The challenges of building a human-powered amphibious sculpture include working with nary a blueprint in sight, avoiding flying sparks from your professor’s power tools, returning to the theatre department’s dumpster again and again seeking out items to upcycle into an ever-changing design, and—oh yeah—not sinking in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor when all is said and done.

By Randianne Leyshon ’09
Race day photos by Poulomi Banerjee ’16, all other images by Marlayna Demond ’11, unless otherwise noted.

A dismembered hammerhead shark takes up most of the office space.

Professor Steven McAlpine proudly holds up the dorsal fin and other grey body parts to demonstrate the ingenuity of his student team, which plans to work with the specimen in piecemeal. “It’s like a pile of sushi in here,” laughs McAlpine.

Previously on display in the National Aquarium and then donated for this project, the “shark” in question has skin made of plastic bags from Lowes, melted together to form the exterior of this beast of recycled materials. McAlpine and his students are giving the shark a second life by building it a three-tricycle chassis, complete with pontoons and three pilots to careen 14 miles through the streets of Baltimore—including a stint in the harbor—to compete in Baltimore’s 21st annual Kinetic Sculpture race.

This—in all its fishy, gear-filled glory—is what interdisciplinary learning looks like at UMBC.

Creating jaws from scratch

Working outside under the Fine Arts portico this spring, with a portable speaker blasting “Can’t Touch This,” in homage to the class’s name for their project—MC Hammerhead, the students are engaged in a variety of hands-on tasks: creating a skeleton of two-by-fours to hold up the shark’s wire mesh head and sawing jagged teeth from fiberboard from the theatre’s trash to fill its mouth with double rows.

Two of the three teal trikes sit nearby, connected by a homemade metal apparatus, and with pontoons made of old recycling containers welded on. In December, the team tested out the pontoons’ effectiveness in UMBC’s Pig Pen Pond. As the test pilot (in swimming trunks) prepared to sink or float, Cody Thomas ’19, mechanical engineering, described watching his classmate go down into the water with “hopeful pessimism.”

“I was like, ‘okay, we’ve done the math and we definitely have the right volume in these pontoons’ and then he hit the water. The wheels broke through the ice and then the pontoons sat there and I thought, ‘wow, this is working really, really well.’”

Not all, but many of the students’ ad hoc solutions would turn out to work really well. To demonstrate the biomimicry of the structure, Lucas McCullum ’19, mechanical engineering, and Lorraine Dell’Acqua ’19, psychology, two students in McAlpine’s class, jump on the swivel-combined tricycles and pedal around campus, the second rider’s direction depending on the steering of the first. The effect is successfully serpentine.

McAlpine says the students identified the design challenge and decided to tackle it head on. “They really get fundamentally why it’s important to take time to design. Design means really coming up with a product that’s appropriate for the context…so if it’s a shark, you want it to have that kind of dynamic fish movement, to move differently from anything we’ve built before. So I credit the capstone team for having the courage to see that like a very generally defined engineering problem: ‘We want it to move like a fish.’”

There’s no textbook for this

This spring marks UMBC’s fifth entry into this wacky, very Baltimore race, and UMBC’s second structure (the first was the squid-shaped Kracken Upcycle, which won Grand Mediocre East Coast Championship in 2015). With detailed rules down to the required homemade sock creature that must be displayed on board, the funky race is the perfect platform for art and engineering to meld together, or in this case, literally weld together.

It’s a project, McAlpine says, that fits perfectly into the UMBC ethos.

“I’ve never before encountered this kind of cross-disciplinary problem-solving,” explains McAlpine, “when actually your strengths in another area can help you tackle the problem in a new way.” The interdisciplinary studies seminar guided by McAlpine also includes a consulting team of mechanical engineering students completing their capstone project under the guidance of Neil Rothman in the College of Engineering and Information Technology. The interplay between the two groups has refined the shark into a well-engineered piece of art.

When a steering or hitch issue stumps the engineers, it’s the psychology and political science students in the class who start doodling on the whiteboard, using their non-traditional sets of knowledge to work out the kinks. “UMBC students allow students of other majors to solve problems for them,” adds McAlpine.

There’s no pre-existing manual for how to create such a beast, so McAlpine and his team of students are learning from the successes and failures of their original Kraken sculpture, which survived in various iterations to run four kinetic sculpture races previously and is currently living out its retirement in front of Fine Arts. They’ve also sought guidance from Arbutus Middle School’s long-standing kinetic sculpture team, as well as from the UMBC Baja design lab, a racing club on campus.

“I was really excited that we were working with an interdisciplinary team,” says Alliana Warner ’19, one of the mechanical engineering capstone consultants. “We provided a lot of mentorship, which I don’t think we expected to do at first.”

“Like our mechanical side, we can do that,” says David Thompson ’19, another of the capstone students. “But we have to connect their art to our mechanical side. So we had to have a lot of communication.” And when their vocabularies didn’t overlap, they turned to art to convey their ideas.

“It was just like a no-barriers way of communicating when everybody picked up the markers and started drawing on the board, and it was cool to see the whole class have their own ideas that they were sketching from stick figures to really elaborate art majors just making these beautiful drawings,” Thompson explains.

The end result of their collaboration is a 20-foot, seven-wheeled, 1,000 pound (with three human pilots on board) upcycled kinetic sculpture that would hopefully mimic the undulating sashay of a shark as they pedaled it through the city.

Quality design on a budget

The challenges of building a human-powered amphibious sculpture that is safe to drive but also stands out in a field that includes local favorites like Tick Tock the Croc, Cowsmic Moobeams, and Platypus Lost is textbook Individualized Study course material. (In fact, the textbook they used was Cradle to Cradle. Remaking the Way We Make Things, an interdisciplinary collaboration between a chemist and an architect.)

McAlpine added to the already complicated rules for entry an additional goal of using 80% upcycled materials, raiding the theater department’s trash after productions and going to facilities management to scrounge for pontoon-like barrels.

Using upcycled materials created additional challenges for the capstone consultants. “We would come up with what we thought was the most sound design,” says Thomas. The class would then push back on their prototypes, asking them to find a cheaper or more sustainable solution. “And we’d be thinking to ourselves, oh, like now I have to use not the best materials but still create something that’s just as quality in design.”

One hurdle was the ball-and-socket hitch that the mechanical engineering students proposed to connect the trikes. After looking at the price and weight of the hitches they’d need, the individualized study students balked. As they sat on their swivel chairs thinking, the motions inspired a new idea.

After some prototyping, the capstone students were able to take the swivel from barstool-like chairs and play with the orientation on the sculpture to make it work as a replacement for their original idea. “I think it made us more proud of it at the end,” adds Brianna Scarpulla ’19, the fourth member of the mechanical engineering group, “by doing something different than what we were going to do.”

Race day dawns

On May 4, MC Hammerhead and 23 other creations lined up to compete in the American Visionary Arts Museum’s Kinetic Sculpture Race. The UMBC pilots and their pit crew gathered all their necessary provisions, including water bottles, life vests, and granola bars. And even though the engineers triple-checked their calculations and crowd sourced their prototypes, they still cross their fingers.

Their gear is tested from the very start. After the gun and a Le Mans-style running start, the human-powered sculptures make their way up Battery Avenue in Federal Hill Park. This daunting climb sets the tone of the race as many other obstacles lay in MC Hammerhead’s way—including cobblestones, water entry and exit, a sand pile, and a mud pit—before the team’s anticipated conclusion six hours later.

Early into the race on Key Highway, MC Hammerhead’s tail fell off, but this was nothing a roll of duct tape couldn’t fix as the team waited for their turn to enter the water. Going into the Chesapeake Bay at full speed blasting “Can’t Touch This” really hyped up the onlookers, but McAlpine held his breath. “I was expecting pontoons to break off,” says McAlpine. “But it was so well engineered. It made a big splash and kind of accordioned, but it was designed to be flexible, so it was fine.”

When the shark emerged from the water, the “kinetic kops” tried to slap the team with several time penalties, but the threats were quickly resolved by some lemon-flavored shark cookies made by McAlpine’s 12-year-old daughter, Lily. Graft is not only encouraged at the race, but there’s even a prize for best bribe.

