Turns out UMBC alumnus-turned-celebrity-chef Jeffrey “Duff” Goldman ’97, history, is not just a stellar cake baker, but also an auto enthusiast. In an interview with MotorTrend.com, the “Ace of Cakes” star talks about his lifelong love for all things car.

As he tells Motor Trend reporters:

“I am a freakish gearhead,” he says, sitting at a table in Cakemix, which allows people to decorate their own cakes and cupcakes. “I will take your car apart and put it back together. I can totally do that.”

Read the full story in Motor Trend here.

Goldman, who most recently created a six-tier cake for President Obama’s inauguration, was named an Outstanding Alumnus of the Year by UMBC in 2009.

On January 29, the Washington Post praised “The City of Devi” by Manil Suri, professor of mathematics, in a review by Ron Charles.

Proclaiming it “the best sex comedy of the year about nuclear war between India and Pakistan,” Charles commends the book for the fact that it “never dips toward cynicism, never loses its essential sweetness, no matter how cruel or kooky the action… the whole story manages to keep hurtling along toward a surprisingly tender ending.”

“Even amid the wondrous variety of contemporary Indian fiction, Suri’s work stands apart, mingling comedy and death, eroticism and politics, godhood and Bollywood like no one else,” he wrote.

The full review can be read here.

“Since it arrived a year ago at Politics & Prose, ‘Opus,’ Washington’s first print-on-demand Espresso book machine, has helped hundreds of area scribblers realize their publishing dreams,” writes the Washington Post.

Two such authors are John Nelson, Co-Director of the ESOL M.A. program, and his student Tymofey Wowk. The two used Opus to create their dream textbook, “Making English Grammar Meaningful and Useful,” which they read from at an “open-mike” night at the bookstore on January 26.

The paper wrote about the reading in a January 29 story entitled “Open-mike night for self-published authors.”

Baltimore magazine reviewed Manil Suri’s latest book, The City of Devi, in the February 2013 issue.  Calling the book “a preculiar love story that’s both tawdry and hopeful,” the magazine says that it is “super-charged by religion, sexuality, and the overarching political conflict.”

The magazine also posted a Q and A with the mathematics and statistics professor on their website, where they asked Suri about teaching a math class for non-math majors.  “It taught me that without at least some basic motivation on the part of the learner, it’s simply impossible to engage people in mathematics, no matter how interesting or fun you make it. The subject is difficult, and for the students who were genuinely curious (and were ready to put in the effort), it was a great class. I’ve now taught a bunch of such courses, and they’ve been essential experience for a ‘math novel’ I’m working on,” he said.

Suri will read from The City of Devi on Febraury 6 at 7 p.m. in the Library Gallery.

Black and Gold? Try Green and Gold

Spend a few minutes in Patapsco Hall’s recently-completed addition, and you won’t have to be told it received one of the world’s top certifications for environmentally-friendly design. The large windows reduce the need for artificial light, the heating and cooling system automatically adjusts to your presence and you won’t have to look far to recycle your soda can.

But while all of those features helped the building earn a LEED Gold certification, perhaps the most innovative part of the building’s design is how it is helping shape the future. That’s because residential life is using the building as an opportunity to educate the campus about sustainability.

“We are committed not only to having facilities and practices that lead to a more sustainable future, but also to educating our residents so that they understand our commitment to sustainability and have opportunities to change the culture firsthand,” said Katie Boone, director of residential life.

Education and leadership on climate change are key underpinnings of the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, which President Hrabowski signed in 2007. Within three years, the university adopted a Climate Action Plan, which among other things, requires new construction to meet at least LEED Silver certification.

Patapsco Hall exceeded expectations for certification – and for student involvement. While the addition was still in the earliest stages of planning, residential life invited students to contribute to conversations about making the building environmentally friendly.

“I was primarily concerned with the green design of the project, the energy consumption of the building, ideas for day-lighting as well as energy conservation,” said Samuel Su ’11, biology, who proposed several ideas for building features at the meetings.  “Because the project was something outside of the scope of my academic studies, it really presented an opportunity to learn something else through self-study.” Su runs the green living website Verno, which he started with several other UMBC students in 2009.

All student ideas were considered; some, such as elimination of actively-cooled water fountains, were implemented, while others, such as liquid discussant waterfalls, were investigated but proved to be too costly. One of the most innovative ideas came from Olyssa Starry, a graduate student at UMBC at the time, who suggested setting up a permanent experiment on the building’s roof.  Building designers incorporated a 600 square foot “green roof” and an identical “white roof” area into the building’s plans, and data are collected from the water that drains from each section of roof.

“Working with them to incorporate research into the design was such a learning process,” said Starry, who is now completing her Ph.D. at the University of Maryland, College Park.  “The team did not need a lot of convincing [to implement the plan], and from what I understand that is not typical.”

