“The University of Maryland, Baltimore County chess team tied four other college teams for first place at the Pan-American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship on Sunday — maintaining its record as one of two colleges with the most top finishes in the history of the international event,” wrote Kevin Rector in the Baltimore Sun.

The UMBC chess team tied for first place December 30, 2012 in the Pan-Am Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship, advancing to the 2013 President’s Cup, known as the “Final Four” of chess.

The team headed into the 2012 Pan-Am Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship with a record nine titles to its name. The competition known informally as the Pan-Am, was held December 27 to 30 in Princeton, New Jersey. Since the tournament began in 1946, dozens of universities throughout the Americas have participated. The Retrievers won their first Pan-Am title in 1996, and then embarked on a five-year title streak from 1998 to 2002.

This year, the Retrievers tied for first place with 3 other Universities: University of Texas, Dallas; Webster University, which had 2 teams; and the University of Illinois.
“It was an exciting finish. This was the strongest Pan Am in the history of the event. Twenty – three grandmasters as well as 5 teams rated over 2500 competed,” says Alan Sherman, Director of the UMBC Chess Program.

The UMBC team, all on chess scholarships, is composed of students not only with exceptional chess skills but also with strong academic records, Sherman says. UMBC requires students to maintain a 3.0 GPA to maintain chess scholarships.
The Retrievers last won the Pan-Am title in 2009, and took second last year. This year’s team will compete in the 2012 President’s Cup, the “Final Four of College Chess,” to be held in April 6-7, 2013 in Herndon, Va.

Library Journal has named Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond by Robert Provine, professor of psychology, as one of the best books of 2012.

In the publication’s original review of the book, the reviewer said that the book ” is a delectable presentation for all who love the territory between pop and hardcore science writing.”

Hillol Kargupta, professor of computer science, is the winner of the 2012 10-Year ICDM Highest-Impact Paper Award for the ICDM 2003 paper on “On the Privacy Preserving Properties of Random Data Perturbation Techniques.” Researchers, Souptik Datta (UMBC), Qi Wang (Washington State University), and Krishnamoorthy Sivakumar (Washington State University), were also authors on the paper.

ICDM is the premier international conference on data mining (with an acceptance ratio of approx. 8-12% in the last ten years). The 10-Year ICDM Highest-Impact Paper Award is awarded every year since 2010. The first ICDM was held in 2001.

Ellen Handler Spitz, honors college professor of visual arts, recently reviewed the art show The Event of a Thread by Ann Hamilton, which runs through January 6 at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City, for the online magazine Artcritical.

Spitz says that “The Gothic Revival Park Avenue Armory… provides a perfect venue for Hamilton’s swings, her 42 pigeons in miniature, stacked dovecotes, and the immense white silken fabric that billows from on high, responsively rising and falling according to the visitors’ velocities as they sway on their swings, pushed often by perfect strangers.”

Relating the exhibition to its title, Spitz says, “by the most gossamer of threads— of silk and of sound—connections proliferate.”

The review, “Gentling The Savage Enormity Of Gargantuan Space: Ann Hamilton at the Armory,” appeared online on December 20.

Josiah Dykstra, a Ph.D. student in Computer Science, won the Outstanding Case Study Award for 2012 of the The American Academy of Forensic Sciences, based on his presentation of a paper by Dykstra and his advisor Alan Sherman,
published in the Journal of Network Forensics. Dykstra will accept the award in February at the Academy’s annual meeting.

Ellen Handler Spitz, honors college professor of visual arts, was a guest on the “Marc Steiner Show” on Tuesday, December 18, to discuss children’s literature, the best children’s literature of the year, and books that make good gifts.  Spitz was joined by Deborah Taylor, School and Student Services Coordinator for the Enoch Pratt Free Library, and JoAnn Fruchtman, owner of The Children’s Bookstore in Roland Park.

Spitz spoke to the bond that books can create between a parents and a child.  Because children cannot read when they are very young, the experience of books must be shared with an adult, which creates a bond.

