Professors Amy Hurst and Shaun Kane have created a community that helps open up the world for people with disabilities through assistive technology.

By Kathryn Masterson

Every Monday morning at UMBC’s Prototyping and Design Lab (better known on campus as “The Pad”), Amy Hurst and Shaun Kane convene a meeting of students across disciplines who work in the space. Some of the students come to the lab to build things, but many are exploring how to use technology to make computers and the wider world accessible for people with disabilities.

Hurst and Kane are both assistant professors of human-centered computing in UMBC’s department of information systems. It’s a field that focuses on the user end of technology, combining elements of computer science, design, and behavioral science.

In mainstream human-computer interaction studies, Kane observes, the work often centers on making small improvements in a user’s computer experience, such as making a mouse respond better. In the accessibility research that Kane and Hurst focus on – which investigates how to put technology to work for people whose physical or mental disabilities make even simple tasks difficult – the chance for a breakthrough is higher.

“There is a great potential to make a substantial difference in people’s lives,” Kane says.

The projects that their students bring to Monday meetings are as diverse as the majors of the attendees. An engineering major is building a device to create plastic molds using a wooden box, a metal frame and what looks like a vacuum cleaner. An undergraduate biology major is experimenting with electroplating figures built using the lab’s 3-D printers. And a doctoral student in human centered computing is experimenting with ways to help visually impaired people choose outfits that are both fashionable and appropriate for different situations. Another engineer shows off a decorative lamp he created with “Twinkle”– The Pad’s collective nickname for its laser cutter.

Hurst and Kane help these students and others refine their ideas and provide positive and constructive feedback. Yet the weekly meeting is more than a taking of the pulse of campus undergraduate and graduate research being done. The gathering also reinforces a culture Hurst and Kane have intentionally built at The Pad: an atmosphere of collaboration and teamwork where members of the community are invested and involved in each other’s work.

“We really started to develop a community” in the past year, Hurst says. “You can go to the lab and know people will be there, all the time. Students have ownership of the space.”

Both professors observe that human centered computing is a field where sharing ideas, expertise and energy is the only pathway to success. After less than five years, their own collaborations with students and other faculty are already winning recognition and grants – and drawing those on campus who are interested in using technology to help people into their orbit.

Collaborators at The Pad don’t just revel in the act of creative partnership. Hurst and Kane also celebrate the simple joys of making and building in an atmosphere that allows for play and fun.

Kane insists that assistive technology that stretches beyond aiding in daily tasks can add richness to people’s lives. At times, Kane tells his students: “Let’s try to do something that’s not useful, that’s just for fun.”

USER FRIENDLY

Assistive technology can be something as simple as the white cane used by a blind person to tiny wearable computers such as Google Glass, with which people with physical disabilities can take pictures, search the web and crowdsource opinions on various things. It is a field thathas opened up into new vistas in recent years, and Hurst and Kane and their research are right in the thick of it.

Smartphones, tablets and other handheld technology gadgets are putting greater computing power at the fingertips of the population as a whole. Developments in 3-D printers, which can produce prototypes more quickly and cheaply, are also pushing the possibilities forward.

“The work is really exciting,” Kane says. “There is a lot of potential.”

Both in The PAD and in other research, Hurst and Kane design assistive technology for people with visual impairments, aphasia, and also people with motor-control issues that make it difficult for them to point and click.

One important mantra in the field of accessibility and human computer interaction is: “You are not your user.”

It’s an admonition of sorts for the designers and engineers involved to look beyond themselves and put themselves in the place of (or better yet, collaborate with) the people who will use the technology.

One of the problems of assistive technology is that users commonly abandon it if it does not meet their specific wants or needs. So getting feedback from the users is critical if assistive technology is to be both useful and used.

Hurst believes the best way to get true feedback is to dive in and volunteer with groups that serve the disabled and build relationships that will guide research. As a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon University, Hurst spent three years working at a cerebral palsy center in Pittsburgh. Her time in the center’s computer lab led her to research software that detects when someone seems to be having a problem operating a computer. (She recently received a grant from the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research to continue that work.)

“Go out and find ways to do service,” Hurst says. “I make my students do that.”

One of Hurst and Kane’s Ph.D.students, Patrick Carrington ’16, spent last summer volunteering in a spinal cord clinic in Baltimore to further his research on developing interfaces for power wheelchairs. He worked as a therapy tech, helping people from their wheelchairs to therapy mats and working with physical therapists.

Working alongside colleagues at the center allowed Carrington to develop relationships with people for whom he was designing technology. “I didn’t have to sit and be creepy in the corner,” he says.

