Mechanical engineering majors Andrew Wallace ‘16, Michael Torres ‘16, Stefan Wroblewski ‘16, Jezron Basbas ‘16, and Baruch Weiner ‘16 have won top prize in the 2016 Cangialosi Business Innovation Competition (CBIC) for Preventing Injuries, Trauma and Cracks to the Head (PITCH), a lightweight protective device designed to reduce head trauma and skull fractures in baseball players.

The competition, hosted by the Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship, is supported by Greg Cangialosi ‘96, English, a leading Baltimore entrepreneur. “My goal in creating this competition was to connect our students with mentors who are off campus, actively running companies, or investing in startups,” he says. “It is important for them to know, while they are still in school, that the Baltimore region is thriving as an innovation ecosystem and here to develop and support the next generation of entrepreneurs.”

The CBIC allows students to experience and plan a start-up company, explains Vivian Armor ‘73, American studies, director of the Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship. “The CBIC targets students who are serious about starting a business in the near future, and the goal is to provide them with mentors, potential seed funding and networking opportunities to help them take their idea to the next level,” she says.

This year, 30 ideas were submitted, and seven of those ideas were selected for the final competition by a panel of judges from various Baltimore-area employers. Business mentors worked with each team to help develop and refine their idea before the final competition was held.

Second place went to an app called SupplySense, which uses sensors to track product inventory in a way that can help business function more strategically and efficiently. The idea was created by Filip Dabek ‘13, ‘14 M.S., and ‘21 Ph.D., computer science.

Third place was awarded to Aerwell, a device that extracts clean, pure water from humidity in the air to provide fresh water and sustainable energy. The Aerwell team includes Alexis Walmsley ‘16, music; Marios Levi ‘19, mechanical engineering; Bedford Boylston ‘16, interdisciplinary studies; Terry Wasserleben ‘17, computer engineering; and Arthur Schorr ‘17, media and communications studies and visual arts.

The top three teams were given cash awards, and membership in Betamore, a Baltimore-based incubator and educational facility, which Cangialosi cofounded.

The prizes themselves are designed to help students explore what it would mean to take their business ideas to the next level. Armor explains that the competition is “meant to be a real world experience to get them thinking about what is involved in planning and launching a business.”

“The CBIC was designed for those students who are truly going to go after the dream of entrepreneurship,” says Cangialosi. “Now, in its third year, it’s exciting to see how alive and vibrant entrepreneurship is at UMBC.”

Image: The PITCH team with Greg Cangialosi, left to right: Michael Torres, Jezron Basbas, Greg Cangialosi, Stefan Wroblewski and Andrew Wallace; missing Baruch Weiner; top. Vivian Armor, director of the Alex. Brown Center of Entrepreneurship; middle. Greg Cangialosi at a UMBC event, bottom. Photos courtesy of the Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship (top), and Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC (middle and bottom).

Markus Proctor
B.S., Interdisciplinary Studies
Cum Laude
Upper Marlboro, Maryland
Plans: CEO of EduPal, Inc.

UMBC is an institution that fosters academic excellence, inspires creative thinking, and nurtures character in every student. There are opportunities for students to achieve their highest academic potential at UMBC no matter what their goals are in life. UMBC has allowed me to craft my own journey through the INDS program and that has prepared me more than I could have ever imagined.

Markus Proctor is walking the walk with his interdisciplinary studies degree. He created his own major, Technology Entrepreneurship and Organization Management, not just to prepare for a career as a tech entrepreneur, but while founding and building his own company: EduPal, Inc.

Proctor’s work on EduPal has already earned him several accolades, including 3rd prize in the Cangialosi Business Innovation Competition, 2015-16 UMBC Entrepreneur Scholar of the Year, 2015-16 PNC Entrepreneur Scholar, and 2nd prize in the SEFA National Design Competition. He is also the 2015-16 Joseph and Frieda Faiman Eisenberg/VPC Scholar and was featured as a speaker on the panel “Youth and Diversity in Entrepreneurship” at Baltimore’s inaugural Light City U Creative Innovation Conference in April 2016.

Proctor plans to continue operating EduPal after graduation, transitioning it into a nonprofit “that provides free, innovative technology for students in order to support their rise to academic and career excellence.”

In addition to his entrepreneurial work, Proctor has served as vice president of the Interdisciplinary Studies Council of Majors. He has been invited to serve with the UMBC Alumni Council, UMBC’s Chapter of Black & Latino Alumni, and the Baltimore Emerging Leaders Roundtable.

Images: Markus Proctor with his mentors Greg Cangialosi ’96, English, and Vivian Armor ’73, American Studies; photo courtesy of Markus Proctor. Portrait by Marlayna Demond ‘11 for UMBC.

On July 30, a longtime music and arts space in Station North closed its doors permanently. The Hour Haus served as a music practice facility and performance venue for 25 years. American studies student Adam Droneburg produced an hour-long audio documentary which recently aired on WYPR’s The Signal. Dan Goodrich, an interdisciplinary studies major, collaborated with Droneburg on the project and provided photography.

