure!

STEP 1: WHAT IS A FANZINE ANYWAY?

Fanzines are amateur publications that are created by fans of a particular genre of work for other fans of that genre. Work of this sort spans not only science fiction and fantasy, but also horror, mystery, crime, and other genres. The first American fanzine was called The Comet and published in May 1930, and the first use of the word “fanzine” was in the October 1940 issue of Detours, a hand-written mimeographed publication on hand in Special Collections.

So, what’s inside?

“They often had letters to the editor with fans discussing the works of other established writers…but they were also a venue for aspiring writers to write their own stories and artists who contributed artwork. There were poems, inside jokes,” as well as plans for get-togethers and conventions, Graham says. “Sometimes authors would even write in and have this sort of relationship with the fans” that kept them reading issue after issue.

STEP 2: HOW CAN I FIND FANZINES TO LOOK AT, AND WHAT KINDS ARE AVAILABLE?

Because their history is so deep and interesting, much is to be found online about fanzines and their background. Many titles from the Coslet-Sapienza collection are digitized and available via the UMBC Library website, where it’s easy to quickly learn about a range of titles and topics — from war to feminism — and even find out how to see them first-hand on campus.

Over the summer, a group of students new to fanzines spent several weeks exploring the collection through the CoLab program, digging deep into titles that interested them, and ultimately creating an online resource for people interested in the literature.

“They produced a great online exhibit that talks all about fanzines and how they were created,” says Graham. “If you’re just starting out, it’s a great place to begin.”

STEP 3: HOW CAN I LEARN MORE ABOUT THE FANZINE COMMUNITY?

Much like immersing oneself in the language of an undiscovered country, learning the ins and outs of fanzines can take some deep study. Much like travel, you can also easily lose yourself in the splendor of fanzine culture.

One great doorway in is through the library’s collections of Fantasy Amateur Press Association (FAPA) materials. A quick flip through some of their newsletters can give you a host of details about what readers enjoyed, and how they communicated with each other, Graham says.

Another is The Fillostrated Fan Dictionary by Elliot Weinstein, also on hand at the library, which offers definitions for hundreds of fandom-specific terms you didn’t even know you didn’t know. (Like “Bolega,” a “mythical fannish liquor,” or “Helicopter Beanie,” the “stereotyped head gear worn by all neo type fans,” to name just a couple.)

But, nothing quite compares to holding a fanzine in your hands and imagining who made it, says Graham.

“One thing that’s really special about fanzines is that some of them can look really homemade,” with original drawings and hand bindings that show the depth of commitment of the publisher, says Graham. “This was somebody’s passion, they loved it, they wanted to get work out there. They wanted to be a part of this community.”

The More You Know

Ready to get started? Here are some resources to get you on your way to fanzine fandom.

• Fanzine Lib Guide: Visit this guide online for history of fanzines, links to searches within the Coslet-Sapienza collection, digital copies of fanzines, and information on how to visit the collection in person. lib.guides.umbc.edu/fanzines
• CoLab Student Project: Dig in deeper to several specific titles in the Coslet-Sapienza collection through this in-depth student summer research project. umbcspecialcollections.omeka.net/exhibits/show/cosletsapienzafancoll
• Zine Wiki: Use this open-source encyclopedia devoted to zines and independent media to find out about a larger swath of zines, including history, production, distribution, and culture of the small press. Zinewiki.com
• Learn more about UMBC Special Collections and all of its wonderful holdings! library.umbc.edu/speccoll/

— Jenny O’Grady

As an award-winning travel photographer and writer, Lola Akinmade Akerstrom ‘98, M.S. ‘02, information systems, uses her keen sense of sight to show her readers the wonders of the world. But it was at UMBC that she learned another valuable skill that has touched every aspect of her life, from career to parenting: listening.

Her trip to UMBC was an unexpected one, but a welcome opportunity when the universities in her hometown of Lagos, Nigeria shut down due to strikes in the mid-1990s. With extended family in Maryland, Akinmade Akerstrom had traveled extensively growing up but had not been an international student on a U.S. campus before.

As she settled into her new life in Maryland, she began to notice some differences between the cultures. People attempted to frame her story for her instead of listening to her, she said. Culture shock set in.

“For the first time in my life I encountered the American idea of Blackness,” shares Akinmade Akerstrom, a contributor for National Geographic, BBC, Lonely Planet and other media outfits. “In Nigeria, I was used to understanding people based on their cultural and ethnic differences, not their race, and we saw those differences as positive. That is how I saw the world, as well, and how people had seen me.”

In the U.S., she said, people made assumptions based on her skin color and accent. Unsure of her place in this new world, she stopped trying to explain through the noise and began, instead, to listen. This meant not reacting to people’s judgments, assumptions, and misconceptions – and letting go of hers, as well.

“I began to see what people were doing to me and I had to learn to not do the same. I learned not to frame or define someone upon initial meetings. I let go of all assumptions or predetermined narratives,” she said. It was not easy, but it was important to her to understand this new culture and build her own new community.

“Nigerians make the best of any situation. We don’t quietly fade into the background. We must show that we are here, that we exist,” she said. Akinmade Akerstrom immersed herself in the UMBC campus culture by joining the African Student Association, Intervarsity Christian Fellowship, and the Intervarsity Rugby team. She also enrolled in art and guitar lessons to develop hobbies that provided her balance. “My experience in college was culturally rich because I specifically sought out those sub-communities. It taught me to not allow others to define me.”

A year after graduation, Akinmade Akerstrom was hired as an information systems architect and programmer in Dayton, Ohio. She loved the position, but Dayton, devoid of the international vibe and extended family she had enjoyed in Maryland, was a true testing ground for the skills she had developed while on campus.

In need of an international community, Akinmade Akerstrom took a chance and approached Denton’s then-male-only rugby team with an idea.

“I walked onto the field and said, ‘I’m here to help you start a women’s rugby team.’ Their expressions were priceless,” remembers Akinmade Akerstrom. She was right. International women came from across Ohio to play and the team went on to win their division and develop some of the best rugby players in Ohio.

