UMBC Athletics Director Tim Hall Lays Out His Program for the Future of Retriever Fever

Interview by Richard Byrne ’86

When Tim Hall was appointed director of athletics, physical education and recreation in July 2013, he had some big shoes to fill. Longtime director Charles Brown had led UMBC’s program for 24 years, solidifying and growing the program’s Division I successes while keeping the department true to UMBC’s mission of emphasizing both sides of the student-athlete experience.

Yet in Hall’s first semester, he had the chance to oversee the ascent of UMBC men’s and women’s soccer to simultaneous 2013 America East conference championships and (in the case of the men’s team), lofty national rankings that have been rare for past UMBC teams.

Before coming to UMBC, Hall was director of athletics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) for six years, and he helped propel UMKC to new heights at the NCAA Division I level in athletic competitiveness, academic success, fund-raising and community service efforts.  He has also worked at Kent State University, Eastern Kentucky University, St. Xavier College and Youngstown State University.

Interviewed recently in his office in the Retriever Activities Center, Hall radiated a quiet intensity of purpose – both in embracing the priority to balance academic and athletic success articulated by UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, and making plans to take UMBC athletics to even greater success by involving its alumni and the wider community.

What have you learned about UMBC athletics and the school spirit of the university in your first year on campus?

Tim Hall: Certainly our mascot, “True Grit,” is appropriate. The word “grit” is associated with UMBC as an institution, and it’s synonymous with our athletics department, too. We’re a relatively young institution, and there’s a growing amount of school spirit. Our colors – black and gold – resonate with alumni. We have pockets of very strong support and spirit.

We are working to engender a stronger sense of pride in the university through our athletics programs: primarily men’s and women’s basketball, men’s and women’s soccer, men’s and women’s lacrosse. And a stronger sense of pride in the success of our athletics program I think will bode well for having a stronger sense of overall school spirit.

How do you assess where our athletics program is at the present moment? What challenges do we face as a university?

The landscape of college athletics is changing a great deal. We’ve gone through a massive overhaul of the legislative process and NCAA governance structure. The big five conferences – about 65 institutions – really are going to control, by and large, the governance structure and process. The word used a lot in anticipation of these changes is “permissive” – which means if you have the resources to do it, you can do it. There is going to be a lot of deregulation.

What it’s going to mean for UMBC as a smaller, mid-major division one program is that we’re going to have to prioritize our expenditures. We need to talk about return on investment – and, as I always say, return on objective. What are our major objectives? Our funding will have to be in line with those objectives if we’re going to realize success.

We love all of our sports at UMBC, but as an NCAA Division I-AAA school – which means we don’t sponsor football – our best opportunities for revenues are in soccer, lacrosse and basketball – primarily basketball, though. And for us to realize revenues from those sports, we have to put teams on the field that are competitive and can win more than they lose. You have to make sure that you have the coaches and the student-athletes and the tools that they need to be successful: scholarships, equipment, and appropriate facilities, etc.

That doesn’t mean we don’t want baseball or tennis or track and field to be successful. We want all of our programs to be successful.

You mentioned pockets of spirit and support. How does UMBC athletics build on that?

One of my initiatives as we put our strategic plan for UMBC athletics together is to grow and to engender more of a sense of pride from all constituencies, but specifically from our former student athletes.

When I got to UMBC last year, I was able to discern fairly quickly that our former student-athletes are very active within their own particular sports. For example, former lacrosse players come back to Homecoming and interact just with former teammates at lacrosse-specific functions. Soccer, the same. Tennis, the same. The phrase “siloed” would probably be accurate.

What we want to do is tear down some of the silos. We want to say: “Yes, your sport is important, but there’s strength in numbers. A rising tide raises all ships. We want you to come to events that are athletic department-wide and institution-wide.”

What opportunities are presented for UMBC athletics by the new facilities in the works right now – especially the new Events Center that is planned for 2017?

From an organizational perspective, having the new Events Center will allow us to move nearly all of our varsity programs to that facility. All of our coaches’ offices and all of our support units for intercollegiate athletics will be housed there. This move will allow us to then have the RAC refurbished to become specifically a facility for recreation and wellness and club sports, which would be more consistent with other similar universities. That’s a big growth step in our maturation process in the areas of athletics, recreation and physical education.