Starry is using data from the roof as part of her dissertation, a model of green roof hydrology. The data also are available online – and will eventually be displayed on a screen in the Patapsco lobby – creating a valuable resource for students interested in hydrology, said Andy Miller, associate professor of geography and environmental systems.

“Having a monitoring site right here on campus collecting information in real time presents a great educational opportunity,” he said. “It’s always a great advantage for students to be able to get their hands on real data and to see where it came from.”

With more construction and renovation projects on the horizon, the lessons learned through this project will impact the future of sustainability on campus. The next construction project, the apartment community center, will include a green roof, and residential life is looking to harness students’ enthusiasm for sustainability through new programs, such as contests to see who can use the least electricity and a potential geography and environmental systems living/learning community.

“Ultimately,” Boone said, “it is really about partnering with students to engage and educate on sustainable practices.”

(1/30/13)

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Janice Grant, Civil Rights activist and storyteller in the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture’s touring humanities project, For All the World to Hear: Stories from the Struggle for Civil Rights, was interviewed for Baltimore Magazine this month. Grant speaks candidly about her experiences growing up in segregated Maryland, and the interview not only provides insight into her life at the time of the Civil Rights Movement, it provides a snapshot of what one can expect to hear at For All the World to Hear. Read the interview at Baltimore Magazine.

For All the World to Hear, is a community outreach project that features approximately a dozen area seniors who speak, write, perform and digitally publish personal stories about their struggle for civil rights, that debuted at UMBC in the fall. A full program will return to campus Friday, February 15. Find out more about the project, and discover other performance dates at foralltheworldtohear.org.

This week the University of Maryland law school journal Race, Religion, Gender and Class will publish George La Noue’s new article, “Defining Social and Economic Disadvantage: Are Government Preferential Business Certification Programs Narrowly Tailored?” (see abstract).

La Noue is a professor of political science and public policy at UMBC. He is recognized nationally for his scholarship on education policy (K-12 and higher ed) and constitutional law, and he’s been invited to testify before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights in early February. La Noue is also highly committed to undergraduate teaching and recently coauthored a paper with undergraduate student Matthew Speake, accepted for presentation at the Eighth Interdisciplinary Social Science Conference at the Charles University in Prague.

What Weekly magazine featured Susan McCully, Senior Lecturer for the Department of Theatre, in an interview for their website last week. In the interview, she discusses the evolution of her work as a playwright and performer, and its influence in the “Baltimore Renaissance”.

“[Interviewer]: What do you think is the over-arching theme of our conversation?
Susan: Emergence. I feel like I’m at a place in my life where I’m emerging. That word is usually attached to someone in their 20’s. And there are all kinds of reasons why I’m emerging now, but I feel emotionally and artistically grown up now and ready to actually talk about things other than myself when I talk about my work. My work is about me, of course, but I’m grown up enough to talk about human beings. I feel like Baltimore theater is emerging. Emerging for a lot of reasons that have to do with the changes in the larger professional theaters, and with the younger groups coming here with the intention to grow together.” Segment from the interview, “Susan McCully, Late Bloomer Extraordinaire”.

This week Minnesota Public Radio’s “The Daily Circuit” hosted UMBC political science professor Thomas F. Schaller for a show on the role of the South in U.S. politics. Schaller is the author of Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South and appeared with David Woodard, professor of political science at Clemson University.

Schaller articulated the argument, central to his book, that the South is no longer required for Democrats to win a presidential election. He further suggested that the South — though it will, to an extent, always “remain distinct” culturally — is becoming increasingly like the rest of the United States. “In 30 years or 40 years,” Schaller said, “I don’t think we’ll see the kind of distinction between South and non-South that we see today and that we saw 100 years ago,” as new populations move into the region and younger, more secular voters in the South voice more liberal views on social issues.

For the full interview, including a debate between Schaller and Woodard on the role of race and class in Southern voting patterns, see the show recording (now online).

The Maryland Humanities Council featured the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture’s current humanities project, For All the World to Hear: Stories from the Struggle for Civil Rights, organized by Sandra Abbott, CADVC, in collaboration with Harriet Lynn, in their blog this Monday.

The article gives an overview of the performance, and comments of the effective quality of the participants’ moving, emotional stories. Read the article at the Maryland Humanities Council’s website: “Marylanders at the Front Lines for Freedom”

For All the World to Hear, is a community outreach project that features approximately a dozen area seniors who speak, write, perform and digitally publish personal stories about their struggle for civil rights, that debuted at UMBC in the fall. A full program will return to campus Friday, February 15. Learn more about the project and other performance dates at foralltheworldtohear.org.