MERGERS AND MAJORS

When it comes to shifting tides in disciplines from the social sciences to the humanities to engineering, UMBC’s academic leadership and its scholars aren’t standing still. They’re exploring new vistas that respond to the challenges of our moment.

The growing importance of Asia in world affairs, for instance, has led the university to create a new interdisciplinary Asian Studies major, minor and certificate program. The effort was spearheaded by professor of Japanese and East Asian history Constantine Vaporis, who has pursued the new program since 1993 and finally achieved his goal.

“What seemed like a prohibitively expensive program to create in 1993 has become far more affordable today, due to things like the strategic hiring of professors with expertise in Asian affairs over the past few years,” says Vaporis.

Melding disciplines into a coherent course of study in Asian affairs was key. “We wanted the major to be broad-based and interdisciplinary in nature, and to strike a balance between language and area study,” observes Vaporis. “This entails a bit of a balancing act, which is why the major is structured the way it is, with five electives in at least three different disciplines (in addition to the two required courses and minimum two years language study). We felt that this broad-based curriculum would prepare students best for the various professional paths related to Asia, such as advanced academic research, international relations, international business and trade, government service and international law.”

And as America’s citizens, its government and its industry become increasingly concerned with climate change and its effects, turning the good intentions of sustainability into concrete achievements requires a new generation of engineers to assess environmental challenges and solve them.

To help train that generation, and to help them get started sooner in their academic careers, the College of Engineering and Information Technology has merged its chemical and biochemical engineering department and its civil and environmental engineering departments into a new chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering department.

Julia M. Ross, professor and chair of the new department, says the merger “allowed us to build on the existing research synergy and develop an undergraduate track in environmental engineering and sustainability that leads to the B.S. in chemical engineering.”

Combining the departments, she adds, also “provided an opportunity for growth and increased stability.”

That research collaboration is key, continues Ross. “In the former civil and environmental engineering department,” she says, “much of the environmental research being done overlapped core areas in chemical engineering such as fluid mechanics, mass transfer, reaction kinetics and separation processes. Similarly, the research in chemical and biochemical engineering focused on bio-related areas, often on problems related to these same core areas in chemical engineering.”

Ross says that the new department will “target research areas at the interface between environmental engineering and biochemical/biomedical engineering – environmental microbiology, environmental chemistry, environmentally sustainable energy processes, biofuels and multi-scale modeling.”

— Richard Byrne ’86

CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?

Commercials will tell you to blame your cell phone carrier for problems with reception. They’re partly right, though location also plays a role — a Metro train might not be the best place for a heart-to-heart with a loved one.

But a seldom acknowledged source of bad reception comes from a basic challenge of signal processing. Cell phones convert data from two distinct channels of radio waves into information that can be used and understood. The same signal processing challenge applies for a wide range of devices used in communications, medicine and other fields.

For decades, engineers made various assumptions to simplify the data so they could design devices efficiently. They traded clarity for speed, reducing costs but also leaving us with garbled phone calls and reduced precision for some medical tests.

Now researchers at UMBC are receiving wide recognition for describing a mathematical technique that allows researchers to avoid this tradeoff.

“People have been making simplifying assumptions that don’t make good use of the data,” explains Tülay Adali, a professor of computer science and electrical engineering. “With the framework we developed, researchers don’t have to do that.”

The technique is not technically new. The researcher D.H. Brandwood described similar ideas in a 1983 paper. But Adali describes a “lightbulb” moment in 2006 when she was discussing that paper with Hualiang Li ’08, Ph.D., electrical eningeering, who has since become a research assistant professor at UMBC.

The two researchers realized the technique could be applied broadly to process a range of data without having to simplify those assumptions.

“People had missed that one elegant, simple point,” Adali says.

Subsequent research at UMBC linked the technique to work published in the early 20th century by the Austrian mathematician Wilhelm Wirtinger. Adali and Li, along with Mike Novey ’09, Ph.D., computer science, and French researcher Jean-Francois Cardoso, described the technique and developed a framework for applying it to a range of problems in “Complex ICA Using Nonlinear Functions,” a paper published in IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing in 2008.