And, again, our basketball program has to be successful for us to be successful as a department, so having a venue that’s going to be one of the finest of its kind in the mid-Atlantic region will give us a recruiting advantage from as far north as Boston to as far south as Florida. Having this new state-of-the-art venue will put us in a different conversation in terms of prospective student athletes that we could recruit to UMBC.

You can’t be successful in getting new facilities and growing an intercollegiate athletic program without the support of the university’s leadership. President Hrabowski and Dr. Nancy Young, vice president of student affairs, want to see a very strong and vibrant athletics program, and we have aligned our activities based on the success of the student first, and the athlete second – but a real close second – to prepare them for graduation and to be future leaders of our society. I think that that’s really where we keep our focus.

What does UMBC offer to recruits by that strong emphasis on both elements of the term “student-athlete”? In an economy where recent graduates continue to struggle, is there an advantage in taking in the whole person, and being able to say: “This is a place where you’re going to compete and where you’re going to excel and be prepared to do almost anything?”

I believe that success in athletics and success in academics are not mutually exclusive. You can be successful and balanced in both.

We talk to our coaches all the time about finding student who fit in at UMBC academically, athletically and socially. If any one of those three is not present, then it probably won’t be the right fit for a young person. I think the three of them really go together. You spend a lot of time with your teammates as an athlete, you spend a lot of time with them pursuing academics, and then there’s some of that time that’s also social. You want to make sure that you’re maximizing each one of those facets of the university experience.

It’s rigorous to be a division one athlete. There are the maximum mandated hours that the NCAA allows you to practice and compete, but then there’s also the training that you do during the off season to keep yourself in peak physical shape.

If you put in the student piece, and then the athlete piece, and also put in the social “enjoy your college experience” piece, it doesn’t leave you a lot of time to prepare to enter the working world. We must find creative ways for internships, externships, shadowing opportunities, summer jobs, so that our young people are tangibly prepared to enter the workforce.

We partner with our Career Services Center to ensure that our student-athletes have all of the appropriate preparation that they need to be successful when they have graduated so that they are prepared to enter into the working world. I think that’s something we do very well here.

Where do alumni fit in to where you see UMBC athletics headed?

Alumni play a very integral role. They are crucial to our future success. You have to have alumni – that group of individuals that have come before – to really show that sense of unity, that sense of family, that sense of school spirit and pride to (and for) current and future student-athletes.

Over the coming three to five years, we’re implementing an aggressive strategic plan that has a strong external component to it. One of our highest priorities is further connecting and reconnecting athletic alumni to really be involved with our athletic department and our university at a level that’s commensurate with their personal and professional situation. If we’re successful, it will be through the support of those alums – their time, talent and treasure – that will give us the margin of excellence.

And when I say time, talent and treasure, we really need all three. For example, we need alums to give of their time to volunteer as part of an alumni mentoring program, where they can also manifest their talent. But we’re also going to need treasure. We’re going to need alums to step up and give – to say yes to our funding initiatives – whether they are facility-related or scholarship-related initiatives. There’s a direct correlation between alumni involvement and alumni investment and successful athletic programs.

And as the university looks to celebrate its 50th where does athletics fit in? And finding those special moments in the history of our athletic department and really celebrating those and using those as a launching pad for the next 20 to 30 to 50 years, I think is going to be really important.

Hopefully our success comes in terms of being able to recruit the right young men and women here to win championships, and graduate many fantastic, well-prepared young people who go on to be leaders of our society and contribute to the betterment of our world.

As an athletics department we don’t determine what our brand is: our constituencies determine what our brand is. And from an athletics perspective, I don’t think, in the past, we’ve been as consistent with our messaging as we need to be. What our alumni and our various constituencies will see going forward is, number one, more consistency in our messaging, and then, number two, that our messaging will be very closely aligned with that of the broader university.

INSPIRED CHOICE

Julia M. Ross’ path to becoming the new dean of UMBC’s College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT) was paved by numerous achievements as a scholar and an academic leader. But it is a deep commitment to breaking down disciplinary boundaries, ensuring graduate student success, and increasing diversity in the fields encompassed by her college that have characterized her time at UMBC.

