The Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement Meeting (CLDE17) held in Baltimore this month offered an opportunity for students, faculty, and staff from colleges and universities across the nation to discuss forward-looking community-building and civic engagement strategies. UMBC participants played a major role in organizing and presenting numerous sessions, tours, and special events held during the meeting, which was cosponsored by the American Democracy Project (ADP), The Democracy Commitment, and the student affairs administrators group NASPA. Additionally, UMBC’s Craig Berger, coordinator of student life for campus and civic engagement, served as the chair of the ADP’s own annual meeting, held as part of the larger gathering.

During that annual meeting, the ADP honored Philip Rous, UMBC’s provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, with the William M. Plater Award for Leadership in Civic Engagement. This meaningful award recognizes the commitment of a provost to advancing civic engagement on their campus.

Michael Vaughan, provost at Weber State University, presented Rous with the award in recognition of his support for creating new courses at UMBC that foster civic engagement and help students rethink their power to envision and enact change in the world. Vaughan mentioned, for example, a mechanical engineering class that partnered with Baltimore City to identify failing water pipes and a class on race, poverty, and gender where UMBC students helped local refugee high school students prepare for the college admissions process.

Upon accepting the award, Rous shared with the crowd a story from his days as a student at Cambridge University, to explain his approach as UMBC provost. He noted that the entrance of Cambridge University is a very large wooden door, which itself contains a smaller wooden door, and said, “As you step through that door, it is as if you step into a completely different world.” On one side of the door he found the world was quiet, beautiful, and secluded, and on the other side it was the opposite, creating the immediate effect of excluding the broader city from the Cambridge experience and isolating the university from the dynamism of the city. As a university leader, Rous reflected, he wanted to challenge such barriers.

President Freeman Hrabowski delivered the opening remarks during the CLDE17 plenary session, discussing the importance of involving everyone on campus in shaping community. “Any institution that is truly about ethos, inquiry, and looking at agency and action will want the entire institution to be involved,” said Hrabowski. “To make a difference in communities, it is so important to have faculty, staff, students, and academic and student affairs all on the same page and understanding that we are in this together.”

David Hoffman, assistant director of student life for civic agency, facilitated the session “Our Stories Can Light the Way Forward,” focused on collecting and documenting stories from community engagement efforts to empower participants. Collin Sullivan ‘19, information systems; Manisha Vepa ‘19, fine arts; and Berger led the roundtable discussion “Ethos Matters: Creating Empowering Messages and Environments.”

Romy Hübler ‘09, modern languages and linguistics, M.A. ‘11, intercultural communication, and Ph.D. ‘15, language, literacy and culture, who now serves as UMBC’s coordinator of student life for student organizations and involvement, worked with Jason Loviglio, associate professor of media and communication studies, to lead Tell Me What Collective Action Looks Like. This discussion session focused on how educators can help students feel inspired to take action as engaged citizens.

Emily Melluso ‘17, biological sciences, shared her experiences during the session “Cultivating College Campus Leaders: A Story of Collaboration with U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and Citizen University.” Corinne Janet, coordinator of student life for leadership; Simon Stacey, interim vice provost and dean of undergraduate education; Berger; Hoffman; and Hübler facilitated the methods-focused session “Congruent Democratic Pedagogies: Teaching Democracy as a Way of Life.”

In addition to kicking off the meeting, UMBC community members also brought it to a productive conclusion, with Hoffman and Vepa presenting for the closing plenary session “The Theory of Our Work, Today and Tomorrow; What’s Next?”

UMBC is a leading member of the ADP, which was founded in 2003 through a collaboration between the American Association of State Colleges and Universities and The New York Times. Through innovative initiatives, ADP member institutions work to provide students with the skills and opportunities needed to put their ideas into action, on and off campus.

Banner image: Dr. Rous accepting the William M. Plater Award for Leadership in Civic Engagement at the 2017 Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement Meeting in Baltimore. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Kaitlin Smith
B.A., Media and Communication Studies
Cum Laude
Hometown: Perryville, Maryland
Plans: M.A., Morgan State University

Finding my place in college is one of the greatest things that has ever happened to me… My involvement in student life, admissions and orientation, and student affairs connected me to people who believed in my abilities, gave me the support and strength to pursue many different avenues…and gave me the opportunity to help others find their passions and place at UMBC.