At times, the relationships go beyond volunteering into direct collaboration. Working with the National Federation for the Blind in Baltimore, Hurst and Kane developed tactile plates to help display traditionally visual information – graphs of equations, or a picture from the Hubble telescope – as plastic plates that people could touch to understand shapes or curves.

The tactile plates may seem plain when compared to the sleek design of a pair of Google Glasses. But for a visually impaired person, the plates not only offer a chance to better understand something they may not have been able to access before, but are something they can create themselves on a 3-D printer.

In 2012, Kane, Hurst and several students travelled to New York to display these tactile plates, Braille rings and other pieces at Maker Faire – an invention festival that attracts thousands of people. Their work received the festival’s editor’s choice award and a blue ribbon hangs right inside the front door of the Pad.

“AMYANDSHAUN”

Michele Williams ’16 is a doctoral student who works with both professors. She specializes in developing navigation aids for the blind and in helping make fashion more accessible to blind people. She says that the success of The Pad and its collaborative atmosphere are rooted in the deep partnership between Hurst and Kane.

Williams say that students often refer to as a single entity: “You say it all as one: AmyandShaun.”

Hurst grew up in California, making things with her dad in the family garage. She recalls that as an undergraduate studying computer science at Georgia Tech, she was more inspired by what technology could do for people than what the latest trends in software were.

The possibilities to use technology to help people really clicked for her, Hurst says, when she participated in research at a hospital clinic involving patients with Parkinson’s disease. The effort to develop software that would replace a paper test for detecting tremors didn’t go anywhere, but the experience of working with people in need and using technology to assist them stayed with her.

Kane, who grew up in Massachusetts, was born with a physical disability. His limbs are short and he has the use of only one arm and hand. When he was younger, he recalls, the “moody teenager” in him was resistant to doing work involving disability. But after enrolling at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Kane observed a class that was designing toys for an autistic boy. The design challenges of the work, coupled with the altruistic possibilities, appealed to him.

Hurst and Kane’s collaboration started in graduate school, when Hurst, a Ph.D. student at Carnegie Mellon, approached Kane, who was studying at the University of Washington, at a conference. She introduced herself and told him they should get to know each other because they had worked with the same people and did similar work. Soon, they were seeing each other at conferences, skipping sessions to take walks and talk.

When it came time to look for jobs (Hurst completed her Ph.D. in 2010; Kane in 2011) neither one of them wanted to teach at a university or department where they were only researchers working in their area of interest. So they both were attracted by UMBC’s information systems department – which boasts one of the few human computer interaction specializations in the country – and by the breadth of knowledge among the faculty at the university.

“Being in a place with a lot of experts makes it really fun,” Hurst says.

MAKING GOOD

There is a sign on the door of Hurst’s office: “Keep Calm and Make.” When she first visited UMBC, she remembers asking: “Where do you make stuff?”

UMBC did not have a specific space dedicated to the rapid prototyping necessary to keeping up with technology, so when Kane came to UMBC a year later, they launched The Pad.

The Pad is a place to collaborate and make. “We let people loose,” Hurst says. And after the Monday meeting, the students in The Pad go directly back to making things. There are the telltale bleeps and bloops of the 3-D printer, where Joshua Dutterer ’14, the lab’s resident prototyper, makes a Statue of Liberty figure that he will try to electroplate at Hurst’s suggestion.

Hurst wants Dutterer to make something that conducts electricity but is also beautiful, and then publish an article about it so he gets recognized for what he’s done. “I don’t think anyone else is doing this,” she says of Dutterer’s work. “It’s a nice opportunity for us to be first on the scene.”

The electroplating work also interests others in The Pad. For Carrington, it may offer a way for a power wheelchair to charge a tablet or another piece of technology on the go.

Work made by students at The Pad is celebrated a few steps inside the door in a “museum” – a bookshelf of toys, trinkets and small pieces of assistive technology built by 3-D printers. Braille rings, can openers and bottle holders for people who have problems gripping sit side by side with UMBC tchotchkes, interlocking puzzles, figurines of an angel, a DNA helix, a hand making the hang-ten sign, a Yoda head and an Iron Man reactor for a Halloween costume.

The smart, quirky ebullience of the museum is a reflection of the sort of students who end up finding a home in The Pad. Hurst and Kane say specific areas of study pursued by undergraduates or graduate students who show interest are less important than the qualities of independence, teamwork, adventure and a passion to build that they bring to The Pad.