Ross arrived at the university in 1995, rising eventually to become Constellation Professor of Information Technology and Engineering at UMBC. In 2011, under her leadership as chair, UMBC’s chemical and biochemical engineering department merged with the civil and environmental engineering department to create a single entity. (Ross remains a professor in the new chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering department.)

The new dean has a stellar record of scholarship in bioengineering and engineering education, and is the author or co-author of more than 50 peer-reviewed publications. In 2013, Ross received a prestigious American Council on Education fellowship, which is the nation’s premier higher education leadership development program. During that year, Ross worked with Jay Perman, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

At UMBC, Ross also served as special assistant to the provost for inter-institutional research initiatives and was instrumental in enhancing research relationships and collaborations between UMBC and the University of Maryland, Baltimore, including the development of the universities’ joint seed grant program.

Another initiative that Ross has helped spearhead is the INSPIRES Curriculum – a program for high school students supported by the National Science Foundation and designed to promote interdisciplinary research in science and engineering education. The program’s acronym stands for “INcreasing Student Participation, Interest and Recruitment in Engineering and Science,” and the research team led by Ross began its work by building a curriculum that could be used in high school classrooms to teach engineering.

“We were trying to put something together that could be used by all students,” says Ross. “We’ve developed an engineering curriculum that is well suited for putting into science and technology classes. There are very few curricula for either that incorporate engineering. We were trying to develop something that was low cost and modular but still had real engineering in it.”

Ross and her colleagues recently received $3 million from the NSF to continue their work, and she believes the timing couldn’t be better. “Science standards have changed,” Ross observes, “and they now place engineering as part of the Next Generation Science Standards.”

“UMBC is very fortunate to have someone of Ross’s impressive experience and talent to serve as our next dean of the College of Engineering and Information Technology,” says Provost Philip Rous.

In her new role, Ross is seeking to attract top graduate students to the college. Yet she adds that her college also must focus on attracting and retaining just the sort of undergraduate students who may be inspired by the curriculum she has helped develop in high schools.

“We have to work to diversify the undergraduate population,” says Ross. “I’d love to see us exceeding the national average regarding minorities and women. And we also need to make sure that as students move through the college that they are progressing equally regardless of their backgrounds.”

– Nicole Ruediger

SAFER AND STRONGER

UMBC’s increasingly central role in strengthening our nation’s cybersecurity infrastructure – and its growing ability to collaborate with private industry in that effort – were highlighted in October by the announcement of the university’s participation in a new Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC).

The U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) – which promotes U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve national quality of life – awarded a contract to operate the new center to the MITRE Corporation.

The center is the first to be dedicated solely to enhancing cybersecurity and protecting national information systems. MITRE will partner with the University System of Maryland (USM) to carry out the center’s goals, with UMBC and the University of Maryland, College Park as the essential collaborators in that effort. The contract to operate the center has maximum funding of $5 billion over 25 years.

“Securing our cyber infrastructure requires government, industry, and higher education to work closely together, and this center makes that powerful collaboration possible,” says UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III. “Further, it solidifies Maryland’s role as the hub of cybersecurity in our nation.”

Anupam Joshi (photo, left), director of the UMBC Center for Cybersecurity, will serve in a leadership role for UMBC in the new project. Joshi says that “while national security interests are usually central to the security conversation, this center will also work to meet the cybersecurity needs of individuals and businesses in a variety of sectors, such as health care and energy. Individuals and small and medium-size businesses constitute a major part of the nation’s cyber-infrastructure, but can lack the resources and technical expertise to respond effectively to cyber threats.”

Geography – and the proximity of the USM and UMBC to a growing hub of activity in cybersecurity – also played a role in the award. The federal government sponsors fewer than 50 FFRDCs across the country, and all are designed to tackle complex, long-term problems of significant national interest. Maryland hosts a large number of federal agencies and companies on the cutting edge of cybersecurity, and the USM is nationally recognized for its research and education programs in the field.

U.S. Senator Barbara A. Mikulski lauds the public-private collaboration created by the new project. “This new center unites the knowledge of the government with the know-how of the private sector,” she observes, “to develop cyber technology solutions needed to protect dot-com entities and make our cyber-infrastructure more resilient.”