As a freshman, Kaitlin Smith was performing well in her classes and making friends, but she had a nagging feeling that she wasn’t making the most of her college experience. That changed when a staff member encouraged her to get involved in the Orientation Peer Advisor program, which opened the door to her involvement and leadership in campus life.

Smith completed an internship focused on campus safety with the Office of the Vice President of Student Affairs, joined the service-focused Alpha Sigma Alpha sorority, became a coach for STRiVE (an intensive student leadership development program), served as a Woolie (a UMBC Welcome Week leader), and became a trainer with the Green Dot bystander intervention program.

In her senior year she has served as undergraduate fellow in the Office of Undergraduate Admissions and Orientation, and as president of UMBC’s highly active Student Events Board (seb). On the academic side, she also served as president of the Media and Communications Studies Council of Majors.

Smith’s experiences have inspired her to pursue a master’s degree in higher education and student affairs administration at Morgan State University, to ensure future students have access to the same kinds of college experiences that brought so much meaning to her time at UMBC.

The Baltimore Sun’s latest special section on education highlights several UMBC programs designed to prepare students to start or advance careers in new areas that combine the most recent innovations of different fields.

In UMBC’s master of professional studies program in biotechnology, students explore the intersections of science and business, preparing for a rapidly growing biotech job market as well as tech-focused entrepreneurial careers. “The program is a hybrid between an M.S. and an M.B.A.,” explains Sheldon Broedel, assistant graduate program director and instructor in the program.

Stephen Miller, associate professor of biological sciences and director of the biotechnology M.P.S. program, says it is particularly well-designed to prepare professionals who previously studied the sciences to commercialize technologies, start biotech enterprises, or contribute to the growth of existing biotech employers.

“We want their background in science to be a bridge to business,” he says, “and we work to get them placed where they gain experience.” The UMBC Career Center works with current students and recent graduates in their job searches and preparing for interviews.

The Division of Professional Studies continues to expand its degree offerings, with plans to launch additional programs in fall 2017. A new M.P.S. program in technical management is designed for professionals with 3 – 5 years of experience who want to develop strong leadership and communications skills. 

UMBC’s media and communications studies (MCS) program, highlighted in another Sun article in the issue, also focuses on an interdisciplinary approach to a field experiencing rapid technological advancement. MCS exposes students to current expertise in journalism, multimedia production, public relations, marketing, and even theater.

Donald Snyder, senior lecturer of MCS, notes, “We believe that flexibility is key to any interdisciplinary major, so we focus on larger debates and theories in mass communication and then bridge those ideas to practical applications.”

Snyder explains that all students majoring in media and communications studies must also complete an internship. He helped Giselle Nakpil ‘19, MCS, find an internship with the Institute for Public Accuracy, which gave her a window into media and communications related to politics and policy, new areas for her.

Yao Adantor ‘14, industrial psychology, was also featured in The Baltimore Sun’s special section on education, discussing his current M.P.S. program at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Read the full articles in The Baltimore Sun’s special section on education.

Image: UMBC library. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

The 2017 Graduate Research Conference (GRC) at UMBC delivered on its theme, “diversity across disciplines,” with research talks, posters, and keynote speakers in areas from history to atmospheric physics. The event also celebrated and encouraged interdisciplinary research and creative achievement.

“The boundaries between traditional disciplines are dissolving as our human curiosity leads us to understand much more complex issues,” shared Provost Philip Rous. He pointed to UMBC’s emphasis on inclusion as a boon toward that end. “Advancing our research mission,” he said to the attendees, “is inextricably linked to our ability to bring together students, faculty, and staff of diverse backgrounds to work together on the most challenging social, scientific, and humanitarian problems we face today.”

That’s exactly what happened at the GRC on March 29. In a panel highlighting work related to climate change, Marshall Washick, emergency health services, presented his proposed research on the relationship between tuberculosis and air pollution in South Africa, Alexandra St. Pé, geography and environmental systems, discussed her work on the under-performance of offshore wind farms, and Michael Battaglia, Jr., chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering, addressed how urban heat islands affect the chemistry of tiny particles in the air.

