Meet Jennifer Herson ’99, interdisciplinary studies. Jen is an executive at Data Canopy, a data center and cloud company, and the current Vice President of Operations of the UMBC Alumni Association Board of Directors. As a board member, Jen believes deeply in the mission of UMBC and the sense of community and belonging this institution fosters. She helps perpetuate these values through her work on the board and as a donor. Take it away, Jen!

Q: What’s the one thing you’d want someone who hasn’t joined the UMBC community to know about the support you find here?

A: Everyone can find their people here. I wasn’t a traditional student and I didn’t choose a science-focused major, but UMBC was the absolute best choice for me as it allowed me to customize my experience and find what worked for me so that I had the confidence to follow the path that worked for me. 

Q: What’s one essential thing you’d want another Retriever to know about you?

A: My area of study was interdisciplinary studies with a focus on visual arts, English, and modern language and linguistics. In my role as an executive at Data Canopy, a data center and cloud company, I have touched everything from operations and finance to marketing. I actually use (and have always used) my degree daily. I’m a mom to a ten-year-old, an avid concert-goer/music enthusiast, and, when I’m not cheering on my son at hockey, I like to root for the Baltimore Orioles or Washington Capitals. 

Q: What’s your favorite part of being a part of Retriever Nation?

A: Being a part of Retriever Nation is a point of pride. We’re not just a little school from Baltimore County, we’re a community of people with a similar dedication to excellence–and it’s evident everywhere you see us. 

Q: What drives you to support the Alumni Endowed Scholarship Fund?

A: I love to support the Alumni Endowed Scholarship Fund. As someone who worked their way through college, the mission of that fund is near and dear to my heart. I know that the donations I make will be put to good use by a student in need. 

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UMBC’s greatest strength is its people. When people meet Retrievers and hear about the passion they bring, the relationships they create, the ways they support each other, and the commitment they have to inclusive excellence, they truly get a sense of our community. That’s what “Meet a Retriever” is all about.

Learn more about how UMBC can help you achieve your goals.

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Kinetic Trailer from Zachary Garmoe on Vimeo.

Last year, a group of UMBC students and alumni combined their expertise in engineering, art, and design to build the Kraken Upcycle, a plastic behemoth on wheels that took home the grand prize in Baltimore’s Kinetic Sculpture Race. (We wrote about them last summer at UMBC Magazine, and you can take a peek here.)

The next step in their incredible journey is the Kinetic Grand Championship in Arcata, California, this May…and they need your help to get there.

When you give to UMBC’s Kinetic Sculpture Race team, you’re not just supporting this one project — you’re helping UMBC build its reputation as a hub for innovative undergraduate teaching, where project-based collaborative learning leads to great achievements and great discoveries.

You’ll also help fund graduate teaching assistantships for the INDS 430 course, called “The Upcycle,” where students will pool their talents to design and build sustainable installations for events like the KSR, Artscape, and Light City.

Make your gift today at our GiveCorps site!

Every so often, we shine a spotlight on alumni who have made the news recently, in Baltimore and beyond. Today, we’re featuring two alums who are making an impact through creative expression, whether through storytelling or visual art.

Asif Majid ’13, interdisciplinary studies, former class valedictorian and current instructor at UMBC, will relay his tale of getting lost on a pilgrimage to Mecca at the February 10 Stoop Storytelling event at the Senator Theatre in Baltimore. Stoop Storytelling is now in its 10th year, and was created to “foster empathy and build a community” in Baltimore, both by empowering citizens to tell their own unique stories and give audiences a different perspective on other people’s lives.

John Alexander ’98, visual arts, has mounted a solo photography exhibit at the Savannah (Ga.) Jewish Educational Alliance art gallery called “Connecting with Nature.” As an artist, Alexander is inspired by Claude Monet, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Mary Cassatt, and says that being out in nature is his “great escape.” The Columbia native has established himself as a wedding, portrait, and commercial photographer since graduating from UMBC.

Got news to share with us? Send in a class note!