Through “mysterious mathematical means,” as the race rules nebulously explain, MC Hammerhead came away in 14th place, and while the production is not about the medals, McAlpine didn’t see a single sculpture make it through the mud and sand as well as UMBC’s.

“The shark was light and fast, which attests to Neil Rothman’s engineering capstone class—they really engineered a strong and light pontoon system,” says McAlpine. “Because that’s really something that keeps me up at night: Are they going to capsize? And they didn’t do that even at full speed.”

Looking back on the experience, even the hectic last two weeks before the big day, McAlpine only sees the success of his students. “Probably the biggest interdisciplinary challenge is that you have to take a sculpture that’s meant to be static—not moving and bouncing around—and make that sculpture strong enough to have enough integrity to survive constant vibration for 14 miles of potholes and cobblestones. Given that, I thought the sculpture did remarkably well…the combination of engineering and art was a real crowd pleaser.”

*****

Header image by Poulomi Banerjee ’16.

UMBC Magazine‘s longtime photographer Marlayna Demond ’11 is used to going to great lengths to get her shot. A former Linehan Scholar, she climbs on tables and ladders to achieve the right angle. She waits quietly in the cold for the right moment to snap the shutter. (Here’s one example of that.) She takes hundreds—and sometimes thousands—of photos to get the one perfect for print. And who even knows how many squirrel portraits she’s captured over the years, simply because we asked? In short: she’s a true team player.

So, when we decided to write a feature on UMBC’s award-winning swimming and diving team, the obvious first question was: “How do we safely get Marlayna (and her camera) under water?” (Read the full story here.)

In addition to the challenges of using electronics in and around the waters of the UMBC Natatorium, we also wanted to make sure Marlayna could breathe easily and have as much range of motion underwater as she would on land. Over the course of a month and a half, our team tested out lighting and camera solutions with the guinea pigs—ahem, wonderful student athletes—on the swimming and diving squads. Marlayna borrowed a “dry suit” that allowed her to float and move somewhat gracefully in the water. Some ideas worked right away, others didn’t. In the end, it was a win-win: Marlayna got what she wanted and no one got electrocuted.

Here’s Marlayna’s take:  “When we started planning for this feature, the biggest challenge was how to get the underwater photos safely—both for my safety, and for my equipment’s! After searching a bit, the best solution was to use an underwater camera and a borrowed dry suit (it’s like a wet suit, but can also keep air trapped inside making floating much easier!). With the addition of a scuba mask and breathing tube, I hopped in the water for our test round photo shoot (looking absolutely ridiculous) and quickly found that my nervousness about photographing in such an unusual environment floated away, and my love of being in the water kicked in instead! The shoot day itself had lighting and timing obstacles to figure out, but all in all, the swimmers were fantastic and patient, and this was one of the most fun photo shoots I’ve gotten to be a part of here!”

We’re grateful to UMBC’s swimmers and divers and Coach Chad Cradock ’97 and his team for giving us the time and space to explore these new depths of photography with them. And we hope you enjoy these behind-the-scene peeks of our time in the water.

— Jenny O’Grady, Editor

Getting ready to jump in! With Candace Cage, designer.

Marlayna enjoying her time in the “dry suit.”

Marlayna waited in the water to capture Elijah Wright’s dive in slow motion.

Did we mention how amazing the student athletes were?

Testing out shot ideas with art director Jim Lord ’99 and designer Candace Cage.

* * * *

Read the full story: The Best Team You’ve Never Heard Of

Header image: There’s a strong possibility they’re cheering because it’s the final shot of the day.

Karyn Swann ’92, sociology, never imagined that her daughter, Lyric, would attend UMBC, let alone follow in her basketball-shoe footsteps. And Lyric had no idea when she was cheering at the Homecoming games and attending UMBC Nike Basketball Camp in 8th grade that she would one day leave her own legacy on the same court.

Lyric, who signed with UMBC in December 2018, began playing basketball when she was eight after Swann put her in a clinic with her twin sister. She will start playing in the fall.

“It was my UMBC teammate, Angel, who told me about a clinic that she was putting her daughter in, and she suggested I put my twins in” says Swann. “I was hands-off. I never dreamed that I was going to be coaching her. Two years after being in the clinic, she joined a league, and I’ve been coaching her ever since.”

Both Lyric and her mother are left-handed, so Swann’s coaching was key. Lyric quickly became an outstanding athlete, playing both basketball and soccer. After she was named Most Valuable Player at the UMBC Nike Basketball Camp, recruiters started taking note.

“Her sophomore year going into last year, she had a phenomenal summer. So [UMBC] said, ‘Oh gosh, we have got to get this girl before these top top programs get her. The tournament wasn’t even over and they wanted to schedule a visit with her. That’s when it was first surreal, like she could really go here,” says Swann.

Can we put this on our fridge? #RetrieverNation https://t.co/uXyCOk0TOV

— UMBC (@UMBC) June 14, 2019

Currently finishing her senior year at Long Reach High School, Lyric is the top point guard in the area and was the 2017 – 18 Howard County Player of the Year. When it came to making a decision, she had to pick between many schools recruiting her, including Yale.

“She’s a very prolific player. The coach here knows she could have played at a higher level. She realizes that academics are important, and there’s so much that UMBC has to offer in helping you beyond graduation,” says Swann.

When UMBC offered Lyric a full scholarship, she accepted it the same day.

“I was considering some other schools, but I felt like this one was the best fit for me because my mom went here and it’s close to home, and it’s like a home to me. Last year, I verbally committed to this school. This year, I did early signing,” says Lyric. “It was nice because it was a confirmation that I’m here and that my education is secured and my athletic career is secured, and I was just excited to go to college, you know?”

Swann, who wasn’t recruited, but became a walk-on-turned-scholarship athlete, remembers a very different UMBC, one that was much smaller, but one that she loved nonetheless. “I had so much fun when I was here. There were a lot of people from my high school here, so it felt really comfortable,” she says. “I loved going to the dining hall and going to some of the parties on Hilltop, and of course I spent a lot of time in the gym and running around the loop for conditioning.”

Incoming women’s basketball head coach Johnetta Hayes said she was thrilled to learn about Lyric well as her mother’s history with the team.

“Lyric will get a chance to create her own story, and I’m excited about that,” Hayes said. “I am thrilled to know she has passion for UMBC. This is home for her. It’s great for her family, and it’s great for UMBC, as well.”

Lyric already knew she wanted to stay in-state so that her mom could come to watch her play. “UMBC is a good school. I’m looking forward to going to an honors school. The people who go here are really smart and focused and they put their future first, as a priority for them. They’re trying to go places in life, and I’m excited to be surrounded by these people,” says Lyric.

She plans to major in graphic design. “I’m looking forward to playing here because basketball is my passion,” says Lyric. “I’m looking forward to making an impact here at UMBC and having fun doing it.”

*****

Header image courtesy of UMBC Athletics.

When a swimmer is good—really good—the sound of their stroke is smooth and quiet. The athlete plunges neatly into the water as if into another layer of air. Gentle ripples of movement belie the engine propelling it powerfully beneath the surface.

For years, the UMBC swimming and diving team has been quietly winning its way into university history. Since 1999, they have amassed 32 championship trophies, not to mention consistent accolades for athletic prowess and coaching. And they’ve done this largely without the fanfare received by more popular sports.

So, what’s the secret to this powerhouse squad’s success? What keeps them coming to the pool again and again?

It’s simple: They don’t do it for the splash.

By Jeff Seidel ’85

Beneath the surface

The UMBC men’s basketball team shocked many and generated a huge amount of publicity when they beat Virginia 74-54 in the first round of the NCAA basketball tournament in March 2018. By now, the story is well-known because it was the first time in the history of that tournament when a No. 16 seed beat a No. 1.

The basketball program and school received a deluge of publicity from all around the country after that. Places like the New York Times, Washington Post, and ESPN suddenly wanted to know not just what the letters “UMBC” meant, but everything about the basketball program and school. The attention seemed endless— and that was all for just one game.