In another panel, Shawntay Stocks, language, literacy, and culture, described research utilizing critical race theory just before Chrissie Reilly, media and communication studies, discussed how the film Jiro Dreams of Sushi demonstrates complex relationships with consumption, with both talks touching on the session’s “media manipulation” theme.

“Mechanical engineers and historians are here in the same room talking to one another,” said Dean Scott Casper, of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences. “That is what is really exciting about today.” Casper encouraged students to use the opportunity to hone their communications skills, both by presenting their own work and observing techniques others use to share complex ideas in different fields.

In his featured talk, Casper discussed specific techniques to improve one’s presentation, such as knowing your audience and catering to what they want to get out of the experience. No matter how excited researchers are about their work, he said, it’s “translating that enthusiasm into a form that people who are not as immersed in the work as you will understand, appreciate, and enjoy that is really the key to great presentations.”

In addition to the panels and microtalks, four students tested their communication skills by competing in the international Three Minute Thesis competition, where each presented a summary of her graduate thesis in three minutes. Janae Baptiste, chemistry and biochemistry, won second place from the judges and first place from the audience for her presentation on research in Michael Summers’ lab on Feline Immunodeficiency Virus, the cat version of HIV. Denise Williams, chemistry and biochemistry, took first place for her talk on the toxicity of quantum dots—luminescent nanomaterials with a wide range of potential applications—based on her research in Zeev Rosenzweig’s lab. She will represent UMBC at the Council of Southern Graduate Schools regional competition. Both Baptiste and Williams are Meyerhoff Graduate Fellows.

Onimi Jademi, vice president of the UMBC Graduate Student Association, chair of the GRC planning committee, and a Ph.D. student in information systems, shares, “The GRC provides a platform for all graduate students, across all disciplines and at all levels and stages of research, to discuss and exchange ideas.” Interactions with faculty, staff, and students from every corner of the university are a major advantage of the event, she explains, offering unique feedback to developing researchers, artists, and scholars.

“GRC is not just a melting pot,” Jademi says, it’s an opportunity for graduate students to try out, retest, and “mold ideas and communication styles” that will help them connect with fellow researchers and the public throughout their careers.

Banner image: Alexandra St. Pé answers a question about her research on wind turbines during a panel discussion. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

A group of five UMBC students recently made the trip to Washington, D.C. to serve as leaders and collaborators during the 2017 National Campus Leaders Summit. The event, held at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, was centered around the themes of cultivating community and redefining civic engagement.

UMBC was consulted during the planning of the summit after David Hoffman, assistant director of student life for civic agency, Corrine Janet, coordinator of student life for leadership, and Emily Melluso ’17, interdisciplinary studies, made a connection with the summit’s principal organizer at last year’s Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement meeting.

The leadership summit was co-presented with Citizen University, and a description of the program provided by the Holocaust Memorial Museum explains that the event was designed to bring together students to explore how, “In these turbulent times, civic leadership and an understanding of history are more important than ever.” They note, “The Museum is pleased to collaborate with Citizen University and to welcome student leaders and change-makers from ten universities to dive deeply into the history of the Holocaust and explore its relevance for today’s college students.”

Jasir Qiydaar ’18, media and communication studies, is one of the UMBC students who attended the event. He became interested in it after participating in the Imagining America National Conference in Milwaukee last fall.

“I thought having another opportunity to discuss the social issues that affect so many of us with people from other institutions would be valuable,” Qiydaar explains.

The students participated in a two-hour guided tour of the museum and engaged in discussions about the fragility of democracy and the role of civic engagement during the Holocaust. They also examined how the social and psychological dynamics that influenced people’s decisions during the Holocaust can continue to be relevant in the world today.

Qiydaar says that the event served as a powerful learning experience and it provided important historical context for many contemporary issues.

“My key takeaway from the event was a reinforcement for the need for an intersectional approach to solving social problems. The atrocities of the Holocaust were an escalation of Jewish marginalization perpetuated by inaction while their rights were being violated. Today the same issues of ‘othering’ people who are different still exist, and it’s important to understand that this is largely allowed to continue through the inaction of people who aren’t personally affected by it. Collectively people have the power to combat this othering by speaking out against all oppression, especially when it doesn’t harm them personally.”

