Majoring in the arts requires intense levels of stamina and self-discipline—long hours rehearsing, creating, writing, designing, interpreting—coupled with an inner drive for inquiry and perfection. UMBC’s undergraduate and graduate students in the arts are no exception, reaching forward even in this era of social distancing.

UMBC’s 2020 graduates in dance, theatre, music, and visual arts include scholars looking forward to graduate study, teaching, and professional creative work in their fields. Some have been able to move ahead with long-planned next steps. Others have been making adjustments in response this unique and challenging moment.

Listening to the natural world

Percussionist Jonathan Sotelo ’20, music, came to UMBC to study music education, but discovered his love of timpani by playing in the UMBC Symphony. Since then, he has been a member of the UMBC Percussion Ensemble and studied with associate professor Tom Goldstein and Baltimore Symphony principal timpanist James Wyman.

With a strong interest in new music, Sotelo has commissioned a number of his student composer colleagues to write solo percussion pieces for him.

“My most important achievement at UMBC,” says Sotelo, “was learning how to listen. I’ve learned how to listen to the natural world, and how to apply it to music. Because of that, I am able to make my performances more connective to the audience, in any type of music—improvisations to the orchestral repertoire.”

He looks forward to attending graduate school at the University of Maryland, College Park, with the goal of becoming an orchestral timpanist.

An athlete, an artist

Linehan Artist Scholar and Division I soccer player Courtney Culp ’20, visual arts, has combined her loves of sport and visual arts to create impactful works during her time at UMBC.

The National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis screened her film A Mile in My Cleats as the opening presentation of the 2020 Race and Sports Day, held just before Martin Luther King Day. Through her documentary, she gave others space to share their stories of what it’s like to be a black female athlete. She shares, “I finished the project with an immense amount of new knowledge of my craft and closer relationships with my peers at UMBC.”

Studying Italian art and culture in Rome in 2019, with UMBC visual arts faculty Kimberly Anderson and Lynn Cazabon, also played a significant role in Culp’s UMBC experience. “I have gained lifelong friends at UMBC that have pushed and challenged me for the better,” she says. “I will forever be grateful for my time here.”

Culp will begin an M.F.A. program in illustration with minors in production design and themed entertainment design at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) this fall. “My hope is to become a visual designer for animation, film, and interactive entertainment projects.” She is also slated to play soccer at SCAD.

Contemporary musician

Few musicians are equally adept at more than one instrument, but Christian Hartman ’20, music, is an exception. He has made a name for himself as both a cellist and percussionist.

The principal cellist of the UMBC Symphony and a Linehan Artist Scholar, Hartman will attend the University of Delaware in the fall for graduate studies in cello performance. While at UMBC, he received a Music Performance Fellowship and Music Achievement Award.

“I’m considering an academic career, which would allow me to perform, teach, and research,” says Hartman, “especially in the fields of contemporary and early music in which I’m most interested.”

His interest in contemporary music has led to collaborations with composers, and he has premiered a number of new compositions. A composer and arranger himself, he has written and arranged music for a variety of ensembles, including works premiered by high schools, honor groups, dance companies, and collegiate ensembles.

As a percussionist, Hartman plays snare drum in the Baltimore’s Marching Ravens Drumline, which he intends to continue through graduate school. He also drums for the Baltimore-based rock band The Negative Men and serves as percussion director for Manchester Valley High School marching band, his high school alma mater.

Lighting a new path

Linehan Artist Scholar Corey Goulden-Naitove ’20, theatre, has already had the opportunity to work professionally as a lighting designer at the Annapolis Shakespeare Company, Abington Friends School, and Long Lake Camp for the Arts. He had planned to continue this path when he graduated. But as coronavirus stay-at-home orders rolled out, and show after show was cancelled, he watched as five months of work evaporated in 24 hours.

Remarkably, the next day Goulden-Naitove received a call from Indiana University, Bloomington, inviting him to their Design + Technology program. At the time, it seemed “out of the blue.”

“They called up to offer me a spot in the M.F.A. program, with an assistantship with a living wage and tuition remission,” he says. Now, he will have a chance to continue studying his craft and remain connected to the theatre industry during COVID-19 closures.

This past winter at the Southeastern Theatre Conference, Goulden-Naitove presented his lighting design for the 2019 UMBC production of Anon(ymous), and won First Place in the Undergraduate Lighting Competition. He would later learn that it was that lighting design and award that caught the attention of the University of Indiana.

“UMBC was definitely the right choice for me—I have had opportunities here that I don’t think I would have found anywhere else in the world,” Goulden-Naitove says. “I am very grateful to all of my professors, to the university, and to Earl and Darielle Linehan for helping to make this happen.”

Inspiring the next generation of students

It’s no wonder that Linehan Artist Scholar Teresa Whittemore received the dance department’s Outstanding Senior in Choreography Award—her work has been twice featured at the American College Dance Festival. This includes the work Giving Skin, performed this spring.

Whittemore has also twice presented for UMBC’s Undergraduate and Creative Achievement Day, and through departmental dance showcases. And Arts by the People has presented her choreography in New York.

In addition to choreography, Whittemore also loves to teach. Following graduation, she plans to teach at three area studios—JMD Studios, EMC Performing Arts, and Kinetics Dance Theatre, where she is currently assistant school manager.

Everyday activities become something more

Brandon Ables, who earns his M.F.A. in Intermedia and Digital Arts this spring, had expected to travel to Romania this September as a Fulbright scholar. Fortunately, although coronavirus complications have delayed his travel, it will still move forward in February 2021. In Romania, he’ll teach English at a university and will conduct an arts research project on the Romanian deadlift weightlifting form and history.

In the meantime, Ables will continue his research in the U.S. His work replays dreams, notes, and ideas using everyday environments and actions, accompanied with hypnotic suggestions. “I’m interested in discovering and creating triggerable actions within daily routines to score with audio and visual self-help style suggestions, guiding the subconscious to solve practical and absurd challenges,” he says.

“Activities like lying in bed, chewing, and looking in the pantry become opportunities to carve the subconscious into a desirable shape with no extra effort required.”

This summer, Ables will complete an interactive novel about parking, autonomous cars, and impulse purchases. He will also develop a one-man-band live performance to add more complexity to the actions he’s using to trigger self-hypnotic audio and visuals. And then, onward to Romania.

Performer, producer, teacher

Raymond Robinson ’17, music technology and jazz studies, and ’20 M.A.T., music, came to UMBC in 2013 as Linehan Artist Scholar and a multifaceted musician. He already was a skilled pianist and saxophonist, but he credits UMBC and his professors for his mastery of music theory and music technology.

“Now I produce, engineer, and know advanced jazz theory, arrangement, and composition,” he says. “I would not be the musician and educator that I am today without the guidance of all my teachers. I feel like I owe it to them to also be a teacher.”

