In an industry known for changing direction without warning, a UMBC professor has drawn praise for predicting the movements of social networks a decade ago. A paper written in 2008 by Anupam Joshi, professor and chair of computer science and electrical engineering at UMBC and one of the authors at the IBM Research Lab in India, has received the “Test of Time Award” from the Extending Database Technology Association.

Each year the Association selects a paper written 10 years prior that still applies to the industry. The paper, “Social Ties and their Relevance to Churn in Mobile Telecom Networks,” examines the role of social ties, relationships, and groups in influencing how people use mobile networks and select providers. The authors discussed the idea that people who use certain mobile providers are more likely to switch to a different mobile provider if they have friends who have already changed providers, which the authors call churning.

“The research we did over a decade ago touched upon a lot of issues that are still relevant. We were amongst the first to analyze the ‘social networks’ formed by people when they call each other and infer what this tells us about people. Our target then was to prevent customer churn (i.e. a customer changing from a prepaid plan of Verizon to T-Mobile),” explains Joshi.

The authors analyzed data to determine whether people with friends or acquaintances who churned from one service provider to another were more likely to switch providers themselves, and explored the structure of cellular networks, which helps explain how relationships can lead some customers to churn.

The research outcomes can be applied to topics from crime fighting to business and marketing and can be applied to social media networks that are created by popular platforms, including Facebook and Twitter. “As long as people connect to each other by electronic means and form ‘networks’, and these networks
tell us something about their behavior, I expect our techniques to remain valid,” Joshi says.

— Megan Hanks

Astronaut Scott Kelly Reads The Right Stuff at the Right Time

The path to success isn’t always written in the stars. But, if you’re willing to follow inspiration as it appears, you may just find yourself catapulting beyond your wildest dreams.

For astronaut and best-selling author Scott Kelly — who spent a short time as a Retriever in the 1980s — a small but pivotal spark happened on the UMBC campus. As he describes in his 2017 memoir Endurance: A Year in Space, A Lifetime of Discovery, Kelly happened to notice a copy of The Right Stuff in the window of the campus bookstore, then housed in the University Center. Until that point, he felt directionless, he writes.

“I bought the book and I lay on my unmade dorm room bed reading it for the rest of the day, heart pounding, Tom Wolfe’s hyperactive, looping sentences ringing in my head,” he writes in the book’s prologue. “This wasn’t just an exciting adventure story. This was something more like a life plan.”

Figuring Out Your Direction

The moment changed Kelly’s life forever. Years later, Kelly’s groundbreaking career includes four space flights and the command of a year-long expedition in the International Space Station. Success didn’t happen overnight, though, Kelly explains. You need an incremental plan.

“It was nearly impossible for an 18-year-old me at UMBC to understand the skills required to become an astronaut, but as a test pilot I could imagine the astronaut job, and as a fighter pilot being a test pilot was more realistic,” he says. “Back that up to college and I could understand what it would take to be commissioned as an Ensign in the U.S. Navy. Small steps add up to a giant leap. Also keep in mind people aren’t going to make your goals happen. You and only you can do that and it takes hard work. There’s no easy path.”

And don’t forget to keep your eyes open. You never know where the spark will hit you.

“Inspiration is critically important,” he says. “For me it came from the book The Right Stuff. You need to find yours.”

— Jenny O’Grady

Header image: Night Earth observation of Japan taken by Expedition 44 crewmember Scott Kelly, with a Soyuz Spacecraft connected to the Mini Research Module 1 (MRM1), and a Progress Spacecraft visible. Courtesy of NASA.

In the corner of the Music Box theater, a spacious room on the first floor of the Performing Arts and Humanities Building, lives a curious collection of gold-colored instruments. Organized in an ensemble on the floor, all of the pieces make up the gamelan, one of the most unique musical instruments on campus.

“Take your shoes off and find a spot to jump right in,” says instructor Gina Beck, M.A. ’90, ethnomusicology, as she invites her students to sit on floor mats behind each individual piece of the Indonesian instrument. They file in toward the gamelan and choose their places. Some sit behind the bronze bars of the sarons in the front and second row; some choose mats behind the shiny kettle-like bonang instruments to the left; and a couple go for the gongs in the back.

Once the students are settled, the professor counts off a song and they begin to play. The music evokes a kind of ringing sound like an ensemble of bells, but more delicate on the ear. Beck observes the gamelan “has a sound that can come forth dramatically as well as so delicately that it is floating on air.”

A Sound “Like Floating on Air”

Each piece of the ensemble contributes to the gamelan’s warm, relaxing sound made up of melodic tunes, musical flourishes, and percussion all working together. Most of the instruments are made out of bronze casing and keys that the player taps with a tabuh (a padded hammer). UMBC’s ensemble also includes hand drums and stringed instruments.

Tyler Whittenburg ’20, Asian studies, says, “there’s different instruments with different levels of skill required to play, so the sarons in the middle are what everybody starts off playing.” The sarons provide the melody for the whole ensemble and are traditionally made up of seven numbered bronze metal keys encased on a decorative wooden frame. In order to play, one taps the numbered keys with a tabuh and follows the melody’s numbered pattern. Rather than relying on sheet music, players follow a pattern of numbers, such as “6-3-6-3-6-3-6-3-5-6-3-6-3-6- 3-5-3-2-1-3-2-1” and repeat.