Over the next decade, she developed a thriving career and a strong community, which made it easier for her to take more risks. On a whim, she volunteered for Mark Burnett’s Eco-Challenge- Fiji, an international physical endurance team race. Her task was to travel to Fiji and listen to the athletes, the locals, the experts and document the impact of the race within a host country. The work also required her to post daily articles and pictures. Up until then, she had only taken pictures during her travels to inspire her paintings. But soon, the world of travel photography and writing became a viable career option and a true passion.

After four years of practice and confidence building, Akinmade Akerstrom decided to leave her twelve-year career as a geography information systems architect and programmer to become a full-time freelance travel photographer and writer in Stockholm, Sweden.

She was excited. Her family was terrified. Up to this point in her life, she had followed her parent’s advice by pursuing an approved traditional career. Having a minor in geography, the major she would have chosen for herself, was a compromise. This time, she listened to their concerns respectfully, but knew she could not be defined by limitations others wanted to place on her – even if they had the greatest intentions.

“My parents had a cultural mindset that felt being a doctor, lawyer, engineer, or having tech experience was the most lucrative career choices,” says Akinmade Akerstrom. “My mom was deeply worried about me when I decided to freelance full time. Ultimately they both wanted me to be happy. Initially, she wanted me to tell people my degrees when I introduced myself as a travel photographer and writer. Now my mom is my biggest fan.”

Akinmade Akerstrom’s ability to go into unfamiliar places and listen continues to be the foundation of a path that keeps evolving. Today as a Nigerian woman married to a Swede, being trilingual, and raising a family in Sweden, she is focused on leading the way for creatives of color to not be limited to working within their own cultural context, but to be accepted as authorities in other cultural contexts of which they are a part of.

“Just because I am African, I don’t always have to write about Africa. I can write about Swedish culture and write about it with authority,” says Akinmade Akerstrom.

“Above all, listen to people tell their own story the way they want to tell it,” she says. It is a skill she is passing down to her daughter, along with her love of travel. “I do this for my daughter. So when she grows up and someone tries to put her in a box and tell her this is what she can’t do because she is Black, mixed, Nigerian or Swedish. Then she can say, ‘Have you met my mom?’”

Images courtesy of Lola Akinmade Akerstrom.

When Scott Casper, dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, was asked to lend his expertise in 19th-century U.S. history to help understand a unique artifact found during the Walters Art Museum renovation of the 1850s mansion at 1 West Mount Vernon Place (known to many as the Hackerman House), he was intrigued. 

The item in question was a letter dated December 6,1861, and written by Sybby Grant, a highly skilled cook enslaved at the house, to her owner John Hanson Thomas. Casper joined the exhibition’s academic advisory committee – including experts from Morgan State University, Maryland Institute College of Art, and independent researchers – in studying the letter within the contexts of enslaved people, 19th-century Baltimore, and domestic spaces.

“We also looked at approaches to telling the stories of enslaved and employed people and how to connect particular works and artifacts in the Walters collection with the lived history of the house,” explains Casper, whose previous research includes examining the lives and experiences of enslaved African Americans in domestic settings, as well as the uses of historical evidence and memory in excavating and interpreting the lesser-known stories of historic homes.

Grant’s letter paved the way for the Walters to shift the way they present not only the history of the house but also the stories that are subtly and directly represented by the art displayed at the museum. The letter is now part of a larger exhibit by ceramicist Roberto Lugo, who is known for creating fine art ceramics using traditional techniques and incorporating portraits of people of color in history to help the world remember their contribution to society and become accustomed to seeing people of color’s faces in fine art. Grant’s letter inspired Lugo to create a series of works about working women of color.

The Walters researchers once again found a partner in UMBC at the Albin O. Kuhn Library Special Collections, which houses photography, books, and archival collections, as they searched for images of freed, working class, Black women in Baltimore. 

“Researchers from all over the world work with us to use digital copies of our collections,” said archivist Lindsey Loeper ’04, American studies, who helped with the request. “Our original works are also available for exhibit and have been displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY and the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris. The Walters request was a challenge because in the 1800’s even working class white women were not being photographed or documented.” 

The answer was found in The Baltimore African American Family Album, which contains professional portraits of African Americans from the 1860s and 1870s. The people are unidentified, and most of the photographers are also unidentified, as well. One in particular caught the eye of the Walters researchers: a portrait of a woman in a dress. The photograph inspired two fine arts ceramic tiles that now hang above the fireplace at 1 West, in what used to be the main dining room, as a tribute to Baltimore’s working women of color.

“Although I don’t know these women’s names, I know the history of my own family and they, too, are nameless, as we only have records going back a few generations, because my family used to be property,” shares Lugo. “My work in ceramics is an effort to include a community that has yet to find a place of prominence in ceramics. I’m thankful to UMBC for having such an important collection and being such an asset to our community culture and history.”

*****

Artwork by Roberto Lugo and Sybby’s letter, courtesy of the Walter’s Art Museum. Archived photography, UMBC Special Collections. 

Lauren and Vibha sit in a conference room deep in the middle of the University of Maryland School of Medicine. They wait patiently as faculty and staff from UMBC; the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB); the University of Maryland, College Park; Baltimore City government officials; and staff from Baltimore-based non-profit organizations fill the round tables.

This is the Research Summit on Violence Prevention and Community Engagement hosted by UMBC and UMB. In a room of about fifty attendees ready to discuss the impact of violence prevention efforts in Baltimore, Lauren and Vibha look at each other, knowing they bring a different voice. Both recent UMBC alumni and graduate presidential fellows at UMB, they are here to speak as young Baltimore researchers, who care deeply about their communities and want to be involved in the research aimed at making their city safer.

“I am the community”

Lauren Highsmith ‘15, education, introduces herself to the room after a conversation about the need to work with the community. “I am the community. Please remember me,” she says. “I am a master’s student in social work at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. I was born in West Baltimore and continue to live in the area. Don’t assume the community is just what you see on television. The community are also people like me who are working in the field and doing research.”