The four researchers were honored in May with the 2010 IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award, presented in Prague at the 2011 International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing. Given annually, the award recognizes up to six recent papers with significant impact on the field.

While cell phone reception problems frustrate many consumers on a daily basis, the same challenges present themselves in satellite communications, acoustics, radar, medical imaging and other fields. Adali’s research now focuses on an analysis of medical data from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and other sources. Researchers often use fMRI to see what is happening in subjects’ brains while they are at rest or performing tasks such as driving or solving problems.

Applying Wirtinger’s techniques to analyze fMRI data, Adali and her colleagues have shown, on average, a 20 percent improvement in sensitivity detecting brain activity. The technique also does a better job highlighting which brain regions are involved in certain tasks, providing insights that can be used to more accurately diagnose mental disorders.

It’s a discovery that translates into shorter, more accurate tests and, for the broad field of signal processing, a more effective and efficient way to use data.

— Anthony Lane

BUILDING A TRADITION

The path to preserving Maryland’s traditional arts and culture sometimes begins when a jazz musician walks through an unlocked door in UMBC’s Fine Arts building.

One of Baltimore’s master jazz musicians, Lafayette Gilchrist ’92, Africana studies, was taking a summer class before his freshman year when he discovered that the building’s piano rooms were left open in the evening. One night, he finally gave in to temptation.

“The very first piano I played was this nine foot Steinway grand piano,” recalls Gilchrist, who had taken no formal lessons before coming to UMBC. “People think I’m lying when I tell them this, but the piano was in a concert hall, all the lights were off and there was a spotlight on it,” he said. “I fell in love. The music moved directly from my body to the instrument and into the air.”

Gilchrist audited composition classes during his time at UMBC and he was even hired to play at campus events. His musical passion and skill also eventually led him to Maryland Traditions – a statewide program that supports efforts to find, share, preserve and sustain traditional arts and culture.

Over the past academic year, Maryland Traditions has forged an exploratory partnership with UMBC that has not only brought Gilchrist back to campus for a March 30 event centered on introducing the program’s artists to the UMBC community, but created classes and events throughout the year.

The university installed Elaine Eff, the program’s co-director, as a folklorist-in-residence in the American studies department. In that role, Eff has connected UMBC students with internship opportunities, created a film series for campus and co-taught a humanities scholars class on Maryland’s traditions with Nicole King, an assistant professor of American studies.

“Elaine is such a force,” observes King. “She’s bringing the energy of the public programming realm here to the university.”

One of Maryland Traditions’ cornerstones is a Master-Apprentice program in which Gilchrist has been working. He first served as an apprentice to jazz saxophonist Carl Grubbs, and now Gilchrist is a mentor himself – advising pianist Ethan Simon (son of The Wire’s creator David Simon.)

Making strong connections is a key to the collaboration’s success. King says that Eff’s connections are invaluable to an American studies department, which has aspirations (especially with the recent establishment of its Orser Center for the Study of Place, Community & Culture at UMBC) to become a center for Baltimore area community studies.

“If we have these relationships with outside organizations and people,” King adds, “we don’t have to re-invent the wheel every time we go to work with the community.”

Eff says that the benefits of UMBC’s own pre-existing networks can’t be overstated. The university’s reach has allowed her to recruit interns for Maryland Traditions, inspire students to turn an analytic eye honed in campus classrooms to their own communities, and tap into the cultural knowledge of UMBC’s ethnic student organizations.

Who knows? Eff may find the next Lafayette Gilchrist practicing in the Fine Arts building after hours. “Every accomplishment we have here has tremendous value in building towards the future,” she concludes.

— Chelsea Haddaway

WE ARE THE ’80s?

Those who study 20th century America can point to many decades as culturally pivotal time spans. The boom and bust Jazz Age of the 1920s. The “Greatest Generation” and its role in World War II and the Cold War dominated the 1940s and 1950s. And the vast upheavals of the 1960s have made it perhaps the most written-about decade in all of American history.