However, more rhythmically inclined students might enjoy a challenge with the bonang instruments. The bonang consists of gold-colored “pots” placed in two rows within a wooden frame that the player taps with a tabuh. Because this is an elaborating instrument, it does not play the basic melody with the sarons but, rather, adds flourishes around the melody. Any gamelan ensemble would struggle, however, without the help of a drummer to provide the steady beat. At the front of UMBC’s student ensemble is a two-faced drum that is tapped by the musician’s hands.

All of these elements together — the rhythm from the drums, the saron’s resounding melody, the bonang’s colorful elaborations, and additional music from stringed instruments and the gongs — create the gamelan’s unique sound.

Because the gamelan can be played by musicians of all levels, UMBC’s course attracts a diverse group of students — even non-music majors without any prior musical training. Whittenburg enjoys playing as a part of the gamelan ensemble “because it is a relaxing way to gain insight on a new culture while simultaneously adding new depth to my understanding of music.”

— Allison Cruz ’18

Learn more about cultural performances at UMBC

Images by Marlayna Demond ’11, Video by Allison Cruz ’18

If you could do it all over again, what would you tell your younger self?

This is the concept behind “Interview an Alum,” a new initiative designed by the UMBC Alumni Board of Directors (AABOD) and the UMBC Career Center. During Career Month 2018, current students and alumni came together to network and discuss their academic journeys, career aspirations, and, at times, uncertainties.

“Even as a college senior, I’m not entirely sure what I would like to do with my degree,” admitted Casey Dahlgren, a senior majoring in business technology administration. “So, getting different perspectives on that seemed like it could help.”

In all, AABOD volunteers conducted 20 interviews as part of Interview an Alum during Career Month.

Sharing Networking Experience

“Interview an Alum gives us an opportunity to practice inclusive excellence by sharing what we have learned — sometimes the hard way — so that our current students can benefit from our experiences,” said AABOD President John Becker ’01, information systems management. “I am full of pride in my alma mater, and I have always felt like I should be helping our future professionals the way I was helped when I attended UMBC.”

Geeta Shanbhag, a senior majoring in media and communication studies, interviewed with two different alumni. “One that addressed my major in media and communications, and one that addressed my legal policy minor and my potential interest in law and public policy,” she said. “It was amazing.”

Alumni volunteers agreed with that sentiment. “I found the experience rewarding,” said alumna Andrea Thomson ’11, economics and political science. “I was able to connect with a current student. She asked a lot of intelligent questions and I was able to help her frame and think through her professional narrative, i.e., how her past experiences make her a good fit for the field she is hoping to pursue.”

— Bobby Lubaszewski Jr. ‘10

Pictured: Sweeten Up Your Network, another Career Month networking activity, brought alumni and students together in April.

Read more UMBC impact stories here.

Spring time is the season of hope at Boordy Vineyards. Emerald shoots appear on the grapevines across rolling hills. In May, perfume from tiny flowers fills the air.

“Everything looks under control,” says Rob Deford ’93, geography, owner of Maryland’s oldest winery. “You suffer from irrational hope.”

Deford calls spring his favorite season, a time of promise. In the spring, he says he looks around and thinks, “I’m in the right business.” A month later, weeds appear, vines grow a foot at a time, and anxiety grows until harvest time.

He laughs about the process of growing grapes and turning them into wine, but he’s serious about it. So serious, in fact, that a few years ago, he ripped out all of his vineyards to plant new ones and tore down the winery to build a new state-of-the-art facility. The goal was the best wine Boordy could produce.

Early Beginnings

Deford grew up on the farm in Long Green Valley where Boordy is headquartered. Once the home of chickens, pigs, and cows, its fields are now covered in grapevines. His family began growing grapes in the 1960s to produce fruit for the Boordy winery, then owned by Philip Wagner. Wagner began Boordy in 1945; the Defords took it over in 1980.

Deford came to UMBC in a roundabout way, via Stanford University, a motorcycle trip to South America where he took more college classes, and then to wine school at the University of California, Davis. Already running Boordy, he decided he needed to go to business school — but he was still a few credits short of his bachelor’s degree.

“It was the best thing for a winemaker.” — Boordy Vineyards owner Rob Deford ’93, on studying geography at UMBC

“I kind of stumbled on UMBC,” Deford says. UMBC offered him a way to finish the degree started nearly two decades before. He intended to study economics until he sat in on a geography class with Andy Miller and later another with Sandy Parker.

“I fell in love with the geography department,” Deford says. He immediately switched majors and has been glad ever since. Everything to do with wine, he explains, is related to geography: the land, the soil, the weather, mapping. Wine-lovers discussing the “terroir” of a wine are considering all the factors that give a wine its flavor profile: soil type, topography, weather. In other words, geography.

“It was the best thing for a winemaker,” he says.

