Friday, June 21 at 8:00 p.m., Between You and Me, an exhibition by Coordinator/Producer of the New Media Studio, Christine Ferrera ’10 M.F.A., Imaging and Digital Arts, opens at the Gibbs Street Gallery in Rockville, Maryland.

According to Rockville’s VisArts website, Between You and Me is a collection of performance pieces “that circuitously contemplate art, humor and feminism. Each piece uses personal monologue as a vehicle to explore longing, insecurity, narcissism and enlightenment. By counter-posing live and recorded performance, satire and sincerity, the artist either transcends her angst or winds up in a self-reflexive tangle.”

The works include Starbux Diary; Awkward Pauzez the Digital Comic, a stand-up comedy act with computer generated punchlines; Google Art Video, a performance featuring the strange encounters of two women drifting through cyberspace receiving mystical clues and the inspiration to create, and Stellar Cellar, a journey through a woman’s subconsciousness under the guise of a radio show discussion about wine. Read the complete descriptions of the works on the event poster.

This event is free and open to the public, and continues through July 7. Performances of the works are scheduled through June on the 22nd, 23rd, 28th and 29th. A free opening reception will be held on the 28th from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m.

BLADE RUNNERS

On a Thursday night at the Retriever Activities Center, amidst a hard-fought pickup game of basketball  and  wrestling practice on large mats, a group clad in loose-fitting, traditional Japanese-style garments clashes with wooden training swords called shinai.

These warriors are members of the UMBC Kendo Club, students of the samurai tradition of kendo, or “The Way of the Sword.” Over a 90-minute training session, they engage with head-and-body-armored instructors from a group called Baltimore-Annapolis Kendo in controlled exercises and watch demonstrations of the sort of action group members might expect in kendo competitions.

The club was founded in 2010, when club president and co-founder Christopher Nam ’13, biology, transferred to UMBC from Virginia Tech, where he’d taken up kendo as a way of dealing with ADHD. “When I thought about all the clubs UMBC had to offer, I felt that kendo was a better alternative to many,” says Nam, who observes that kendo disciplines not only the body, but also the mind.

Instructor Phil Van Den Berghe ’09, computer science, agrees. “On the surface, it looks like just a lot of fighting and hitting with sticks, but it’s a lot deeper than that,” he says. “The real purpose of kendo isn’t to learn how to fight, but to learn how to be a better person.”

The club initially held its sessions off campus due to lack of space, but full recognition as a club sport last year has spurred interest and membership. Kendo club vice president Mirsaid Parmanov ’13, biology says: “I can definitely see the club being here for a long time.”

 – Nathan Glover ’12

POWER PLAY

UMBC’s chess team is a regular contender at the annual President’s Cup, also known as the “Final Four” of chess. But UMBC’s elite chess players recently sought out a game in a different venue: the state capitol building in Annapolis.

During this year’s session of the Maryland General Assembly, UMBC’s chess team was formally recognized on the floor of both the state’s Senate and its House of Delegates with a citation from Speaker Pro Tem and UMBC alumna Adrienne Jones ’76, psychology.

Members of the team also stayed to play a series of friendly chess matches with the members of the Maryland General Assembly Chess Challenge, including Senators Jamie Raskin, Bryan Simonaire and Ulysses Currie. (Currie co-sponsored the Senate recognition of the team with Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller, Jr.)

“We ended up playing for about two hours games with some of the senators,” said Sabina Foisor ’12, modern languages and linguistics, a team member who is currently a graduate student at UMBC.  “We all had a good time and hope to be able to do it again.”

Collin Wojciechowski ’13, political science and media & communication studies, who also serves as UMBC’s government relations assistant, observed that the event was not set up as tournament-style play, but rather a sort of round-robin in which each student played a legislator multiple times.

“From what I saw,” says Wojciechowski, “a legislator never won a game.”

–  Nicole Ruediger

WORD POWER

For most people, Scrabble is just a word game. For Linda Oliva, it’s a ticket to the world.