“We demand passionate people,” says Hurst. “This environment does not work for everyone.”

It also helps to not take oneself too seriously. Hurst and Kane took the team out for a night of laser tag after a particularly intense deadline had passed.

REPLICATING SUCCESS

Hurst and Kane’s spirit of collaboration is starting to spread across campus.

Each semester, The Pad hosts an intern from The Shriver Center’s SUCCESS program, which helps people with intellectual disabilities acquire post-secondary-school skills. These interns help with coding or other research, giving them job skill experience and making The Pad an even more diverse work space.

The duo’s research into assistive technology – and the energy of its students – has also been a key element in work done at The Erickson School. Judah Ronch, the school’s director, works with Hurst and Kane and their colleagues on projects that use technology to help the aging population. Ronch marvels at the possibilities of the work. “I think it’s really accelerated the rate we can develop solutions for the elderly,” he says.

Collaborating on societal problems with people who come from a multidisciplinary approach has been exciting and rewarding, Ronch says. “These are the kind of hybrid, interdisciplinary individuals our field needs. To them, nothing is not interesting, and nothing can’t be done. It encourages us to think bigger.”

The Pad is not a literal factory. The things made there are prototypes, not products. Yet even in the initial making, the work that Hurst and Kane and their students are doing is a leap into a world where technology can improve more lives of those whose existence is circumscribed by disability. Their intellectual contributions are helping to open up technology and the world beyond for many more people.

“The world is a better place when people can do the things they want to do without barriers,” says Kane.

Finding Love at UMBC

By Elizabeth Heubeck ’91

* * * *

Maybe it was a first date at Quadmania. A coffee at the Commuter Cafe. A pizza at Sorrento’s.

Ask those who’ve studied and worked at UMBC, however, and you’ll find that many of them didn’t just get their degree or a job at UMBC. They found long-term relationships that are still going strong.

As Valentine’s Day approaches, we’ve asked five couples who found their significant other at UMBC to share their stories.

We hope you’ll enjoy the ride down memory lane. And feel the love.

Katelyn Niu and Kevin Yang

In the fall of 2003, Kevin Yang ’07 computer science and financial economics and Katelyn Niu ’05, biochemistry, found themselves in the same physics study group.

But their relationship began to bloom a year later, when a computer virus brought them together.

“Katelyn’s computer was affected by a virus, and she called me for help,” Kevin recalls.

He admits that he took his time fixing the computer problem, making several trips to Katelyn’s place at Walker Avenue Apartments. “That gave us time to chat,” he says.

Kevin and Katelyn also began bumping into one another more frequently in the dining hall. “I wasn’t stalking her or anything, but I have a good memory and I memorized her schedule. I’d show up [at the dining hall] a little before she’d get there,” he says with a playful grin.

While Kevin found the time in his full academic schedule to see Katelyn, her recollection of life as an undergraduate at UMBC is a little different.

“I was always so busy studying,” Katelyn says, who earned a joint Ph.D./D.D.S. from the University of Maryland, Baltimore, after graduation.

Katelyn was eventually won over by Kevin’s persistence. The couple married this past fall at the Center Club in Baltimore after a two-year engagement. They live in Ellicott City, a half-way point between Katelyn’s commute to her dentist’s office in Hagerstown andKevin’s position as an investment analyst at T. Rowe Price in downtown Baltimore.

While life as young commuting professionals is busy, Katelyn and Kevin stay connected to UMBC. She uses the pool on occasion; he plays tennis on the campus’s courts. They volunteer their time at recruiting events for prospective students, and attend alumni events. They also see UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III and his wife, Jackie, from time to time.

“I was a Meyerhoff Scholar,” says Kevin. “He was the founder. We’ve kept in touch .”

Katie and Jessica Porras

For the two years that Katie Walrod and Jessica Porras worked together at UMBC, a large part of their jobs involved making sure students felt comfortable and engaged on campus. As the university’s community director and assistant community director, respectively, Katie and Jessica focused on helping students find success at college outside the classroom.

Eventually, some of the very same issues which Katie and Jessica assisted students in tackling – in particular, finding their identity – proved near and dear to their own hearts.

During their time as staffers at UMBC (Katie from 2003 to 2007, and Jessica from 2005 to 2007), they developed a strong friendship within a tight-knit and supportive environment.

“I loved our co-workers. We worked with some amazing people, and the students were great. It was a really special time,” Katie says.

The setting was conducive for falling in love. And over time, that’s exactly what happened – though neither woman realized it at the time. It wasn’t until after they’d moved on to other jobs literally a continent away from each other – Jessica at Gonzaga University in Washington state and Katie at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. – that their relationship moved beyond friendship.

