Attending college these days is expensive. You’ve got tuition, room and board, books and computers to buy — and that’s not even counting late night pizza runs!

Even at a state school like UMBC, students find themselves struggling to keep up with bills. In Fall 2011, for example, 62% of undergraduate students applied for financial aid; 80% of those demonstrated some level of financial need. On average, the percentage of need that was met of students who were awarded any need-based aid was 60%. You don’t need to be a math genius to see that many students still need our help.

UMBC’s Office of Financial Aid provides a tool where students (and alums!) can calculate the cost of an undergraduate or graduate semester. Try it out, and you’ll see the hard numbers so many of our students face.

A couple of years ago, we made a silly video with UMBC’s Mama’s Boys to show how quickly a semester’s costs can add up! Watch below and help support our students today.

Ellen Handler Spitz, honors college professor of visual arts, discussed the young adult novel Jepp, Who Defied the Stars, byKatherine Marsh, in her latest column in the New Republic.

The historical novel follows the story of Jepp, a court dwarf in the Spanish-ruled Netherlands of the late sixteenth century. Spitz compares Jepp’s story – in whichhis destiny is defined by his body and dictated by the whims of others – to the plight of the story’s adolescent readers.

“Adolescents are newly encased—like Jepp—in bodies that seem too small (or too large) but never a match for what is inside them, which nobody else can see…. despite the plethora of insignificant choices accorded them, young people’s lives are not in their hands, and they often feel cooped up in prisons not of their making,” she writes.

“As one reads Jepp, Who Defied the Stars, present and past entangle just as childhood and adulthood spar.”

The column, “The Age of Adolescence,” appeared online on November 7.

Jesica Berman, professor of English, recently gave a talk at Vanderbilt University on entitled, “Documentary Interruptions: Virginia Woolf’s Three Guineas and the Media of War.”  The talk was part of the second annual Modernist Mini Jamboree, a celebration of modernism in literature and film sponsored by the English Department and the Program in Film Studies and took place on Friday, November 2.

Berman’s Her recent book, Modernist  Commitments: Ethics, Politics and Transnational Modernism (Columbia  University Press, 2011), examines the connection between ethics and politics in  early twentieth-century writers such as James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Jean Rhys,  Mulk Raj Anand, Cornelia Sorabji, Max Aub and Meridel Le Sueur, and argues for  an expansive, transnational approach to the definition of literary modernism.

TO: The UMBC Community

FROM: Larrabee Strow, Research Professor of Physics, and Sergio DeSouza Machado, Research Assistant Professor of Physics

We are deeply saddened to report that Scott Hannon ’86, ’90 MS physics, passed away last Thursday night after a nearly two-year battle with cancer. Scott remained at UMBC for 22 years as a Research Assistant in the Physics Department/Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology. Scott was continuously involved with the development of new meteorological and climate satellites while at UMBC.  In particular, Scott developed radiative transfer algorithms that were highly regarded throughout the meteorological community and are in continuous, operational use at both NOAA and NASA. We have shared more about Scott’s life and legacy here.

Private services were held for Scott, and condolences may be sent to the Hannon family at 6614 Jacks Court, Mount Airy, MD 21771.

UMBC’s alumni live and travel all over the world doing fun, amazing things! And UMBC Magazine wants to showcase this.

That’s where the Roving Retriever project comes in. Next time you travel to an interesting place, take a copy of UMBC Magazine with you and snap a photo of yourself with it. Send the photo to jogrady@umbc.edu along with information about who’s in the photo and where you are, and we’ll feature you on the UMBC Magazine Facebook page!

Take a look today…we’ve already got a couple! Where will our Retrievers go next?

This essay was written by Manus O’Donnell ’72, English, who served as editor of the Retriever Weekly and as a senator in the Student Government Association.

A little over 40 years ago UMBC was embroiled in protests and occupation rumors. The Viet Nam War created a lot of controversy in that period. 8 students were killed by National Guard during the riots at Kent State University in Ohio. Colleges everywhere had spontaneous student rioting. Across the country student bodies were organizing and college administrations were scrambling. UMBC was no exception. An envoy from Rutgers University came to recruit UMBC into the national movement to shut down America’s college campuses in protest of the Viet Nam War.

The UMBC People’s Party had recently formed and was interested in promoting protests against the War and supporting Women’s liberation and in general changing how UMBC operated. The Student Government Association (SGA) officers and the People’s Party were in constant communication during the “riot preparations”. The Administration also wanted to have the SGA play a role in these turbulent times. So, here was the SGA in the middle of an Administration who wanted peace & calm and the People’s Party who wanted to disrupt the campus in order to make their political positions known to all. There were some sit-ins, but they were generally well controlled and peaceful. The UMBC SGA chose not to follow the national trend. Rather, we chose to forge our own path for involvement, yet in a peaceful way. Rioting would be a bad move for our relatively new campus.