Oliva, an assistant professor of secondary education at UMBC, plays in three local clubs, including one on campus, and teaches the game at school Scrabble clubs. She has played on the national competitive circuit for 12 years, attended the national tournament six times and even competed in Italian.

This summer, in fact, she’s going on a three-week Adriatic cruise, “playing Scrabble when we’re not visiting amazing places.” It’s her fourth Scrabble cruise.

The game got her started, but fellow players keep her interested. “You play with such diverse people,” she said. She’s met musicians and mathematicians, retired librarians and a man determined to visit every Starbucks. “They’re a colorful group,” she said.

Dr. Oliva usually travels with her friend, Dave Engelhart, to two tournaments a month.  They’ve taken their boards — hers is custom-made — to tournaments in South America, New Zealand and Southeast Asia.

“The good thing about scrabble is anybody can play,” she said.

And, in fact, Oliva is such a believer she has spread the Scrabble obsession to several Baltimore area schools, including Mount Pleasant Christian School, her first club, and Arbutus Middle School, where she has led their club to regional and national tournaments for three years.

She teaches strategies for winning — rules about words and keeping an eye on those double- and triple-word scores.

“There’s always the first play. And then there’s the best play,” she said.

Her students have learned.

“And then they beat me,” she said.

“Coaching kids when they make a great move and get all these points, it’s really joyful,” Oliva explains. “They really enjoy playing and learning,”

Oliva got hooked on the game playing with her family in Silver Spring. They not only played Scrabble, they finished each game by using all the words on the board to tell a story.

Eventually Oliva discovered study is the key to winning and she started beating her older sister, Debbie, who is now a teacher.

Important words good players know:

• All the two-letter words. “You shouldn’t even step foot in the club if you don’t know your two letter words,” she warned.
• Unusual words such as “howf.” “They are all good Scrabble words,” she said.
• Seven-letter words. (Remember “retinas.” It’s a high-frequency bingo word.)

Oliva has a curiosity about words — from their meanings to working out anagrams – to the point where she’s worn out a dictionary. “I love it because I keep learning,” she said.

–  Mary K. Tilghman ’79

UMBC’s Scrabble Club meets Mondays in the Administration Building lobby, 7-11 p.m.

A SIDELINE VIEW

It doesn’t get much better than watching your favorite team win the Super Bowl – especially if you work closely with them and get to be there in person.

Alan Sokoloff ’82, health science and policy, headed to New Orleans earlier this year as one of the team chiropractors for the Baltimore Ravens. Sokoloff helps tend to player injuries, but he also assists healthy Ravens in getting their joints functioning as efficiently as possible in order to gain a competitive edge.

“At the NFL level, that one one-hundredth of a second makes a huge difference between getting tackled and scoring a touchdown,” he says.

A back injury in college from carrying disc jockey equipment was what first prompted Sokoloff to see a chiropractor. He grew so fascinated by the profession that he ended up studying it.

After attending chiropractic school in Iowa, Sokoloff returned to Baltimore to open his own practice. He interned with the United States Olympic Training Center, earning a spot on the medical team for the 1998 Goodwill Games and 1999 Pan Am games. Those experiences led him directly to a spot with the Ravens, with whom he has worked for 13 years.

Sokoloff says that being able to make a difference when it comes to a player’s performance is the real motivation for his football work. “It’s not all glamour,” he says, “but there’s so much satisfaction in knowing you’re one of the thousands of doctors who have actually gotten that far.”

And it doesn’t hurt, of course, to get to see the Ravens win it all in the Superdome.

“There’s just something about all that confetti falling,” Sokoloff says.

 – Laura Lefavor ’13

Donald F. Norris, professor and chair of public policy at UMBC, has published an op-ed in today’s Baltimore Sun that gives a sense of scale to Joe Flacco’s $20 million Ravens contract in relation to education funding in Maryland.

Norris writes, “We could do a lot with $20 million to support the education of our students that would further ensure that they graduate with the best learning possible, and would make even more certain that, no matter where their futures take them, they are as well equipped to succeed as possible.” Read the full op-ed at the Baltimore Sun.