Vibha Rao ‘14, biological sciences, M22, claps after her friend’s statement. She is from Gaithersburg, Maryland, but lives, studies, and works in Baltimore. In the last decade, she has earned her undergraduate degree and a medical degree from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and she is currently pursuing an M.S. in clinical research.

Rao has been deeply affected by the experiences of her undergraduate and graduate peers from Baltimore whose family members have been killed by gun violence. “Their experience having grown up and gone to college and medical school in Baltimore is starkly different than students outside of Baltimore,” she says. She worries about the normalization of gun violence and wants to be part of research to address it from a medical perspective. She shares, “I don’t want violence to be normal anymore.”

Human- and community-centered research

The research summit was organized by Christine Mallinson, director of UMBC’s Center for Social Science Scholarship (CS3) and professor of Language, Literacy, and Culture, and Kate Tracy ‘03 Ph.D. and ‘01 M.A., psychology and human services, who is associate professor of epidemiology and public health and director of The Richard and Jane Sherman Center for Health Care Innovation at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. As one focus for the day’s work, Mallinson and Tracy asked participants to explore both immediate and long-term supports for communities served through the UMB Community Engagement Center. During the breakout sessions, they asked attendees to identify how they might engage more undergraduate and graduate students from Baltimore, like Highsmith and Rao, in community-facing research on violence prevention.

“We wanted to purposefully use this summit to convene as many researchers as possible to examine, discuss, and share expertise and data,” Mallinson says. “Our intent is increasing collaboration and resources beyond this room, between institutions and the community, to create tangible, applicable and responsive human- and community-centered research in violence prevention with and for Baltimore.”

During the day-long event, UMBC faculty and staff representing the School of Public Policy, media and communication studies, visual arts, The Hilltop Institute, The Shriver Center, Division of Student Affairs, emergency health services, and psychology gathered for group discussion in different areas of violence prevention research. They met as cohorts focused on data, community involvement, K-12 and higher education, clinical interventions, and the intersection of the correctional and health systems.

Responding to the call from the morning discussion, the groups developed ideas for how to support the UMB Community Engagement Center through each of their focus areas, particularly building on existing work by community members. They also identified a timeline to continue the cohort work beyond the conference. 

“Collaboration between academic and community partners is key for successful violence prevention research, and developing the next generation of innovators by harnessing the talents of our undergraduate and graduate students in this process is essential,” shared Lucy Wilson, M.D., graduate program director of emergency health services at UMBC.

As everyone spoke with the artists, and with each other, reflecting on the day, Mallinson took this opportunity to connect with Lauren Highsmith and Vibha Rao. She wanted to hear their perspectives, and their advice, on how to engage and include more undergraduate and graduate students from Baltimore in violence prevention work, to ensure it tackles the most pressing issues, recognizes community work already underway, and can have a lasting impact.

Banner image: Event organizer Christine Mallinson (r) speaks with summit participants. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

We’ve all had these moments.

Moments of wondering aloud. Moments of principled argument over sandwiches in The Commons. Moments of listening and believing as someone’s personal truth unfolds before you. Moments of examining our ideals and acting upon them.

Humanity strives for truth, but it’s not such an easy thing to achieve. Barriers can keep us from it. (Sometimes we are our own worst barriers, in fact.) But we persist in breaking through, in not shying away. And we nurture each other as we figure things out.

In his State of the University address this fall, UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski noted, “We are a community that believes in the importance of having respect for each other and seeking the truth. Nothing we do at UMBC is more important than the search for truth, and our role in teaching students how to think critically.”

You can’t have truth without light. This is a community where that light burns brightly.

These are but a few of our community’s ways of approaching tough questions. These are our

MOMENTS OF TRUTH.

Moment #1: Questioning Everything — Math + Philosophy = Doubt
Moment #2: Committing to Print — Beyond Black & White
Moment #3: Examining Our Biases — Seeking Honesty in Collections
Moment #4: Seeking the Truth — Science and Faith
Moment #5: Creating Safe Spaces — Seen and Believed
Moments #6-11: Walking the Talk — Words Become Actions
Moment #12: Listening to Our Instincts — The Computer is (Not) Always Right
Moment #13: All Voices Welcome — Conversations We Avoid Over Thanksgiving Dinner
Moment #14:  Being Ourselves, for Ourselves and Strangers — Our (Secret) Truths

Moment #1.
Questioning Everything
MATH + PHILOSOPHY = DOUBT

For those who think college is just about sitting in a lecture hall, listening to a professor profess, absorbing what they hear, and leaving with a brain full of absolutes, we humbly turn your attention to the far corner of the room.

As a mathematician, professor, and novelist Manil Suri wants his students to question everything they hear; as a philosopher, instructor Jim Thomas desires the same. So, when they talk with their classes about representations of truth in their fields — proofs, axioms, facts, and the like — they sometimes bend it a bit just for the sake of argument.

Suri likes to start his 301 class with a proof that seems right…until it suddenly doesn’t. The students realize they’re trying earnestly to prove that any whole number, like 1, 2, 3, etc., equals any other possible whole number.

“And I say, ‘Do you know what this is saying? Do you think there might be something wrong with it?’ And so then they scramble to try and find what could be wrong,” he says.

Thomas approaches his intro students in similar fashion, telling them a series of truths about himself when he first meets them, then building into statements that could or could not be believable, and then laying it on a bit thicker. He’ll say he’s in his 70s, for instance (which he most certainly is not), but with a truly double take-inducing deadpan.

It’s all part of how they teach their students to think deeply about two subjects known for building off of deceptively simple ideas. One plus one equals two, but it can take hundreds of pages to prove that equation. Philosophy hopes to create a truthful description of the world, but anyone studying it long enough eventually realizes how naive the pursuit is, Thomas says: there’s so much standing in the way of answers.

“I say, ‘Of course, it’s a word. I wrote it on the board, so that’s a word.’
And so now they’re thinking, ‘Why am I trusting this?’”
— Jim Thomas, philosophy instructor

The best way of moving forward is to doubt everything, the two agree, discussing it upon meeting for the first time.