This new center will support the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE), established in 2012 by NIST, the state of Maryland, and Montgomery County to help businesses secure their data and digital infrastructure by bringing together information security experts from industry, government, and academia. The collaboration between the USM and MITRE will further the NCCoE’s goal to foster public-private collaborations to identify and solve today’s most pressing cybersecurity challenges.

“I am delighted about this new strategic collaboration with our colleagues at College Park and at MITRE,” says Karl Steiner, Vice President for Research at UMBC. “It will provide opportunities to further expand and apply our scientific capabilities in an area of such critical importance.”

– Dinah Winnick

CONTEMPLATING COMMUNITY

When Anne E. Brodsky won a national award in February 2014 for contributions to the field of community psychology, it came as no surprise to her students and colleagues at UMBC. Brodsky is a tireless scholar who has nurtured dozens of graduate and undergraduate researchers – all while working in collaboration with a range of social-service organizations in Baltimore and beyond.

Over the last 20 years, Brodsky has made creative use of narrative and other qualitative methods in her field. She also conducted extraordinary field work in Pakistan and Afghanistan from 2001 through 2007, including the study of an underground feminist organization there at a pivotal moment in the region’s history.

Brodsky, a professor of psychology, joined UMBC’s faculty in 1997. Her research initially focused on resilience and community-building among East Baltimore women affected by welfare reform. In 2000, however, Brodsky’s work took an unexpected turn when she met members of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA) – a feminist organization that has resisted the Soviet, Taliban, and post-Taliban regimes since 1977 – at a conference in Baltimore.

“This was an organization that had never been able to come to the West, never been able to share its stories,” Brodsky recalls. “We put together an informal national tour, and for four months, they were in and out of my house.”

One morning not long after the tour, Brodsky says, “I woke up and thought, wait: Risk. Resilience. Women’s communities. I do this for a living.” She sent her RAWA contacts an e-mail message and, to her surprise, they were willing to have an American academic visit their clandestine sites in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Brodsky made her first visit in July and August of 2001, just weeks before the September 11 attacks, and returned for several more months in 2002. The resulting book, With All Our Strength: The Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, was published by Routledge in 2003 and received strong reviews.

One major concept that Brodsky has attempted to formalize throughout her work is resilience – that is, the strengths that allow women to endure in contexts of risk and adversity. In both Afghanistan and East Baltimore, she and her colleagues have found, having children can serve as a protective factor, providing hope and motivation to persist even in extremely challenging climates.

Gitika Talwar, who is completing a doctorate in psychology at UMBC, is one of 13 past and present UMBC graduate students who have co-authored papers with Brodsky. “She has an amazing range of scholarly interests,” Talwar says. “I’m on the West Coast now studying Afghan immigrant communities, but we still make time every two or three weeks to talk about my research. She’s been very supportive the entire way.”

Brodsky is a former director of UMBC’s Gender and Women’s Studies program and is an associate dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

“Anne’s just top-notch,” says Kenneth Maton, a professor of psychology. “She asks really difficult and appropriate questions, and she brings to bear important theoretical perspectives. When she went to Afghanistan, that was an intellectual stretch and also a personal risk. But she’s always been determined to follow her intellectual passions.”

– David Glenn

STEPS TO THE FUTURE

Dance has been an integral part of the artistic and academic environment at UMBC since the university’s earliest days, and the completion of the second and final phase of university’s Performing Arts and Humanities Building (PAHB) is an opportunity for the entire community to reflect on the importance of the centrality of the arts in the UMBC experience.

The dance department at UMBC has long occupied a large and well-lit studio in the university’s Fine Arts Building. Over the years, thousands of UMBC students – be they dance majors or students who have woven the art into their academic life – have taken flight in that space.

The studio in Fine Arts that saw so much motion and energy over the last four decades is now in the process of an extensive remodeling and repurposing for other uses, but the new home for the dance department in the PAHB features a 120-seat dance studio and a separate dance technology studio.

