The English Department’s Christopher Corbett will be featured Saturday, April 14 at the CityLit Project at Baltimore’s Enoch Pratt Free Library in a panel discussion on the art of writing biography. Corbett is the author of Orphans Preferred: The Twisted Truth and Lasting Legend of the Pony Express (Random House/Broadway Books) and The Poker Bride: The First Chinese in the Wild West (Atlantic Monthly).

http://www.citylitproject.org/index.cfm?page=news&newsid=113

The GOP presidential primary is drawing more attention in Maryland than usual, AP reports, given the protracted fight for the nomination among the top candidates. Anticipating a low primary election turn-out among Maryland Republicans, which already comprise a relatively small group, former Gov. Ehrlich suggests the results are “difficult to predict.”

Don Norris, UMBC professor and chair of public policy, disagrees. “I think it’s going to go for Romney,” he says, “because even the base in Maryland is not as conservative of a base as…some other states.”

Robert Wardlow, a senior majoring in biochemistry and molecular biology, has received a Gilliam Fellowship from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).

The goal of the Gilliam program, according to HHMI, is to increase the diversity of college and university faculty by supporting the scientists of tomorrow. Students receive $46,500 per year towards Ph.D. study for up to five years at the graduate school of their choice.

While at UMBC Wardlow worked in the lab of Terry Rogers at the University of Maryland Medical School. His research focused on heart cells and a type of stem cell called a mesenchymal stem cell.  The goal of the research he says is to look at the protective properties these stem cells may have over heart cells.

For graduate school he says, he will be enrolling in a combined M.D./Ph.D. program at either Harvard or Johns Hopkins University. His current plan is to focus his clinical training in cardiology with a Ph.D. in biochemistry.

George Stover ’73, interdisciplinary studies, answers the door at his production studio, Adventure Productions, looking like he’s on location in the wild. A tall man with a full head of silver hair and a boyish frame, Stover is clad in blue jeans, rugged boots, and a black canvas shirt emblazoned with his company’s emblem, a hammerhead shark.

Stover’s North Baltimore basement studio is far from the exotic underwater locations where he shoots his kid-friendly weekly television show, Aqua Kids. But the décor of his cavernous subterranean studio illustrates just how seamlessly Stover blends his dual passions for film and aquatics: fish tanks accessorize every room, a string of coral hangs from Stover’s office door, and replicas of manatees and starfish dangle from the ceiling.

Stover grew up in Perry Hall, but always was drawn to the water. His family spent summers on their 30-foot sailboat docked in Middle River. “I was always fishing or crabbing, always had an earache from swimming,” he chuckles.

So how did a middle-class kid end up swimming in the company of sharks and other aquatic animals in exotic locales such as the Bahamas and the Caribbean with a camera hoisted over his shoulder?

Stover developed his love of film at UMBC, where the would-be veterinarian found himself in a film animation class. “I got an A. I loved it,” he says. Even the fact that UMBC didn’t offer a film major didn’t deter Stover, who became one of the first students at the university to take what was then known as “Option II” and design his own film major.

Read the full story in the Winter 2012 issue of UMBC Magazine.

Robert Deluty, associate dean of the graduate school, has published a new book of poetry, “Unacknowledghed Miracles.” In his review, Dr. Richard Berlin writes: “Once again, Robert Deluty’s poems had me hooked from beginning to end. On dazzling display are the characters Deluty embraces with his warm, sly sense of humor—the skinny and obese, professors and hookers, husbands and wives, children and grandparents, and of course, Jews and Gentiles. Deluty’s deft embrace of our shared humanity is his greatest gift. And his ability to share his heartfelt observations through poetry is an ongoing miracle.”

Copies of “Unacknowledged Miracles,” as well as of Deluty’s other books, are on sale at the UMBC Bookstore.

Kelley Bell, assistant professor of Visual Arts, will speak at American University on March 29 as part of a panel of four women in the District of Columbia area who currently work in animation and motion graphics. In honor of Women’s History Month, the Animator’s Roundtable will provide an opportunity for the artists to show samples of their work and discuss how they approach animation, from business to aesthetics.

Uncultivated, an art project by Lynn Cazabon, associate professor of Visual Arts, will be featured in two exhibitions and will be published in a digital media art catalogue, SCAN2GO. An ongoing public art project that explores wild plants in urban landscapes, Uncultivated began in Baltimore in late 2010 and has expanded to include other cities.

Photographs from Uncultivated are on display at the VisArts Gallery, at 155 Gibbs Street in Rockville, Maryland, from March 9 through April 14 in an exhibition curated by UMBC IMDA alumna Susan Main.

Photographs will also be on display at Brooklyn Utopias: Park Space, Play Space, at the Old Stone House, 333 3rd Street, Brooklyn, New York, from April 5 through June 25.

Uncultivated is also featured in the publication SCAN2GO, a printed catalogue of digital media art works produced by the College Art Association Services to Artists committee in collaboration with v1b3. The catalogue will represent the artworks by printed QR codes, which function to connect viewers to digital media art works by using a smart phone. The QR codes are linked to a web address/url that shows an art piece (sound art, video, code pieces or web art) that will be viewed on smart phones and camera enabled tablet computers.

John Sturgeon, professor of Visual Arts, was selected for a Fulbright Scholar award to the United Kingdom, 2012-13, as a Distinguished Chair at the London College of Art, London, England. This is Professor Sturgeon’s second Fulbright Scholar appointment (Argentina/Uruguay 1988-89), but his first since joining the UMBC faculty in 2000.

Writing and photography by Callie Neylan, assistant professor of Visual Arts, was featured on National Public Radio’s “The Picture Show” blog on March 17. Offering a St. Patrick’s Day reflection on a visit to Ireland, she notes, “One thing I stress when teaching design is the philosophy of austerity, simplicity, and that less is more. What you take out, I always say, is more important than what you leave in.”

Marie desJardins, computer science and electrical engineering, competed in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in Brooklyn last weekend. She placed 44th out of 593 solvers, 22nd (of 568) in the “B” category (solvers who haven’t competed in the A (elite) or B finals), and 5th (of 87) in the Mid-Atlantic. She was the 8th ranked woman in the tournament, and the top-ranked woman in the Mid-Atlantic region. She also earned an “I Beat Dr. Fill” button for outscoring the crossword-solving computer program, “Dr. Fill.”

The tournament page is here: http://www.crosswordtournament.com/

Rankings: http://www.crosswordtournament.com/2012/standings/rank.htm

Dr. Fill: http://www.crosswordtournament.com/articles/bg031112.htm