Robinson feels that it’s important to have more men in the education system, especially black men. “I hope to have the opportunity to teach students of all ethnicities about acceptance and open-mindedness before perspectives and deeper implicit biases get locked-in,” he says. And he hopes to be a role model for black boys and young men.

He looks forward to teaching instrumental and general music in Baltimore County and Anne Arundel County public schools. He also looks forward to resuming performances at popular venues around Washington’s U Street corridor and with A.B.M and New Impressionz, two of the major Go-Go bands in the District.

Intensive training, unique opportunities

Linehan Artist Scholar Emily Godfrey ’20, dance, has performed at the Kennedy Center not once, but twice. Godfrey first appeared there in 2018 at the American College Dance Festival, performing choreography by Maia Schechter ’18, dance. She then appeared again in 2019 in choreography by assistant professor Ann Sofie Clemmensen.

Godfrey’s own choreography, terminal, was chosen in 2020 for the American College Dance Association (ADCA) Mid-Atlantic North Conference Gala, along with Giving Skin by Teresa Whittemore. At UMBC, she has appeared on stage with Baltimore Dance Project and in many dance department programs.

With the financial support of the Linehan Summer Award and the Dance Department Summer Award, Godfrey attended several intensive programs. These include the Hubbard Street Dance Chicago Summer Intensive, the Paul Taylor American Modern Dance Summer Intensive, the Peridance Blueprint Summer Intensive, and study at the Gerlev Sports Academy in Denmark.

Following graduation, Godfrey plans to pursue a professional career in dance performance with national and international companies.

Satisfying “my creative side”

Double majoring in the arts and sciences can be daunting, but Linehan Artist Scholar and Honors College student Sarah Brewer ’20 will graduate with a B.A. in dance and a B.S. in biology. She credits open communication with dance and biology faculty, a team of advisors, and her own focus on time management for making it work.

As she prepares to leave UMBC, Brewer remains committed to both art and science. She is interning at a molecular biology lab within the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, and recently interviewed for a full-time position. She says the work at the lab “satisfies some of my creative side and all of my scientific side.” Still, she’s already reaching out to contacts at local companies to find ways to continue her work in dance. 

Brewer says her proudest undergraduate moment was a duet performance choreographed by Teresa Whittemore ’20, When Eve and Eve Bit the Apple, at an ACDA gala performance in spring 2019. The piece was one of only two undergraduate works among twelve selected for the gala.

She shares, “To be a part of Teresa’s choreographic process, and build a creative relationship with her and my duet partner Michelle Ye ’22 was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had at UMBC.”

The perfect fit

Some UMBC students dream of attending the university for years before they arrive on campus. Linehan Artist Scholar Olivia Mills ’20, visual arts, had a different experience.

“I’m not from Maryland, and I wasn’t familiar with UMBC until the end of my college search,” Mills says, “but once I researched it and was offered the Linehan Artist Scholarship, it rose to being my first choice—and it was the perfect fit for me,” she says.

Mills’s focus has been on animation. Her senior capstone project and 2020 URCAD presentation, the animated film Creatures in Crisis, challenged the notion that robust animated film projects emerge only from major studios.

As an artist at UMBC, she especially enjoyed Commonvision programs, and made a point to share her work during annual Art Week festivities and in seasonal zines.

Given the impact of coronavirus on the arts, Mills plans to use her time immediately following graduation to build her artistic portfolio. “While the coronavirus situation saddens me and has been a source of stress, a silver lining is I now have to stay in and work on my art,” she says. “I’m also glad there is a virtual network through UMBC’s Career Center and Alumni Association to get on-track with my professional goals.”

Catherine Borg contributed to this article.

Banner image: Emily Godfrey ’20 performs with colleagues in Baltimore Dance Project’s 2020 concerts at UMBC.

All Photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC unless otherwise noted.

On October 18 and 19, choreography by Ann Sofie Clemmensen, assistant professor of dance, will be presented at the new REACH expansion of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C. Featuring 20 dancers, Clemmensen’s three-part experience — In To and Out Of — transports audiences through different spaces of the REACH using the unique characteristics of each location to explore concepts in pattern and timing, light and dark, and limitation and transformation. The work was commissioned by the Kennedy Center as part of the 2019 Local Dance Commissioning Project.

“In To and Out Of is a three-part site-inspired performance that examines the physical and invisible qualities of a place,” explains Clemmensen. “All three works seek to embody the REACH building’s inquisitive nature traceable in the texture of the walls, the array of light diffusion and breathtaking verticality.”

In the second part of the work, for example, two dancers — Linehan Artist Scholars Deven Fuller and Emily Godfrey — perform against a long narrow wall, often leaning or pressing on its surface. “The flow of people moving in and through a space doesn’t happen in isolation,” says Clemmensen. “The spaces around us have an impact on how we move around.”

Part One of the work, Welcome Pavilion, features eight dancers. “The group work draws abstractly from the physical site and its function, engaging with direct and indirect patterns through gestural movements amplified using group unison and prolong time sensibility,” offers Clemmensen. She adds that “traditional meets contemporary in the use of voluminous tulle skirts — a playful reference to the artistic breath of the Kennedy Center.”

Part Two, Peace Corps Gallery, “is a duet exploring the notion of space-between-space; literally the space between wall and body as well as the space share and created by two moving bodies.” Part Three, Sky Pavilion, featuring five professional dancers from the Washington, D.C. area, explores a long panoramic window and a gravity-defying tall curved wall.

Other UMBC colleagues are involved in the performances. In addition to Fuller and Godfrey, In To and Out Of features students Jody Cole, Joshua Gray, Sylvia Lagas, Kayla Massey, Kasey Mannion, Jahnaye Samuel, Michelle Ye, Gretta Zinski, and Katie Blake.

Timothy Nohe, director of the Center for Innovation, Research and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA), created music for the first section of the dance, making “acoustic choices in the score that complement the unique architecture and reverberant signature of the REACH.” Nohe explains, “The score will be reproduced on wireless Bluetooth speakers, adding an element of mobility that responds to the movement of the dancers.”

Admission to the performances is free. Information is available on the performance pages for October 18 and October 19.

Update: The Kennedy Center has added videos of the performances held on October 18 and October 19.

Featured image: Deven Fuller and Emily Godfrey rehearse In To and Out Of. Photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Faculty and staff in UMBC’s College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (CAHSS) celebrated students in the annual CAHSS awards ceremony this spring. Scholars programs and departments recognized undergraduates for academic achievements, public service, and innovation within their major and beyond.

“CAHSS’s amazing students do it all: think and learn across boundaries and borders, develop their identities as scholars and citizens, and contribute their imagination and expertise to local and global communities,” says Scott Casper, dean of CAHSS. “Given all they’ve already accomplished, it’s exciting to envision what they’ll do next.”

Combining dual passions

Among the many accolades were twelve awards to graduating students in the college’s hallmark scholar programs: the Humanities Scholars, Sondheim Public Affairs Scholars, and Linehan Artist Scholars. These include several students with dual majors.