“Any kind of proposition that’s given to you, the only way you can actually get to a proof — even when it’s true — is to try and think how it might be false and to hurl all these possibilities at it, and try to see if there’s a chink somewhere that things don’t work out,” says Suri. “And that’s a super-concentrated version of the same kind of skepticism we increasingly need in day-to-day life.”

And so Thomas’s way of purposely misspelling words on the whiteboard to see if anyone calls him out on it isn’t just some kooky professor trick, but a way of kickstarting that doubt in his students.

“I say, ‘Of course, it’s a word. I wrote it on the board, so that’s a word.’ And so now they’re thinking, ‘Why am I trusting this?’” says Thomas. “I want them to doubt whether or not they know the truth, and I want them to doubt it so they understand that the truth is something that is worth the trouble.”

— Jenny O’Grady

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Moment #2.
Committing to Print
BEYOND BLACK & WHITE

The Retriever, UMBC’s student newspaper since 1966, has always had something to say. Above the fold, the very first paper of this fall semester declared its intentions in bold inch-high type:

We Commit.
To Truth. To Community. To You.

“We decided we needed to make a statement and re-commit to what we stand for as an organization,” said current editor-in-chief Julia Arbutus ’20, a double major in English and financial economics.

People noticed. And as the semester has progressed, with all of the twists and turns of news on campus, the student reporters have stretched themselves to learn and grow — a process repeated many times over since the paper first published in its original form as UMBC News in September 1966.

Joseph Howley ’06, ancient studies, served as a reporter and editor during a period of time that included upsets in fraternity leadership, a murder case involving a former student, and the beginnings of the war in Iraq. During that time, he and his staff strove to create a publication that helped students understand what was going on in the world around them, he said.

“An independent student press may be the only organization on campus equipped and motivated to challenge those institutions and make sure that students know what they need to about how they are or are not looking out for them,” said Howley, now an associate professor of classics at Columbia University.

“I hoped for this type of impact, but I didn’t know how
widespread it would be.” — Julia Arbutus ’20

Former news editor Tyler Lewis ’18, political science, learned skills during his years at The Retriever that are serving him now as an intern on Capitol Hill.

“Working as a student journalist provided the perfect opportunity to sit down with important members of the community,” he said. “The more I networked, the more scoops I received, and consequently I was able to better fulfill my goal of writing meaningful stories that mattered to my audience.”

As a scholar and a budding journalist, Arbutus takes the job of telling the truth very seriously. When that first issue hit the stands, she got an immediate rush of support from students, as well as alums of the paper, she said.

“I hoped for this type of impact, but I didn’t know how widespread it would be,” she said. “[This is] a movement to channel our journalism into more student-focused stories and to find a more active place within the student body on campus. We really want students to be proud of and engage with their community newspaper.”

— Jenny O’Grady

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Moment #3.
Examining Our Biases
SEEKING HONESTY IN COLLECTIONS

The tagline for the television show The X-Files proclaimed that “the truth is out there.” Once a week, true-believer Fox Mulder and sceptic Dana Scully probed the possibility of hidden realms of the paranormal and conspiratorial lurking beneath the surface of American society. Faced with current cultural debates, the tagline seems less a tongue-in-cheek credo than a desperate plea to restore a once verifiable truth that is now elusive; the truth is out there, somewhere, surely, but where? While it is easier than ever to access information, it seems harder to decipher the significant fact from the extraneous detail.

“We must also interrogate how these objects came together in a collection
in the first place, since what is excluded can tell us just as
much as what is included.” — Beth Saunders

I come from the world of museums, where provenance is a major key to unlocking information about an object. Knowing where something came from and who else may have viewed, valued, or owned it tells us a great deal about objects, but also about history. I would argue that we could all benefit from thinking more about the provenance of the information we encounter. Museum and library collections make it possible to trace information to its origin by providing access to primary sources. Evaluating subsequent interpretations against the original text illuminates the biases that each researcher necessarily brings to the material. However, we must also interrogate how these objects came together in a collection in the first place, since what is excluded can tell us just as much as what is included. The truth is indeed out there, if you are willing to look for it.

— Beth Saunders, curator and head of Special Collections and Gallery

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Moment #4.
Seeking the Truth
SCIENCE AND FAITH

“Science is a systematic process that seeks to understand the inner workings of the universe, our world, and ourselves,” says Bill LaCourse, dean of the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences at UMBC. In other words, it is a process that seeks the truth — not a static body of facts. Scientists rely on observations and experiments to reveal and then repeatedly confirm truths about the world, but no conclusions they draw are ever guaranteed to be the last word.

It’s that uncertainty, the apparent fleeting nature of what is true, that may lead some people to toss science aside as unreliable or even misleading. That’s why it’s so important that the practice of science be communicated in a way that helps people understand its strengths alongside its limitations.

One of those limitations is that science is a human endeavor. As such, it is not as pure or objective as we might like to believe. “Science is a search for truth that relies on observations by humans and all their inherent qualities, whether righteous or flawed,” says LaCourse. Steve Freeland, an astrobiologist and director of the Individualized Study Program (formerly known as Interdisciplinary Studies) at UMBC, adds, “Scientists are partly responsible for creating what they observe in ways we still do not fully understand.” In other words, who does the science, despite their best intentions to be objective, influences what truths are discovered.

But the scientific method is not the only way to seek the truth. “Twentiethcentury scholarship, from within and beyond science, has led us to a current understanding that no one approach to finding truth is superior or sufficient,” says Freeland, who is also a committed Christian. “Logical systems must always be incomplete in terms of what they describe,” he adds. “This gives each of us reasons for humility as we seek truth in our different ways.” The scientific method, religious traditions, spiritual practices, and Indigenous traditional knowledge are all valid ways of seeking truth.

However, it is easy to distrust knowledge gained by means one does not understand. In particular, the uncertainties and impurities inherent to the scientific enterprise can influence how it is perceived by people more familiar with other truth-seeking methods, especially if they are more absolute in their profession of what the truth is. And yet, it is critical that scientists and people of faith communicate across their differences if we are to build a just, safe, and healthy world for all.