The opening of the second phase of the PAHB – which was formally commemorated at a ceremony in October – concluded a transition that encompassed not only UMBC’s dance department, but also its music, philosophy and ancient studies departments. The new phase of the building also includes a 350-seat concert hall, a new rehearsal hall, a recording studio for the music department, and an archaeology lab that is central to the continuing teaching mission of UMBC’s ancient studies department.

– Richard Byrne

UMBC’s growing status as a hub for cybersecurity was highlighted in October by the university’s central role in an award by the U.S. Department of Commerce – National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to the MITRE Corporation for a new Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC). Where does this activity weave into UMBC’s profile as a research institution? UMBC Magazine talked with Karl V. Steiner, Vice President for Research at UMBC, about the award and the university’s burgeoning research program.

* * * * *

UMBC Magazine: You’ve been at UMBC for a little more than a year now. What attracted you to UMBC, and what are its strengths as a research university?

Karl Steiner: The first thing I heard about UMBC was about its remarkable undergraduate success. The story has been told many times, about its STEM pathways for students and reaching out to underrepresented populations in those fields, and really providing a remarkable overall undergraduate experience. And obviously I knew about President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, who has positioned the entire institution such that UMBC is now a recognized national leader in this area. The other part that struck me when I first came on campus were the people – the faculty members, the academic leadership and many of the outstanding students I had a chance to meet with. UMBC is an exciting place to come to every morning and the chance to work with the campus community makes this a very exciting opportunity for me and my family.

Once I looked at UMBC in more detail, I realized: “Here’s an institution that has come a long way over the past 20 years but I know it’s ready for another major jump over the next decade or so.

Many great pieces are already in place at UMBC – and I’m calling them “pieces” because I think many of them were not connected quite yet the way I know we can combine them. We are now creating a structure that benefits from our existing strengths in research and scholarship, our national reputation for undergraduate education and our status as a U.S News & World Report number one “up and coming” university for six years in a row. We will continue building UMBC as an institution with a very vibrant, collaborative research and scholarship culture.

What advantages accrue to UMBC from our proximity to Washington, DC, and to the major research hub that has developed between that city and Baltimore?

It is vital for our future plans to have this very rich environment around UMBC – including the proximity of numerous federal laboratories, and to federal and state agencies. Within an hour’s drive of campus we have NASA Goddard, the National Security Agency (NSA), NIST, the Army Research Lab, the Naval Research Lab, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Social Security Administration and the US Department of Education.

Did you know that Maryland as a state has the second highest amount of federal R&D obligations in the Nation? It is a remarkable positioning for our faculty to build meaningful collaborations and partnerships – and provides future employment opportunities for our students.

UMBC’s current research strengths are well aligned with key national priorities such as healthcare, the environment and national security. These topics are not only in the forefront of today’s discussions, but they are long-term issues that won’t be solved over the next five years.

Collaboration seems to be another key strength in UMBC’s research profile

UMBC is a highly collaborative campus. As I like to say: “We play well with others” – both within our campus and with external partners. And as a university, we have always been proactively looking for collaborations. These can be collaborations with federal agencies, with local industry, or with other academic institutions in Maryland and across the country.

It’s a major strength for us as a mid-sized research institution to have so many faculty who go back and forth between departments across colleges. These faculty members actually encourage our academic leadership – including myself, our deans and all the way to Provost Philip Rous and President Hrabowski – to think not only within the academic structure but also within the solution space that we need to find to address major research issues.

It creates an environment where faculty from the social sciences and the humanities can collaborate and provide key solutions. For example, there are ethical questions and social science approaches needed for all of these research segments – especially in the life sciences, but also in climate change, and in cyber-security. None of these challenges can be addressed properly without thinking about the societal context.

Our location close to two major urban centers provides us with many opportunities to pursue our research mission in partnership with our communities, such as our scholarship and creative activity in the arts at Station North in Baltimore or research studies of the urban environment and its impact on underserved neighborhoods.

We have the chance to offer a comprehensive approach to solve some of society’s largest challenges together, which positions UMBC in many ways better than other institutions.

You mentioned some of the key strengths in UMBC’s research profile. What are some of the ways that we’re using those strengths?