For example, four honored dance majors were also earning a degree in another field: Linehan Artist Scholars Emily S. Godfrey ’20, dance and a psychology minor; Melissa Hudson ‘18, dance and economics; and Giavanni Powell ‘19, dance with an entrepreneurship and innovation minor; and Honors College member Samantha L. Siegel ‘19, dance and psychology.

Linehan Artist Scholar Giavanni Powell

Baltimore on my mind

The ceremony also honored students who committed to giving back to Baltimore communities during their time at UMBC. Vanessa Gonzalez ‘19, American studies, worked as a student teacher in Baltimore City as a Sherman STEM Teacher Scholar and received the award for outstanding achievement in American studies.

Gonzalez working with students.

Belgian international student Tanguy Ringoir ‘18, financial economics and M.S. ‘20, economic policy analysis, was named the outstanding graduating senior in financial economics. Ringoir, a chess grandmaster, learned to play chess from his father at age seven. As he strengthened his skills he began to enjoy teaching the game.

During his time at UMBC, Ringor was part of a volunteer chess coach team for a program by TouchPoint in collaboration with UMBC and the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth (CTY). TouchPoint is a community organization in Baltimore that provides free chess lessons to Baltimore youth. The coaching team included volunteers from both the UMBC chess team and chess club.

Ringoir, chess grandmaster, working with CTY students. Photo courtesy of Ringoir.

Ringoir also received a Community Service Outreach and Leadership award from the UMBC Division of Professional Studies for his dedication to creating accessible chess teams. He will continue his work with Baltimore K-12 students through the CTY program.

“I personally stay in Baltimore because I can combine my passion for finance with chess,” shares Ringoir. “UMBC gives me an education at the same time that it supports my chess development through the chess team and community volunteer opportunities.”

Like Ringoir, Ciara Jones ‘19, social work, is also an award recipient who has chosen to begin her professional career in Baltimore. She received the excellence award from Africana studies, her minor. Upon graduation, Jones will work with Sarah’s House in Druid Park, as a forensic social worker. She will also serve the Canton community through Renaissance Baltimore Church.

Global skills

In addition to maximizing their academic experience on campus and participating in an exchange of skills within Baltimore communities, CAHSS students seek to sharpen their personal and professional skills by studying abroad.

Miriam Newman-Marshall ‘19, Asian studies with a Japanese minor, received the Constantine Vaporis Academic Excellence in Asian Studies Award. Newman-Marshall has traveled to Thailand and Cambodia, and has completed three study abroad trips to Japan. These trips strengthened her research skills and historical knowledge, which were critical for her work as a research assistant. She assisted Constantine Vaporis, Asian studies director, on his book, Samurai: An Encyclopedia of Japan’s Cultured Warriors.

Newman-Marshall next to a volcano in Hakone, Japan. Photo courtesy of Newman-Marshall.

Vaporis encourages all students to study a foreign language overseas to accelerate and deepen their understanding of that language and culture. “Learning a language in its country of origin equips students with skills to conduct more complex research, using multi-lingual sources,” explains Vaporis. “Miriam’s knowledge of Japanese history and her ability to read Japanese greatly facilitated her work in support of my research on the samurai.”

For more CAHSS news follow @UMBC_CAHSS on Twitter.

Banner image: Linehan Artist Scholar Emily Godfrey. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC unless otherwise noted.

He’s a bassoonist and chemical engineer. She’s a dancer and social justice advocate. UMBC students have a lot of focus, but that doesn’t mean they have to focus on one thing. For many, the UMBC experience is about figuring out how to combine their passions, not chose one or the other. Here, four UMBC students graduating this spring share how they have found their own unique balance.

Pitching an idea

Senior Jeff Carr can easily recall one of the most pivotal moments of his first year at UMBC. Jason Schiffman, psychology, was speaking to the new cohort of Retrievers and simply told them “this place will be what you make it.”

“It really resonated with me. This was a place where I could restart and find myself,” remembers Carr. “I get kind of emotional looking back over my four years…I’ve done a lot here and I think part of that is the faculty and the community just motivated me to want to do so.”

For Carr, financial economics, sports were part of life. Growing up in nearby Linthicum, he spent much of his time crouched on a baseball diamond as his high school’s catcher. A shoulder injury ultimately derailed his athletic career, but coming to UMBC allowed him to turn that passion into a future profession.

A chance meeting with a member of the athletics department led to an introduction with Liam Bowen, associate head baseball coach. Carr joined the team as baseball manager, filling in wherever he was most needed, from booking catering to helping with scouting reports.

Carr’s biggest contribution came in his sophomore year. “Players would chart pitches during the game using pencil and paper and then I would have to total everything up by hand. One day, I had the realization that the strike zone is basically a graph with X-Y coordinates, so we could just chart pitches using some type of phone app,” explains Carr.

As a result of this epiphany, Carr set out to develop pitchTrax, an app that would track pitches and log the results in a spreadsheet, eliminating the need for hand tabulation.

“Three years ago, I told him that I was interested in tracking our pitchers’ statistics at a granular level and getting the information organized in a way that they could use,” says Bowen. “Jeff took off with the idea and created a system where we could see virtually every aspect of our pitchers’ performance. I have used the information that he has gathered countless times with our players and our program is very much in his debt.”

Carr enlisted the help of economics professor Scott Farrow to turn his ideas into reality. Farrow suggested Carr use heatmap quadrants and helped him refine the visual representation of the pitching data. “Jeff is a great example of becoming outstanding by following a particular interest and then having new opportunities grow from that success,” says Farrow.

Carr has continued to develop his expertise in sports analytics and will soon begin his master’s degree in sports management at the University of Michigan. But he won’t forget his roots anytime soon.

“I feel like my experience here…I’ve been very lucky, but I’ve also been around the right people,” says Carr. “The community here is so welcoming and that’s the most important part, for me. Everyone has a story like mine and we didn’t do it on our own—it’s all thanks to the people [at UMBC] supporting us.”

Justice through performance

The individualized study program at UMBC encourages students to take the road less traveled, or never before traveled, and create their own major. Alexia Petasis jumped at the chance to combine her passion for choreography with her commitment to social justice, a pairing that would define her time at UMBC.

“Dance has always been a big part of my life, but throughout college I became equally interested in social justice activism. When I came to UMBC, I was able to explore the intersections between them,” says Petasis. “I started learning how they could work together to create and inform empathetic dances that grow an individual’s understanding of an issue.”

Taking courses in psychology, sociology, dance, and gender and women’s studies helped Petasis to envision how she could use elements from each in developing a cohesive piece.

“She is consistently looking for new ideas and ways to communicate through the body,” says Doug Hamby, associate professor of dance, of Petasis’s work. “Once she sets out on an creative journey she expands and deepens her exploration until the dancers embody every nuance Alexia intends to communicate to her audience.”

Petasis’s most ambitious work eventually became her capstone project, an evocative dance piece that “brings to light the experiences of survivors of domestic sex trafficking from the point of view of the victim.”