“Even though we have all kind of wonderful technology, the books are there for a relational cultural experience,” she said.

Spitz also encouraged parents to take care with the books they share with their children.

“I feel passionately that just as we think about the food that we give to our children, and we want to give them something nourishing, I think what goes into their minds, into their heads, is equally important.  I think parents, and teachers, and editors, and the writers themselves, need to think very seriously about the cultural lives of children. When you are a child, you are a sponge.  Everything goes in; every subtle hint becomes a part of your psychic equipment,” she said.

The full segment can be heard here.

Here’s wishing our wonderful alumni a safe and happy holiday season, and a brilliant new year! We look forward to seeing you in 2013!

Craig Saper, professor and chair of Language, Literacy, and Culture (LLC), has been named the Bearman Foundation Chair in Entrepreneurship.

“Dr. Saper is a scholar of large achievement and great energy, whose talents and interests make him a superb choice for the Bearman Foundation Chair in Entrepreneurship,” said John Jeffries, dean of the college of arts, humanities, and social sciences (CAHSS).

The Bearman Foundation Chair in Entrepreneurship was established by The Herbert Bearman Foundation to acknowledge and honor the contributions of Dr. Arlene Bearman to the UMBC community. This chair recognizes and supports outstanding teaching skills, an interest in entrepreneurship, and a strong record of scholarship in entrepreneurial studies or a field related to entrepreneurship.

“Since arriving on campus, Dr. Saper has been a whirlwind of research and teaching activity deeply anchored in commitments to social entrepreneurship,” said Bev Bickel, associate professor and former chair of LLC.

This three-year endowed position will provide Saper with funding to integrate entrepreneurship concepts into classroom instruction, advising, and scholarship. Saper will also work with the Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship and Kauffman grant activities, and with the Administrative and Managerial Sciences program.

“My research is deeply anchored in commitments to social entrepreneurship that I have been studying throughout my career,” said Saper.  His recently-released book, Intimate Bureaucracies, examines social entrepreneurship during the creation of the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan in the 1960s-1980s.

Saper is planning two projects during the course of his Bearman chairmanship.  The first will examine the social entrepreneurship involved in the building of shared memorials and monuments. His research will focus on the entrepreneurs who organized and made the memorials possible.

Saper’s second project will explore the possibility of establishing a digital e-press at UMBC, which is he doing in collaboration with colleagues in the Library, the English department, the media and communication studies program and LLC as part of the campus’s larger Digital Humanities efforts.

“I’m interested in being a participant-observer of this group-entrepreneurial effort that works within, and for, UMBC’s institutional structure and the larger demands of academia and legitimate scholarship,” he said.

But Saper’s objective as the Bearman Foundation Chair isn’t just to achieve his research goals – it’s to offer a new vision of what entrepreneurship can mean.

“Hopefully, at the end of my term I will have promoted a progressive model of entrepreneurship that offers an alternative to Ayn Rand’s outlaw heroes. In the new model, entrepreneurs are part of communities working cooperatively for public space, public schools and the public good not renegades and raiders,” he said.

Todd Eberly ’06, Ph.D. public policy, is living his dream, teaching political science to the students of St. Mary’s College — and acting as a “go-to-guy” for those seeking political analysis, MarylandReporter.com reports.

“Other kids liked sports or what have you. I just never did,” Eberly said. “I cared about politics. I followed that the way other folks would follow a football season or a baseball season.  … I am curious to see who’s winning, who’s losing and what strategy they are employing.”

Read the full story at MarylandReporter.com.

In addition to being quoted regularly in various local media, in 2011 Eberly was named one of the top influencers of Maryland politics by Campaigns and Elections Magazine.

Eberly got an early taste for politics while helping his uncle Robert Eberly during his campaign for court clerk in Pennsylvania, the story says. After earning his undergraduate degree from Clarion University, Eberly started working in analysis for healthcare companies in the Washington, D.C., area and wound up earning his Ph.D. at UMBC’s Hilltop Institute. He began teaching at St. Mary’s in 2007.