Here at UMBC, we honor our recent graduates’ accomplishments and look forward to seeing their education and experience continue to grow. We would like to take the time to meet a few of our newest alumni and discover what the future has in store for the Class of 2015.

Anna Johnson ’15, Ph.D., Geography and Environmental Systems has combined her love of gardening with her research interests to have a lasting impact through improving Baltimore’s urban environment and serving an important–and often overlooked—population. As an active participant in the Maryland Green Prisons Initiative, Anna worked with inmates at the Maryland Correctional Institution for Women to understand how different plants interact with weeds in vacant lots to improve urban ecology. She has received significant recognition and support for her work as an NSF IGERT Trainee through the UMBC Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education and as a Phipps Botany-in-Action Fellow. She received a Maryland Native Plant Society Research Grant award and served as the Baltimore Ecosystem Study graduate student representative. During her two-year NSF post-doctoral fellowship in biology, she will use herbarium specimens to reconstruct historic plant-pollinator interaction networks, mentored by Dr. Tia-Lynn Ashman at the University of Pittsburgh.

Andres Camacho ’15, B.A., Entrepreneurship and Digital Communication in Interdisciplinary Studies,  is a two-time winner of the Alex Brown Center for Entrepreneurship Idea Competition, Shattuck Family Entrepreneurial Fellow, and was a finalist in the 2015 Cangialosi Business Innovation Competition. For UMBC’s 2012 Idea Competition, he and his collaborators won the top award for Banana Bones, a campus wayfinding mobile app they developed and later sold to Tecore Networks. The team donated a portion of the revenue to help build UMBC’s Entre-space, which is specifically designated to support students as they develop skills in entrepreneurship. For the 2014 Idea Competition, he pitched True Greens, which empowers students to shape their own campus food system. Andres was also the recipient of the 2014 Joseph and Frieda Faiman Eisenberg/VPC Endowed Scholarship.

Kelsey Donnellan ’15, B.A., Interdisciplinary Studies (Community Health and Nutrition), is a McNair Scholar who has received two BreakingGround grants to launch and extend community initiatives with impact. One supported a seed saving effort in The Garden at UMBC, a community learning space that Kelsey co-founded, where she has served as director of academics. The other grant supported a cooking class with the SUCCESS program that serves young adults with intellectual disabilities. In 2014, Kelsey was also awarded an Undergraduate Research Award to study vegetable and fruit consumption of UMBC students, and co-wrote a winning proposal for the Prove It! competition. She was also selected as UMBC’s nominee for the nationally prestigious Truman Scholarship. This year she has been honored as a Shattuck Family Scholarship recipient and received the Mary Jo Kleiner Award for Outstanding Service to Interdisciplinary Studies. Kelsey has also supported and mentored students as a resident assistant at Harbor Hall and the Walker Avenue Apartments.

Meet more of our newest alums!

Every so often, we’ll chat with an alum about what they do and how they got there. Today we’re talking with Theresa Columbus, about her work a creator of the feature-length film “Chaza Show Choir,” a musical comedy about a high-school show choir’s journey to Europe. The film was screened April 29th at the Charles Theatre in Baltimore.

Name: Theresa Columbus
Major: Interdisciplinary Studies
Grad Year: 2011

Q: Where did you first come up with the idea for “Chaza Show Choir”?

I had been writing and directing lots of short plays in Milwaukee, and my partner, Didier Leplae, was interested in collaborating on a longer piece that would have an orchestra, since he wrote music. I tried to explain that I really wanted to include a funny flavor that had to do with being in a show choir in high school and being a theater person in high school. I described a show choir I was in that traveled to Germany, and someone suggested it should be about a show choir that ends up in Germany.

Q: Can you tell me more about when you were introduced to musical theatre and how it has impacted you?