But what about the 1980s – which began with the election of Ronald Reagan and ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall? The decade has attracted the attention of Kimberly R. Moffitt, assistant professor of American studies, and Duncan A. Campbell, lecturer in American studies, who have collaborated on an edited collection of essays: The 1980s: A Critical and Transitional Decade (Lexington Books).

Campbell points out that Reagan was the decade’s key political figure – and that with “the 30th anniversary of his inauguration and centenary of his birth, there’s been a bit of a Reaganesque revival” that is not limited to conservatives who shared the Gipper’s views.

But as a skeptic of the “great man” school of history, Campbell and his co-editor Moffitt also “seek to question just how much of what is classified as ’80s culture could be attributed to Reagan in either a positive or negative sense…. Reagan was very much a product of his time and the circumstances preceding and surrounding it.”

The essays collected by Moffitt and Campbell span the era’s politics and the culture, and the book teems with pieces that tackle the politics of AIDS and apartheid, as well as the triumphs of MTV and Bill Cosby.

Moffitt says that the significance of major black artists such as Cosby and Michael Jackson was that they “were able to broaden our understanding of this culture in ways that resembled the familiar for most Americans; hence their successful crossover appeal. This was a major shift or transition from previous decades in which we saw most black performers catering to all-black audiences or television programs and films with majority slack casts that featured the downtrodden, poverty-stricken, and racially segregated realities of a people.”

These successes, as well as the pervasive influence of hip-hop, she adds, “is paramount in that black culture received a platform, even in the midst of the conservatism of Reagan, to be seen by America (and the world) in a new perspective and embraced as instrumental to the creation of much of the pop culture of the ’80s and beyond.”

The ’80s also saw the rise of the machine that now dominates our lives, says Campbell. “Our wired world simply wouldn’t have taken the form it has without the personal computer,” he observes. “Few people used computers either at work or for play prior to 1980. By 1989 most middle-class Americans almost certainly did. We’re still in the middle of this revolution – and thus for the end results, in the words of Zhou Enlai on the French Revolution, it’s too soon to tell.”

— Richard Byrne ’86

STEPPIN’ WITH A STAR

Rap legend Snoop Dogg can usually be found selling out huge venues such as Madison Square Garden or the L.A. Coliseum, so the hip hop star’s late April performance at the UMBC’s Retriever Activities Center was a unique event. What made it even more special? Step performers from a few UMBC fraternities and sororities can now brag that they opened for Snoop Dogg.

UMBC Greek organizations entertained the 2,500 people waiting for the headliner with a step show competition encompassing styles from shimmy to stomp. UMBC’s Kappa Alpha Psi walked away with top honors at the show by combining both styles and breaking out their fraternity’s traditional “cane step” – giving them a dimension that none of the other performers possessed.

Senior Kappa Alpha Psi stepper Bakari Smith credits demonstrating a variety of moves as the key element in their winning performance. “We just thought a complete show that touched all aspects of the scorecard would give us a good chance to take the crown,” he says. “When we slowed it down with our kick, then [our] shimmy, I heard the screams and knew right then we killed the show.”

You might think opening for a legend would make student performers nervous, but Smith says sharing the spotlight with Snoop Dogg provided more incentive than inhibition.

“There was a lot of pressure, but we used it to keep us pumped up to perform well,” says Smith. “Our fraternity’s fundamental purpose is achievement, so we are always under pressure to perform at a high level – regardless of the endeavor.”

— Corey Johns ’11

MIND OVER MATTER

The tough-minded attitude that pitcher Jay Witasick ’93, learned on the way to the major leagues served him well during a 12-year career there – and informs his work these days with TWC Sports Management in Timonium.

“I was mentally tough,” says Witasick. “No matter what happened in the game, I was ready the next day. When the game was over, the game was over. Even today in business, I never let any one game or one out define a whole career.”

As a transfer to UMBC as a rising sophomore, Witasick posted a 7-5 record for the Retrievers over two years. He was 4-1 with four complete games in 1993 and finished second in the nation with 12.3 strikeouts per game. He signed a professional contract with the St. Louis Cardinals, who picked him in the second round of the 1993 draft.