Katie observes that the blossoming of her relationship with Jessica after leaving UMBC had to do with a gradual deepening of their feelings for one another, and not the environment at the university.

“One of the first things that struck me about UMBC is how accepting students are. It was the first campus I’d been on where it was okay for students and staff to be ‘out’,” Katie says.

Indeed, when the couple wed in May of 2011 in D.C., many of their friends from UMBC came to the wedding ceremony as guests.

The couple has settled in the District. Katie took Jessica’s last name, which was a sacrifice she wanted to make since Jessica had agreed to uproot herself from the West Coast and move across the country to be together.

They both work now for George Washington University, where Katie as an associate director in the Office of Students Rights & Responsibilities and Jessica is an academic advisor in the Columbian College academic advising office. The couple is enjoying life as newlyweds, and is thinking of starting a family in the near future.

Amy Young-Buckler and John Buckler

It’s not clear which came first for John Buckler ‘93 ancient studies: interest in Amy Young ’92, history, or a disinterest in biology indicated by his chronic class absences.

What’s certain is that in 1991, John spent more time sitting by the pond outside of the Albin O. Kuhn Library getting to know Amy than learning about cells and molecules.

With its fountain and the surrounding trees flowering in springtime, the pond is admittedly conducive to romance. “In April, we’d hang out and talk there,” recalls John. “I began to get interested in her, and I spent a lot of time figuring out how to ask her on a date.”

Amy figured out John was interested when, as she sat huddled in a cubicle of the library working on her senior thesis, John would “casually” stop by – sometimes at 3 a.m.

The now-married couple’s first date finally happened during spring finals week. Fittingly, it took place on campus. “I had been awake for almost two days typing my senior thesis. John asked me if I wanted to meet after I was done that day,” Amy recalls. “By the time we met, I was so exhausted. I don’t know what I agreed to.”

What Amy agreed to was a rendezvous at the Student Union. Over a bucket of Rolling Rocks and mozzarella sticks, the two UMBC students’ feelings for each other began to gel. Twenty-three years later, the couple remains together, through exciting educational and career moves, a 1996 wedding, and the birth of their son, who is now four years old.

In 1995, the couple began graduate school at the University of Maryland, College Park, where Amy eventually received her master’s degree in library science and John earned a master’s degree in anthropology.

Today, John works for the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a geographic information systems developer for the Economic Research Service, where he spends much of his time performing computerized mapping of the agency’s databases and applications. Amy is the library media specialist for the Meade Heights Elementary School in Anne Arundel County. The couple lives with their son in Columbia, Maryland.

While Amy and John have come a long way from their days at UMBC, they have vivid memories of sitting along the stone wall bordering the pond 20 years ago and contemplating their future.

“At UMBC, I figured out what I wanted to do with my life, I met Amy. It gave me the tools to move forward,” John says.

Amy agrees: “For me, it was just one of those times and places where everything kind of happened. All the pieces just fell into place.”

Lisa and Dwayne Price

From the start, Lisa (Dates) Price ’87, information systems and Dwayne Price ’87, information systems, ’87, seemed destined to become a couple.

They met on the first day of freshman orientation. Later, they were assigned to the same orientation team. And though they lived in different dorms freshman year (Dwayne in Patapsco; Lisa in in Susquehanna), they shared a circle of friends and a major.

Lisa acknowledges how her feelings for Dwayne began to change as she got to know him better that first semester. “Probably around October or November, I started to see Dwayne a little bit differently,” she recalls. “My relationship [with a former boyfriend] had gone the way most long distance relationships did. I started doing some reconnaissance to see what Dwayne’s situation might be.”

Though Dwayne was not in a committed relationship, Lisa waited some time before making her feelings known. She chose Valentine’s Day to make her move – sort of. A sorority on campus was selling homemade Valentine’s Cards, so she bought one and sent it to Dwayne, signing it, “Your Secret Admirer.”

Wayne was stumped. He asked his friends (including Lisa) who the secret admirer might be. She played dumb, for a while, but a month or so later, she confessed. That risky move turned out to be the turning point.

Their commitment was tested when Lisa received an opportunity to participate in a co-op through UMBC that extended from the summer through the following semester. It meant the two wouldn’t see each other regularly for several months. “It was part of us building the foundation for the rest of our lives,” Lisa says. (Dwayne later completed a co-op as part of his UMBC experience.)