“In the end, the search for truth will be a collective journey of many by many roads,
humbled by our own ignorance and glorified by a common goal.”
— CNMS Dean Bill LaCourse

In March, UMBC will offer our community the chance to explore the tricky terrain that is communication among science and faith communities. UMBC is one of six universities nationwide selected by the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Dialog on Science, Ethics, and Religion to organize two days of events around this topic. LaCourse, Freeland, and STEM communications manager Sarah Hansen lead the UMBC team organizing the workshop.

Researchers will receive training on how to communicate with people of faith in ways that constructively engage them while also respecting their identities and worldviews. That includes finding ways to show people of all backgrounds how recognizing the value of science — but not necessarily its primacy — aligns with their values, such as being stewards of the Earth or protecting the vulnerable. The event will also allow scientists an opportunity to familiarize themselves with other means of truth-seeking, and learn how to avoid alienating people by invalidating those methods in conversation.

“In the end, the search for truth will be a collective journey of many by many roads, humbled by our own ignorance and glorified by a common goal,” says LaCourse. As Karl Popper, renowned secular philosopher, put it, “Our attempts to see and to find the truth are not final, but open to improvement… criticism and discussion are our only means of getting nearer to the truth.”

— Sarah Hansen M.S. ’15

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Moment #5.
Creating Safe Spaces
SEEN AND BELIEVED

“Is it my fault?”
“What just happened?”
“Is it rape?”
“Am I just making a big deal out of this?”

These are the questions we hear on a daily basis in the Women’s Center. UMBC community members — whether current students, alumni, faculty, or staff — tell us their truths, despite their own misgivings about the efficacy of that truth.

This self-doubt is common among survivors of sexual violence. And, so we tell them: We believe you. We see you. You matter.

In the wake of trauma and abuses of power, many question the veracity of their experiences and the impact that it has had on them. Whether a person has faced emotional, physical, psychological, social, or economic abuse, we see the impact clearly in the fear and misplaced self-doubt that surround them like dark clouds. Sometimes, coming to the Women’s Center is the first time a student feels believed or validated. Even as we work through resources meant to help and guide people towards healing, these misgivings continue interrupting every aspect of recovery.

And this work is complex.

Our community is not just made up of survivors puzzling through their experiences for the first time. Healing is not, as much as we may want it to be, linear. And, so we also support survivors as they face instances of re-traumatization, as they navigate the frustrating and often disappointing process of seeking justice, and as they practice coping skills in a culture that often does not lend itself to healing.

“There is power in naming our experiences and truths as a shared collective and
this is what we have been called to do in this moment on our campus.”
— Jess Myers and Amelia Meman ’15

Our job in the Women’s Center is to create space for truth-telling. This has been our role since our founding in 1991 as a small, volunteer-led operation. We were born in the wake of Anita Hill’s testimony where she spoke her truth about sexual harassment, and which then allowed so many other women to come forward with their own experiences.

There is power in naming our experiences and truths as a shared collective and this is what we have been called to do in this moment on our campus. As UMBC wrestles with the reality of a civil lawsuit that has forced us to examine the ways we listen to and support survivors of sexual violence, we are given a renewed opportunity to bring a light to truth and help foster a campus that is survivor-centered.

For the last 27 years, our job in the Women’s Center has been to create space for truth-telling by supporting survivors of all genders through individualized support, events like Take Back the Night, educational workshops, and advising the We Believe You student organization, but our real goal is ultimately to work ourselves out of the job. What would it look like if our campus community was so dedicated to sexual violence prevention work that the Women’s Center no longer needed to operate? What are the doubts and truths within ourselves that we need to explore to get there as a campus community? These are the questions we ask ourselves every day and we hope that in this chaotic time, more of us will have the courage to join us in this culture changing work.

— Jess Myers, director, and Amelia Meman ’15, program coordinator, UMBC Women’s Center For more information about the Women’s Center and its services for the many UMBC communities it supports, visit womenscenter.umbc.edu.

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Moments #6-11.
Walking the Talk
WORDS BECOME ACTIONS

“It’s much easier to help others when you yourself are okay with asking for help. My hope is that by empowering others to ask for help, they will be more willing to give help in the future. Students seem to be very responsive to this. I’ve developed a relationship with many of my residents because I helped them out of a tight spot just once. Later on, they’ve helped me carry stuff up to my room, cleaned up after a program, and other small acts that really mean a lot to me. By cultivating a culture of high support, we can empower others to ask for help and give help. I’ve found that this principle is much less about knowing exactly what to do in every situation, and more about being willing to participate in the community of support.”

Lauren Whittaker is lead resident assistant in Erickson Hall, responsible for 50 students and 11 other R.A.s in the building. As a junior on the pre-physician’s assistant track, she is studying biological sciences with a psychology minor.

“I myself am a survivor of sexual assault and I know how traumatizing that can be to experience, and that really motivates me to make sure the school is doing everything it can to support survivors as well as enacting preventative measures. It is important to feel empowered because literally everything is malleable, even the things they say are not changeable are changeable with enough drive and support. Without people advocating during every step of the process, change ceases to happen.”

John Platter is a junior studying psychology, and a member of the LGBTQ Student Union, as well as various campus groups such as STOPP and UMBC Progressives.

“I have been working with people who have experienced assault since 2002 and have heard many stories. I have learned that there is no ‘right’ way to respond to an assault. People’s responses to an assault, and what they need to feel supported following assault, vary hugely. Some want to talk about the assault to whomever will listen. Some never tell anyone. Some seem relatively unaffected, whereas others seem shattered. And these responses often change over time. People may seem fine right after a traumatic event and then become more distressed months or years later. It’s often not possible to predict what someone who has been assaulted will need, and usually what we see as observers is just a piece of what’s happening inside someone after an assault. I have learned that the only way to know how to support survivors is to listen to them, and listen closely. Sometimes this means putting aside my anger when I hear about injustice and harm that someone has suffered so that I can stay focused on providing the support that they’re asking for — in short, allowing survivors to define their experience for themselves and ask for what they want.”