The UMBC men’s and women’s swimming and diving programs have won plenty in their own right—even if most people don’t realize it. They swept the America East championships this past winter, claiming the 31st and 32nd titles for the Retrievers—26 of which have come since Chad Cradock ’97, psychology, became the head swimming and diving coach in 2001.

Those are staggering numbers, but since swimming gets less attention than basketball and other big college sports in this country, the men and women on this team know the score. Even Cradock understands the deal and shrugs it off. What can they do?

“It’s not seen as popular of a sport, and that’s the way America looks at it,” Cradock says. “If we were in Australia, swimming would be the number one. Even in Hungary, it’s very popular. It’s the most-watched sport in the Olympic Games.”

But every day, the swimmers and divers head to the pool anyway. And year after year, the program broadens its family of alumni. It’s a connection that goes far beyond the pennants and tailgating of other sports. It’s a culture all its own.

“We do it because we love it,” Cradock says.

The daily grind

What many don’t realize is the grind the Retrievers endure to find all of their success, Cradock says. This is a year-round gig for the coaches, who often arrive on campus at 6 a.m. and stay until 7:30 p.m., with six to eight more hours on Saturday, plus other work on Sunday.

The workouts are long and laborious. On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, they do weights from 6:15 to 7 a.m., then swimming drills, kicking technique, and recovery (7 to 7:45 a.m.). Later in the day, they work out on land (1:15 to 1:45 p.m.) and then it’s back in the pool from 1:45 to 3:45 p.m. On Tuesday and Thursday, practices stretch from 1:30 to 1:45 p.m., with a two-hour swim right after that. It all continues into Saturday, a fact the swimmers understand and accept. It’s all part of the game.

“We enjoy the sport…and we’re not doing it to be famous or anything,” says Hania Moro, a senior financial economics major from Egypt. Hania—who has fallen in love with bagels while at UMBC and wants to open a bagel store when she goes back to her home country—just set the school record in the 1650 free at the America East 2018 title meet. “We love to be here, and we love to be with each other, and we love to enjoy our time. This is about swimming.”

Elijah Wright , a diver from Baltimore, says the Retriever swimmers and divers put in the foundational hard work to find their success. For example, Wright wakes up at 5:30 a.m. Monday through Saturday and goes to practice from 6 to 8 a.m. from early September through February. Plus, he lifts weights on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.

The swimmers and divers work through a long and tough regimen all season to earn those championship banners, something they all take pride in.

“When you walk into the pool area, you see all the banners, and you would think that’s just decoration if you didn’t see all the hard work we put in each and every day,” Wright says.

Team as family

Cradock swam at UMBC from 1993 to 1997, lettering all four years and earning the Matt Skalsky Outstanding Scholar-Athlete award as a senior. He became head coach in 2001, bringing with him a philosophy that emphasized the coaches working with the student-athletes and not dictating to them.

Growing up at UMBC, so to speak, the team has become a second family for Cradock. Coaching with Cradock now are Chris Gibeau ’93, biological science; Nikola Trajkovic ’18, financial economics; and Elyse Gibson-Clegg ’06, sociology, along with diving coach Petar Trifonov, all of whom work to create an environment where the swimmers and divers feel at home and are comfortable throughout the daunting schedule swimming requires. That means team shout-outs on birthdays and creating spaces where athletes can talk with coaches on a regular basis about problems in swimming, classes, and life. These personal touches help draw the swimmers closer as a group.

For junior economics major Sotia Neophytou, who came to UMBC this year from Cyprus (a 30-hour trek to Catonsville), the family spirit shined especially bright around the holidays.

“I didn’t go home for Christmas, but Chad invited me to his house, and I spent an amazing Christmas there,” she says. “Chad is amazing, and he knows what he’s doing. I trust him so much. You need to communicate with your coach, and Chad and I have that.”

Cradock, who has three children of his own, certainly understands the parents’ feelings when they turn their swimmers over to him for four years. UMBC has about 65 swimmers total on this year’s championship teams, and it’s a very diverse group with athletes from around the globe.

And family membership doesn’t end at graduation. Many of Cradock’s swimmers stay in touch long after commencement, often giving back to the program as a way of showing their commitment.

David Miller ’96, economics, is now a corporate lawyer in New York. He swam with UMBC from 1993 to 1996 and still keeps in touch with some from the program, especially when he makes it back to campus. He also ran into other former Retriever swimmers recently at an event that UMBC hosted in New York City at the One World Observatory. Miller still holds the record for the 1,000-yard freestyle in the UMBC pool and was delighted to learn that the younger folks were aware of him.

“They knew who I was, and it was definitely really cool to know that after all these years, that I still hold some sort of presence there…I was still on the record books…so that sort of helped,” he says with a laugh.

Miller says that he remembers his swimming days at UMBC where there were just about a dozen swimmers on the team. There are now more than five times that many, but Cradock has worked to keep the big group close, as he believes that helps with the overall success of the teams.

“[Being a student athlete is] hard in general, but what I’ve tried to do have the swim team become part of my family so that nobody kind of resents each other,” Cradock says. “We treat them the way we would want our kids to be treated wherever they went.”

Olympic aspirations

Another thing that might surprise those new to the sport is the level of international competition the Retriever swimmers and divers engage in throughout the year—including the most watched competition of all, the Olympics.  

Neophytou swam for her home country at the Olympics in Rio three years ago and said it was an amazing experience. When she competed in the 100 butterfly on August 6—she still remembers the date—she said, with a smile, “my dad came to see me, [and when] I found him, he was still crying. I made him proud.”

Neophytou, the third Retriever to make the Olympics, said her UMBC teammates often pick her brain about what it was like to swim there, and getting that rare opportunity improved her self-confidence. That, combined with the transfer to UMBC and her respect for Cradock and his coaches, has made her a better swimmer.

“There’s a lot of respect out there for our program [world-wide],” Cradock said. “We are well-respected internationally. It took a lot of time.”

UMBC also has a chance for two others to earn spots in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Moro is trying to represent Egypt there while senior mechanical engineering major and Meyerhoff Scholar Alexander Gliese hopes to make it with Denmark, the country he was born in before growing up in nearby Howard County. Both are within range to qualify and will be spending plenty of time this year focusing on that goal.

Gliese is a two-time captain at UMBC and the Danish national record holder in the 200-meter backstroke. He also mentioned that the family atmosphere Cradock and his coaches created gives him help in many ways in and out of the pool.

“It motivates you every single day; you have somebody there who’s pushing you or you have somebody who’s there when you’re not having the greatest day,” Gliese said. “Somebody says ‘hey, it’s OK to have a bad day.’ I’m still [getting better]. I don’t know if I would have seen the same success or not [somewhere else].”

Making their mark

Cradock said one moment that they all enjoyed recently came after winning the America East championship and the team returned to campus. They were honored during a media timeout of a basketball game at the UMBC Event Center and received a large ovation from the crowd that night, something that the swimmers just loved.

It was a moment in the sun on their own campus, one that doesn’t happen often with this sport.

“We went up there to do our job and we did,” Cradock said. “The theme this year was Love It, Live It, Enjoy It, and we did just that.”

The Retrievers certainly did what they planned for when taking the men’s and women’s team titles in the February 2019 America East championships in Worcester, Massachusetts. Moro broke the school record in the 1650 freestyle and won a gold medal in that event. Gliese set a school and conference record for the 200 backstroke (1 minute, 42.56 seconds in a preliminary race) and later took home a gold medal in the event.

Moro also earned the Dave Alexander Coaches’ Award, for the senior who gets the most points during the meet. Gliese received the same honor on the men’s side and was named Most Outstanding Swimmer. He also broke the America East record in the 100 backstroke. Wright won gold in 1 meter and 3 meter dives and was named Most Outstanding Diver of the Meet, while Cradock and his coaches were named the men’s and women’s Coaching Staff of the Year.

Cradock and the team are enjoying their successes and the extra attention that comes with it.