One example is the close relationship we’re creating between UMBC and our partner institution, the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB), especially in health sciences. UMB has outstanding expertise in such areas as medicine, pharmacy, dentistry and nursing, and in turn our faculty members in such areas as engineering, IT, biology, biochemistry or statistics have unique skills that provide a fertile ground for successful collaborations with our colleagues.

A key to our success in this is that our senior leaders – including President Hrabowski and UMB President Jay Perman – are committed to establishing meaningful and sustainable relationships between our two campuses.

The Partnership Pilot Grants for five collaborations between researchers at UMBC and UMB that we launched last fall set the stage for even deeper relationships, and we’ll announce a second round of Partnership Pilot Grants recipients early next year. I have been impressed by the level of interest expressed by faculty on both campuses as we shared and discussed these opportunities with them.

As an example of the promise of this partnership, there is Mike Summers, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UMBC – one of only two Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigators at a public institution in Maryland – who is leading a large research group that is using nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques to study the structure and function of proteins, such as the AIDS virus. Just a few years ago, Dr. Summers joined with colleagues at UMB and at College Park and together they successfully competed for a major instrumentation grant from NIH for a state-of-the-art 950 Megahertz superconducting NMR instrument. This is what research excellence combined with strategic collaborations can do for us.

In the end, this relationship has to lead to multi-faceted interactions where individual researchers – perhaps a surgeon or a materials researcher for dental implants at UMB – know they can find partners in UMBC’s mechanical engineering or computer sciences departments for a particular orthopedic device, a new test method for materials, or an innovative computer simulation. It might be a partner in our mathematics and statistics department working with so-called Big Data containing 3-D MRI or CT scans or the rapidly growing amount of electronic health records. What we are trying to build is a natural synergy between our two institutions, where research collaborations flourish easily and on multiple levels.

I call this “weaving the fabric” -rather than just building individual bridges.

In what other research areas is UMBC pushing forward into new vistas?

The environmental sciences, clearly. UMBC has a multi-decade history of working closely with NASA Goddard, with over 100 researchers working within three joint centers between UMBC and Goddard. And there’s a significant benefit for our campus by having these very active links between us.

I just returned from a tour over in our Physics Building and saw our LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) facility in action, where we conduct research measuring pollution, rainfall, and other environmental factors. So much of that work – and the other work we do with NASA – has a direct impact on our understanding of climate change.

UMBC’s research in this area also extends to the Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education (CUERE), which provides not only a global perspective to the issue of climate change but a true local and regional perspective as well. The director of CUERE, Claire Welty, and her team are looking into environmental, social and economic consequences of the transformation of the urban landscape in and around Baltimore.

Upal Ghosh in UMBC’s chemical and biochemical engineering and Kevin Sowers at our Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology (IMET), located at Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, are successfully working on research in microbial bioremediation to understand the effects and fate of heavy metals and organic pollutants in bays and oceans.

So we have actually a very unique footprint here in research on the environment. Our challenge and our opportunity – I always like combined those two words – are to take that footprint and grow it by working with other institutions, agencies, foundations or the private sector.

While we are talking about the environment and climate change, I should also mention that we’re conducting relevant research into the broader life sciences at a unique facility – the Aquaculture Research Center that we have downtown at the Columbus Center with IMET, led by Russell Hill and Yonathan Zohar.

To my knowledge, there is no other site like this in the world that is able to create sustainable aqua farming from the egg all the way to a harvestable fish. And just like UMBC’s connection to NASA, IMET provides our institution with a way to open the door and create even more collaborative research efforts that actually build communities of excellence.

We have faculty like Govind Rao, director of the Center for Advanced Sensor Technologies (CAST), who is currently working under a major grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) on ways of literally disrupting the current pharmaceutical manufacturing paradigm by producing drugs in small, portable devices, either at the bedside of the patient – or in the battle field. This is path-breaking research with direct impact on life sciences and beyond.

And then we have Don Norris, director of the Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research (MIPAR), a highly respected leader for scholarly research on policy and policy-related issues in the social sciences and related disciplines. Their work connects the analytic capability of UMBC scholars to the policy issues facing public sector decision makers in the region, state and nation.

Along the same line, our Shriver Center serves as a national leader in applied learning, civic engagement and community-based service delivery programs.