Rebecca Schacht is a clinical psychologist who serves as director of the UMBC Psychology Training Clinic. She is also an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology.

“In an environment where student-athletes are expected to be physically and mentally strong, it can be hard for them to ask for help. I feel honored when they seek me out for assistance. They trust me to help guide them through a challenging situation and I do my best to help them navigate the environment. It is important for community members who work closely with students to feel comfortable being an advocate. Even if you don’t know the right answer, you probably know someone who does. And to that student, the first phone call makes all the difference.”

Jessica Hammond-Graf advises student-athletes in her role as senior associate athletic director at UMBC.

“One of my favorite opportunities to connect with students is through Green Dot, which teaches community members that as bystanders we have a responsibility to keep each other safe. Community members learn how to identify behaviors related to stalking, partner violence, and sexual assault and then act by being direct, distracting, or delegating to someone more equipped to help. Nobody has to do everything, but everyone has to do something! I think people get overwhelmed by the idea of intervening as if it has to be a superhero gesture — where you put on a cape and take down the ‘bad guys.’ Intervening can be a simple moment in time where you ask someone if they’d like to talk or share some behavior that you have observed. Most of us can think about a moment, big or small, where we could have really benefited from someone stepping in to help us. How great it would feel to have confidence that the people around you, both friends and strangers, have an interest in keeping everyone safe. I believe that when thoughtful citizens learn the skills to do this, we can change UMBC and the world.”

Jacki Stone runs UMBC’s Green Dot training program, and serves as a community health and safety specialist in UMBC’s Division of Student Affairs.

“My work often involves feelings of excitement, frustration, sadness, hurt, joy, and fulfillment. These feelings at times can happen at once in the one hour I’m sitting with the student trying to navigate the process of understanding their needs, finding the resources, calling, advocating and connecting them to the resources. Some days the process is easy and straightforward and I have answers right away. Other times it feels like I am jumping hoops and moving mountains. We are in the business of higher education, meaning we are in the role of getting these individuals educated, with degrees to be productive members of society. They can’t get to the finish line if we don’t help them with the many hurdles along the way….and model behaviors that show empowerment and value social justice.”

Doha Chibani is a clinical social worker in UMBC’s Counseling Center and a 2008 alumna of UMBC’s psychology program.

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Moment #12.
Listening to Our Instincts
THE COMPUTER IS (NOT) ALWAYS RIGHT

Each day, we interact with content in a range of forms, and rely on technology for everything from communicating and navigating our travels, to staying updated on the news and paying bills. Richard Forno, assistant director of UMBC’s Center for Cybersecurity and senior lecturer of computer science and electrical engineering, says people should take any information they find online with a grain of salt until they can verify it. Just because something is on the internet, Forno explains, does not mean that it is true or accurate.

Technology, however, is not solely to blame. “It’s a function, I think, of education and society teaching people to put faith in technology before their own selves,” he says.

Forno recommends that people do their own fact checking and listen to their instincts. “A good rule of thumb is if you hear something or receive something online, that before you get your emotions all tied up in knots, is anybody else reporting on this?”

As an educator, Forno feels it is his responsibility to educate UMBC students on how to think critically. “This all ties back to the idea of thinking critically and thinking for yourself, and not just blindly relying on what you’re presented with as information,” Forno explains. It’s also important that people who post to social media accounts be aware of the content they are sharing with their followers.

“This all ties back to the idea of thinking critically and thinking for yourself,
and not just blindly relying on what you’re presented with as
information.” — Richard Forno

“Recognizing that by just blindly passing something along on Twitter, you’re contributing to the noise machine, and you’re making the problem worse,” he says. “I know in my case, there were times where I’ve seen stuff on Twitter that I’ve been caught in a moment of weakness, and went ‘Oh, retweet. Stop.’ Then look through it, and say ‘No, I’m not going to play this.’”

The notion that the “computer is always right” can be challenging for consumers of media and information to work against because some images and videos circulating online can be very convincing. That’s why taking courses in a wide range of disciplines is so helpful for students shaping their perspectives, Forno says. “Things like civics and media literacy, digital cybersecurity — there’s a need for that so that you become a well-rounded and competent citizen.”

— Megan Hanks

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Moment #13.
All Voices Welcome
CONVERSATIONS WE AVOID OVER THANKSGIVING DINNER

The old adage says there are three things one should never talk about: religion, money, and politics. However, avoiding certain topics instead of facing them head on can lead to divisiveness, and a lack of forward momentum.

As Romy Hübler, assistant director of the Center for Democracy and Civic Life, explains, “That goes against the idea of coming together and thinking about our own experiences and acknowledging the issues we’re all facing in order to truly address them.”

As a campus, the way to ensure that each community member’s truth is heard and respected is by placing the emphasis on collaboration and conversation, not individualization. Vrinda Deshpande ’20, executive vice president of the Student Government Association, recently worked with peers and several campus constituents to organize a “Dinner with Friends,” where guests talked about Maryland state and local politics at 10 simultaneous dinners, drawing conversation from their personal experiences.

While the student voice is important, students may not necessarily recognize that. “The biggest thing I hear from my fellow students is that as an undergraduate student, I’m not qualified to be part of certain conversations,” says Deshpande. “But undergraduate students make up the majority of the campus so a lot of the policy and decisions affect us directly.”

Similarly, in 2016 UMBC’s chapters of College Democrats and College Republicans began hosting “Coffee and Conversation” events — forums intended to appeal to all students, not just those who previously engaged in civil discourse, the organizers say.

“We want to help mend the social fabric and move away from the
divisive rhetoric that we see in our society today.” — Scott Buchan ’20

This year’s topic was healthcare, chosen because “we found the issue to be extremely relevant to the current election cycle and a contentious topic of the same nature as past topics (e.g., immigration, gun control),” explained College Democrats president, Luis Zuluaga-Orozco ’18, political science and media and communication studies.