“I think it has a lot of effect, and it starts with name recognition,” Cradock said. “It’s become a lot easier that we’re more respected in the athletic world because of what they did. It’s probably tripled in one year the amount of people that reached out to the swimming program. [UMBC was] the big story last year.”

The publicity that follows the athletic success of some teams, well, that’s for other sports. Building a solid environment to compete, that’s for this program, and it’s why they’ve been so successful.

“Sustained success is one of the most difficult things to accomplish on the Division I level,” said Tim Hall, director of athletics, physical education, and recreation. “This is what UMBC Swimming and Diving programs have achieved under the leadership of Chad and his staff. The student-athletes are wonderful representatives of the university and the alumni stay very connected. All of Retriever Nation should be extremely proud of this model program.”

*****

Header image by Marlayna Demond ’11.

WEB EXTRA: Our photographer, Marlayna Demond ’11, will do almost anything to get her shot — even submerse herself and her camera. Visit umbc.edu/swimming for a first-hand look at what it took to do our DIY underwater photo shoot.

This is what it looks like when researchers push beyond band-aid solutions and design better answers to pressing medical and mental-health issues.

The Patapsco Valley might not bring to mind the disruption of the technology industry the way Silicon Valley has defined itself, but UMBC student and faculty researchers are aggressively tackling disparities related to health care and changing the way people around the world access health technologies.

As a public university, UMBC’s scientific community is actively researching ways to alleviate public-health problems. In some labs this means changing the focus of research to address a more pressing medical issue, like Ph.D. student Mustafa Al-Adhami did when he veered away from studying water purification to address sepsis, a life-threatening condition that strikes over a million Americans each year.

Another example is UMBC faculty member Govind Rao, who feels a sense of urgency in addressing critical challenges that are impacting people’s quality of life. Rao, a professor of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering, and director of UMBC’s Center for Advanced Sensor Technology (CAST), sees UMBC students and professors using their skills and interests to make health technologies more equitable, more affordable, and more sustainable. A central focus of Rao’s collaborative work is creating health-care solutions that are not restrained by cost or geography, like an award-winning cardboard incubator his lab produced, accessible for communities with limited resources.

Rao refers to his research and the technologies he’s developed as “disruptive innovations,” and he’s not the only UMBC researcher who is working to help people change how they approach and access medical care. These developments offer novel solutions to challenges facing the world, and faculty and staff at UMBC are changing the way people receive medical care and support from medical providers.

“If I can empower students to think and come up with solutions that have a green footprint and are lower cost and sustainable, I think we can bend the curve,” explains Rao.

Treating sepsis with more accuracy

Mustafa Al-Adhami, M.S ’15, Ph.D. ’19, mechanical engineering, credits a conversation with his wife Stephanie Al-Adhami, a nurse, in changing the focus of his research. At the time Al-Adhami was working to develop a device to determine whether water was safe to consume, but after discovering devices on the market that could already filter most water to make it potable, he shifted his work to address another prevalent challenge that people around the world are facing. “We just pivoted from water to actual blood with this specific application,” he says.

Sepsis is a serious blood infection that, if not treated properly and promptly, can lead to serious complications and even death in mere days. Those at highest risk are the most vulnerable: infants, children, the elderly, and those already facing severe medical problems. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than one million people fight sepsis each year and about a quarter of these cases are fatal. Discouragingly, the number of sepsis cases each year is also on the rise. Al-Adhami and others are working to reverse the trend.

The challenge for physicians isn’t determining whether a person has sepsis, explains Al-Adhami, but rather identifying which antibiotics to administer to the patient. “With every one hour without proper treatment, there is a 7% less chance of survival,” he says.

Working with faculty and student researchers in CAST, Al-Adhami developed a rapid bacterial-detection test that can determine whether a patient has an infection within an hour and helps physicians determine which specific antibiotics should be administered to help fight the infection. Al-Adhami’s device, ASTEK, costs a fraction of the price of the current antibiotic susceptibility test, can reduce the duration of hospital stays, and can prevent antibiotic resistance by avoiding unnecessary antibiotic use.

In addition to its cost effectiveness, ASTEK only requires one milliliter of blood to be run. This is a breakthrough in detecting sepsis in young children. “For [traditional] blood cultures, they take four bottles of blood. Each one is eight milliliters,” explains Al-Adhami. “Because we don’t need this much blood, it could be used for newborns…the concentration of bacteria is much higher in infants.”

The device has successfully been tested in mice, and Al-Adhami hopes that it will be ready for human testing in the next couple of years. If the device is approved for human use, it has the potential to save thousands of patients each year by speeding up the process of diagnosing and administering the correct antibiotics.

Understanding behavior through social media analytics

According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, more than 130 people die from opioid-related overdoses each day, and there are over 14,000 substance abuse facilities across the U.S. that treat people facing these addictions. The opioid epidemic affects every region of the country, and those watching loved ones go through the cycle of substance abuse are seeking any new ways to halt this disease in its tracks.

Shimei Pan, assistant professor of information systems, is studying human behavior in the context of monitoring, preventing, and treating substance-abuse by analyzing how people with substance use disorders behave on social media. “On social media, there is a lot of information about each individual. Some are related to substance use, like drinking, smoking, and illicit drug use,” she says.

Pan and her collaborator Warren Bickel, a well-known behavior scientist at the Virginia Tech Addiction Treatment Center, are employing large-scale social media analytics to better understand addiction and help medical professionals provide personalized treatment to people facing addiction and substance abuse.

The clues Pan and Bickel are looking for in social media data are subtle, but have the potential to alter the way substance abuse is identified and subsequently treated. “Sometimes, people explicitly mention substance use in their social media posts,” she shares. “These are useful signals. But there are other signals in social media, sometimes even stronger than explicit mentions of substances. Substance abuse is frequently linked to mental disorders such as depression, anxiety and impulsivity. As a result, social media behavior signals related to depression, anxiety and impulsivity can also be very useful in helping us detect and understand substance abuse”

Since substance abuse could be explained by both genetic and environmental factors, with large-scale social media analytics it is possible to identify distinct patterns in its manifestation on social media, says Pan. “We want to see whether we can find those behavioral markers of addiction on social media. By identifying these markers, we can understand substance abuse a little bit better.”

Pan and her collaborators plan to continue conducting basic research, and hope to help develop new screening, diagnostic, and intervention tools in the future—another way of building a bridge to proper health care access for all.

Studying stigma and pain

Another UMBC faculty member studying human behavior is Shawn Bediako, associate professor of psychology, who focuses on the psychosocial impact of sickle cell disease. Bediako is using new technologies to assess sickle cell patients’ pain and experiences.

Previously, Bediako and his collaborators collected data using paper surveys that were sent to patients and required that patients mail them back each week. “We didn’t know when they filled [the surveys] out,” he says. “All we knew is that they would send us a packet back.”

The development of a new app-based tool, however, lessened the lag in survey responses. This new approach gives researchers a more accurate picture by providing data with integrity. Bediako explains that the app allows patients to submit their experiences directly and enables researchers like him to pose bold, new questions to patients. Each night at 7 p.m., the patients automatically receive a survey to fill out by midnight. The rapid turnaround and ease of completing the survey also “cut down on data contamination,” he says.

“Now that data analytics has expanded the range of online behaviors that we can examine, researchers like me can think about the links between health care and health outcomes in a different way,” Bediako explains.

Bediako, who is also the facilitator for UMBC’s Collaborative for the Interdisciplinary Promotion of Health Equity Research (CIPHER), hopes that his work bridges the gap between people who are doing research on sickle cell disease and people who are studying how innovative technologies can be utilized to help people with the disease. “I’m currently integrating information from history, policy, sociology, psychology, and medicine to better understand the genetics of sickle cell pain,” he says, adding this requires some “out-of-the-box type thinking.”

Like Pan, Bediako is interested in how people’s social media use differs depending on whether they are in pain versus not in pain. “Now that data analytics has expanded the range of online behaviors that we can examine, researchers like me can think about the links between health care and health outcomes in a different way,” he explains.