The two students took an American studies course in the spring, “Community in America,” which focused on oral history/audio/mapping work in Station North. The class was funded by a Hrabowski Innovation Grant. Droneburg and Goodrich continued working in Station North over the summer after the class ended. Below is a description on WYPR’s website about the documentary:

“At midnight on Thursday, July 30th, 2015, the final amps and drum kits were reluctantly lugged out of Station North’s longtime music rehearsal space, The Hour Haus. After 25 years as a music practice facility and performance venue, the building is being converted to office space. Audio producer Adam Droneburg and photographer Dan Goodrich spent the past few months chronicling the end of the Hour Haus era, collecting interviews and portraits of the building’s final musical residents.  Today, with a stroke of the clock and the change of a lock, their documentary work has become instant history.”

Listen to “The Last Days of the Hour Haus” on WYPR’s The Signal.

Editor’s note: Here at UMBC, our students are the heartbeat of campus, and we are committed to providing them the best possible education. We’re highlighting our amazing academic departments, some of their recent achievements, and ways that you can help fund their continued excellence.

Your gift is extremely important and many of our students are depending on you. Please show your support and make an impact today. With you we can make a difference.

The Interdisciplinary Studies Program (INDS) is proud to have celebrated its 45th Anniversary this past year with over 1,200 students to have graduated with INDS degrees. The department hopes to continue their success and impact on future students by providing more and more opportunities.

Your gift to the Interdisciplinary Studies Program will help us continue to support student research and travel, sending students to present their research at national conferences, and develop new courses and curricula for our students.

Together, alumni of INDS can make a big difference in the future of UMBC. Please show your Retriever pride today by making a gift.

Support INDS today!

Michele Wolff, Shriver Center, and Stephen Freeland, interdisciplinary studies, were featured in an article about UMBC’s new Summer Enrichment Experience in The Catonsville Times. The Summer Enrichment Experience (SEE) is a commuter day program through the Shriver Center which offers academic courses for middle and high school students.

Wolff shared her goals for the program, saying, “The idea is to give the middle and high school students the opportunity to be on a college campus, but also the opportunity to have an interesting and exciting way to learn about the sciences or arts and humanities based content.”

Freeland, who will teach “Cosmos on Campus” at SEE, described the importance of exposing middle and high school students to a different way of learning science. “We teach them that science is about the steady accumulation of facts and that has no resemblance to what an actual scientist does,” he said. “That completely underestimates the creativity, the role of hypothesis testing- the whole point is investigating what we don’t know, not what we do know.” Instead, Freeland has designed his course to enable students to “ask important questions in a way that gives reliable answers.”

SEE will run from July 13- August 7. Registration is open and there is a discount available for UMBC faculty, staff and alumni. Visit see.umbc.edu to learn more.

UMBC is always full of hard-working people who aspire to do great things, and the class of 2014 is no exception. Today, we wanted to share with you what some of our recent graduates are planning to do with their Retriever education.

For seven of her eight semesters at UMBC, Kat Schuster, theatre, dedicated her time to the costume shop on campus. A Linehan Artist Scholar, she has been recognized by the theatre department, local theatre companies and their audiences. While aiding younger students through UMBC Residential Life and the Wilde Lake High School Theatre Department, Schuster was awarded the Outstanding Departmental Service Award along with the Linehan Summer Award. She now plans to work in theatre administration and technician and costuming positions at Daydreams and Nightmares Aerial Theatre, Historical designs, and the Jim Rouse Theatre.

Mary Hester, dance and interdisciplinary studies, used her love of dance and advocacy to serve as president of the Dance Council of Majors, receive the Linehan Summer Research and Study Award, and perform at the American College Dance Festival. Her project “Arts Advocacy: Promoting Policy Change,” analyzed “the benefits of dance lessons and the political implications for arts education.” She now plans to complete an M.P.P. at UMBC.

A campus leader and driven student, Kwadwo “Kojo” Owusu-Boaitey, philosophy and biological sciences, was a Meyerhoff Scholar, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Undergraduate Scholar, and Salutatorian for the Class of 2014. He was greatly involved as a member of the club soccer team, president of the Meyerhoff Scholars, co-founder and treasurer of the Minority Association of Premedical Students, and vice president of Philosophers Anonymous. Owusu-Boaitey has completed breast cancer research at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, has done research at MIT labs for two summers, and is now contributing to a research manuscript. He plans to earn his M.D./Ph.D. from Harvard and MIT after graduation.

Miss Baltimore 2014, Miss Maryland 2013 runner-up, and winner of two Miss America Academic Awards, Samantha Hawkins, cultural anthropology and interdisciplinary studies, visual research methodology, was a member of the Honors College and received the Undergraduate Research Award. She has volunteered weekly at St. Francis Neighborhood Center, was a goodwill ambassador for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals, and interned at Maryland State Arts Council and the Smithsonian Institution’s Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Hawkins plans to earn her Ph.D. in socioanthropology with a fully-funded fellowship at Harvard University.

Learn more about the Class of 2014!

It’s almost two weeks till Christmas, and Chief Ike’s Mambo Room in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of D.C. has hung up its stockings.