Petasis explains, “This dance, titled ‘Becoming Survivor,’ calls attention to the various ways a victim can become trapped in the life of human trafficking and offers a deeper understanding of the manipulation into exploitation that occurs.”

“In addition to showing her dance, Alexia saw the importance of using this opportunity to share community resources and have a dialogue about sexual violence in our communities,” says Jess Myers, director of UMBC’s Women’s Center. “Alexia’s dance has brought communities together—We Believe You, the Women’s Center, other on-campus and off-campus partners—to help create space for our UMBC community to have complex conversation about consent and sexual violence.”

Myers lauds Petasis’s keen ability to encourage others to see themselves as people who can have a social impact. She notes, “Alexia uses dance to tell stories that often go unheard. Her interdisciplinary work is grounded in inclusion and inviting others to care about issues they may not have otherwise known mattered to them.”

Taking the skills the she’s learned and the advice from the mentors she’s met along the way, Petasis is pursuing a teacher’s assistant program in France. “My time at UMBC has allowed me to pursue my passion and research interests with guidance, mentorship, and an overwhelmingly supportive network.”

At home in the lab…and on stage

“The world needs more Justins!” exclaims Kim Leisey, associate vice president of Student Affairs, when you ask about senior Justin Hosten. Leisey met Hosten when she taught a class for new Residential Life student staff. “If you want to know him, listen to him play the bassoon—it’s soulful and expressive,” she says. “Justin travels UMBC with gentle humility and care for others” in all that he does.

Hosten has a rare skill set—pursuing majors in both chemical engineering and music performance—and he firmly believes that this combination has improved his problem-solving skills.

“In music, we’re taught to look for patterns and I use this thought process in solving engineering problems. Looking for patterns helps determine what steps need to be taken to reach a solution and that’s integral in the engineering curriculum,” explains Hosten.

At the same time, Hosten notes, “In engineering, we’re taught to use all the tools we have to solve the problem fully. I take this into account when I look at all the ways I can create  beautiful sounds.”

After graduating from Bowie High School in Maryland, Hosten hit the ground running at UMBC, with both his music and his passion for engineering, in equal measure. He joined the university orchestra and wind ensemble and is both a Meyerhoff Scholar and a MARC U*STAR Scholar.

Hosten cites his Meyerhoff acceptance as something that makes him particularly proud, and that has had a major impact on his experience. “It’s been a huge part in making sure that I have been successful and helping me to be where I am today,” he shares.

Hosten’s current research explores how nanocapsules could be added to dental resin to revolutionize fillings. Should a person’s filling crack, the nanocapsules would break and the void in the tooth would be filled without a trip back to the dentist. Presently, Hosten is working to coat the particles with a silica shell to keep them uniform and prevent bursting.

One of Hosten’s mentors, Erin Lavik, professor of chemical, biochemical and environmental engineering, appreciates how his lab work is positively influenced by his stage work.

“It is challenging to be a chemical engineer, but to do that while also being a tremendous musician is humbling,” says Lavik, who herself has experience with theatre. “There’s also a critical interplay between the two,” she explains. “It isn’t surprising to me that Justin can approach a challenge from multiple perspectives and come up with elegant, creative solutions.”

This fall, Hosten will pursue his Ph.D. in biomedical engineering as part of a joint program between the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University.

Making waves

“I started swimming because my mom told me that my local summer team needed more kids my age…which was a complete lie. The reason she wanted me to swim was so that I wouldn’t drown when I went to the pool.”

It’s not exactly the auspicious beginning you would expect from a Danish national swimming champion, but that’s exactly how Alexander Gliese’s story begins.

The Danish-born competitor has a score of swimming accolades attached to his name, but he didn’t develop a true love for the sport until he was a teenager. “I was swimming competitively on a year-round team and it wasn’t until I was about 14 that I began to really like the sport,” says Gliese. “At this point, I started to win events at the Maryland state championships.”

When the time came to look at colleges, UMBC immediately stood out to the young swimmer. And once he committed, he never looked back. “I’m happy that I chose UMBC as the coaching staff and my teammates have helped me grow into the person that I am today,” he reflects.

While his numerous athletic achievements would be impressive alone, Gliese managed to perform just as well in the classroom as he did in the pool. The Meyerhoff Scholar is graduating with a mechanical engineering degree this May and dedicated his time to researching energy harvesting and design optimization. He also credits his academic work for helping him improve his athletic performance.

Soobum Lee, UMBC assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has served as mentor for Gliese and has been impressed by his research contributions. “Alex has consistently shown promise and commitment” as a researcher, offering “a unique perspective” while applying the research experience to his own learning, says Lee.

“During his involvement of my energy harvesting research for wind turbine monitoring, Alex proactively and voluntarily worked on brainstorming, CAD modeling, and testing,” Lee explains. “His diligence seriously accelerated the project, and his sincerity positively affected my graduate students.”

“I think that my swimming and my academics intersect very well since I have always been interested in how I can maximize my efficiency in the pool,” Gliese says. “I feel that my knowledge from mechanical engineering has helped me to understand what positions and movements in the water will help me to swim faster in the pool.”

His success in research and swimming are also connected by the same underlying work ethic and tenacity. Neil Rothman, professor of practice in mechanical engineering, shares that as busy as Gliese was with U.S. and international swimming competitions, “he would show up to class with a smile on his face. I had him in four different courses over a period of three years and he was consistently an excellent and dedicated student. The busier he got and the harder work became, he seemed to enjoy it even more.”

Gliese’s approach of applying his classroom knowledge to the pool can certainly be deemed a success. He’s a two-time CCSA Champion, two-time America East champion, 2019 America East Most Outstanding Male Swimmer, two-time America East All-Academic Team member, two-time CSCAA Scholar All-American, UMBC record holder in 100 backstroke and 200 medley relay, and the Danish national record holder in 200 backstroke. He even broke Michael Phelps’ 16-year-old NBAC record during the back split of the 400 medley relay in January 2019.

Head swimming and diving coach Chad Cradock ’97, psychology, says Gliese “has always been well-balanced in the classroom and in the pool. They say the price of excellence is discipline. Alex is one of the most disciplined, focused, and hardworking swimmers I have ever worked with and has earned his way to the world stage each and every day.”

After commencement, Gliese will compete in the World University Games. He will then take time to train for the Danish Olympic swimming qualifiers before pursuing a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering.

As much as he’s made a mark on UMBC, Gliese thinks about the mark UMBC has made on him. “UMBC has helped me to not only grow as a student and a swimmer, but as a person.” Sharing that the UMBC community is like family, he says, “it’s allowed me to thrive and create bonds that will last a lifetime.”

Banner image: Alexia Petasis ‘19, left, at UMBC’s fall Senior Dance Concert. Photo by Marlayna Demond ‘11.