Lay of the Land

Not only was he prepared for his MBA studies at Loyola University Maryland, he had a whole new tool kit to use at the winery. He’s no geography expert, he adds. “What little I do know has dovetailed with the wine industry.”

Deford puts those concepts to work every day in the vineyards — sustainability, climate change, balance. “The better our balance with nature, the better our wines will be,” he says.

Boordy remains a family business. Deford and his wife Julie are co-owners with Deford’s sister Sally Deford Buck, and her husband R. Bayly Buck, and Deford’s son Phineas have joined the business. Although Boordy is 73 years old, in the world of winemaking, it’s still comparatively young.

“We are in our infancy,” Deford says. But the business is definitely growing up. In addition to fruity wines and drier wines known as the Chesapeake Landmark series, Boordy now offers the award-winning, estate grown Landmark Series. To produce the new wines, Deford did something breathtaking. In 2006, he began replanting all the vines at both the Long Green farm and the 50 acres Boordy leases in Burkittsville, on South Mountain. He then rebuilt the winery in 2013.

Winemaking is a competitive business but a collaborative one, too, says Deford, who has worked with other Maryland wineries to improve the value and quality of their products. The winemaking business has mushroomed in Maryland with some 70 wineries and nearly 1,000 acres planted in grapes, according to the Maryland Wineries Association, an organization Deford helped establish.

He recalls local wine trade shows of the 1980s when the quality wasn’t always so good, a time when “we were all learning,” Deford says. “Now you go from wine to wine and you say, ‘That’s really good.’”

— Mary K. Tilghman ’79

Q: I was wondering if you had any advice for a finance student?

— Godwin Okoro, senior financial economics student

A: I think it’s really important that students work with our Career Center, where the staff members do a superb job of giving advice to students about opportunities. We have many employer partnerships. And I hope that you participated in the recent Career Fair where we had over 100 employers. It’s critical that students apply for internships beginning after their freshman year, because practical experience will give them increasing opportunities.

For a senior, the most important advice is to listen to the experts in the Career Center and talk with professors for general advice. It’s important not to be too specific in what you’re looking for. The most important tip to new graduates is to get broad experience that can shape their vision for the future.

Broad education always helps. And students need to understand the different tracks or paths one can take in financial institutions, from technology, data science, and cyber security to becoming analysts. I also recommend talking with the Career Center about connecting with UMBC alumni in those fields who can give specific advice to students.

Q: As we see expressions of hate and racism on college campuses around the country, how is UMBC addressing these issues?

— Maceo Thomas ’93, biochemistry and molecular biology, and a member of the Meyerhoff Scholars Program’s first cohort

A: UMBC regularly communicates our values and our support for all of our residents, students, faculty, and staff, and the larger community. We speak to the need to not accept prejudice of any kind, whether it’s racism, or homophobia, or religious intolerance, or sexism.

We have a number of forums sponsored by the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences and by student groups that provide opportunities to hear different perspectives on the divisive issues in our society. And I would say many of our courses across the disciplines address issues of prejudice at UMBC. We encourage open dialogue, and we encourage people to keep an open mind and listen to other perspectives.

If you look at social media and talk with our students, they appreciate our speaking out against these types of prejudice. And they want to know that we are prepared when acts of intolerance arise, whether involving sexism or racism or other issues. And we have a number of people on campus who are focused on giving our students support during these times. In my talks and a number of the talks of other administrators, we encourage students to get beyond their comfort zone and to get to know people different from themselves. While it’s important for each group to appreciate its own cultural roots, strengths, and challenges, we need as a society to encourage more robust dialogue across different groups. UMBC is constantly working to support that idea.

Click here to read UMBC’s statement after the unrest in Charlottesville, August 2017.

Do you have a question for UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski? Send it to magazine@umbc.edu, and it may appear in a future issue of UMBC Magazine.

UMBC graduate programs are among the best nationwide, according to the 2019 U.S. News Best Graduate Schools rankings, which makes a new scholarship announced this March an even sweeter deal for alumni considering a return to school.

For the fall 2018 semester, all alumni starting a new master’s or certificate program at UMBC will qualify for a one-time $1,000 scholarship, which can be applied to any of the university’s 62 programs. New applicants can also receive a code to waive application fees.

“We want to thank our Retriever Nation for making us so proud, and celebrate our alumni so they can claim their future,” said Christopher Steele, Vice Provost, Division of Professional Studies.

The U.S. News rankings recognize a dozen UMBC master’s and Ph.D. programs including nine top-100 programs from a broad range of fields, with all three UMBC colleges represented. They are based on a survey of more than 20,500 academics and professionals, plus data on over 2,000 programs, indicating the quality of each school’s faculty, research, and students.

UMBC has recently launched several new programs at both the Catonsville and Shady Grove (Rockville) campuses, including master’s degrees in data science and technical management. The scholarship applies to all master’s degrees, which span the sciences, social sciences, and humanities.

“We want our alumni to think of UMBC as their destination for applied master’s and certificate programs no matter where they are in their careers,” said Janet Rutledge, Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School. “Our programs are built to take students to the next level.”

For more information about the scholarship, programs, and deadlines, visit gradschool.umbc. edu/retrievernation.