“Lt. Gov. Anthony Brown and Howard County Executive Ken Ulman shook up Maryland’s 2014 gubernatorial race by announcing they will run as a ticket for the Democratic nomination in 2014. Politically and electorally, it’s a shrewd and gutsy move,” writes UMBC political science professor Thomas F. Schaller in today’s Baltimore Sun.

Schaller notes, “Picking running mates before the primary remains unconventional,” with most gubernatorial and presidential candidates assuming they should make solo nomination bids and pick running mates only after receiving the nomination. Brown and Ulman, however, are positioning themselves as a complementary ticket, highlighting Brown’s service in the state legislature and executive levels and Ulman’s experience as county legislator and top county official. The candidates are also complementary in the voters they will draw, with Brown’s support in Prince George’s County, Montgomery County and Baltimore City, and Ulman’s strength in Howard County and Baltimore County.

How might gubernatorial aspirant Doug Gansler compete with the ticket? Schaller suggests he “convince rising star and openly gay [Del. Heather] Mizeur to join his ticket, setting up an epic clash for power within the post-O’Malley Democratic Party.”

Yesterday, Maryland State Senator Allan Kittleman ’81, political science, launched his campaign for Howard County Executive. He is the first to announce his candidacy for county executive, a position that has been left vacant by term limits.

According to the Baltimore Sun:

During a 15-minute address to his supporters, Kittleman, 54, said his priorities for the county are education, solving transportation issues, fostering economic development, and assisting county residents who are suffering.

If he is elected, Kittleman would be the first Republican to hold county executive office in Howard County since 1998.

Read the full article.

In his junior year at UMBC, Collin Wojciechowski ’13, political science, represented nearly 180,000 students within the University System of Maryland (USM) as their sole student representative on the Board of Regents. Wojciechowski advocated against “doomsday” budget cuts and tuition increases and successfully lobbied to overhaul the USM policy for assessing student fees, making students an active part of the discussion.

Without the aid of scholarships, he would never have been able to serve his fellow students in this way. We sat down with the newly graduated Sondheim Scholar to talk a little bit about the part scholarships have played in his life.

Help UMBC students do AMAZING things. Make a gift to the 30 Days/30 Scholarships campaign today!

Q:  How important was it to your college career to have the support of scholarships?

A:  Being the son of a firemen and a public school teacher and the oldest of three brothers who all aspire to seek higher education, having the support of a scholarship was extremely important to my college career.

Q:  Can you tell us a little about what it meant to you to be able to serve as the student regent, and then to continue working with legislators?

A:  If I did not have a scholarship, I would not have been able to be the USM Student Regent; it’s as simple as that. I only had the time and ability to serve at that post because I did not have to work a side job to pay for college.

Being the Student Regent was one of the most meaningful experiences of my life. Representing students through such trying times as merger debate and the doomsday budget was the thrill of a lifetime. To then be able to take what I had learned on the Board and use it to represent Dr. Hrabowski in Annapolis was a dream. I have never had more fun then the Session I spent advocating for UMBC before legislators.

Q:  Has that work given you added insight into education funding, and if so, can you talk a little about the significance of alumni support of education in Maryland?

A:  Having been a member of the Advancement Committee of the USM Board of Regents, which oversees alumni giving, I feel I have a unique perspective on the significance that alumni support plays in higher education in Maryland. While our state, specifically Governor Martin O’Malley, has done tremendous things for public universities in terms of funding, student support and financial aid always need assistance. As students and their families continue to face economic difficulty it is up to the alumni base to ensure UMBC is a place welcoming to everyone.

Read more about Collin and his UMBC experiences on the Class of 2013 site.

FROM: Freeman Hrabowski, President, and Philip Rous, Provost
TO: The UMBC Community
RE: New Grants from the Hrabowski Fund for Innovation

We are delighted to announce the second set of projects to receive grants from the Hrabowski Fund for Innovation. These projects build on the strong commitment of our faculty to continually reimagine our students’ learning experiences.