On Saturday, June 9, the stage of Terrace Theater at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., will be graced by the choreography of new UMBC alumna Maia Schechter ’18, dance. Schechter is a Linehan Artist Scholar whose work was selected for the finals of the American College Dance Festival (ACDF) through a nationally competitive process. Her dance, Now Elsewhere, previously has been performed at West Chester University in Pennsylvania and twice at UMBC.

“Now Elsewhere is a dance that explores the emotions and events that happen after someone passes away,” explains Schechter. “Throughout the dance there is a range of movement that begins as very minimal and gestural and grows into an explosive full-body expression. The dancers experience their loss together and individually, which can be seen in solo and ensemble work, as their relationships are ever changing throughout the dance.”

Six UMBC students and alumni will perform the dance, including Emily Godfrey ’20, dance; Clarisse Lukban ’20, dance and biology; Kasey Mannion ’19, dance and elementary education certification; Briana Norwood ’20, dance; Giavanni Powell ’19, dance; and Kendra Welborn ’17, dance.

ACDF adjudicators commended Schechter for the clarity of her vision. “We chose Now Elsewhere with deep appreciation of its unusual compositional structure, and its taut, compelling performance,” they said. “The work demands that its performers work with physical accuracy and synchronicity as well as emotional transparency in its abstract rendering of a community reforming itself.”

The American College Dance Festival performances at the Kennedy Center feature works by young choreographers from thirty colleges and universities across the country. “I’m very honored to be presenting this dance at the National College Dance Festival,” says Schechter, “and cannot wait to be surrounded by other artists. These festivals are a wonderful opportunity to share work and unite young choreographers in the field.”

Tickets to the festival are available online through Kennedy Center.

Photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

UMBC expects over 350 presenters and 2,500 guests to attend Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day on April 25, making URCAD 2018 the largest in the event’s 22-year history. The annual showcase of advanced undergraduate work offers students a chance to share with the broader community projects they have been working on for months, or even years. Through URCAD, students practice their presentation skills, get robust feedback on their work, and engage with fellow researchers to think, collaborate, and push their research in new directions.

“I am most proud of the kinds of questions these students are asking in their research and creative work,” says April Householder, director of undergraduate research and prestigious scholarships. “From developing clean air technologies or bringing awareness to human trafficking, to collaborating with local poets and creating meaningful art, UMBC undergrads are making change in the world.”

Undergraduate Research Award (URA) recipient Courtney Mattson ‘18, biological sciences, works with Tamra Mendelson, professor of biological sciences, to examine the mating behaviors of male darters, a common freshwater fish. Mattson spent hours catching darters in a Pennsylvania stream and running controlled trials in the lab, on top of her regular coursework and dedication to cross-country and track and field.

With all of these commitments, Mattson says that completing research required her to hone her time-management skills. “Because my experiment had to be conducted during mating season, I was sometimes trying to find an extra 10 hours per week to run trials on top of a full-time course load and outdoor track competition season,” she says.

Still, Mattson found it exhilarating, and she recommends all students dive into a variety of experiences. “Never put yourself into a box,” she says. “Don’t limit yourself by thinking, ‘I’m an athlete, so I don’t have time for research,’ or ‘I’m not a STEM major, so I can’t do research.’ Through my research, I’ve learned so much about ecology and evolution, but I have also made friendships, gotten to know a faculty member, and had fun along the way.”

Maia Schechter ‘18, dance, will present Now Elsewhere, a performance of three acts featuring six dancers that she choreographed to explore the profound loss of loved ones. Schechter shares, “I believe the movement and music work together to create a poignant journey that the audience can relate to.”

URCAD will be the third presentation of Now Elsewhere, which will also be performed in June at the Kennedy Center as an official selection of the National College Dance Festival. Festival adjudicators shared, “We chose Now Elsewhere with deep appreciation of its unusual compositional structure, and its taut, compelling performance. The work demands that its performers work with physical accuracy and synchronicity as well as emotional transparency in its abstract rendering of a community reforming itself.”

Jamshaid Shahir ’18, mathematics and statistics, will present his research on mathematically modeling cell polarization—a process through which cells develop distinct front and back ends, allowing them to move and transmit information. His research with mentor Hye-Won Kang, assistant professor of mathematics and statistics, is supported by NIH and NSF. Both a Meyerhoff Scholar and MARC U*STAR, Shahir has already received a prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship to pursue a Ph.D. in computational biology at UNC Chapel Hill.

Reflecting on his research experiences at UMBC, Shahir shares, “The mentorship and guidance I have received…has been invaluable in clarifying my resolve to earn a Ph.D. and has opened many doors for me in terms of research opportunities.” This includes “presenting at conferences around the country, from Harvard to Hawaii.”

Priyanka Ranade ‘18, information systems, another URA recipient, will present her work on using advanced computing techniques to more accurately identify cyber threats—part of UMBC’s research collaboration with IBM. Ranade works with Anupam Joshi, chair and professor of computer science and electrical engineering. She has been focusing on a specific aspect of cybersecurity called multilingual representation, which relies on natural language processing to understand cyber threats in a range of natural languages.

“The URA allowed me to explore a whole new area I was not familiar with, which was the intersection of artificial intelligence and cybersecurity,” she says. Her advice to new student researchers: Ask your mentor questions instead of Googling everything. Ranade explains, “Human insight from experience cannot always be communicated through a search engine. Being open about what you don’t understand…it’s a part of being a researcher.”

Kelly Dunn ‘18, Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication (MLLI), has examined constructions of collective and personal memory of armed conflict in Colombia, under the mentorship of Tania Lizarazo, assistant professor of MLLI. Dunn explored how participants in the Mujeres Pacificas storytelling project spoke about their personal experiences with violence in the context of other life experiences, involving gender and economic disparities, in a way that differed from how memory of the conflict was presented at the national level.

As part of his research, Dunn traveled to Colombia, living with a host family. There he developed a clearer sense of the diversity within Colombian culture and the experiences of Colombian people living in different communities. “I would encourage students to jump in and get engaged in the research process as soon as possible,” he says, “especially when you are talking about doing research in a language that is not your own.”

“You also have a lot less time than you think you have,” Dunn notes. “I have been speaking Spanish for about 8 or 9 years and am comfortable with it, and even then…it took a while to get my ear to adjust to the specific dialect.”

Linda Wiratan ’19, biochemistry and molecular biology, and URA recipient and 2018 Goldwater Scholar, conducts research on the relationship between plant defense systems and their circadian clocks with Hua Lu, associate professor of biological sciences. “Plants have evolved extremely sophisticated mechanisms of disease immunity,” Wiratan says. “They are even capable of anticipating attacks by specific pathogens at certain times of day, and coordinate defense activities with their circadian clock.”

Wiratan has embraced the role of researcher at UMBC. Through her work, she says, “I gained a deep appreciation of how plants, despite being immobile, survive amid constant threats.” She describes research as a “thrilling” experience of discovery, explaining, “The researcher is the first one who learns a little more about the universe, and that role is invaluable.”