Representatives from the Maryland Citizens’ Health Initiative and the Heartland Institute opened the event with remarks and then allowed the audience to steer the conversation, with lots of interaction in small groups. “We hope that the people coming out walk away with a better understanding of their peers and those who think differently than them and that they find that they can get along,” says Scott Buchan ’20, political science, College Republicans president. “So much emphasis is put on political beliefs that people are cutting off their friends who think differently. We want to help mend the social fabric and move away from the divisive rhetoric that we see in our society today.”

— Kait McCaffrey

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Moment #14.
Being Ourselves, for Ourselves and Strangers
OUR (SECRET) TRUTHS

Tucked away in a thicket of trees at the edge of campus, a seemingly ordinary notebook holds hundreds of tales of heartbreak, euphoria, angst, and love. The journal is housed beneath a bench in the Joseph Beuys Sculpture Park and serves as a blank slate for any passerby who has a story to tell.

In a world that lives almost entirely online through platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and Tumblr, the idea of taking pen to paper seems almost archaic. However, members of the UMBC community have shared their most private, oftentimes anonymous, truths in this highly public forum for nearly two decades now.

“If everybody keeps it secret, those who really need it may never find it.”
— Sandra Abbott, Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture

Once each journal is filled, it is collected and added to the tome that’s been steadily growing since the early 2000s, each serving as its own sort of time capsule. Brandee Blumenthal ’20, economics, is spending her semester working in the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC) to scan and archive the collection of journals. She reflects on how this project manages to thrive in a digital world explaining, “The notion of journaling is something we all still grew up with. There’s something about writing on paper that feels different than typing it. You’re actually creating the words. For some people, it’s nostalgic and provides an element of comfort and familiarity.”

Sandra Abbott, curator of collections and outreach for the CADVC, cites the physical location as a reason for inspiration.

“You’re in a place that’s lush and green and cut off from the hustle and bustle of campus. It forces you to slow down. Handwriting takes longer, but that’s because you have to choose your words carefully and critically since you can’t go back and edit. It gives more weight to your words because you’re being intentional.”

While individuals may put their thoughts to paper and be done with them, that doesn’t mean their story is over. Many entries have annotated words of support or congratulations or commiseration from strangers flipping through the pages. Using the journals as inspiration, Linehan music composition majors performed “Creative Acts,” a site-specific music and dance production. A few students have even used the journal to take a major next step in their lives.

Nate Dissmeyer ’07, information systems management, had his unofficial first date with his wife in the Joseph Beuys Sculpture Park. When the time came to propose to his wife, he “grabbed the journal and suggested she leave an entry about us. While she was writing, I was able to pull out the ring from my pocket and get down on my knee and add that she should include this moment in the journal.”

With more attention being paid to the Joseph Beuys Sculpture Park’s treasures, is there a concern that this hidden gem will lose its luster? “I’ve always been divided because it’s a place that people discover on their own and it’s so special,” said Abbott. “But if everybody keeps it secret, those who really need it may never find it. We want the campus to take advantage of this space. It’s theirs.”

— Kait McCaffrey

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I have a secret. No one actually pronounces my name right. It’s not like it’s one person’s fault, don’t worry. There’s more than enough blame to go around. Including a little dose for me. Let me start from the beginning.

Having an “ethnic” sounding name, I’ve had people mispronouncing my name since I was a baby. It’s an unfamiliar name to many people in America, and I’ve never had any resentment towards people who squinted at my name on name tags, or spouted a completely incorrect pronunciation. Unfortunately, I’ve done the same thing with others. To be fair, my name is actually pronounced different ways in different parts of India. And, growing up in America, being mixed race, I have never felt strong roots to India (of my own accord) and so I never fully understood the actual pronunciation. As you can see, my name is highly nuanced.

But there came a point when I realized that my name, as my mom and dad called me, didn’t fit in people’s mouths quite correctly. Ever. So I modified it a little. It’s just an inflection change, and I accepted that everyone, besides my parents, would pronounce it the way that would be easier for them.

And thus, instead of “Uhn-Jah-Lee,” my name to all of my close friends, acquaintances and professors became “Ahn-Jah-Lee.”

And I like both pronunciations. I think my name is pretty, and I do get my fair share of compliments for it. But those compliments are nowhere near the majority.

“I refuse to feel nervous about correcting other people.
My name is the most personal thing I have, and I deserve
to have people make an effort to say it correctly.”

One thing I know is that even though I’ve modified my name to fit in others’ mouths, people still can’t, and sometimes refuse to attempt to pronounce it. And that’s where I place blame on others.

When I was in high school, I dreaded the substitutes who would run down the list until they reached my name, and there was that awful pause, and they would laugh and say “Oh god. I’m not even going to try!” Cue 16-year-old Anjali, who would raise her hand and clearly pronounce her name, and the endless substitutes who would just check her name off. No offer of apology for negating my identity, and giving up on my hopelessly foreign name. Nothing.

In college, I decided to go by the nickname my mom gave me when I was very young. “Anj.” I’ve always had an affinity for the familiarity that goes along with a nickname. And, to be honest, how hard can it be to pronounce three letters? Apparently “Anj” is also an impossible name.

After ordering a bagel on campus, I waited for the cashier to call my name and hand it to me. “A-N-J?” she called out, spelling it out, letter by letter, like my name was a confusing word in an elementary school spelling bee. I was appalled. I would 100% rather people mispronounced my name than make no effort at all.

To make matters worse, as a woman, I’ve been conditioned to feel like I’m inconveniencing others to correct someone. I’m afraid I’ll offend my coworkers and teachers, or come off rude by saying “actually, it’s pronounced…”

No one is expecting every person to know how to pronounce every name. That’s an unattainable goal for everyone, myself included. But I will stand up and say that if you find an unfamiliar name on your roster as a teacher, or you’re a cashier handing a hot coffee over the counter, the absolute least you can do it make an attempt to pronounce it. I refuse to feel nervous about correcting other people. My name is the most personal thing I have, and I deserve to have people make an effort to say it correctly. “I’m not even going to try,” isn’t going to fly with me anymore.

Anjali DasSarma ’21 is an editorial intern for UMBC Magazine.