Witasick finally broke into the major leagues with the Oakland A’s in 1996 and pitched for seven teams over 12 years. A starter early in his pro career, he then shifted to the bullpen – from which he made 349 of his 405 appearances and retired with a 32-41 record and a 4.64 ERA.

Today, Witasick guides a new generation of players – both at TWC and as an assistant baseball coach at Harford Community College. Players under his tutelage benefit from the experiences of his battling baseball career, but his own memories center on the joys of that life in Major League Baseball.

“I enjoyed every day I played in the big leagues,” says Witasick, who played in two World Series. “I felt like a kid for 15 years straight. It’s fun. That’s the way it should be.”

— Jeff Seidel ’85

GAG REELS

Aspiring actors and videographers often yearn to be discovered. But three recent UMBC students and alumni aren’t waiting around for a big break. They’ve made their own success by collaborating on a comedy web series called Monday Wednesday Friday (www.facebookwastaken.com).

The skits are performed by former UMBC student Darrell Britt-Gibson (who also appeared as “O-Dogg” in HBO’s The Wire) and Joe King ’09, mechanical engineering, and produced by Tal Levitas ’08, political science and media and communications studies. Each episode is a freestanding story, but there are running themes to the sketches, with Britt-Gibson and King appearing as pilots, sportscasters, CIA agents and even wild animals.

“For the animal shoots, we had to be in make-up for twelve hours,” quips King.

The team for Monday Wednesday Friday is based largely in Los Angeles, the better to be close to the entertainment industry. The series started in January and recently wrapped up its third season of videos, but they are already drawing in other UMBC alumni to the process – including Adam Kurtz ’09, visual arts, who designed the show’s Tumblr website.

The Monday Wednesday Friday trio is also garnering kudos from even better-known UMBC alumni such as Ace of Cakes star Duff Goldman ’97, history, who gave the show a shout out in a recent appearance at Auburn University.

Levitas says that the Monday Wednesday Friday team wants “to create sharp, funny comedy that is written, acted and produced well. We don’t want to present slow, long performances and we’re really serious about tackling this in a new modern medium.”

— Monica Berron ’12

STERN COMPETITORS

In early May, UMBC invested in the recent success of its women’s basketball program by signing Phil Stern to a new six-year contract that will keep him coaching at the RAC through the 2016-17 season.

UMBC’s women’s hoops team has just completed one of its best seasons in recent memory – vastly exceeding preseason expectations in which the team was forecast to finish fifth in the America East conference.

Stern’s squad won the conference’s regular season title and accumulated 20 wins for the first time since the 1985-86 season. He also led the team to its second post-season berth – a spot in the Women’s National Invitational Tournament – in the last five years. (The Retrievers stormed into the NCAA Women’s Tournament in 2006.)

This year’s overachieving squad featured senior forward Meghan Colabella (who reached 600 career rebounds) and senior point guard Michele Brokans (who tallied more than 300 career assists). Next year’s prospects may be even brighter, as the team will be led by a talented tandem including center Topé Obajolu, forward Erin Brown and guard Michelle Kurowski. Kurowski finished the season ranked sixth in the NCAA with an .894 free throw percentage – a school record and the third-best ever in the America East. She was also named as America East Scholar-Athlete for women’s basketball.

Continuing that combination of skill and smarts is one of Stern’s highest priorities. “We will continue to bring in quality young ladies,” he says, “who embody the true definition of the term ‘student-athlete.’”

— Richard Byrne ’86

Shannon Young, who received her M.F.A. from UMBC in 2008, is one of several area artists included in “Eat Your Words,” the second exhibit presented by the Porch Project in Washington, D.C.

According to the Porch Project site, “Taken together, these artists’ works will help viewers examine their own complex relationships with food, and how the acts of preparing and consuming a meal link us all to each other and the larger world.”

There will be an opening reception for the show on May 21, and an artist discussion on June 4. For more information, click here.

You can see more of Shannon’s work at http://shannyoung.wordpress.com.