There are loads of them—maybe two dozen, dangling out of arm’s reach above the cluttered bar and along an opposite wall. Each bears a name – Doug, Angela, D-Rok, Baby G – painted in glitter glue.

I ask the bar’s white-bearded owner, Allan Jirikowic ’77, interdisciplinary studies, (who has probably withstood his share of Santa Claus comparisons) about the stockings, but he would rather talk about a mural – one of many – he’s commissioned for the D.C. dive bar he’s owned for 23 years.

“You have Marion Barry riding on the Lion of Judah, next to Fidel Castro with Nixon and Elvis,” Jirikowic says, gesturing toward the painting’s characters. “And over there, Nikita Khrushchev.”

Jirikowic grew up in Silver Spring and enrolled at UMBC in 1972. He studied under Herbert Blau, the forward-thinking theater director who led the university’s arts and humanities division from 1974 to 1978.  “I was about to drop out,” he says, until Blau came aboard and shook things up for him.

When Jirikowic graduated in 1976, he still didn’t know what to do. “I was in a complete quandary,” he says, chuckling. But eventually he drifted back down to the District, where as a bar owner, actor, gadfly and Falstaffian bon viveur, Jirikowic has helped build numerous institutions that have jostled the culture of the often-stodgy federal city. He has also gotten a lot of people drunk.

With his friend Bill Warrell, Jirikowic helped launch and manage the influential downtown art hub d.c. space in a part of the city still shell-shocked after the 1968 riots. The venue brought hundreds of shows to D.C., including an early performance by Laurie Anderson. But after several years at dc space, he began to wonder what was next.

So Jirikowic bartended elsewhere. Couriered. At one point, he even appraised houses. He loathed that, mostly, but it helped him understand certain cold facts of life. “It gave me an immense education about how this country really works,” he says.

In 1988, Jirikowic threw his weight behind a new enterprise: a rooftop bar in Adams Morgan that he called Krakatoa Lounge. A Washington Post feature observed that Krakatoa resembled “a high school gym that’s been decorated for a very ‘80s dance.” The bar was a success – Jirikowic guesses he sold more than 6,000 daiquiris in one season – but a short-lived one.

Subsequently Jirikowic launched more watering holes: the landmark Adams Morgan bar, Hell, and a fiesta-themed joint called Rancho Deluxe. He also made himself a fixture on local stages as an actor, involving himself in scrappy theater organizations such as Studio Theatre and the Capital Fringe Festival, which have become major forces in the D.C. arts scene.

On the cusp of the 1990s, Jirikowic leased a building on the 1700 block of Columbia Road NW, and transformed it and an abutting property into three conceptual bars: Chaos, Pandemonium, and later, Chief Ike’s, which is named after former President Eisenhower. He decorated them lavishly, some of his decor salvaged from junk yards or simply found around town. The tacky Chief Ike’s and its two upstairs bars draw a loyal (and perpetually under-35) customer base.

Often to the chagrin of his neighbors, Jirikowic has become a fierce protector of Adams Morgan bacchanalia. He favors life, liberty, art, and dance, and the business that comes with them. He’s a member of the board of the neighborhood’s business improvement district and also heads up his local citizens’ association.

“I have to be politically active to protect the interests of the right to party, for art, for the joie de vivre of the neighborhood,” he says.

After a motley career spent as the life of D.C’s art scene and its party, Jirikowic sometimes wonders if he should have done something more conventional.

“You know it’s kind of funny,” Jirikowic says. “You just do what you do, and then all of a sudden it’s what you’ve done.”

– Ally Schweitzer

Most scientist accept the RNA world hypothesis, which states that RNA was the first biological molecule due to its ability to copy itself and pass along genetic traits. However, Nicholas Hud, a chemist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, wasn’t convinced.

A recent article in WIRED, courtesy of Quanta Magazine, discusses Hud’s experiment with the building blocks of RNA. The experiment made a breakthrough with the discovery of a chemical recipe that points to the existence of a molecule that might pre-date RNA.

Quanta interviewed Stephen Freeland, director of UMBC’s interdiscipinary studies program, for the article. “In my opinion, nothing like this has been seen before,” Dr. Freeland said, before going on to say that the experiment leads to conceptual progress, even if it did not use the exact components of the unknown molecule.

Read the entire article at WIRED.com.

Based on his experiences studying and researching abroad in Morocco during the 2011-2012 academic year, Interdisciplinary Studies major Asif Majid ’13 published his first book at the end of the summer.

Written in two parts, This Moroccan Life pairs an original Brechtian play providing social commentary on Morocco with an extended analysis that connects the play to the academic research and personal experiences that influenced the writing of the play. Taken together, the two parts address issues related to Morocco including migration, transnational identity, human rights, gender, harassment, and the Arab Spring.

Supported by two Undergraduate Research Awards, Majid aims to produce the play on campus in concert with URCAD 2013. Paperback copies of the work can be purchased by clicking here while hardcover copies can be purchased by clicking here. Any inquiries should be addressed to publishers Bisaouraha Books at bisaourahabooks@gmail.com.