Musical theater was a joyful experience for me in high school. I could not wait to get to high school and jump into these activities which seemed so electric and full of life. My first theatrical experience in high school was not a musical: my sister was an incredible actor and had just gotten back from an intensive theater experience over the summer. She then directed a play that consisted of about 10 people–including me–wearing jeans and black turtlenecks, saying monologues created by young writers and doing movement pieces. The hours of theatrical exercises and movement and communication was so new and thrilling to me. The one performance of the play, “Insights,” was one of the most intense experiences of my teenage years. That happened within the first few months of my attending high school!

Q: What is your favorite musical?

My favorite musical… I don’t know. I’ve been working on collaborating on performance with kids and I just watched one of my roommate’s (Jake Budenz) favorite musicals of all time: The Phantom Tollbooth. It’s animated, full of wordplay, and is the best musical I’ve seen in a long time. We hope to cover one of the songs in a performance piece soon!

Q: Do you have any other projects in the works?

Yes! I’m working with my partner Aaron Smith on a participatory theater stage that will be part of “Lazy River,” an area of Artscape. I will write short pre-recorded plays that festival attendees may act out with us, and they may be able to compose their own, record them, and act out amplified versions of them! We’re still working out the kinks. Also, I am collaborating with 5 performers, as well as musicians and visual artists, to create public theater based on ideas of stages of life, in a project called “Sphinx & Co.” Also, I am in a group art show/performance that will take place in October in Milwaukee entitled “Distance.” It is a yearlong project where I and 3 artists in different locations around the USA are collaborating on text and visual exquisite corpses, as well as portraits taken at dawn and a performance based on concepts of distance.

Q: If you could meet one person in the world who would it be and why?

If I could meet a person in the world I think it would be Laurie Anderson. Listening to her recordings where she tells stories and sings, you can tell she would be an incredible person to talk to. She’s inspired so much good art in this world. She has carved a life doing performance art that I find fascinating.

Q: Looking back on your time at UMBC, tell us what you think makes this place so special.

Preminda Jacob, Lisa Moren, Temple Crocker, Steven McAlpine, Fred Worden, James Mahoney, Mark Durant, Steve Bradley, Kathy O’Dell . . . there are so many teachers, advisors and role models that I felt so fortunate to have access to! Many of these teachers were open to and encouraged discussion outside of class… there are so many gems at UMBC, that’s what makes it special. And though I didn’t meet with him, I have so much respect for the school’s president: Freeman Hrabowski. My most memorable experience at UMBC was walking and talking with Preminda Jacob, noticing the beauty of the decorative grasses on campus, after an art history class that she taught with unbridled enthusiasm.

Learn more about Theresa’s work.  

Here at UMBC, we take pride in what our alums accomplish after graduation. Take a moment to see which Retrievers have been on the move and making news!

Caitlin Chance ‘14, psychology, recently accepted a position as assistant softball coach on the Shorewomen’s staff at Washington College. During her time at UMBC, she was a four-year starter for second base. Chance also played in the 2011 and 2014 America East Championships and was team co-captain her junior and senior years. Read more.

With the release of the iPhone 6, Stephan Sherman ‘00, M8, interdisciplinary studies, presented at an Apple iPhone Keynote about his company’s VainGlory game that will run on the iPhone 6. Sherman is co-founder and CCO of Super Evil Megacorp, a game company, and he discussed how the multiplayer game will be taking advantage of the larger screen and quicker processors of the iPhone 6. Watch the keynote.

With only 222 fire officers worldwide, Robert Frampton ‘14 M.S., emergency health services, is the first in Maryland to receive the “fire officer” credential from the Center for Public Safety Excellence. Frampton has been working at the Salisbury Fire Department since 1999 and with this new title, he will have the ability to contribute to a forum to improve the Salisbury department and other departments across the country. This new position took him three months to complete, along with a peer review and a secondary application which must be completed every three years for him to remain the fire officer. Read the full article.

Stephen Morgan ’72, psychology, is one of The Daily Record’s Most Admired CEOs for his work with The Arc Baltimore. His company fits under the category of nonprofit with more than $10 million in annual revenue. The Arc Baltimore provides support to individuals and their families with disabilities. See the complete list of winners.

Have a story of your own to share? Submit a class note.