The University System of Maryland is asking faculty, staff, students and parents to contact their state legislators to encourage them to keep supporting public higher education in Maryland. You can learn more about the USM effort here.

The USM Student Council also has produced a video, asking lawmakers to keep public higher education in Maryland affordable.

Craig Saper, associate professor of Language, Literacy and Culture, has published a new book under his alter-ego ofdj readies.

Intimate Bureaucracies is a history from the future looking backward at our present moment as a turning point. Our systems of organization and control appear unsustainable and brutal, and we are feeling around in the dark for alternatives. Using experiments in social organization in downtown New York City, and other models of potential alternative social organizations, this manifesto makes a call to action to study and build sociopoetic systems. It is published by Punctum Books.

The book is also a part of the AK Press Tactical Media Project, which makes short, timely political interventions freely available in download and zine form.  More information about the book, including a link where it can be downloaded for free, is available here.

Gloria Chuku, associate professor of Africana studies, has been awarded the Summer 2012 West African Research Association (WARA) post-doctoral fellowship. WARA’s mission is to promote research and scholarly exchange between West African and US scholars and institutions, and the award will enable Chuku to conduct research in Nigeria on the Biafra-Nigeria War during the summer.

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/22633568]Eric Dyer, associate professor of Visual Arts, has been awarded a 2012 fellowship for creative arts by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Professor Dyer is an artist, filmmaker, experimental animator, and educator whose award-winning films have screened internationally at numerous festivals, including the Chicago International Film Festival, the Ann Arbor Film Festival, South by Southwest, and the Ottawa, Annecy, Melbourne, and London International Animation Festivals. His work has also been exhibited at the Exploratorium, the Hirshhorn, the Smithsonian National Gallery of Art, Ars Electronica, and the Cairo and Venice Biennales.

Much of his recent work focuses on the zoetrope, as shown in the video clip above. Dyer comments, “I have dug up the zoetrope, a pre-cinema optical toy, and am using it to create and explore a visual language of loops and spirals. When spun, the complex circular sculptures, dubbed cinetropes, are a blur to the human eye but come to full animated life when viewed through shutter glasses or the lens of a fast-shutter video camera. This video is a compilation of film clips and behind-the-scenes footage from [my zoetropes] Copenhagen Cycles and The Bellows March.”

The Department of Theatre’s current production, Incorruptible, which runs through April 28, received praise from critic Jack L. B. Gohn of BroadwayWorld.com in a review published on April 19 (click here to read). In conclusion he remarked, “Incorruptible is a hoot. You should go.” Theatre students Sydney Kleinberg, Christopher Dews and Jessica Ruth Baker all received mentions. For more information about the production, which is directed by Colette Searls, associate professor Theatre, visit the Arts & Culture Calendar.

The Center for Art Design and Visual Culture (CADVC) has received two 2012 publication design awards from the American Association of Museums. Within the category of institutions with budgets of less than $750,000, the CADVC received first prize for the exhibition catalogue Where Do We Migrate To? (pictured), designed by Kelley Bell, assistant professor Visual Arts (and Visual Arts MFA ’05). Additionally, the CAVDC received second prize in the scholarly journals category for the publication Visual Culture and Evolution: An Online Symposium, designed by Guenet Abraham, associate professor of Visual Arts. Both publications are distributed by Artbook.com.

From Ben Lowenthal, Associate Vice President, Financial Services

I am very pleased to announce the appointment of Ms. Charlene Uhl as Director of Budget & Financial Analysis in Financial Services, effective April 23, 2012.

Charlene has extensive experience in the state of Maryland budgeting arena, currently serving as Supervising Budget Examiner for Higher Education at the Maryland Department of Budget and Management. In addition, she has worked as a director of several non-profit and governmental agencies in her career, providing leadership and strategic direction, with a proven record of success. Charlene’s undergraduate degree is in Biology & Social Work. She also has a Masters in Educational Administration from the University of Maryland College Park. She brings 11 years of budgetary and financial analysis experience along with multiple years of supervisory and organizational skills to the position. Her experience and broad understanding of the inner workings of the state budget process will be valuable assets to UMBC in the years to come.

We are fortunate to have such an accomplished financial leader joining our team. Please join us in giving Charlene a warm welcome to UMBC.

Six years ago, Julie Rosenthal, the program management specialist for Asian studies, wanted to teach her daughter about helping others. Rather than encouraging her daughter to volunteer, Rosenthal took it farther: she founded Food on the 15th, a program through which students deliver food to the elderly.

“We want the children to have firsthand experience delivering the food to the people so that they can get that feeling of really making a difference in somebody’s life, a positive difference,” Rosenthal said.

The program was recently profiled by Voices of America, which provides news, information, and cultural programming worldwide through the Internet, mobile and social media, radio, and television.  VOA is funded by the U.S. Government through the Broadcasting Board of Governors.

The piece, “Students Learn Lesson in Power of Giving,” appeared on the VOA website on April 13.  The story will be translated and shown around the world.

Food on the 15th will come to UMBC later this semester, with the Asian Studies Program as the lead partner. The program will be collecting non-perishable food items from students as they move out of the dorms at the end of the semester. Rosenthal hopes that the organization can have a consistent presence at UMBC.

In responding to the global economic crisis of the past two years, which nations’ governments got it right and which got it wrong? UMBC political science professor Thomas Schaller asks this question in his latest Baltimore Sun column, which compares economic policies and outcomes in the U.S. and Europe.

“Economic indicators strongly suggest that the Obama administration and those who called in 2009 for a massive, Keynesian stimulus made the prudent, informed choice,” Schaller argues. He writes, “Austerity measures — tax increases and public sector payroll and benefit reductions — actually resulted in higher, not lower debt ratios for some European economies because GDP contraction yielded lower tax revenues, which more than offset any short-term economic savings from budget-slashing.”

TIME named President Freeman Hrabowski to the 2012 TIME 100, the magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. The full list and related tributes appear in the April 30 issue of TIME, available on newsstands on Thursday, April 19, and now at time.com/time100.

The list, now in its ninth year, recognizes the activism, innovation and achievement of the world’s most influential individuals.

As TIME Managing Editor Richard Stengel has said of the list in the past, “The TIME 100 is not a list of the most powerful people in the world, it’s not a list of the smartest people in the world, it’s a list of the most influential people in the world. They’re scientists, they’re thinkers, they’re philosophers, they’re leaders, they’re icons, they’re artists, they’re visionaries. People who are using their ideas, their visions, their actions to transform the world and have an effect on a multitude of people.”

President Hrabowski told The Baltimore Sun that he accepts the recognition on behalf of the whole campus. “My success and the campus’ success are the same,” Hrabowski said. “People appreciate what we’ve done at the university, and I enjoy telling the story.”

Hrabowski also told The Sun that he considers the TIME honor a recognition for universities and their leaders nationwide.

“I think we often take for granted colleges and universities,” he said. “At UMBC, we don’t take it for granted, we celebrate it. That celebration gives people hope. People need to hope that we can educate all kinds of students, and those students will go on to lead our nation.”

This post originally appeared in UMBC Insights.