To make up for lost time together, and lost credits, Lisa and Dwayne spent a summer together on campus, working and taking classes.

“You felt like you owned the campus,” Lisa recalls.

Dwayne concurs: “We had the whole campus to ourselves.”

Two years after graduation, they married. They also both decided to pursue master’s degrees in management information systems.

Over the years, the couple has remained highly involved in UMBC, serving on the alumni board in various capacities and offering advice to prospective students. Their two children – Devin, 20, and Layne, 18 – both attend UMBC.

“No one believes us, but we didn’t push them to go there. They could have gone anywhere they wanted, and they chose UMBC,” says Lisa.

Bob and Patti Pfeiff

Bob Pfeiff ’82, economics, was a quiet, slightly home-sick freshman from rural Southern Maryland. Patti Kattowski’81, health science and policy and sociology, was a bubbly sophomore from New Jersey. They met and fell in love at UMBC.

Both Bob and Patti lived in the same residence hall on a campus that, in the 70’s, was limited to just three dormitories – which were still called Dorms One, Two, and Three.

“We traveled in the same circles. It was a really tight group of people who lived together in the dorm,” Patti recalls.

In spite of (or perhaps because of) their dramatic personality differences, the two undergraduates were drawn to each other. “Bob was so shy, and I was so out there,” Patti says.

Patti and Bob began to date by the spring of his freshman year. As neither one of them had a car on campus, their social activities were limited to activities on or near campus. “Going home wasn’t an option,” Patti says. “You found your fun.”

That they did. They swam laps together; frequented the ‘party room’ of Dorm Three; watched men’s lacrosse games. (Patti played both field hockey and lacrosse for UMBC.) Occasionally, by bus or borrowed car, they ventured into downtown Baltimore or Georgetown.

“If there was anything happening on campus, a performance of any sort, we went,” Patti says.

In 1981, not long after Bob and Patti graduated from UMBC, they got engaged. For their “honeymoon,” they drove to Pensacola, where Bob reported to Navy flight training after having been commissioned by the U.S. Navy. He then spent ten years as a naval officer, managing weapons and control systems at sea.

After Bob retired from the Navy, the couple settled in Fairfax, VA and raised a son, now 19. Bob has worked for a number of technology companies; currently, he is a senior software architect at Microsoft. Patti has worked in both several industries, including restaurant and real estate. Now, she is employed at a private boys’ school in Bethesda as the headmaster’s executive assistant.

Bob and Patti still recall their undergraduate days as a significant part of their lives together.

“It’s part of our history,” Bob says.

Patti, effervescent as ever, comments: “It’s been a fun ride.”

Check out some great web extras to accompany stories in our Winter 2014 issue, including interviews, videos and more…

Phone Home – Curious about the students calling you for UMBC Phonathon? “Meet Our Student Callers” here.

Goals Oriented – Read more about UMBC soccer and other teams at the brand new UMBC Retrievers page.

Hearts and Minds – Can’t get enough UMBC love? Visit and contribute to UMBC Alumni’s Retrievers in Love feature on Facebook.

How To See The Stars – Follow the star followers on Twitter here, and find out when you can visit UMBC’s telescope.

Tom Beck, Chief Curator, Library & Gallery, was recently quoted in The Baltimore Sun about the Library Gallery’s N. Jay Jaffee exhibit. The exhibit highlights a talented artist who has not received much recognition. “Jaffee never worked as a professional photographer,” says Tom Beck, chief curator at UMBC. “His career was in printing. So it was always a matter of balance between his business and personal obligations, his family. And he never worked very hard at getting exhibitions.”

Read the entire article here.

Beck was also quoted about Lewis Hine in the Waterbury, Connecticut Sunday Republican-American. The Library Special Collections holds 5,000 Lewis Hine child labor photographs.

• Forget the Smoking Gun… – Gus Russo ’72, political science
• Moving In Place – Jill Sisson Quinn ’97, English
• Changing Communites – Sherece West-Scantlebury ’07, Ph.D., public policy
• Heaven, Hell, and Eisenhower – Allan Jirikowic ’77, interdisciplinary studies

Open Labs, Engaging Research

UMBC partnership with U.S. Army Research Lab creates new opportunities for teaching and research collaboration.

On January 14, UMBC signed an Educational Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the U.S. Army Research Lab (ARL), the Army�s premier laboratory for basic and applied research and analysis. The agreement provides a framework for collaborations between UMBC faculty and students and ARL researchers.