Looking East

UMBC’s new Asian studies program will give students the opportunity to learn about Asian languages, cultures and the significant impacts that the region is having on the world. The first public institution in Maryland with an Asian studies degree, UMBC offers a major, a minor and a certificate.

Constantine Vaporis, professor of history and the director of the new program, has been advocating for an Asian studies program on campus for many years. Recently, the right conditions—a cohort of faculty members with expertise in Asia and an increasing focus on making UMBC into a global campus—have come together to bring his dream to fruition.

As the economies and global influence of Asian nations continue to grow, both students and educators are realizing that knowledge of the region can give graduates an advantage as they begin their careers. The program aims to prepare students for various professional paths related to Asia, such as advanced academic research, international relations, international business and trade, governmental service and international law.

Noting the number of Asia-focused classes and events already happening on campus, Vaporis said that “the program will coordinate all of the things that are already going on as well as encourage new ones, and be a voice and organizing mechanism for those elements.”

The program’s value as an organizing mechanism was made clear in the days after the devastating earthquake that hit Japan on March 11. The Asian studies program was able to serve as a central coordinator for relief efforts, working with other departments to quickly organize a lecture, concert and (with the help of the Japanese Culture Club) two fundraisers.

A new course, “Asia 100,” will introduce students to the program. Taught by Vaporis, the course will also draw on participating faculty to show the different approaches to the area of study. Departments that may intersect with the program include history, economics, music, modern languages and linguistics and American studies, and potential courses that can be taught through the new program range from a philosophy course called “The Philosophy of Asian Martial Arts” to a political science course teaching “International Relations of the Asia-Pacific Region.” UMBC is also the only public university in Maryland to teach the three major East Asian languages: Chinese, Korean and Japanese.

Vaporis said that having the program on campus will open up future opportunities. For example, faculty members will have access to resources to help them create courses for the program. “We’ll be able to host faculty development workshops to infuse Asia in the curriculum for people who have the interest but maybe not the expertise,” Vaporis said.

The program will also bring speakers to campus and, Vaporis hopes, expand study abroad opportunities in Asian countries.

 (5/12/11)

Scott Rifkin ’81, biological sciences, a physician and long-term care executive, was interviewed by the Baltimore Sun about his company’s acquisition of a retirement community in Pikesville.

The move, says Rifkin, managing partner of Mid-Atlantic Healthcare, is personal: he and his parents still live in the neighborhood surrounding North Oaks retirement community.

See the full story here.

Rifkin was named a UMBC Outstanding Alumnus of the Year in 1995.

A Meeting of the Minds

While cleaning out his closet on a recent visit home, Phillip Fitzgerald found a box of old awards. Flipping through certificates and plaques for various achievements, he noticed a trend: Almost every award was related to science, dating all the way back to his third grade science fair. He realized science has been his life since he was a child.

“It was in the books from the beginning,”he said matter-of-factly.

This summer, Fitzgerald will continue on that path as he travels to Lindau, Germany, to participate in the 61st Meeting of Nobel Laureates. This annual gathering of leading scientists brings together about 20 Nobel prize winners and other internationally recognized scientists with 500 “young researchers” selected from a global pool of the brightest collegiate scholars.

Fitzgerald is the second UMBC student in a row to be accepted; Benyam Kinde ’10 attended the meeting last year.
A senior completing a major in biochemistry and molecular biology, Fitzgerald is also a first-generation college student from Prince George’s County, where he was valedictorian at Suitland High School.

He has flourished at UMBC from the day he was accepted into the Meyerhoff Scholars Program. The Meyerhoff program was founded to increase diversity among young leaders in science, technology and engineering fields. Fitzgerald said the program has had a big influence on him.

Fitzgerald finds a spirit of collaboration through the Meyerhoff program and throughout campus. He said UMBC offers a “safe zone,” which contrasts with the “cut-throat” environments he has seen elsewhere.