URA recipient Ezra Pailer, visual arts, will present an animated documentary created in collaboration with local poet Jordann Allen, under the mentorship of Corrie Parks, assistant professor of visual arts. The project combines hand-drawn animation and live-action film to reveal an intimate view of the artist’s imagination and personal inner narrative as expressed both visually and in spoken words.

Pailer shares, “The audio of Allen reading her poetry has a serene and fluid quality; this presented an interesting challenge in designing animated sequences that complement the flowing nature of a medium like poetry.” Allen will join Pailer at the presentation of his film.

Lucas McCullum ‘18, mechanical engineering, explores how piezoelectric materials, which create electricity in response to mechanical stress, can be used for different purposes, including to detect tumors. He has found research to be an incredibly valuable experience and suggests it can “help a younger student to discover their passions while learning about how to successfully manage their time and critically analyze complex problems.”

McCullum, a URA scholar who works with Soobum Lee, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, particularly appreciates his research experience for teaching him how to embrace new situations where he doesn’t immediately have all the answers. “One of the most certain things in research is that you never know what is going to happen the next time you go into the lab, and the ability to be flexible and adapt to unpredictable situations is one of the most valuable experiences out there,” he says.

Yuwanyun Zhu ‘18, SAHAP and psychology, has studied parental control among European American and Asian American parents, specifically Chinese and Korean immigrant mothers in the U.S., under the mentorship of Charissa Cheah, professor of psychology. Zhu has interviewed numerous mothers in English, Mandarin, and Korean languages over the past two years, with the goal of deconstructing cross-cultural stereotypes about parenting styles and their effects on children’s behavior and development.

This project has solidified her feeling that research “is a very powerful way to help people change their beliefs and remove stereotypes,” which can in turn help people “become more understanding” of each other.

Through all this work, Householder says, it’s evident that URCAD “upholds UMBC’s mission as a public research university to integrate teaching, research, and service in dynamic and engaged ways.”

Whether a student goes on to graduate school or directly into a career, major projects completed in their undergraduate years can drive lifelong passions, support critical thinking, and boost an array of skills crucial to their future success. This includes everything from how to identify a problem and explain its importance to how to set project goals, see a project through to completion, accept feedback constructively, and connect with stakeholders who are impacted by the work.

Householder invites all of UMBC to support URCAD presenters by attending the event on April 25 and “asking good questions” that challenge students to think about their work in new ways. “There is something for everyone at URCAD,” she says, sharing, “I hope it inspires even more people in our community to conduct research, collaborate, mentor, and bring creativity to their work each day.”

Featured image: November 2017 performance of Now Elsewhere. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Maia Schechter
B.A., Dance
Magna Cum Laude
Hometown: Glen Rock, Pennsylvania
Plans: Presenting choreography at the National College Dance Festival; studying with the NW Dance Project

The UMBC dance department has offered incredible support. In addition to cultivating my dance technique, many teachers have introduced me to renowned dance companies and intensives that have helped me network and develop as an artist. Thanks to my teachers, I am setting and achieving goals I never thought would be possible.

Maia Schechter came to UMBC as a Linehan Artist Scholar and a member of the Honors College, driven to pursue a career in dance. She quickly got to work developing her technique as a dancer and choreographer, and taking chances on unique opportunities to grow her craft.

In the summer of her sophomore year, she was accepted to the competitive Broadway Dance Center Summer Professional Intensive in New York City, and in the summer of her junior year she was one of twelve women accepted into the highly competitive Jacob’s Pillow Contemporary Dance Program. These opportunities were supported by a Linehan Summer Study Award and a Summer Dance Study and Research Award from the dance department. She also served as the vice president of the Dance Council of Majors.

Schechter has received College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences Student Awards for Outstanding Junior in Dance, and Outstanding Senior in Choreography and Performance. During her senior year, her piece Tipping Point, co-choreographed with Ryan Bailey ‘16, dance, was selected for the Maryland Choreographers Showcase. Most recently, her choreography Now Elsewhere was presented at the American College Dance Association Mid-Atlantic North Regional Conference at West Chester University. Judges then selected the work to be presented at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as part of the American College Dance Association National Festival in June 2018, the association’s highest honor.

Since her freshman year, Maia has supported numerous faculty research projects, performing with Baltimore Dance Project in works by professors Carol Hess and Doug Hamby. She has appeared with Baltimore Dance Project in the Akimbo Artwalk Festival in Station North, Baltimore, Light City Baltimore, and in residence at Washington College.

Portrait by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Baltimore Dance Project returns to the Proscenium Theatre for its traditional winter performances, February 8–10. Co-directed by UMBC’s Carol Hess, professor and chair of dance, and Doug Hamby, associate professor of dance, the contemporary dance company will present a blend of new, recent, and repertory works. Performances will include the premiere of Unravel, choreographed in 1995 by the late Eric Hampton and reconstructed by Alison Crosby, and an excerpt from Framework, one of the company’s earliest works, choreographed by the late Elizabeth Walton, the company’s founding artistic director, who was a member of UMBC’s dance department for more than 40 years.

New works include a solo by Sandra Lacy, instructor of dance, and Tipping Point by Ryan Bailey ’16, dance. The program also includes encore performances of Hamby’s Square Breath, a tour de force of intensity and desperation, and Hess’ LightForest, a venture through breathtaking images of nature.

“For this concert, Baltimore Dance Project is honoring memory of Elizabeth Walton, the founding director of the company and the dance department’s first chair, by performing an excerpt from her piece Framework,” says Hess. “When I arrived at UMBC in 1982, I saw a performance of Framework in UMBC’s old theatre and loved it. In 1984, I suggested to Liz that she present the piece again. There were three dancers in the 1982 version, but Liz decided to expand the cast to six. Both Sandra Lacy and I were in that 1984 cast.”

Hess explains, “In order to re-mount the piece, I used an archival video of the piece, and my memory of Liz’s directions. I found a reel to reel master tape of the electronic score, composed by William John Tudor. The department of music’s Alan Wonneberger used his amazing expertise to process the old tape so the sound could be played and then digitized. Teaching the piece to the dancers brought back so many memories of Liz, and I am so thrilled to be able to share her work on this concert.” Walton, an associate professor emerita, passed away in November 2017.

Hamby views the restaging of Square Breath, originally choreographed in 2007, as an opportunity for exploration. “When awakening a dance from the past, I get to rediscover it with fresh eyes, often adding to my understanding about the essence of the dance,” he explains. “A dance is a living, breathing thing, so new dancers bring new ideas and new kinetic exploration to the work. The musical score for Square Breath incorporates live sounds made by both the dancers and musicians. This allows the movement and the sound score to interact in a new and surprising way, with each restaging.”

Baltimore Dance Project infuses visual media, sound, light and technology into riveting dance performance. Known for its edgy artistic collaborations between choreographers, composers, sound artists, visual artists, engineers, and technologists, the company presents the creative work of Hamby and Hess, performer and choreographer Sandra Lacy, and guest artists.