Qiydaar attended the summit along with Emily Melluso, Andrew Thompson ’19, gender and women’s studies, Hannah Aris ’18, chemical engineering, and Gerardo Herrera-Cortes ’19, visual arts. The other universities that participated in the summit include: Case Western University, Fort Hays State University, George Mason University, Mount St. Mary’s University, New York University, University of Florida, Valdosta State University, Weber State University, and Yale University.

Image: Students from ten universities attended the 2017 National Campus Leaders Summit. Photo courtesy of Corinne Janet. 

Experts from National Geographic, NPR, and other national leaders in the arts, humanities, and sciences connected by webcam last week to discuss a series of ten powerful images for “How Science is Pictured in the Media and Public Culture.” UMBC and Reading the Pictures jointly produced the panel as part of the year-long Seeing Science project, which explores the role photography plays in shaping, representing, and furthering the sciences.

To prepare, explains Marvin Heiferman, Seeing Science curator at UMBC, “Meg Handler, editor-at-large at Reading the Pictures, and I spent a couple of months looking at the year’s worth of photographs that appeared in magazine articles and online pieces about the sciences to…see the various ways, from stock photography to photojournalism, that the sciences were represented.”

The discussion on December 1 took place on Google HangOut, accommodating live audio and video with viewer participation via live chat. Drawn from the ranks of curators, photo editors, visual scholars, and scientists, the panel included Rebecca Adelman, associate professor of media and communication studies, UMBC; Michael Shaw, publisher, Reading the Pictures; Max Mutchler, manager, Space Telescope Science Institute Hubble Heritage Project; Marvin Heiferman; Kurt Mutchler, senior editor for science photography, National Geographic; Corey Keller, curator, SFMOMA; and Ben de la Cruz, multimedia editor, NPR Science Desk, with moderator Nathan Stormer, professor of rhetoric, University of Maine.

The series of ten images they discussed represented a broad range of science disciplines, were visually distinct from one another, and varied in their goals and purposes. Together, Stormer argued, they demonstrated how “science becomes visible to us when science is helping us see things —that is when it becomes apparent to us that we depend on it, live within it as much as we do.”

The conversation began with a colorful and formally engaging photograph of a massive general-purpose detector within the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, in Switzerland. Subsequent photographs included a new view of the Pillars of Creation from the Hubble Space Telescope; a human embryo being modified; four women from NASA’s most recent astronaut class; the early 20th century Chart of Physical Traits alongside photographs of faces overlayed with facial recognition software mapping grid points; an overhead view of a toxic algae bloom in Florida; a 4-month-old baby with microcephaly, published during the Zika outbreak; President Obama with a boy and his marshmallow cannon at the White House Science Fair; and two visitors wearing virtual reality gear at The Void in Times Square.

The depth and spectrum of the panelists’ expertise created a fascinating discussion that began with initial emotional and intellectual responses to the images and quickly delved into, as Adelman described, “how the photograph acts as a visual metaphor for how science gets communicated to audiences of non-scientists.”

“What was interesting and revealing to me was to listen to the various ways people with different relationships to science and imaging looked at and responded to the images discussed,” says Heiferman. “Since Seeing Science is an interdisciplinary look at how images function, that variety of responses is what gives a discussion like the one we had its depth and richness.”

Melissa Cormier ’17 M.F.A., intermedia and digital arts, tuned in to the event from the on-campus viewing party hosted by UMBC’s Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC.) “My current thesis work deals with co-opting traditionally scientific aesthetics and methods of display and observation, so it was an opportunity to witness how those types of images are spoken about and discussed by the various panel members,” says Cormier.

Reflecting on the live chat function of the Google HangOut, Cormier shares, “It was a great experience to be able to interact with such a distinguished panel and feel included in the conversation. It also gave me some new research avenues to pursue in my work, as well as affect the language I will use to discuss my work.”

Reading the Pictures’ salon archive now features in slideshow format the ten photographs that formed that backbone of the event. A video of the discussion is available on YouTube.