The selection committee received a number of outstanding applications. The grant recipients were chosen by a committee comprised of faculty from each college, teaching award winners, and representatives from the Provost’s Office, Graduate School, and Office of Undergraduate Education. In selecting projects to fund, the committee sought initiatives that would address multiple courses or disciplines, respond broadly to student needs, affect student success or retention, and be sustainable.

Implementation and research grants

• Modeling as a Pedagogical Tool for the Life Sciences Curriculum– Led by Mauricio Bustos, associate professor of biological sciences, the team will use computer simulations of lab experiments to allow students in the biological sciences to focus on critical biology concepts rather than rote lab procedures. By removing the beakers, pipettes, and other distractions of the lab, the team hopes to enhance student focus on experiment design, observation, and interpretation.
• Enhancing Hands-On Problem-Solving across the Chemical Engineering Curriculum – A team led by Joshua Enszer, lecturer in chemical and biochemical engineering, will create a series of hands-on activities to connect a five-semester sequence of required courses in chemical engineering. The goal of the project is to show students how these separate courses are related, and enable them to see how the concepts they are learning in the classroom relate to the laboratory.

Seed grants

• Metacognitive Activity Promotions (MAPs) in Chemical Engineering Thinking – A team led by Mariajose Castellanos, assistant professor of chemical and biochemical engineering, will use sociological principles to examine the effect of written reflection exercises on students’ understanding of their chemical engineering coursework.

These projects join our first round of grant recipients in building on our strong history of finding novel approaches to teaching and scholarship. Established with major grants from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Heinz Awards, the Innovation Fund has also benefited from substantial support from alumni and friends, the local community and businesses, and state and national leaders. This support is a testament to the work we’ve already done and a vote of confidence for the national model we’re continuing to build.

The competition for the next round of Innovation Fund grants will be announced later this summer with a due date in fall. We want to thank everyone who has submitted a proposal, and encourage those whose proposals could not be funded in this round to apply again.

We are truly inspired by the creative ideas we hear each day and are delighted to be able to support more of them through this fund.

As a master of marketing tech and entrepreneurship, UMBC alumnus Greg Cangialosi ’96, English, always seems to be two – or ten – steps ahead of pretty much everyone else. He has to be.

When many of us were still figuring out listservs, his vision for power e-marketing was already permanently changing the communications scene. When we finally started to grasp the concept of “the cloud,” he had already measured potential and created a community for big thinkers and even bigger collaboration. Follow him on Twitter, and it sometimes feels like time travel.

And yet, in the best of ways, Cangialosi is an old-fashioned guy with a timeless sense of what really matters. A generous volunteer, he embraces the three pillars of philanthropy – time, talent and treasure – and UMBC is all the better for it.

Last month month, Cangialosi made a five-year commitment to UMBC totaling $100,000 to support the creation of a business innovation competition and an endowment that will support student entrepreneurship initiatives, including everything from new courses, guest speakers and potential seed money for budding student start-ups.

“I have had wonderful experiences in all three realms of giving back and I think they are all important as they all make an impact,” said Cangialosi, who sold his start-up email marketing firm Blue Sky Factory in 2011 and recently co-founded Betamore, an 8,000 square foot “urban campus for entrepreneurship and technology, focused on three main areas, education, community and incubation” in Federal Hill.

“My recent experience, teaching, has given me the closest connection to the students, student life, and how many amazing things are happening on campus and around the university,” he said. “UMBC is moving forward, making things happen, and it’s great to be part of that momentum.”

Since his graduation in 1996, Cangialosi has played many roles as an alumnus and donor. He has judged UMBC’s annual Idea Competition, and served as a speaker for the Alex.Brown Center for Entreprenership and Career Week. A former member of the Alumni Association’s Board of Directors, he was named an Outstanding Alumnus of the Year in the Humanities in 2012. And last year, he taught “Entrepreneurial Marketing” at UMBC for the first time – an experience he found “challenging yet rewarding.”

“Greg’s relationship with campus has so many dimensions,” said Greg Simmons ’04, Vice President of Institutional Advancement.