Tony Moreira, vice provost for academic affairs, says, �Building on the two institutions� shared research interests and strengths, the EPA expands on the opportunities UMBC already offers for teaching and research in and out of the classroom and lab, and provides important new connections for our faculty and students, as well as for ARL researchers.�

This EPA is the latest example of UMBC�s history of developing successful partnerships with federal agencies, while helping to build a skilled workforce and stimulate STEM education and research in Maryland. Don Engel, assistant vice president for research, says, �The ARL mission is reflected in UMBC�s research and education portfolio. ARL is located in Adelphi, Maryland, and at Aberdeen Proving Ground, with UMBC in the middle. We are natural partners, and this new agreement helps to formalize a long history of collaboration, making our shared future even brighter.�

The impetus for the EPA came out of conversations between Aryya Gangopadhyay, professor and chair of information systems, and Barbara Broome �01 M.S., �05 Ph.D., information systems management, ARL�s division chief of information systems. Gangopadhyay approached Tony Moreira about a formal partnership, and the two worked with campus leadership and ARL to establish the agreement.

ARL Director Thomas Russell�s goal is to facilitate more engagement between ARL and universities, and ARL now has similar agreements with 10 other universities across the U.S. �My vision since arriving at ARL has been to open up our laboratories and to create a more open campus feel,� says Russell. �This partnership will give university students who have a strong interest in science, mathematics, engineering and technology the chance to be mentored by our researchers and give them the opportunity to develop their skills. This is a great opportunity for them and for our researchers.�

Initial meetings will enable UMBC and ARL researchers to meet on each campus to learn about similar interests and begin conversations regarding potential collaborative work. In the next few years, Moreira says, he hopes UMBC researchers will be able to take sabbaticals that allow them to conduct research at ARL.

The collaboration also offers the potential for joint funding and publications, potentially in ARL research focus areas such as information systems, computer science, cybersecurity, networks, sensors, communications, mathematics and statistics, human dimensions, human systems integration, synthetic biology, power, quantum information processing, natural language processing and robotics.

At the same time, UMBC students will participate in internships at ARL and learn from ARL guest lecturers on campus. Future plans include bringing in ARL scientists as graduate mentors and advisors, and creating post-doc appointments at ARL.

An advisory committee comprised of UMBC and ARL staff will meet regularly to monitor and develop EPA initiatives.

For more information on the UMBC-ARL EPA, email Tony Moreira. Read more about the specifics of the EPA agreement at the U.S. Army website.

(02/18/2014)

After Maryland was hit with heavy snowfall last Thursday, WYPR’s Maryland Morning looked into the question: how do our older neighbors plan for and deal with this kind of weather? Sheilah Kast, the program’s host, spoke with Erickson School Dean Judah Ronch about tips and suggestions for helping elders during snowstorms.

Ronch discussed how elders can be vulnerable when they lose power and heat in their homes during storms, which can make them more susceptible to injury, cause them to become disoriented and it can even spoil food which can lead to lack of nutrition.

“That affects both body and mind. Their thinking gets to be a little less clear, and they may make decisions which really aren’t typical of what they can do,” Ronch said.

Ronch added you can help elders by creating a buddy system and forming relationships before storms and emergencies happen. He said having a plan in place and making sure the person has everything they need in advance can go a long way.

“Having a checklist of what the person needs, for example, do you have enough food, do you have enough water, do you have all the medications you would need for let’s say a four to five-day period?” Ronch said. “I think those who are checking in on older adults should check in before, during and after the event.”

You can listen to the full interview on WYPR here.

UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, takes your questions.

Q. UMBC has made significant investments in creating physical spaces where collaboration in pedagogy and research can flourish. And the movement toward a new Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Building promises to take that effort even further. Why is it important that there are physical spaces in which to do this sort of collaboration? And, stepping back and looking at the larger picture: What other research collaboration efforts at UMBC are you most excited about?

– Richard Byrne ’86, English

A.  What’s important as we build a new facility, such as the proposed Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Building, is to remember that our faculty are collaborating across disciplines, and that more and more UMBC faculty are collaborating with their colleagues at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB).

Our deans and department chairs are actively looking for ways to work with our new Vice President of Research, Karl Steiner, and with our Provost, Philip Rous, to address different requests for proposals from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation which are increasingly focused on interdisciplinarity.

It’s also important to listen when our Dean of the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, William LaCourse, and others say that they need spaces that can be used by people in multiple departments and how the research and the teaching that they do is increasingly being accomplished in teams that solve problems by combining different disciplinary perspectives.

What that all means is that we need flexibility in the research facilities themselves – the sort of flexibility that you see built into in the foundation of our joint project with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to create the Collaboratory.