Supporting first responders

In a broad collaboration to understand how the stressful situations first responders encounter in their jobs can lead to anxiety and other mental health issues, UMBC faculty in emergency health services (EHS) and information systems are using existing technologies to tackle the task. Principal investigator Andrea Kleinsmith, assistant professor of information systems, is collaborating with J. Lee Jenkins, associate professor and chair of emergency health services; Helena Mentis, associate professor of information systems and associate dean in the College of Engineering and Information Technology; and Gary Williams, acting paramedic director in emergency health services.

Trainees and first responders on the job may experience an array of physiological responses when they are in a situation that is tense or challenging. UMBC students in their third and fourth years of the emergency health services program move through a series of often intense scenarios in the simulation lab in Sherman Hall to prepare them for a range of situations they may encounter on the job. Involuntary bodily reactions such as increased heart rates or perspiration are tracked by wearable devices, and allow the instructors and trainees the opportunity to assess and manage stress and improve the preparedness for future emergency scenarios. 

Working with student researchers, the faculty members design, develop, and evaluate the system to assess how discussions and intentional in-class reflections on stressful situations can help trainees implement stress management strategies during their work. The team is studying how a Team Stress Reflection system can be used by paramedic trainees to “understand the events that trigger stress increases and their ability to mitigate that stress,” according to the grant proposal. This technology allows the students to identify and better understand the correlations between stressful situations and their physiological responses.

Stress, explains Kleinsmith, can lead to errors during care and long-term health concerns for medical personnel, including emergency health professionals. Williams says that it’s important for students to debrief and reflect on the simulation to make sure that they can address any stressors or points that caused them to have strong physiological responses.

“The ability to monitor and manage stress in medical personnel has the potential to improve medical care provided in stressful situations,” explains Kleinsmith.

Understanding the physiological responses during training exercises is important for trainees, explains Williams, because it allows them to improve how they cope with stress in situations that they may encounter on the job. This research is being funded by a three-year grant from the National Science Foundation, which supports the faculty in collecting data from the EHS students and developing the interface to help the students come to their own conclusions about the correlation between physiological measurements and stress to understand their stress triggers. The interface also helps facilitate the team’s discussion about stress.

Motion sensors to inform treatment

Helena Mentis is also using activity trackers and other motion sensors to assess movement and inform treatment for patients with Parkinson’s disease. In collaboration with faculty at the University of Maryland Parkinson Disease and Movement Disorders Center, Mentis designed and developed a sensor using Leap Motion devices to track and assess the movement of patients with Parkinson’s disease during deep brain stimulation.

One observation that Mentis and her collaborators made was that the presentation of data collected from the sensors impacted how the data was interpreted and used to develop customized treatment plans for patients. In 2017, Mentis presented a paper at the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction Conference. The paper explains that the data collected by the patients’ activity trackers led to more informed conversations between the patient with Parkinson’s and their physician.

In a well-researched disease like Parkinson’s, there’s still always room for improvements in care and access to care. Researchers have been studying Parkinson’s disease and treatment options for people with Parkinson’s since the 1960s, but there is still work to be done. Every advancement leads to better outcomes and an increased quality of life for Parkinson’s patients. Mentis and her collaborators are now using self-tracking technologies to help physicians customize treatment plans and advocate for patients.

“Determining how sensor data can be incorporated in shared decision-making is fundamental to effective patient-centered care,” explains Mentis. “Even more so for low-resource and marginalized communities, where sensor data could easily be used by medical caregivers to argue for diagnoses or treatments that are based on assumptions and biases. The sensor data in itself does not embody truth and instead should be taken into account alongside a holistic understanding of the patient and their circumstances.”

Doing good through “disruptive innovations”

Through his work, Rao focuses on addressing critical challenges by answering the fundamental question: “How can we help them?”

“These are real lives, real people who are living in desperate conditions,” Rao says, noting that he aims to empower his students to think about how they can make positive changes through their work. Rao explains that his multidisciplinary approach to research has allowed him and his colleagues and students to make tremendous impacts related to health technology. CAST allows him to work with faculty and students from a range of disciplines, and he believes it is important for engineers, scientists, sociologists and psychologists, and policymakers to have a seat at the table, because each perspective is so valuable.

“Disruptive innovation” refers to technologies and other developments that offer novel solutions to challenges facing the world. Like Bediako and other colleagues at UMBC, Rao challenges his students to consider new approaches to addressing challenges and needs in the health technologies space.

While Rao leads this research, he is quick to point out that the collaborative nature of the work and the contributions of his students are crucial to its success. “It’s not about me,” he says. “I’m just privileged enough to have such an amazing team across several disciplines and backgrounds. It’s just a blast.”

With funding and support from federal agencies, including the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Rao has developed a bioreactor or “biomod” that fits inside a suitcase and allows pharmaceuticals to be produced on demand and with limited resources and time. The device was developed with soldiers in conflict zones in mind because it allows them to quickly create customized medicines to save lives based on the needs of the patient.

Additionally, Rao and his colleagues have developed low-cost incubators to support premature babies in communities with limited resources and in areas that do not have access to robust medical facilities. His research team was presented with the 2019 Global Health Research Award at the Pediatric Academic Societies Meeting in Baltimore.

The question “What have you done for others?” is the driving force behind Rao’s lab. He says that many of the health technologies that are currently available are only affordable to a small group of people, and are only helping the people who can afford them. “Just spending five to 10 minutes a day thinking about what they [students] can do with their skill set to improve the lives of others, that’s all it takes to change the world,” Rao says.

*****

All illustrations by Brucie Rosch.

In the aftermath of two “1000-year” floods in three years, can experts, officials, and residents agree on a way to prevent the next big one while preserving this historic town?

By Sarah Hansen M.S. ’15

Ellicott City, Maryland, rests in a steep, narrow valley at the confluence of the Tiber River, its smaller unnamed tributaries, and the much larger Patapsco River. All that water power made it the perfect place to build a mill town—as brothers Jonathan and George Ellicott did beginning in 1772.

The mill town flourished in the 1800s and was the first stop on the Baltimore and Ohio Main Line railroad (the first railroad in the United States) beginning in 1831. Housing and shops quickly sprang up along the winding street to service residents and visitors.

Today, Wilkins Rogers Mills still processes flours and cornmeal on the old site, and the B&O rail station at Ellicott City is the oldest surviving rail station in the United States. It was designated a National Historical Landmark in 1968, and the Main Street area, which retains over 200 historic buildings, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.

But while much has stayed the same, much has also changed since Ellicott Mills’ 19th-century heyday. Rather than workaday folk gathering sundries on Main Street, droves of tourists and preservation enthusiasts now stroll the charming byway to patronize boutique shops and cafés.

Or, they used to.

In 2016, and then, extraordinarily, again in the spring of 2018, Historic Ellicott City was ravaged by flash floods that trapped diners in restaurants’ upper stories, saw empty cars and trucks careening down Main Street, destroyed homes and businesses, left debris for miles downstream, and, in total, took three lives.

The events, both dubbed “1000-year floods” in the media, have left residents and business owners with the tough decision to stay or go. The Howard County government is faced with a dilemma, too: Ellicott City is a popular attraction and has been an economic powerhouse in the county for decades. But when storms come, as they inevitably do, it becomes very dangerous, very quickly.

The floods are changing

“Ellicott City was put there for a reason, to take advantage of water power,” says Andrew Miller, professor of geography and environmental systems. “Therefore, nobody should be surprised that water power is a potential hazard.”

Faculty in UMBC’s geography and environmental systems (GES) department have been studying the local watershed for years. Miller has a particular interest in the role floods play in shaping stream channels and the local ecosystem. Matthew Baker studies watershed ecology and has been deeply involved with the removal of a dam just downstream from Ellicott City. Jeffrey Halverson is a regular contributor to The Washington Post, where he explains the mechanics of regional storm systems for the general public.

Miller says the dam project and flooding studies provide unique opportunities to study aspects of stream ecology, such as sediment movement, from interesting angles. “It’s very rare to have a research project that falls into your lap that’s two miles from your office,” he says, “and to have multiple research projects within two miles of your office intersect with each other is even more unusual.”