We’ve also developed a considerable reputation in information sciences – especially in what is called “Big Data.” That’s a buzzword that’s been around for some time now, but what it means is that we are working today in Terabytes, Petabytes and even Exabytes – on scales that even just a decade ago were unfathomable. And between Yelena Yesha in computer science and electrical engineering and the Center for Hybrid Multicore Productivity and Research (CHMPR) and Mathias Gobbert’s High Performance Computing Facility (HPCF) in mathematics and statistics, UMBC is well positioned to work with experts in a variety of scientific fields. We’re using our high-performance, big data computing capability to get answers to some of the key research questions out there.

Speaking of information sciences, what does the recent award made by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to the MITRE Corporation and the University System of Maryland for a new Federally Funded Research and Development Center (FFRDC) mean for UMBC’s status as a growing hub for cybersecurity research?

I like to say “we were cyber before cyber was cool.” UMBC outstanding professors, including Anupam Joshi, Tim Finin, Charles Nicholas, Alan Sherman, and many others, who work in this field, have positioned UMBC in a very prominent spot within this rapidly growing field of cybersecurity. And we’re also one of the top producers of cybersecurity talent for the NSA, located just 15 miles south of our campus.

It is vital that this new FFRDC is positioned in Maryland. Five or six of the major federal cyber security labs are located in Maryland. We have the NSA obviously. We have the US Cyber Command. We have the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Agency (IARPA) and the Defense Information Systems Agency Headquarters (DISA). And last year, NIST created the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE), with a focus on cybersecurity issues in the private sector, which now coordinates our joint efforts on the FFRDC.

This new FFRDC is even more vital for UMBC. As I said earlier, all of these centers are within less than an hour’s drive from our campus. It literally positions us in the middle of everything. So – we are in a perfect location and we have outstanding faculty and remarkable students. And more than half of the companies in bwtech@UMBC – our research park – are cyber related. We have an incredibly strong cyber footprint as an institution within a state that itself has a national reputation as a leader in cybersecurity.

As a campus, I think we will benefit tremendously from this form of collaboration with NIST, with MITRE and with our colleagues at College Park. We will be at the table when many of the key questions are being discussed. And this is vital, because unless you are in the room, and you’re at the table, you will not even be aware of many of the challenges and opportunities that are facing us.

NIST is, by its national mandate, a measurement standard laboratory focused on working with the private sector and developing buy-in and adaptation from the community into agreed-upon practices. It’s a way of working together that lends itself to building a strong partnership between NIST, the private sector and academic leaders, all of whom provide advanced thinking on these issues.

As one of the two leading academic partners – together with College Park – we will be coordinating the interactions with our affiliate academic partners, including George Mason University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Purdue University, the University of Alabama Birmingham, the University of California Berkeley, the University of Delaware, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the University of Texas campuses in Dallas and in San Antonio.

Where do you see UMBC as a research institution in the next five years?

I expect that UMBC will continue to be known as an institutional leader providing outstanding opportunities for our undergraduates. But we also want to be known as an institution that has remarkable and talented faculty members who are engaged in world-class research, scholarship and creative activity. By growing this pool of talent, we will attract a very strong group of both graduate students and post-doctoral researchers. These growing research and graduate programs will have a direct and positive impact on the experience of our undergraduates.

Increased funding will be one outcome of this direction, but even more important is to grow and recognize the strong research culture embedded in our institutional fabric. But so is UMBC being at the head of the table when possible solutions to the challenges of today and tomorrow are being discussed. That will bring in an increasing number of talented researchers from across the country and even across the globe to participate in these very exciting endeavors. And in the long term, it will create opportunities that will lead to more collaboratively funded research efforts, new spin-offs and, therefore, new economic growth for our state.

– Richard Byrne ’86

OUTRACING STEREOTYPES

Amanda Knapp, assistant vice provost for academic standards and policy administration, is revved up about higher education. But she’s also making tracks – and noise – as a motorcycle aficionado.

Yes, that’s Knapp on the cover of the September issue of American Motorcyclist magazine, posing with her KTM 300 XCW in a shot taken by UMBC Magazine photographer Marlayna Demond ’11. (Another shot inside the magazine showed Knapp in her full racing gear near the UMBC sign at the entrance to campus.)