Through #SeeingScience, readers can also explore fifty additional media images that Reading the Pictures featured on Twitter and Instagram in the weeks leading up to the event.

Header image: New view of the Pillars of Creation, visible light, detail, 2014; courtesy of NASA/ESA/Hubble and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)/J. Hester, P. Scowen (Arizona State U)

The opening ceremony of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing lasted several hours, showcased thousands of performers, and featured an elaborate fireworks ceremony, wowing the many spectators who viewed it in person and on high-definition television. But what the viewers saw was not entirely real.

The song that accompanied the entrance of the Chinese national flag was lip-synced. The impressive fireworks display was pre-recorded. But for one emerging cultural and media studies scholar watching on television, the event sparked provocative research questions. Fan Yang saw the opening ceremony incidents as emblematic of a larger struggle taking place within China’s economy.

Yang, an assistant professor of media and communication studies, wrestles with this in her new book Faked in China: Nation Branding, Counterfeit Culture, and Globalization (Indiana University Press 2015). The thought-provoking work closely examines China’s cultural dilemma as it deals with competing visions for the nation’s economy since it joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001.

The book traces interactions between Chinese government policies to enforce its nation branding—the idea that China should make its own products to comply with the intellectual property rights regime, and the “counterfeit culture” of making, buying, and selling unauthorized products.

After living in several regions of the country and experiencing its vastly diverse landscape, Yang first became interested in this analysis when she began to think critically about the idea of national culture as a unified notion and started to push back against dominant Western perceptions that Chinese culture has an inherent propensity for faking.

“That kind of discussion of culture to me is not the most helpful,” explains Yang. “Not only because it understands culture as a fixed idea that never changes, but also that it doesn’t take into account the fact that many other places in the world have had this reputation of faking.”

Throughout the book, Yang weaves in examples like Beijing’s Silk Street Market (a popular tourist destination), the cultural formation of the term shanzhai (imitation and counterfeit brands and goods), and the concept of the Chinese Dream to illustrate the complex cultural dilemma that China is experiencing.

“There is a need to think about what China really means not just for China, but for the world. Looking at the interactions between culture and economy in China is a way for us to broaden the scope of cultural studies in the West,” Yang says.

In an increasingly globalized world, Yang is hopeful her book will make an important contribution to generating discussions about how a “rising” China is viewed by people in the West.

“The imagined contention between superpowers of China and America is overly simplistic and doesn’t account for a lot of complexities,” she says. “The kind of analysis that I performed I hope will reorient our thinking of China as at once aspiring to join the First World while still encountering ‘faking’ as a ‘Third-World problem.’”

For news media interviews related to Yang’s book, see below:

Fan Yang on fakes, pirates, and shanzhai culture (Sinica Podcast) 

Images: (1) Silk Street Markets by Tim Riley, CC by-NC-ND 2.0. (2) Fan Yang, photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.   

A year after the death of Freddie Gray and the Uprising that followed, a group of UMBC students went out into the neighborhoods directly affected by the events of last year to interview residents and examine important social, political, and economic issues. The final product was a powerful and influential radio series that aired on WEAA’s The Marc Steiner Show last month.

The students were part of the spring semester’s American studies course “Radio in American Culture.” As part of the class, students worked with the Center for Emerging Media’s host Marc Steiner and senior producer Stefanie Mavronis ’12, political science and media and communication studies, and American studies associate professor and chair Nicole King to produce the radio segments. The series, titled “The World that Brought us Freddie Gray,” examined the legal system, policing and police-community relations, education, housing, and the current situation that Baltimore faces and solutions.

The course was part of the ongoing Baltimore Traces project, a collaborative teaching initiative bringing together several disciplines to produce media focused directly on Baltimore residents and neighborhoods. In previous years, the project has produced radio segments related to deindustrialization and the Station North and Highlandtown/Greektown neighborhoods.

After “The World that Brought us Freddie Gray” aired, student producers Turrel David ’16, media and communication studies and American studies, and Dalton Maize ’18, media and communication studies and sociology, participated in a roundtable discussion reflecting on their work and the impact of their radio series.