Flooding in Ellicott City is nothing new. One of the worst floods was in 1972, when Hurricane Agnes caused the Patapsco River to overflow its banks by 14.5 feet and fill the lower end of Ellicott City’s Main Street. This was a flood “from the bottom up,” explains Halverson. Most of the town’s previous flooding events have happened in a similar fashion—a massive rainfall event deluges the entire region, and the river slowly rises until it can no longer contain the water. Crucially, residents have plenty of time to evacuate in these storms.

But the 2016 and 2018 floods were different. Rather than heavy rain everywhere over an extended period, forecasters predicted potentially devastating, shorter-term rainfall at a hyper-local level in both storms. “But there was never any attempt to localize the storm down to the county or sub-county level,” wrote Halverson for Weatherwise. Why? “Our ability to do so is practically non-existent.”

As a result, when the deluges hit Ellicott City in 2016 and 2018, “people barely had time to get to the second floor of the restaurant,” Miller says.

[rara_call_to_action title=”” button_text=”Read More” button_url=”https://umbc.edu/a-timeline-of-resilience-in-flood-prone-town/” target=”_blank” button_align=”center”]A Brief History of Major Ellicott City Floods[/rara_call_to_action]

“It’s not just the rain that makes a flash flood, it’s also the terrain and the nature of the landscape,” Halverson wrote. Considering this, other changes since the 19th century come into play. Ellicott City has become a highly desirable place to live, and suburban development now sprawls in all directions from Main Street.

Development means more impervious surfaces—roads, rooftops, driveways, patios—and impervious surfaces make it harder for a landscape to absorb rainfall. So, in the 2018 flood, when the center of the storm was a bit upstream from Ellicott City, Halverson wrote, “the torrent of stormwater runoff cascaded downslope into the topographic bowl of the town, flooding it from the top down.”

The floods are “an example of effectively a small tributary watershed ‘wagging the dog,’ making the entire Patapsco River flood before the rest of the drainage area contributed,” says Baker.

In both floods, “upslope development undoubtedly made things worse,” Miller says, but isn’t fully to blame. These events “would have exceeded any kind of storm water management that you could have put in,” he says.

Because of the way heavy rainfall on a small section of the watershed can cause severe flash flood events, Baker says, “the Patapsco River is now behaving much more like an urban river…than its general land use would suggest.” Why is less clear. It could be increasing development, or it could be changes in rainfall patterns influenced by climate change. More likely, it’s a combination of both as well as other factors.

What to do?

The local government is grappling with what to do with this beloved—and sometimes deadly—section of town. They commissioned the McCormick Taylor Report to provide a menu of options that could keep the town safe in future events similar to 2016 and 2018 while keeping the town as-is. The recommendations included $35 million in immediate improvements, plus $60 to $85 million more for longer-term projects. It’s hard to imagine anyone being willing to spend that much to protect such a small parcel of property. The plans included everything from “pipe farms” underground to store storm water until it could be released more slowly, to tunneling through bedrock to create a pathway for water through town that wouldn’t disturb the street above.

In September 2018, the county government announced a plan that would involve removing up to 10 of the historic buildings to take people out of harm’s way and improve water flow for the next major flood. The public outcry was swift and powerful, and no demolition has occurred.

[rara_call_to_action title=”” button_text=”Read More” button_url=”https://umbc.edu/an-ounce-of-prevention/” target=”_blank” button_align=”center”]UMBC Experts Discuss Preventing Future Floods[/rara_call_to_action]

Most UMBC scientists prefer not to engage in local politics, but based on their work, they can inform conversations on what the county should consider as they’re making decisions. In the days immediately following both storms, Miller and Halverson were in high demand with the news media. One question that kept coming up was whether another storm of this strength could happen again, and when.

Miller is currently working on a paper using evidence to make the case that “it’s an extraordinary event, but it’s not as extraordinary as we think it is. There’s some evidence, although right now it’s not completely conclusive, that we are seeing greater frequency of large floods,” says Miller. “So you cannot assume something like this just won’t happen again.”

In its current state, “There’s not enough room for Main Street and the river—that’s why the river flows underneath,” explains Miller. “It’s a pipe dream that you can just make this problem go away.” In fact, dealing with the danger of water is a challenge that will only get worse as climate change leads to more strong storms and rising seas. “This is a microcosm of the much bigger problem that we face on a massive scale in this century,” Miller says.

As a local and a hydrologist, Baker sees both sides of the argument. “I appreciate the historic nature of the community, and I think something would be lost if they tore all those buildings down. At the same time, I can understand why any administrator would want to minimize the risk of loss of life, so that’s totally reasonable as well,” Baker says. “I don’t think there’s a real clear solution here, it’s just a value judgment that people have to decide what is most important in this situation.”

And so, the debate rages on. In the meantime, visitors continue to stroll, shop, and snack at the bright and cheery storefronts along Main Street, albeit in reduced numbers. Some establishments, however, remain shuttered, and storm damage is still visible through dirty windows. The contrast reinforces the fragility of this charming historic oasis, reminding tourists, scientists, and public administrators alike what happened here, and what could happen again.

How the community chooses to proceed is still uncertain, but one hopes the expertise of elected officials, scientists, and the public will all be brought to bear in a way that keeps people safe and allows Ellicott City—in whatever form it eventually takes—to thrive for years to come.

****

Header photo by Mark Baxter @SkySightVIP

Recovery from the flooding in Ellicott City has been long and difficult, and communities have often been left with more questions than answers. UMBC Magazine sat down with experts in public policy and emergency health services for some insight into policy issues and options for flood hazard management. Included are Susan Sterett, director of the School of Public Policy, on the role of public policy in natural disasters; John Rennie Short, public policy, researcher of urban infrastructure; Ryan Miller’99, emergency health services (EHS), former director of emergency management director and deputy chief of fire and rescue for Howard County; and Matt Levy‘00, M.S. ‘08, emergency health services, medical director for EHS, and medical director of Howard County Fire and Rescue Services.

By Catalina Sofia Dansberger Duque

Could you tell us about your emergency response to the Ellicott City floods?

Levy:  Our 911 operators and dispatchers are some of the biggest heroes of the Ellicott City Floods that most people won’t know about. They were the ones managing the phone lines and keeping people calm, giving them direction about what to do and not do as flood waters were rising and people were rightfully panicking and scared.

Once our responders received notification, they went into immediate response mode, which is to rescue and to get people out of harm’s way. We train for this. Our responders will risk their lives to try to affect rescues if it is technically feasible and capable. That is not just us but firefighters, police officers, sheriff deputies, and anyone who is responsible for getting people out of harm’s way. Rescuers from the lay public also help – neighbors helping neighbors.

We have the right equipment and use a variety of strategies and tactics to affect as many rescues as possible. Our responders have flotation devices on their apparatus to safely make entry into that environment as well as boats, rigging to remove people, and aerial ladders on trucks to reach people.There are also specially trained swift water rescue teams. The immediate response is to rescue everyone with as many strategies as possible. Once the immediate rescues are done, there is an ongoing process to try to determine that everyone is accounted for.

Eventually we shift to recovery. Once those rescues are made there is a methodical process of assessing the damage to structures after water has rescinded. We look for any potential survivors or casualties and provide a degree of stabilization of those structures to minimize the chance of secondary collapse while our personnel are in them until they can be safely turned over to private contractors who take over that work. Responder work is not as iconic as the media makes it to seem but the work is very important. We continuously train for this and are always looking for improvement to prepare for whatever may come.

What was your role in rescue operations? And how do you work with local government to create policy changes?

Miller:  I have been part of three Ellicott City floods. The first one was in 2012. It was associated with Tropical Storm Lee. That is when I personally saw the hazards associated with Ellicott City and flash flooding. It was a relatively minor storm now that we have 2016 and 2018 in perspective. Tropical Storm Lee causes roadway flooding and set off a lot of planning and mitigation planning within the county. It was the predecessor to the 2016 and 2018 which were severe.