The cover photo and the accompanying article tackle the public perceptions of motorcyclists, and Knapp is a proud and accomplished rider who has been an enthusiast for 30 years, since she rode her first motorcycle – a Honda 70.

Knapp developed her love for motorcycles at a young age, thanks in big part to her dad. “Some of my happiest childhood memories were spent on two wheels chasing my dad through the woods. My dad always challenged me to ride hard, go faster than the guys, and face fear head on – even if it meant taking a few risks along the way.”

The sport is such an important part of Knapp’s life at present that she even taught her husband to ride. She told American Motorcycle that “there’s nothing more rewarding or stress-relieving than hitting the trail and/or a track.”

She says that some lessons she’s learned as a motorcyclist have been useful in her professional life. As an assistant vice provost, Knapp works with a diverse UMBC student body that she says is brimming with potential.

“I serve as a student advocate,” Knapp says, “cheering loud when they are succeeding and cheering even louder when they may need some extra encouragement. Like racing a motorcycle, I am passionate about my position, and I am committed to keeping students ‘on track’ and ‘in the race.’”

Asked why she chose a career in higher education, Knapp quips that she loved college so much, she wanted to find a way to stay there forever. On a more serious note, however, she observes that her 15-year career in higher education has been motivated by the fact that college changed her own life. As a first-generation college student, Knapp chose the field as a way of giving back to a process that gave so much to her.

Knapp says working at UMBC has been the highlight of her higher education career: “Never have I been part of an academic community quite like UMBC. This is a place where people care deeply for one another, work collaboratively, think beyond the impossible, and center all efforts on a common goal – student success.”

And the fact that UMBC gives her the path to excel as an academic leader and get her motorcycle out on the track is an added bonus. “I feel so grateful to UMBC for creating a community where the concept of work-life balance is not only a reality, but something that is strongly encouraged.”

– Katherine Scrivener

PAGE TURNER

Many people share thoughts, ideas and emotions in a handwritten journal or an online blog. The entire business model of Pinterest is based on such sharing of ideas and images that spark creativity.

But how do you spin that sort of activity into a more creative life? Adam Kurtz ’09, visual arts, says you can do it 1 Page At A Time – the title of a new “daily companion book” that he published in October with Perigee Trade, a division of Penguin Books.

“I think this [book] could be really great for anyone who needs a little help moving along,” Kurtz says. “Someone who has maybe abandoned journals in the past. This is a fun, weird, silly book, but it’s not a coincidence that the title sounds a little bit like a recovery slogan.”

Kurtz says the process of taking creative exploration in small steps – literally one thing each day – offers an unintimidating entry point into constant creativity.

“My book is for human beings, for anyone with a pulse,” he insists. “We’re all creative in some way, that’s maybe what makes us human at all.”

And in a society that increasingly revolves around the Internet, adds Kurtz, a book like his new work can be an impetus to slow down and pace your creativity by exploring a bit of it each day and recording it.

“I put feelings into words and words onto objects,” Kurtz says, “and then I hold them and never let them go.”

– Shannon Williams ’14

REVISING THE LIST

How much influence can a blog post have in reshaping public perceptions about race, gender and even what’s “sexy” in science? In June, Kyla McMullen ’05, computer science, decided to find out.

McMullen – an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Florida – was perusing a 2013 Business Insider feature on “The Sexiest Scientists Alive” and noticed something strange: Not one of the 50 scientists named to the list was a black woman.

So McMullen created her own list of “Sexiest Black Female Scientists” and posted it on her own website. The story went viral, and was such a success that she created a similar list of black male scientists (“Brilliant Is the New Black”) in October.

“The reach of the article has surprised me the most,” says McMullen.“I have had people tell me that they have landed speaking engagements, or been called for faculty interviews, and all sorts of wonderful things from being on the list. I was even contacted by the head of the search committee of a very prestigious school to help identify candidates to diversify their faculty search.”

McMullen also organizes seminars and speeches, and works with middle and high school students to help address the issues raised by her list about minority participation in STEM fields.

“It’s my job to get out there,” she says, “and let young people know that they have options far better than what the media would have them think.”

– Richard Byrne ‘86
Photo: Michael Oliver