At UMBC, Fitzgerald has worked with Suzanne Ostrand-Rosenberg, professor of biological sciences and Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Chair of Biochemistry. Together they are researching tumor immunology, focusing on how inflammation and a specific type of suppressor cells can promote cancer by inhibiting the body’s immune system. Fitzgerald has also interned at the New York University School of Medicine under Dan Littman, professor of molecular immunology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) investigator. There he studied how certain immune cells, called dendritic cells, can shuttle HIV to target T cells, greatly increasing HIV infection rate. Fitzgerald received this internship through HHMI on recommendation from Michael Summers, HHMI Investigator and UMBC professor of chemistry and biochemistry.  

One key influence in Fitzgerald’s life was his high school biology teacher, who encouraged him to do a summer research project at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

“It turned my love of studying science, into a love of researching science,” he said, explaining that he believes this appreciation for science should be shared.

Fitzgerald is a tutor in the chemistry tutorial center, and he has been a teaching assistant for introductory biology. He also volunteers at Prince George’s Tennis and Education Foundation, a non-profit that provides opportunities for young people to excel academically, athletically and socially through tennis. Fitzgerald said he has more to offer with Bunsen burners and Erlenmeyer flasks than he does with a racket.  

With all this on his plate, Fitzgerald still finds time for himself to unwind with his other talents. Fitzgerald is learning to play the piano and guitar, while also taking singing lessons. He says this is a treat to himself for his last semester at UMBC.  It is an artistic release that he hopes will benefit him as he pursues a joint M.D./Ph.D.  at Johns Hopkins University.

“Success is when you reach a point in life where with whatever you’re doing you find happiness in doing it, whether that is career based or not,” Fitzgerald said. “It is not in correlation with income or number of degrees; a successful person is someone who can wake up and be excited for what they are going to do that day.”

He has big plans for his career in biochemistry, and he said UMBC has been just the place to put him on this path.
“UMBC has supported my passion for scientific research so much through its emphasis on research and giving hands-on training,” he said.  

He remembers the overwhelming feeling of getting accepted into the Nobel Laureate meeting in Lindau.

“It means,” he said, “there are people out there that are seeing potential in me.”

 (4/29/11)

Freelance journalist Matthew Van Dyke ’02, political science, is still missing in Libya.

A recent story in The Atlantic magazine about another missing journalist mentions Van Dyke, who was originally reported missing March 13. Read the Atlantic story here.

The Committee to Protect Journalists issued an alert about Van Dyke’s disappearance earlier this month. He is one of 15 journalists currently missing or in government custody in Libya. Read the full story here and please share;  keeping Matthew in the public eye is important!

Boundless curiosity

Can you get high school students to ignore their cellphones during class?

Could wind power off the East Coast greatly reduce fossil fuel consumption?

What can dance tell us about our relationship to water?

These questions may span a wide range of human experience and academic study, but the answers give just a glimpse of the research and creative achievement that UMBC students will present at two upcoming events.

The 15th annual Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day (URCAD) will be held Wednesday, April 27, followed by the 33rd annual Graduate Research Conference (GRC) on Friday, April 29.

More than 120 students will present their work at URCAD this year, highlighting the insights gained from long months spent in the lab, conducting fieldwork or analyzing patterns of behavior or movement. URCAD, presented by the Office of Undergraduate Education, gives students a chance to demonstrate their engagement with a field of study while also helping them develop skills that will be beneficial as they continue their studies or start their careers.

A special session this year features “Action Research” conducted by UMBC education students during their student teaching in local middle schools and high schools. Competitive grants of up to $1,500 from the Office of Undergraduate Research support some of the URCAD projects.

Diane M. Lee, vice provost and dean of undergraduate education, said the event recognizes that students gain true mastery of their subjects by wrestling with basic research and creative challenges.

“One major goal at UMBC is to create a vibrant community of scholars that includes undergraduates in all facets of disciplined inquiry,”  Lee said.  “URCAD is the realization of that goal as students share the knowledge they have gained through research and creative achievement.  Their inquiry can, and typically does, use all the ways of knowing associated with the arts and with the sciences. The products of their efforts go beyond the oral presentations, poster sessions, exhibits, and performances we delight in at URCAD.  Through the process of research and its dissemination, our students develop habits of mind that will serve them well in all of their future pursuits.”