Our role in both storms was to set up the emergency operation center in Ellicott City and bring together all the county agencies toward a common response goal and lead the recovery. We also work with the State of Maryland and the Maryland Emergency Management Agency to pull in resources from outside of the region and outside the state and interact with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and all federal agencies that are brought in resources to assist us. After the initial response, we chart the recovery plan, which can be anywhere between six months to a year. Howard County is unique in that we had a similar disaster twice in a short period of time. Alot of our plans and systems that we created in 2016 helped in 2018.

During emergencies, the directors work side by side with the county executive who creates policy. The director then has delegated authority or direct authority to coalesce those county resources toward a response. We are appointed by the governor, so should there be a catastrophic event, the governor can then work through the 26 directors to affect statewide responses and recovery.

What is the impact of floods on local governments? And are there policies that can be implemented to help prevent flooding?

Sterett:  It is a challenge for local governments to restrict development in flood-prone zones. Even if there is a potential for risk at the national level, local governments have reasons to want people to rebuild in flood-prone zones because they depend on property taxes. It is also an issue in areas that are fire risks like in California or Arizona where people build in areas where they don’t have access to the water that they need.

We need to be aware of changes in extreme weather events and rethink the National Flood Insurance program. The insurance models need to be reevaluated so that insurance can be priced accordingly.

Building codes would make a difference, but we need to evaluate overbuilding in areas that are at tremendous risk. Local governments need to work with developers to build communities that reduce risks. However, this is not simple. Implementing accurate government maps of flood levels would decrease property values drastically and local government taxes. There is no easy answer.

We also must think of renters and how they are affected by extreme weather. Owners have a range of choices in a devastating situation, but renters are not in control of whether their home will be rebuilt. It is also important to take into account how disasters can deepen existing racial and economic inequalities.

So much of this is about land-use planning. We don’t have a big national plan, and we are not getting rid of flood insurance. Local governments can help by developing adaptation plans as climate changes and more extreme weather occurs.

Is there a model in the U.S. to look towards?

Sterett:  Many local governments have adaptation plans developed with the help of different city departments. The Rockefeller 100 Resilient Cities, a non-profit organization, brings people together to think systematically about environmental problems. They fund a resilience officer who provides support and guidance as cities recover from a disaster.

Norfolk, Virginia can also be an example even though it has a military base. The city has a committed local government that has a multipronged plan. It tries to take advantage of every opportunity to engage the community in its adaptation plan. They hold fun community celebrations like “Retain Your Rain,” to encourage rain barrel use, and bring the public into decisions on how they repave, where public housing is built, and how traffic is guided.  

It is important to approach public problems with awareness of what the problems are, a bit of hope, and a commitment to try to work on various parts. There is no quick fix. Addressing flooding across different communities is a complicated issue that depends on collaboration between governments, residents, business owners, developers, and environmentalists.

Is there a connection between flooding and global climate change?

Short:  It is impossible to discuss flooding without talking about global climate change. When you have two, one-in-a-thousand-year flood, 22 months apart, it creates a new normal. Higher frequency of extreme events like larger hurricanes, longer lasting storm seasons, and more snow make cities more vulnerable to flooding.

What is the relationship between development and long-term environmental impact?

Short:  Suburban tracks are everywhere. Acres upon acres of roads, sidewalks, strip malls, housing, and parking lots, all create an impermeable surface leaving water nowhere to go. When you have a green field and it rains two to three inches, you can get some flooding, but it can get absorbed. Cement does not absorb large amounts of water— it just runs off.

This happens because developers push the envelope, local authorities want the revenue, and politicians want the notion of growth. There is so much growth without any sense of the long-term environmental impact. Research has shown that when more impermeable surfaces are built, there is a higher risk of flooding.

Ellicott City is very vulnerable because of its location. It originally was placed there because it was needed for hydraulic power for the mill. Over time, it became more vulnerable because of increased development in the watershed and ignored infrastructural deficits, which, when paired with larger, more frequent storms, created catastrophic events.

*****

Read more: Learning from Ellicott City 

Read more: A Timeline of Resilience 

Header image: EHS workers respond to the scene in Ellicott City. Permission from Baltimore Sun Media. All rights reserved.

1772 ⬗ Since its founding in 1772, Ellicott City “has come in for an inordinate amount of disasters from floods, fires and railroad wrecks,” wrote Fred Rasmussen in The Baltimore Sun in 2012.

1868 ⬗ Known as the Great Flood, in 1868 the Patapsco rose more than 20 feet and 43 people were killed. “The sufferers by the flood are very numerous,” The Sun reported on July 27, 1868. Floods would come again in 1901, 1917, 1923, 1942, and 1952.

1972 ⬗ The next most memorable event was Hurricane Agnes in 1972. The Patapsco river flowed 14.5 feet above its banks. It took out a concrete bridge and destroyed the Jonathan Ellicott home and the 1910 Victor Blode water filtration plant. Eloise (1975), Hugo (1989), and Lee (2011) were other vicious storms of note.

1984 ⬗ From an editorial in The Sun from 1984 about Ellicott’s City’s resilience: “The town’s special charm lies in wear-and-tear, in improvisation over the decades, in workaday flavor more comparable to what might be found in a none too prosperous Old World community.”

2016 ⬗ Water again rushed down Main Street on July 30, 2016. The flash flood coursed through many historic buildings, washing away the town’s iconic clock, and ultimately killing two.

2017 ⬗ Originally donated in 2000 by the Ellicott City Kiwanis Club, the restored clock was put back in place in 2017.

2018 ⬗ Less than two years later, on May 27, 2018, disaster struck again, days before the town’s new flood emergency alert system was to become operational. Homes and businesses were again destroyed, the newly erected clock disappeared, and a National Guardsman lost his life trying to rescue others.

In June and July 2018, the post and the face of the clock were found again, damaged in the Patapsco.

On July 20, 2018, Main Street was opened to cars and pedestrians and some shops reopened, although most continue to deal with the flood fallout.

Howard County Executive Calvin Ball revealed the second phase of the Ellicott City Safe and Sound plan in December 2018.

2019 ⬗ After considering community feedback, Ball announced his decision on May 13, 2019, to move forward with “3G.7.0,” a five-year, $140 million option to tear down four buildings—Phoenix Emporium, Discoveries, Bean Hollow, and Great Panes Art Glass Studio—and build a tunnel to carry future flood waters away.  

2020 ⬗ The 2020 state capital budget includes $3.4 million in funds for Ellicott City’s Safe and Sound plan and a minimum of $8 million investment is planned over the next three years.

*****

Read More:  Learning from Ellicott City

Read More:  An Ounce of Prevention

Header image by Sun photographer Frank A. Miller. 

We all experience levels of humor in our lives. We may giggle at memes on social media, snarf quietly to ourselves when we spy someone make a goof at work, or fall on the floor laughing at the silly things our children say and do. We have “dad jokes” and “potty humor” readily available to us in books and top 10 lists. We know, innately, what works and what doesn’t, and we react accordingly.

Taking it all up a notch, however, by creating the humor yourself, is another level entirely. And getting up in front of an audience, be it a few friends or a giant concert hall of strangers, to deliver it—well, that takes a certain type of guts this author admittedly does not have. Thankfully, we have Christine Ferrera, M.F.A. ’10, intermedia and digital arts, to help us out. For the last five years, Ferrera—who in addition to working as a video producer at UMBC’s New Media Studio is the author of the Starbux Diary, a collection of witty feedback letters she wrote to corporate coffee—has been hitting open mics and comedy festivals non-stop, learning how to hone her craft one punchline at a time.

Tools of the Trade:  
    + A notebook, always at the ready 
    + A tape recorder for the most honest feedback 
    + Free evenings for hitting the open mics 
    + A healthy attitude toward rejection 
    + The right comedy community for you

STEP 1: Write things down, and don’t censor yourself.

You never know when an idea will pop into your head, so, you’ve got to be ready when one comes your way. The best way is to always have a notebook on hand. For Ferrera, it’s a small notebook she acquired at the Red Clay Comedy Festival in Atlanta. Inside are tidbits, observations, and scribbles.