We need to be able to make changes in our research facilities as priorities change at national agencies or right here on campus.

As far as research collaborations here at UMBC go, I think the future of our campus is heavily tied to our ability to collaborate with University of Maryland, Baltimore. We are increasingly working with the different schools there, including medicine and pharmacy. More and more faculty are getting to know each other at both campuses and looking at ways they can collaborate. So we will see collaborations on cybersecurity and health care, or between environmental science and health.

There are exciting new state initiatives that are going to help us do this. They will help us build research endowments and to boost the research park and other research infrastructure on our campus – by supporting research faculty and emphasizing not only tech commercialization, but also broader research on campus in disciplines that extend beyond science and engineering. The latter is particularly important as we think about the policy implications of our work and as we attack problems that pose major challenges in our society, including the achievement gap and income inequality.

UMBC will be seen as a major driver of the economy, not just because of our science and engineering infrastructure and strengths, but also more importantly and more broadly, because faculty are working across disciplines to solve problems in our society and to create a cadre of leaders – humanists, artists, policymakers, teachers, social workers – who can address critical problems in the wider world.

That is why we have invested heavily as a university in creating spaces where faculty and students in the arts and humanities and social sciences can collaborate with each other. It’s important that our pioneering Imaging Research Center, one of the engines of interdisciplinary research and collaboration, is located on the first floor of the Information Technology and Engineering Building. We also are only months away from the opening of the second phase of our Performing Arts and Humanities Building. Soon, our music and dance students will have new spaces to explore their arts in the same way that our theatre and English students have explored new vistas in the first phase of the building.

We have tangible strengths and opportunities across disciplines at UMBC – and we’re finding the spaces to nurture them so that they grow even stronger.

To send a question to President Hrabowski, click here.

Universities are filled with people who have great ideas.

In fact, the view that universities act as a repository of great ideas has a firm hold on the public imagination. Students go to classes to obtain these ideas. Professors pore over tomes or fiddle with knobs and text tubes in traditional laboratories. And universities didn’t gain a reputation of “ivory towers” where ideas were chewed over in isolation out of thin air.

Yet I hope this issue of UMBC Magazine may help you rethink the notion of our university as a place that contains ideas  Because if the feature stories in this issue have a common theme, it is that the great ideas our faculty, students, alumni and staff have at UMBC don’t exist only to be debated or discussed or memorized. They also form the basis for doing and making.

Our feature on innovative spaces for research and teaching highlight the energy and intelligence behind creating spaces where the best new thinking can be taught and acted upon. Whether it’s a CyberHive at the bwtech@UMBC that seeks to spark collaborations in the university’s burgeoning technology fields, a joint project (“The Collaboratory”) between the College of Natural and Mathematical Science and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute that will change teaching at UMBC, or an off-campus studio for visual arts graduate students that takes artists into the surrounding neighborhoods, the university is increasingly finding spaces for its community to think and create.

This article also points to another wonderful trend: UMBC alumni are carrying the banner of doing and making from the university into the local community.  Betamore – a business incubator founded by Greg Cangialosi ’96, English – and The Foundery – created by Corey Fleischer ’05, ’08, M.S., mechanical engineering – are perfect examples of places where thinking is transformed into tangible acts of creation.

This same culture of creation is also present in Kathryn Masterson’s profile of Amy Hurst and Shaun Kane, assistant professors of human centered computing at UMBC, the culture of making is also at the heart of this duo’s work.

Hurst and Kane are rising stars in the field of accessibility and assistive technology for the disabled, and the community that they have created in UMBC’s Prototyping and Design Lab (aka “The Pad”) has drawn students and faculty from across disciplines into active collaboration.

It’s not just applied research and better ways of teaching that are being forged at UMBC. As Elizabeth Heubeck ’91 discovered in her profiles of five couples who found love at UMBC, relationships that last a lifetime are also being created at UMBC.

We hope this issue inspires you to reflect your own great idea and ask the question: “What can I do to make it happen?”

 – Richard Byrne ’86

PHONE HOME

Once in a while you might get a call asking for your support for UMBC and its mission.

The person on the other end of the line? A UMBC student.

Five nights a week, UMBC students assemble at Alumni House and reach out to alumni and parents via the university’s Phonathon. The program was brought back to campus in 2011 after being outsourced to a third party for eight years.

Dayna Carpenter, UMBC’s director of annual giving, says that the university made the change because it was students who could make the most tangibleconnection to donors.