Formed in 1982 under the name Phoenix Dance Company, BDP features outstanding performers from the Baltimore/Washington area and has been honored with numerous grants and awards. Hamby, Hess, and Lacy have received a total of sixteen individual artist awards from the Maryland State Arts Council, and their work has appeared on the streets of Baltimore and in theaters and film festivals across the United States.

More information about the upcoming performances is available on UMBC’s Arts and Culture Calendar here.

Images by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Nine distinguished faculty and alumni shared their stories at GRIT-X, a TED talk-style event during UMBC’s Homecoming. Karl Steiner, UMBC vice president for research, introduced the event, which debuted at last year’s 50th anniversary celebration. “We’ll take you from outer space to inner space,” he said, “from black holes in the universe to a pacemaker for the brain.”

Kafui Dzirasa ’01, chemical engineering, kicked off the program by discussing the latter. Now associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Duke School of Medicine, Dzirasa has a personal connection to his groundbreaking work. “My family has struggled with mental illness for generations,” he shares. While much mental health research has focused on chemical imbalances in the brain, Dzirasa is using new tools and techniques to detect rhythmic waves of electric pulses in the active brain.

“These rhythms work together in the same way that a conductor can allow all the instruments in a symphony orchestra to work together to produce music,” he says. “These little rhythms allow brain cells to coordinate—to produce motions, and thoughts, and feelings.” He calls these rhythms the “metronomic system” of the brain, and is investigating whether psychiatric disorders, such as bipolar and schizophrenia, are a result of faulty metronomes. Dzirasa’s lab is learning about how these metronomes function through animal studies, and he hopes to one day apply the results to humans.

“In the future that I see, our family members would have lived out their life’s greatest dreams,” he says, “because we won’t simply treat psychiatric disorders by tuning electricity, we will cure them.”

Christine Mallinson, professor of language, literacy, and culture, is looking to cure a different ill: the negative biases teachers may harbor against students who speak differently than they do, even if they’re speaking English. Hearing “coffee” pronounced several different ways as a child sparked Mallinson’s lifelong interest in linguistic diversity, which she says “is a resource, not a deficit.”

Demonstrating the value of diverse linguistic patterns in the classroom shows students they are valued, which makes them likely to value school, Mallinson explains. Overall, educators must “give the students the tools they need to succeed on the tests that we require of them, while sustaining and empowering their diverse voices,” she says, “so that we can have all our students with all their diverse voices right here in the front row of our classes at UMBC.”

Nilanjan Banerjee, associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering, is working on wearable sensors—communication of a very different kind. After the iPhone revolutionized “smart” technology in 2007, he says, “Ten years later, we are at the brink of yet another revolution: the revolution of the next generation of wearables.”

Banerjee explained how these tiny computers can make people with spinal injuries more independent, by allowing them to control appliances or communicate via motions as minute as tongue movements. Ankle straps could track health-related statistics from sleep patterns to cardiac conditions, reducing the strain on clinics facing an ever-increasing demand for services as the population ages. Banerjee also sees applications in driving safety, with sensors able to detect whole-body movements that may indicate distracted, drunk, or drowsy driving.

Banerjee acknowledges that “all of these sensors are useless unless people use them,” so this work requires perspective from an array of disciplines, such as human-centered computing, design, software development, and materials science. And of course, privacy and ethics concerns loom large when devices are collecting this much data. To conclude, Banerjee encouraged audience members to “think about what you want these next-generation wearables to do, and more importantly, think about what you want them not to do.”

The second session began with Sean Pang ’09, English, and M.A. ’11, teaching, who recounted his “fortune of misfortunes,” including culture shock and a language barrier upon his immigration to the U.S. as a small child, and poverty and eviction during his undergraduate studies. When he started teaching in Baltimore City after graduating from UMBC, he was the only Asian person in the room, but his background of challenges helped him connect with students. “When they see me come into the classroom, with a smile on my face, with passion, and dedication, and kindness, they see hope,” he shares, “hope that they can make something better from their lives.”

Pang, who was The Washington Post’s 2017 Teacher of the Year, had three recommendations for audience members. First, he said, be kind. In kindergarten, a classmate gave him a plastic dinosaur that Pang keeps to this day—it was the first act of kindness he remembers from a peer in the U.S. Second, “Try everything, because that will lead you to find your passion.” And once you find it, “use it to give hope, because hope is the greatest gift you can give.”

Gymama Slaughter, associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering, is hoping for a future of implantable medical devices that are safe, environmentally friendly, and powered by the metabolism of our own bodies. Her lab has created thin membranes made of nanocellulose—a flexible, permeable, transparent, biocompatible material produced by genetically engineered bacteria—and tiny attachable circuits that harness the body’s energy. Because the byproduct of the energy production process is simply water, it’s completely safe.

So far, Slaughter’s bio-power devices, only a few millimeters on a side, can light up an LED light. “This gives us hope that eventually, with such a small device, we can develop a power system that harnesses the biochemical energy of glucose within our body,” she says, “to power implantable devices that can monitor disease, diagnose diseases, and one day deliver therapeutics into our body to enable our bodies to heal.”

Kate Brown, professor of history, closed the second session with a talk on radioactive blueberries. Brown traveled to the Chernobyl zone expecting to find sadness and isolation. Instead, she found a booming, revitalized economy based on foraging—blueberries in the summer, cranberries and mushrooms in the fall.

“These women and children pickers have made it happen with human-powered resourcefulness. So economically it’s a good idea,” Brown says. “What about biologically? That’s a trickier question.” Brown explains that berries are extremely efficient at absorbing radiation from the soil, and limits have been set on the radiation level allowed in the EU market. But the berries are simply marked as “wild and organic,” so consumers have no idea they are ingesting radiation. There is very little research on the effects of long-term, low-dose exposure to radiation, but in the area surrounding the berry picking region, birth defects are six times as high as the European average.

“I’m here to tell you that even though we think of Chernobyl as something that’s very far away, it’s being brought to us by the global market that’s been so successful,” Brown says. She recommends paying the pickers the same amount to pick the berries, except then disposing of them as waste in the effort to reduce radiation in the area.. Brown even speculates that tourists might be willing to pay to experience picking radioactive berries. “That might be a better way of solving this problem, than just pretending it’s not happening.”

Next, Jane Turner, director of UMBC’s Center for Space Sciences and Technology and professor of physics, took listeners much, much farther away to black holes at the centers of galaxies. The Milky Way contains a black hole 2.6 million times as massive as our Sun, she explained, and “there’s evidence for supermassive black holes at the center of all galaxy nuclei. This is one of the big discoveries of the last decade or so in astronomy.” These black holes are proportional in mass to the mass of the galaxy they’re in, so “these things must grow together,” she says.