To listen to each podcast and for a list of students and interviewees involved in the project, visit The Marc Steiner Show website. Learn more about the Baltimore Traces project.

Image: The Creative Alliance at The Patterson, where community events related to Baltimore Traces have been held. Photo by UMBC New Media Studio. 

Mechanical engineering majors Andrew Wallace ‘16, Michael Torres ‘16, Stefan Wroblewski ‘16, Jezron Basbas ‘16, and Baruch Weiner ‘16 have won top prize in the 2016 Cangialosi Business Innovation Competition (CBIC) for Preventing Injuries, Trauma and Cracks to the Head (PITCH), a lightweight protective device designed to reduce head trauma and skull fractures in baseball players.

The competition, hosted by the Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship, is supported by Greg Cangialosi ‘96, English, a leading Baltimore entrepreneur. “My goal in creating this competition was to connect our students with mentors who are off campus, actively running companies, or investing in startups,” he says. “It is important for them to know, while they are still in school, that the Baltimore region is thriving as an innovation ecosystem and here to develop and support the next generation of entrepreneurs.”

The CBIC allows students to experience and plan a start-up company, explains Vivian Armor ‘73, American studies, director of the Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship. “The CBIC targets students who are serious about starting a business in the near future, and the goal is to provide them with mentors, potential seed funding and networking opportunities to help them take their idea to the next level,” she says.

This year, 30 ideas were submitted, and seven of those ideas were selected for the final competition by a panel of judges from various Baltimore-area employers. Business mentors worked with each team to help develop and refine their idea before the final competition was held.

Second place went to an app called SupplySense, which uses sensors to track product inventory in a way that can help business function more strategically and efficiently. The idea was created by Filip Dabek ‘13, ‘14 M.S., and ‘21 Ph.D., computer science.

Third place was awarded to Aerwell, a device that extracts clean, pure water from humidity in the air to provide fresh water and sustainable energy. The Aerwell team includes Alexis Walmsley ‘16, music; Marios Levi ‘19, mechanical engineering; Bedford Boylston ‘16, interdisciplinary studies; Terry Wasserleben ‘17, computer engineering; and Arthur Schorr ‘17, media and communications studies and visual arts.

The top three teams were given cash awards, and membership in Betamore, a Baltimore-based incubator and educational facility, which Cangialosi cofounded.

The prizes themselves are designed to help students explore what it would mean to take their business ideas to the next level. Armor explains that the competition is “meant to be a real world experience to get them thinking about what is involved in planning and launching a business.”

“The CBIC was designed for those students who are truly going to go after the dream of entrepreneurship,” says Cangialosi. “Now, in its third year, it’s exciting to see how alive and vibrant entrepreneurship is at UMBC.”

Image: The PITCH team with Greg Cangialosi, left to right: Michael Torres, Jezron Basbas, Greg Cangialosi, Stefan Wroblewski and Andrew Wallace; missing Baruch Weiner; top. Vivian Armor, director of the Alex. Brown Center of Entrepreneurship; middle. Greg Cangialosi at a UMBC event, bottom. Photos courtesy of the Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship (top), and Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC (middle and bottom).

For the last three years, UMBC students and faculty have been working on a project to safeguard the heritage of the Sparrows Point Steel Mill community and to amplify the voices and stories of the people who worked there.

As part of the ongoing project, Michelle Stefano, visiting assistant professor of American studies, Bill Shewbridge, professor of the practice of media and communication studies, and their students have recorded interviews with Sparrows Point workers and community members. The work has transformed into a documentary in response to feedback from the community to contextualize the individual steelworker stories and to build a broader narrative about what life was like at Sparrows Point.

The documentary Mill Stories has been screened at film festivals both domestically and internationally. Most recently, On March 6, the film was screened in Baltimore at the Museum of Industry and it was covered in the local news media by WYPR’s Maryland Morning and the Baltimore Sun.

“It’s about promoting and keeping alive this living heritage,” Stefano told WYPR’s Tom Hall. “The significance of the mill and its history lives on in the minds and hearts of those who knew it.”

Read more about the ongoing project on the Mill Stories website.

Image: Sparrows Point employee interview. Photo by Bill Shewbridge.