“People were really excited to talk to actual UMBC students and to have meaningful conversations,” said Carpenter.

Success is measured in numbers – and giving is up since the switch was made. But the relationships built by the Phonathon effort are just as important. Students and alumni swap stories about their time at UMBC, and a few students have received internship and job offers from alumni whom they’ve connected with during a phone call.

Logan Wern, UMBC’s Phonathon coordinator, says that students’ understanding of philanthropy has also increased: “Many of our students realize and understand the importance of fundraising and the good it does here on campus.”

One of the efforts that has benefited from the Phonathon is the Retriever Learning Center. The effort was heavily funded by alumni and it is a place beloved (and used) by many students.

“It’s because of the donors’ outstanding support that UMBC is able to offer so many resources for students and alumni alike,” says student caller Jordan Coffie ’14.

– Katharine Scrivener

The RIGHT WAVELENGTH

Public policy and economics professor Tim Brennan has had a distinguished career as an educator, researcher and expert on communications and media. Now, he’s taking it to Washington, where he will serve as chief economist for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Brennan has been an economist with the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division and senior economist for the White House Council of Economic Advisers. He has also served as a staff consultant to the Federal Trade Commission, advised on competition law internationally, and received the Distinguished Service Award last year from the Public Utility Research Center.

“I am very pleased that Tim Brennan has agreed to join the Commission as our chief economist,” says FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. “His long and distinguished consideration of regulation, competition and monopoly issues will enable him to contribute immediately and materially to our work.”

Brennan’s research has focused on antitrust, copyright, telecommunications, media policy, electricity markets and related fields. He is also a senior fellow with Resources for the Future, a nonprofit social science research organization that seeks to improve global policymaking on environmental and natural resource issues.

“I expect to learn a lot, and it is an honor,” says Brennan of his new position at the FCC. The commission has a number of leading economists on staff, but has also brought in scholars from academia for several years to provide outside perspectives and advice on challenging issues. Previous chief economists include Steven Wildman from Michigan State University and Marius Schwartz from Georgetown University.

– Max Cole

FRUITFUL LABOR

Most classes offer valuable knowledge and some credits toward a degree.

But three students in a UMBC class on entrepreneurship taught by Gib Mason, economics ’95 (who is also chief operating officer and vice president of administration and finance at the UMBC Training Centers) got something more: a payout for their ideas and jobs helping to make their project a reality.

Josh Massey ’14 , Andres Camacho ’14, and Hashem Kanfash ’16 were students in Mason’s Creativity, Innovation and Invention class who developed a customizable GPS driven navigation app that targets the dynamic environment of college campuses under the name Banana Bones. The app directs users – walking or driving – to desired campus locations, and even creates customizable self-guided tours.

After winning a competition sponsored by the UMBC Alex Brown Center for Entrepreneurship, the mobile app was snapped up by Hanover-based Tecore Networks, a global supplier of 3G, and 4G/LTE mobile network infrastructure.

“Working on this project provided us with real-life understanding of how corporations are formed, built, and acquired,” says Massey.

Massey and his two co-founders students will continue to work with engineers and executives at Tecore to take the app through the final stages of development, and a portion of the funds from the Banana Bones acquisition will support a future collaborative space on the UMBC campus for aspiring entrepreneurs.

“Supporting and mentoring the next generation of entrepreneurs and technologists here in Maryland is a vital part of our future,” says Tecore’s president and CEO Jay Salkini.

– Nicole Ruediger

A PROMISE KEPT

Helping pave the way to success for graduate students from diverse backgrounds is the primary goal of PROMISE: Maryland’s Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (or AGEP). And the Maryland program’s excellence in achieving that goal has been rewarded with an additional five years of funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Founded in 2002 as an alliance between UMBC, the University of Maryland, College Park, and the University of Maryland, Baltimore, PROMISE is the engine for a wide-ranging array of programs (including intensive courses in sharpening dissertation skills and professional development) and mentoring opportunities aimed primarily at graduate students from underrepresented minority communities.

The new NSF grant, which provides  $1,750,000 in funding over the next three years, is aimed at expanding the program across the entire University System of Maryland (USM). The new funding will include expanded activities for postdoctoral fellows and the creation of a new annual graduate student research and careers conference as well as a new conference for undergraduates considering graduate school.

The grant will also allow PROMISE to offer more opportunities for participants in its Professors in Training program to teach at campuses across the USM, as well as institutions like Anne Arundel Community College, the Community College of Baltimore County and the new Ana G. Mendez University Capital Area Campus in Wheaton.

– Richard Byrne ’86