GRC, sponsored by the Graduate Student Association, will showcase research in a range of disciplines from history to engineering and physics. Ralph Semmel, ’92 Ph.D., computer science, is this year’s keynote speaker.

Semmel became the director of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab (APL) nearly a year ago. APL, based in Laurel, Md., has close to 5,000 employees conducting and supporting research related to national security.

“We are delighted that Dr. Semmel will speak at this year’s conference as more than 120 graduate students demonstrate their engagement in research,” said Jenness Hall, executive director of the GSA. “This event is an opportunity
to celebrate these students’ achievements as they develop their own careers.”

Selected highlights:

Joshua Francois ’11, mechanical engineering, will present his work modeling the optical stretching produced in Chinese hamster ovary cells through the use of a laser. Given the relationship between cell structure and function, he argues, increased understanding of the elasticity of biological cells can provide insights into the physiological changes they undergo.

William D. Hanchett ’13, financial economics and statistics, challenges the assumption that investors become more averse to risk as they approach retirement. Instead of the gradual decrease in stock holdings and increase in bond investments that financial advisers typically recommend, Hanchett argues that personally tailored portfolio management strategies would benefit older investors with diverse investment preferences.

Emily Kimak ’11, interdisciplinary studies, explores the relationship between humans and nature in her dance composition “Moving to Water.” After expanding her knowledge of ecology and body awareness, and reviewing the literature on performance and visual art related to the environment, she choreographed a piece exploring the motions involved in twisting knobs, washing and drinking.

Christian Solliday ’11, history, will present his  research on “Limiting the Distractions of Cell Phone Use in the Classroom.” Working with Linda Oliva, assistant professor of education, Solliday created a system of rewards and incentives to limit cell phone use in two high school social studies classrooms.

Sondheim Scholar Andrea Thomson ’11, political science, investigates methods for gathering information on the performance of economic development programs and explores how this information is used in policy- and decision-making in Maryland, Pennsylvania and Virginia. She will present the poster “Worthwhile or Wasteful? An Evaluation of Techniques for Measuring the Impact of Business Subsidies.”

Salma Warshanna ’11, English, traveled to Egypt, where her parents grew up, to explore how being raised between two cultures has shaped her identity. While writing a series of creative nonfiction essays, she realized that the combination of the first-person perspective and a rich description of memories allows memoir to connect to a reader’s sense of self in ways that no other genre can. She explored these issues in “The Past That is Always Present: The Role of Memoir in Identity.”

(4/25/11)

The Rev. Leo Patalinghug ’92, political science, has taken his passion for cooking to the next level, with the publication of a cookbook inspired by his family and his faith. His book, “Grace Before Meals, Recipes and Inspiration for Family Meals and Family Life,” outlines philosophies he teaches both in church and on his online cooking show, “Grace Before Meals.”

Read more about the cookbook here.

UMBC Magazine featured Patalinghug in its Winter 2010 edition. Read the full article here.

In addition to running his cooking show, Patalinghug teaches future priests at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary. Last year, he appeared on the Food Network’s “Throwdown with Bobby Flay,” on which the reverend bested the celebrity host with a fajita recipe inspired by Asian flavors.

Kevin Cepelak ’05, political science, has a job that comes with a pass that gets him into any Major League Baseball (MLB) park. And when he gets to his office near New York City’s Grand Central Station each day, he rubs elbows with former greats of the game and a chance to work with former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents and former New York City Police Department investigators. And he spends his days compiling reports that help MLB officials tackle problem issues in professional sports ranging from steroids to gambling.

Cepelak’s work as an analyst for MLB’s Department of Investigations – professional baseball’s internal watchdog on a variety of issues involving the sport’s integrity – is heady and somewhat surprising stuff for a recent UMBC graduate. After all, the sport that Cepelak played as a Retriever from 2002 through 2005 involved sticks, not bats.

“I never thought in a million years that I’d go from lacrosse to working in baseball,” says Cepelak over lunch at an Italian restaurant near MLB’s Park Avenue headquarters.

Read the full story in the Summer 2011 issue of UMBC Magazine.