Header image by Raquel Hamner ’20. Inset image by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC Magazine.

by Joshua Wilhide, M.S. ’10, and William LaCourse, UMBC

It’s diamond season. Almost 40 percent of American engagements happen between Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day, with Christmas the most popular day to pop the question – and hand over a sparkly piece of ice. Jewelry stores do at least double their usual monthly sales in December.

Since at least the late 1800s, with the discovery of huge diamond mines in South Africa, people have treasured these dazzling gems. The beauty and splendor of diamonds goes well beyond the surface. Like a diamond hunter digging in an underground mine, one must look deeper to their atomic characteristics to understand what sets these stones apart – and what makes them valuable not just for romantics but also for scientists.

On the atomic level

When mined from the earth, diamonds look like cloudy rocks before they’re cut and polished. Their chemical nature and structure were unknown for centuries. It was Isaac Newton’s experiments in the 1600s that first suggested diamonds are made up of the fourth-most abundant element, carbon.

People doubted Newton’s discovery, which is understandable considering how different diamonds look from other common forms of carbon, like the graphite in pencils or the ash left over in a wood-burning fireplace. But in 1797, English scientist Smithson Tennant confirmed the composition of diamonds.

It turns out that carbon takes two common forms that have crystalline structures on the atomic level. Graphite is a repeating two-dimensional, honeycomb-like shape, with layers stacking on top of each other. Alternatively, carbon can form a repeating three-dimensional shape, a tetrahedron – and that’s your diamond.

Where do they come from?

There are two sources of the precious gemstone: natural mining or synthesis within a laboratory.

Natural diamonds are formed under intense pressure and heat in the Earth’s crust over millions of years. Natural deposits have been found all over the world, from Northern Canada to Western Australia, even underwater in Namibia.

Mines were the only source of the gemstone until 1955, when General Electric produced the first synthetic diamond using what’s called the high-pressure, high-temperature process. This process works by applying hundreds of thousands pounds of pressure to graphite at 2,700 degrees Fahrenheit to force the carbon into the correct crystalline structure. It’s sort of like an artificial version of the extreme conditions that produce diamonds deep within the earth.

In the 1970s, labs started to use the chemical vapor deposition method to grow diamonds at lower pressures. At the time, the HPHT technique couldn’t produce a gem-quality stone. This improved method converts a hydrocarbon gas mixture by breaking it down to its components, carbon and hydrogen molecules, with an intense heated filament or plasma and deposits it onto a substrate, ultimately forming a solid diamond. Originally, this process had a very slow growth rate, but it’s now optimized to grow quality diamonds within days.

Together these techniques are largely responsible for human-made diamonds – upwards of 4 billion carats worldwide annually.

There’s a common misconception that a natural diamond must be inherently different than a synthetic diamond. To the contrary, they are chemically identical and share the same physical properties. Even the most sophisticated techniques can not detect a difference between a flawless mined diamond and a flawless human-made diamond – both are “real” diamonds. However, truly flawless diamonds of either type are extremely scarce.

Assessing a diamond

No matter its origin, a diamond can be assessed by the “four Cs” of cut, color, clarity and carat weight. Specialized laboratories grade each category, as created by the Gemological Institute of America.

The cut of a diamond is defined in two ways. There’s “the general shape of the cut stone,” with shapes including round brilliant (most common), oval, emerald, pear, princess, trilliant, triangle, heart and radiant. And there’s “the degree of perfection achieved by the cutting and polishing process” as rated on a scale ranging from excellent to poor. The type and quality of the cut ultimately determines the way light reflects in the stone, contributing to its “brilliance.”

The color of a diamond is graded on a scale from “D,” being perfectly colorless, to “Z” having the most color. Originally, the color of the stone was a huge hint about how it was formed because until 2007 about 90 percent of the high-pressure, high-temperature synthetic stones were yellow orange or yellow. Almost no stones from that process were colorless, so a colorless stone was almost certainly natural. But the HPHT growing process has greatly improved and as of 2016, 43 percent of synthetic diamonds were colorless.

Diamond clarity indicates the presence of inclusions, or tiny imperfections, in the stone. Inclusions make every diamond unique and provide strong clues to whether a diamond is natural or synthetic. The HPHT process uses metal flux, or a hot metal liquid, which acts as a solvent to dissolve the carbon source, graphite, to be rearranged and grown into a diamond. Diamonds grown this way can have inclusions of metals. The resulting stones may be magnetic – if a diamond reacts with a magnet, it is certainly synthetic. Additionally, most synthetic diamonds receive high clarity grades, while natural diamonds contain larger inclusions.

Many consumers focus on carat weight – that is, diamond size. The stone is weighed on a scale where one carat is 200 milligrams (0.007 ounces). Diamonds larger than four carats are almost guaranteed to be natural because that’s the limit for the size of the diamonds that the synthetic processes can grow.

Although the “four Cs” of diamonds ultimately define retail value, sentimental value can be even greater. Buyers must decide if a natural or synthetic stone fits the bill for them, based on factors that might include the ecological and ethical ramifications of diamond mining as well as the lower price tag for synthetic rocks.

Diamonds found beyond your ring finger

Although diamonds are well known for their place in the jewelry industry, they play other valuable roles, too.

Their physical properties, especially hardness, are ideal for abrasive applications. Small diamonds can be found coating cutting wheels, drill bits and grinding wheels, which are used for cutting concrete or brickwork.

Diamonds also have certain optical properties that make them suitable for various spectroscopy techniques, or measurements involving the electromagnetic spectrum. Scientific researchers use these tests to help identify the composition of materials they’re investigating.

A previously common place for diamonds was on record players, where to this day the needle that touches the record can be a very small diamond sliver.

Whether one appreciates the aesthetic or scientific characteristics of the gem more, diamonds can dazzle.

* * * * *

Joshua Wilhide, M.S. ’10, chemistry, Manager of the Molecular Characterization and Analysis Complex, University of Maryland, Baltimore County and William LaCourse, Professor of Chemistry and Dean of the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

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

Header image  chuttersnap on Unsplash