Most of the black holes at the centers of galaxies are dark and only detected by their gravitational influence, but a few percent emit an incredible amount of light—these are called “active nuclei.” Turner’s work involves investigating why those few are so bright, by looking at X-rays coming from very close to the black hole “event horizon,” beyond which we cannot make observations. These X-rays can tell scientists about what material is present close to the black hole and how that material is moving. Astrophysicists like Turner have found that black holes are pulling in about one star’s-worth of material per year, which is “enough to feed these active nuclei.”  The black holes are also pushing some of that material back out —enough to affect star formation in the surrounding galaxy. It’s by analyzing results like these, Turner says, that “we’re going to be able to understand the connection between the growth of the black hole and the host galaxy, and from that the growth of structure in the universe on the whole.”

While black holes are helping build galaxies far away, Corey Fleischer ’08, mechanical engineering, is helping people build things in Maryland. As co-founder and general manager of The Foundery, a makerspace in Baltimore, Fleischer’s goal “is to have anybody walk in with a hand sketch on a napkin, for a product or an invention they want to build, and with our tools and classes be able to walk out with a polished, professional-looking prototype.”

Fleischer’s career path has been largely informed by his experience on UMBC’s mini-Baja team, which involved designing and constructing a one-person vehicle and then navigating it around an obstacle course at competitions. “We were learning textbook knowledge in classrooms, but at the same time we were learning firsthand how to build things,” he says. The Foundery provides a space for people with ideas to make them reality, and quickly, by speeding up the design feedback cycle—which involves a lot of failure. “Failure is an empowering way to learn,” Fleischer says. “And makerspaces allow people to fail faster.”

Finally, Doug Hamby, associate professor of dance, and two UMBC dance students, Emily Godfrey ’20 and Samantha Siegel ’18, created an original dance right before the audience’s eyes. Hamby gave them instructions and they absorbed them on the spot, performing turns, rolls, and pliés to the audience’s delight. “When I make a dance,” Hamby shared as he moved fluidly across the stage, “I like to think of it as an investigation of the human body in motion, and in space, and in time.”

After the dancers performed the full sequence to close the program, Hamby tied all the GRIT-X talks together. “That’s one of the ways art is made,” he said, “through serendipity and experimentation.” Replace “art” with language, science, or technology, and the statement holds. UMBC faculty and alumni are creatively exploring the edge of knowledge, and the physical and mental world, from inner to outer space—from black holes to brain pacemakers, from language usage to radioactive fallout, from driver safety to dance—and sharing it with the world.

Watch videos of the complete GRIT-X presentations to learn more.

Banner image: Sean Pang ’09, English, and M.A. ’11, teaching, chats with his wife (right) and President Hrabowski (left) after his presentation. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

UMBC’s newest Postdoctoral Fellows for Faculty Diversity will soon begin a two-year experience focused on growing their research and refining their teaching skills through professional development opportunities and working closely with faculty mentors, in preparation for possible tenure-track faculty positions at UMBC.

The fourth cohort of fellows—the largest in program history—includes Lisa Cassell, philosophy; René Esparza, American studies; Christine Hawn, geography and environmental systems; Erika Fountain, psychology; Adanna Jones, dance; Camee Maddox-Wingfield, sociology and anthropology; and Noor Zaidi, history.

“UMBC is fortunate to have been able to attract a group of such outstanding young scholars whom we now welcome as members of our community,” says Philip Rous, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. “These fellows represent the best of UMBC and our commitment to attracting scholars from diverse backgrounds and perspectives to further advance our shared values of inclusive excellence through world-class scholarship and a distinctive educational experience for all of our students.”

As a Maryland native who earned her Ph.D. at the University of Florida, Maddox-Wingfield knew that she wanted to return to the University System of Maryland for the next step in her career. “This postdoctoral fellowship opportunity will mark a major milestone in my career trajectory,” she shares. “It is my goal to complete a book manuscript based on my dissertation field research, and gain pedagogical skills that will make me a more effective instructor and mentor to students.”

Fountain explained that UMBC’s commitment to diversity is a reason why she chose to join the program for 2017 – 19. “I believe being part of a community that embraces different perspectives is essential to producing top quality research. I look forward to working with the outstanding mentors at UMBC and furthering my research on issues related to juvenile justice,” she said.

Esparza shared in Fountain’s excitement to develop his research in a supportive community that values diversity. “I am enthusiastic about sharing my passion for teaching and commitment to community engaged scholarship through the Postdoctoral Fellowship for Faculty Diversity Program, in hopes of fulfilling UMBC’s mission to prepare students for a multicultural, global society,” he reflected.  

Hawn agrees, noting, “I’m looking forward to having the time, mentorship, and resources necessary to build my own research program. Because this fellowship is centered around diversity, I’m taking the opportunity to develop sound ecological research that is informed by my identities.”

In addition to continuing to publish and present her research, Cassel is particularly interested in the teaching opportunities the fellowship provides. She says, “I’m looking forward to developing new courses for the philosophy department—courses that I’ve always wanted to teach, and that I’ll finally have the opportunity to teach, at UMBC.”

Jones is looking forward to working with her two mentors Carol Hess, dance, and Kimberly Moffitt, American studies. “Ultimately, this fellowship offers me the time to complete my book proposal, as well as get critical feedback on my research-based choreography,” she says.

This year, UMBC’s College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences also launched a program designed to fulfill the same needs as the university-wide Postdoctoral Fellows for Faculty Diversity program, but with a specific focus on career trajectories in the natural sciences.

UMBC’s new Natural Sciences Pre-professoriate Fellowship program offers fellows an appointment of up to two years, during which scaffolding is in place to prepare the pre-professoriate fellows for tenure-track assistant professor positions at UMBC. In addition to being strong scholars, the program stipulates that applicants must be committed to diversity in the academy. Fellows receive research and teaching guidance from a faculty mentor, work on a collaborative research project, teach one class per semester, mentor students in the STEM BUILD program, and participate in the Active Learning, Inquiry Teaching Certificate program.

The first two scholars to accept appointments through the program, Fernando Vonhoff and Mercedes Burns, will join UMBC’s biological sciences department this fall. Vonhoff is currently a postdoctoral research associate in molecular, cellular and developmental biology at Yale University, and Burns is a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in biology at San Diego State University.

Phil Farabaugh, professor and chair of biological sciences, is tremendously excited about the high quality of fellowship applications received. He explained that in addition to having strong research credentials, the dozens of candidates who applied have demonstrated a longstanding commitment to diversity in the sciences, including “a lot of work with undergraduates and younger kids in reaching out to underrepresented populations,” work the department hopes the selected fellows will extend at UMBC.

These initiatives are part of a broader effort by UMBC to build and steward a faculty that reflects and effectively meets the needs of the university’s highly diverse student body. Also included in this effort is the successful ADVANCE program to increase the number of women faculty members.

Read more about the Postdoctoral Fellows for Faculty Diversity program, including information about previous cohorts.

Banner image: Camee Maddox-Wingfield. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.