“From his early days an entrepreneur – when he let us use his e-mail marketing platform to publicize university events like the IT Visionaries programs – to his work on the alumni board, he has always demonstrated great commitment and energy to finding ways to be supportive of UMBC.  Seeing him enjoy teaching has been great.  And this recent demonstration of his commitment – via philanthropy – shows a great alignment of UMBC’s efforts and his own value system.”

Cangialosi’s gift will further solidify UMBC’s entrepreneurship program, said Vivian Armor ’73, director of UMBC’s Alex.Brown Center for Entrepreneurship. She expects the Cangialosi Business Innovation Competition to become a major source of support and inspiration for students looking to become successful entrepreneuers.

“We’ll be able to create a very immersive experience for students,” including potential cash prizes for winning ideas, as well as structured mentorship opportunities, she said.

Through his teaching and connections to UMBC, Cangialosi has been able to further provide opportunities for students. Recently, Betamore hosted a “Startup Crawl” for more than 80 students from around Baltimore (including a couple dozen from UMBC) as a way of “getting students exposed to the startup scene here in Baltimore, and at the same time exposing new emerging companies to the amazing talent pool here in Baltimore,” Cangialosi said.

Twenty companies participated, all of whom were hiring either full time positions or internships. Students mixed and mingled, getting a taste for employment options they might not otherwise have considered.

“What I got out of it was great networking,” said newly-minted alumna Monica Berron ’13. “I had no idea we had a burgeoning entrepreneur community in Baltimore. I met a great group of women, for example, who have business called Drio who create website for bloggers and businesswomen, which is something I’m really interested in.”

“Aside from networking and meeting a lot of the founders, a portion of the Startup Crawl also included a session in which each company presented to all the attendees,” said senior Andrew Mavronicolas, who recently took Cangialosi’s class, and who is majoring in information systems with a minor in entrepreneurship. “From this, we not only learned about their companies, but some of the struggles they went through along the way.

Always looking ahead, Cangialosi is already hoping to host another Startup Crawl for the fall. And UMBC students will definitely be a part of it.

“I love UMBC first and foremost,” he said. “I am also a big believer in giving back and helping to make the places and the institutions that support you better and better. That happens by giving back.”

Learn more about entrepreneurship at UMBC here.

A new guest column by UMBC political science professor Thomas F. Schaller on Sabato’s Crystal Ball ask the highly provocative question, “How Should We Vote?”

Schaller writes:

Given pervasive gerrymandering and a shrinking number of competitive districts, any serious reform of congressional elections might also entail changes to our voting rules — that is, how votes are cast by voters and aggregated to determine winners… So what sort of voting rule reforms might significantly alter the composition of Congress, encourage greater voter participation and create a more responsive national legislature?

Changing voting rules can change voter behavior in two important ways, notes Schaller: impacting the likelihood that someone will vote and affecting “how voters express their preferences once they do turn out to vote, especially if they are able to indicate secondary and alternative preferences and therefore vote strategically.”

Schaller suggests:

Despite the earnest efforts of FairVote.org and other electoral reform advocates to move legislation through Congress or the state legislatures, what is probably needed first is a widespread voter education effort… Election reform advocates must first get Americans to properly recognize that the roots of the problem reside as much in the voting rules as in campaign finance law or the redistricting process.

The sudden appearance of three referenda in Maryland’s last election made some in Annapolis predict that they would be a regular feature in future elections, used as a tool by Maryland’s GOP to contest policy passed by the Democratic majority in the Maryland General Assembly. However, political scientists now suggest that the number of signatures required to get a referendum on the ballot is still a high threshold to meet, even with the help of the Internet in gathering signatures.

Donald F. Norris, professor and chair of public policy at UMBC, told AP that this year’s failed efforts to contest Maryland’s gun-control bill and a measure repealing capital punishment reinforce the sense that Maryland is a deeply Democratic state, where it is difficult for conservatives to overturn legislation. Norris argued, “It also says the Republican Party is even more marginalized in Maryland than it has been historically, and it’s been pretty marginalized historically.”