Greg Cangialosi ‘96, English, has made a name for himself as a serial entrepreneur with a passion for helping others succeed.  Since he graduated from UMBC, he has gone on to run two companies, and made it a personal mission to turn Baltimore into a hub for startup companies. To help support that initiative, the MissionTix CEO and co-founder of the startup incubator Betamore gave a generous gift to UMBC to establish the Cangialosi Business Innovation Competition.

The CBIC launched last year through the Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship to give undergraduate and graduate students an opportunity to develop and present their business plans, and get a head start on establishing their companies. The first competition was held in the spring of 2014.

“His spirit is all about entrepreneurism,” says Susie Lynch, a development officer at UMBC. “[He’s] passionate about others’ success…[and] having a thriving startup community in Baltimore.”

Cangialosi had been involved with the Alex. Brown Center for some time before the competition began, according to the Center’s director, Vivian Armor. Among other initiatives, he was a featured speaker for the Entrepreneurship Speaker Series, developed and taught UMBC’s Entrepreneurial Marketing course, and served as a judge for the university’s annual Idea Competition, upon which the CBIC is based and which still runs every fall.

“As a result of his long term involvement with the Center, [Cangialosi] realized there was a need to provide the next level of competition and support for students who were serious about starting a business,” says Armor. The CBIC, she explains, was intended to connect students with the larger Baltimore business community.

To enter the competition, students submit their business plans to a panel of qualified experts. Those selected for the next round are paired with a mentor to help them fine-tune their ideas, and in the final round, they present their fully-formed startup plans to a panel of community business leaders and investors. In addition to a cash prize of up to $5,000 for seed funding, competition winners receive free Betamore membership, as well as free legal services, accounting advice, and fundraising and pitch advice.

Andrew Mavronicolas ‘14, information systems, is one such beneficiary. He was one of 10 finalists in last year’s inaugural competition, and his company, Backpack ‘Em, is now located in UMBC’s Cyberhive incubator. The company provides a platform for an intra-campus marketplace, its most popular use being textbook selling and trading. Mavronicolas says the support he received during and after the competition was invaluable in helping him get his business off the ground.

“The greatest gain that we had from the competition was easily the insights given by judges [and] investors, our mentor, students, and the university. This allowed us to improve upon our business idea by expanding our revenue models. It also helped us to perfect our pitch and gain the confidence to go meet with university decision makers and investors,” he says.

According to Armor, the competition will continue every spring semester, and has been a boon to the Brown Center’s visibility on campus. “[…Now] more students are aware of the wide range of initiatives and programming the Center makes available,” she says.

Lynch says Cangialosi is personified by his Twitter hashtag of choice: #neverstop. “That’s him in a nutshell,” she says. As the CBIC enters its third year, one hopes that that tenacious entrepreneurial spirit will be fostered within and passed onto several generations of students.

Cross-posted from the UMBC Alumni Blog.

As #BlackLivesMatter continues to grow on social media, ABC 2 TV in Baltimore recently hosted Kimberly Moffitt for a discussion to explain how the movement has spread and how it is different from the Civil Rights Movement. Moffitt, an associate professor of American studies, noted that social media has changed the way in which messages and viewpoints are shared through expanded access.

“That’s the space that we’re in now with social media that anyone has access to the platform,” she said.

She explained that during the Civil Rights Movement, people would often gather at local churches, community centers, homes, and other spaces to strategize and coordinate messages. With social media, anyone can be behind a computer or mobile device and type the hashtag to spread their message.

“At this point, everyone becomes an expert. Everyone becomes that lead activist as long as they have the right platform to access a number of different individuals,” Moffitt explained. “The Civil Rights Movement, it was almost very strategic to make decisions about who should be those individuals to speak on behalf of the movement in order to carry out the particular strategy. Now, it’s anyone’s fair game.”

View the full discussion on ABC 2’s “In Focus” program.

In a new column in The Conversation, School of Public Policy Professor John Rennie Short revealed how immigrants can be treated differently based on wealth.

Short wrote about how Canada’s Immigrant Investor Program and the UK’s Tier 1 investor visa are among many programs that provide economic incentives for wealthy immigrants. Short also focused on how such policies play out in the United States: “Since 1990, the US has an employment-based program tailored for the wealthy entitled EB5. Under this program, 10,000 visas each year are reserved for investors to receive permanent residence status if they invest at least US$1 million (only $500,000 in high unemployment and rural areas) in a commercial enterprise that employs at least 10 full-time US workers.