“Some of them are bad or embarrassing, but at this point it doesn’t matter. You never know what will be useful later,” says Ferrera, who keeps the book on her nightstand for midnight musings, and even sometimes asks friends to write ideas down for her in it when she’s driving.

“This isn’t where you’re going to write full jokes. It could be you just thought about something funny, like a phrase or an image or something like that,” she says. “And don’t censor yourself. Later is when you’re going to go in and make something out of it.”

STEP 2: Schedule writing sessions with goals in mind.

Once you have some solid—or vaguely solid—ideas, it’s time to work on writing actual jokes. There are many flavors of comedy out there, and the only way you’ll find yours is to start putting pen to paper.

“I’ll take a notebook and go to a coffee shop and I’ll do a writing session where I’ll set a goal for myself,” says Ferrera. “I’ll say, maybe today I’m going to write three jokes, or five jokes. And then I sit there and pretty much make something out of all those tidbits I’ve been writing down.”

Ferrera also draws inspiration—and discipline—from comedians she admires, like Gary Gulman, who offers a comedy writing tip each day on social media, and recommends setting time aside each day to write.

“I know how valuable that is,” she says. “When I did Starbux, that was 10 years of writing a small amount every day….the writing sessions are kinda torture, but it’s exciting and fun when you really get rolling, just like any creative art form.”

STEP 3: Get yourself up on that stage.

By now you’re probably watching other comics perform fairly often (if not, it’s time to start!), and you’re beginning to make choices about what you might like to do yourself. Just don’t wait too long to jump into performing yourself, says Ferrera, who hits as many open mics as she can.

“So because it’s pretty much universally daunting to most people to, like, get up and try to tell jokes, just get it over with,” says Ferrera. “Don’t write and write and write until you have the perfect set. Throw some stuff together and get up there with a few minutes of something.”

Over time, as you listen to feedback from the audience, polish your jokes and your delivery.  Ferrera records herself so she can critique herself later and make changes to her repertoire over time. The ultimate first goal: to have a “tight five,” or five solid no-fail minutes of material in your pocket for anytime you need it. You will probably bomb along the way, she says, but that’s part of learning, too.

“It can be excruciating, but you have to do it. You will sound terrible, and you’ll hear yourself going ‘um, uh,’…but then you’ll quit doing those things,” she says. “The more you perform, you’ll find you do it a little differently, and after a lot of times, you’ll say…‘oh, that really worked!’”

STEP 4: Find your voice.

As you feel more comfortable with the rhythm of your words and performance, the next step is to try to make the comedy your own. We’ve all seen the same jokes rehashed by multiple comics, and we’ve all seen performers who draw from common topics—politics, relationships, etc. So, how do you produce something nobody’s ever seen before?

“What I consider a mistake is when people say, ‘I wanna do comedy,’ and so they’re like ‘Comedy sounds like this. Comedy is talking about dating. Or comedy is making fun of that thing,’” she says. “And that’s so covered already.”

Ferrera likes to draw from her performing arts background, and reminds herself often that her comedy isn’t for everybody. And it doesn’t have to be. Like one of her favorite performers, Maria Bamford, Ferrera wants to stay true to who she is and grow from there.

“Maria Bamford has been out there 30 years sticking to her gut instincts. It’s literally so specific to her, and the way she thinks. That’s what I aspire to,” says Ferrera.

“I would rather bomb or whatever, but be doing stuff that I actually care about saying and doing. Because then, when it’s good, it’s SO good. You can’t beat it.”

*****

All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11, unless otherwise noted. 

Halfway through her senior year at UMBC, Naomi Mburu M26, ’18, chemical engineering, was named the very first Rhodes Scholar in university history. So, following Commencement, she packed her bags and—after squeezing in a summer trip to Kenya—headed for jolly old England to make her mark on Oxford, the oldest English-speaking university in the world. Today, more than 3,500 miles from home in her pursuit of a doctorate in nuclear fusion, Mburu writes to share her thoughts on her first year at Oxford, and the ways she’s making herself right at home.

Roughly a year and a half ago, I received one of the biggest surprises I have ever received: the opportunity to attend the University of Oxford in England. As someone who has lived and attended elementary, middle, and high school all within 15 minutes of UMBC, I was itching to see the broader world and what it had to offer. Now, I have been living in Oxford for a little over six months and wanted to share some experiences and observations with my UMBC community.

There have been several wonderful and difficult moments woven throughout my experience thus far. Meeting hundreds of other Rhodes Scholars has been one of the most wonderful aspects of this experience, as the scholars come from many corners of the world and each have such interesting experiences and perspectives on life. Some of the moments I most enjoy at Oxford involve exchanging life stories with my fellow “Rhodies” and hearing my classmates passionately talk about topics that are close to their hearts.

Having the Rhodes community around me has definitely helped ease my adjustment to English life, but there have still been many times when I felt the loneliness of leaving home and starting off alone in a new country. I found that close community and friendship can sometime take quite a bit of time, patience, and effort to create, and maintaining old friendships across time zones can be a difficult thing to juggle. Luckily, there is so much fantastic technology like WhatsApp and FaceTime that allow me to easily connect with family and friends back home, and my family was able to visit me in April. There have also been some unexpected differences that I am learning to adjust to, the main being the weather and the sun setting at 3 p.m. in the winter.  

One of the biggest surprises of Oxford has been the structure of the Ph.D. compared to universities in America. For starters, here the Ph.D. is instead called the D.Phil., and in my department the D.Phil. process solely consists of an in-depth research project conducted over 3-4 years. There are no class or teaching requirements; the only responsibility is conducting research. This was quite a shift from my time at UMBC where I found myself balancing a full, pre-determined chemical engineering course load along with extracurriculars, teaching, and research. This has given me the chance to spend my first few months at Oxford really diving into my new field of nuclear fusion and thinking critically about what I want to get out of my Ph.D.

The increased freedom does come with added responsibility, however—students must decide for themselves what they want their D.Phil. experience to look like and proactively seek out those opportunities. Coming from a more structured undergraduate experience, this freedom was initially quite intimidating. However, I have seen how the flexibility of this new schedule has afforded me lots of time to try new things, travel, ponder, and simply do things that make me happy. Oxford has lots of great spots where I go to relax, read, or think, such as Christ Church Meadow, a beautiful field complete with cows which runs along the Thames River, or any of the beautiful college gardens.

Oxford and the Rhodes community are bursting with opportunities for students to “choose their own adventure.” The Rhodes House has been a central part of my experience thus far, as it serves as a meeting place for scholars past and present to plan events, study, and hang out. I have attended many scholar-led talks, musical performances, and even a mindfulness course there. The house also serves as the location for the annual Rhodes Retreat, which is a unique chance to spend a few days reflecting and discussing deep issues of life and purpose with your cohort.

In November, I helped organize an American Thanksgiving dinner for 130 people in the Rhodes House with a diverse team of people, some of whom had never experienced this type of holiday celebration. We had mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, homemade bread, turkey, a vegan option prepared by a scholar from Israel, and one of the Jamaican scholars even made jerk sauce for the turkey! Every year, the Rhodes House also sponsors scholar trips to places like Israel, China, Palestine, and Chile. I attended the Chile trip in March, where I joined a group of 11 other scholars on a nine-day backpacking expedition through Patagonia National Park.

Outside of the Rhodes House, I have attended talks at Oxford ranging from brain surgery to the evolution of language, tried new sports like rowing, and engaged in ancient traditions such as attending formal hall in the Harry Potter-style dining halls where we wear a mandatory black gown and stand for a formal Latin grace before the meal. And in March, the university supported me to attend a fusion-focused, week-long program that involved operating the world’s oldest functioning nuclear fusion reactor, located in Prague, Czech Republic, which was a great chance to meet other students in Europe interested in fusion and gain some hands-on experience with a fusion reactor.

Overall, my time at Oxford has been full of experiences that are continuing to shape the way I view the world and use my time. I look forward to all of the adventures the next year has in store!

–Naomi Mburu ’18

*****

Header image: Mburu finds the end of the rainbow during a Rhodes trip to Chile, which included a backpacking expedition through Patagonia National Park. All images courtesy of the author.