Studies by trade groups estimate that the program contributed $3.39 billion to US GDP and resulted in 42,000 jobs in fiscal year 2012, while a more critical review of the EB5 program came to the conclusion that the visas are too cheap, the program is badly run and the bulk of the money goes to already overheated real estate markets.”

Professor Short wrote about how the programs referenced in his column often do not reflect their intended consequences: “Most official reviews now come to the conclusion that the programs, hastily conceived in the rush to attract the newly wealthy citizens of Russia, China and other countries, are too cheap with few benefits for the host countries.”

Read “The other immigrants: how the super-rich skirt quotas and closed borders.“

In his latest New York Times column, Mathematics Professor Manil Suri wrote about the underrepresentation of LGBT professionals in STEM. The column, titled “Why is Science so Straight?” explored the reasons for the invisibility of LGBT members in STEM fields, what Suri called an “unspoken convention.”

“Underrepresentation is just one factor that reduces visibility. Unlike women and minorities, whose status is usually obvious, sexual orientation is a hidden characteristic. The fact that a sizable proportion of the L.G.B.T. STEM work force is closeted (43 percent, according to a 2015 estimate) further deepens this effect,” he wrote.

Suri also noted that the STEM work culture could play a role in reduced LGBT visibility: “There is a another, more insidious factor at work. STEM culture is very problem-focused. Conversations, even over lunch, typically remain restricted to work matters (which is very different from what I’ve noticed in arts and humanities settings),” he explained.

In his column, Suri provided perspective on how STEM professions could move forward in regards to increasing diversity: “More critically, STEM culture must rein in the pressure to separate professional and personal identities. It should view its workers more holistically, welcoming their interests and differences as sources of enhanced resourcefulness.”

Suri is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times. Read his previous columns on the New York Times website.

Douglas Lamdin, economics, was selected as the annual recipient of the Abramson Award for the outstanding article published in the past year in Business Economics, the journal of the National Association for Business Economics (NABE).

The article, “Gauging the Financial Capability of Americans,” was coauthored with Mark Johnson, a faculty member in the Sellinger School of Business at Loyola University, Maryland. The past two recipients of this award were Lawrence Summers at Harvard University, and John Taylor at Stanford University.

One of the things that makes UMBC great is how wonderful our alumni, students, faculty, and staff are. Because of these amazing people, UMBC often finds itself “in the news,” so each week, we’ll be sharing with you a round-up of the most newsworthy achievements from our community.

• UMBC is the #4 “Most Innovative” college in America and places #6 in undergraduate teaching, according to this year’s U.S. News and World Report rankings.
• President Hrabowski praises Tim Ryan, Baltimore Sun publisher and next head of the L.A. Times and San Diego Union-Tribune.
• John Rennie Short, public policy, views the immigration debate through the lens of class for The Conversation.
• Manil Suri, mathematics, writes about LGBT underrepresentation in STEM fields for Genome Web. (Article requires subscription to view.)

The intersection of technology and do-it-yourself (DIY) culture, known as the Maker Movement, has been praised for encouraging Americans to be creative and resourceful. However, the costly technology associated with the movement has raised concerns about accessibility. Amy Hurst, information systems, spoke to the Huffington Post this week about how she is encouraging diverse populations to engage in making.

Through working with individuals with intellectual disabilities and visual impairments, Hurst found that many DIY tools were difficult to use. Supported by a National Science Foundation grant, she started developing new tools and platforms to help people repair or customize objects, calling it “Making for All.” The tools developed range from VizTouch, which lets teachers quickly 3-D print math equations for visually impaired students, to GripFab, which allows individuals with disabilities print custom hand grips.

“We’re empowering people to incorporate making into their daily lives to solve their own accessibility challenges,” Hurst said. “These are individuals who many people would discount and overlook and not think of as makers and we were getting them to do 3-D printing just like engineering students.”

Read “Democratizing the Maker Movement” in Huffington Post.

Hello,

I am selling my Inspiron laptop. I purchased it in September 2014. Technical specs are as follows:

• 15.6-inch FHD (1920 x 1080) Truelife LED-Backlit Touch Display with Wide Viewing Angle (IPS)
• Processor: Intel Core 4th Generation i7-4510U processor 2.0 GHz (4M Cache, up to 3.1 GHz)
• 16 GB System Memory (DDR3L) 
•  1TB Hybrid hard drive with 8 GB Solid state flash disk
•  Windows 8.1 (64Bit) English, free upgrade to Windows 10

http://www.dell.com/us/p/inspiron-15-7537/pd

Price : $690

Contact : attar1@umbc.edu   (410)343-9392