Rumors circulated that the National Guard was preparing to use riot gas on the campus. That’s when I first got involved with the SGA. Being new to campus, I looked for a group to join. First, I went to a People’s Party meeting. They seemed too loose and anti-establishment. Then, I went to the SGA meeting where they were discussing what students should do if the campus is gassed. Being fresh out of the military, I was the only one who had experience with riot gas. They were anxious to hear what I knew. From then, I was hooked into the student government as Director of Student Activities, Junior Class president, and co-editor & writer for The Retriever.

Bill Soltesz was the Student Government (SGA) President at that time. Bill, along with Sal Maggio, Mike Runge, Mike Brushe and Manus O’Donnell were in meetings daily with Chancellor Albin O. Kuhn and Homer Schamp. Our common goal was to keep UMBC peaceful, yet active in the student movement. We also had emergency meetings with the Faculty Senate to discuss our options as a University Community.

The SGA, led by Bill Soltesz, was instrumental in being the mediator between the administration and the protestors. There were many rumors of unrest coming to UMBC. One rumor stemmed from the “Catonsville 9” who, led by the Berrigan Brothers who were Jesuit priests opposed to inhumanity of war. The “9” spilled blood over Selective Service (draft) records in the Catonsville draft office. Back then, men were recruited into the service by lottery, meaning, if you did not have an exemption, you would be drafted into the Military Service. No questions asked, you go! There were some “draft dodgers” who went to Canada to avoid the draft.

So what happened, you’re asking by now. The SGA asked Dr. Kuhn to convene an emergency meeting of the Faculty Senate to deal with the question of how to end the school year. Many students, inspired by the People’s Party, clamored for the school to shut down. No more school that year. The SGA officers took the position that it would not benefit all students to do that. Some students wanted to take finals so they could pull their grade up (have you been there?). Other students didn’t want finals to pull their grades down.

The Faculty Senate, at the urging of the SGA, came up with a compromise. This compromise settled the campus down. No more riots were imminent. The National Guard had no need to occupy the campus. Many campuses across the country were shut down. UMBC, once again, was a leader in “how to run a campus successfully with all parties involved”.

The resolution was to make final exams optional. If you wanted exams, take them; if not, then you get the grade as it stands before the exams. How many students would like to have optional exams today?

UMBC remained open. UMBC was relatively peaceful, involved in current affairs and productive for the student body. More importantly, UMBC acted as a whole community with Students, Faculty and Administration working together for the common good of OUR UMBC.

TO: The UMBC Community

FROM: Larrabee Strow, Research Professor of Physics, and Sergio DeSouza Machado, Research Assistant Professor of Physics

We are deeply saddened to report that Scott Hannon passed away
Thursday night after a nearly two-year battle with cancer.  Scott
received his BA, and in 1990, his MS in Physics from UMBC.  He
remained at UMBC for the next 22 years as a Research Assistant in the
Physics Department/Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology.

Scott’s early work in the Physics Department’s Atmospheric
Spectroscopy Laboratory involved laser spectroscopy of carbon dioxide
and nitrogen molecular collisions, providing a new model for
understanding carbon dioxide absorption in the earth’s atmosphere.

Following this work he spent most of his career helping to develop and
use a new generation of high-spectral resolution infrared satellite
instruments that provide input for daily weather forecasts around the
world, and are now being used for climate trending.  He also developed
algorithms for the measurement of various atmospheric gases using
high-spectral resolution infrared satellite data, including nitric
acid, carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, dust, and volcanic ash.

Scott had a particular talent for distilling complicated physics
models into computationally simple but accurate algorithms.  He
applied this talent to topics such as the atmospheric water vapor
absorption, and more recently the effects of solar radiation on
mesospheric carbon dioxide emissions.  His model for this “non-LTE”
emission is now the standard for models being developed by other
research groups around the world.

Scott’s work is known, and used, world-wide by many national
meteorological centers and research centers.  This includes two
algorithms he helped develop for atmospheric radiative transfer that
provide the basis for converting the measured satellite radiances into
atmospheric temperature and water vapor.  To this day, and most likely
for years to come, his fast radiative transfer algorithm called SARTA,
is run every day on both NOAA and NASA computers to analyze the daily
satellite data from two US satellite instruments (AIRS and CrIS), and
a European instrument (IASI).  Scott participated in the ground
testing of both the NASA AIRS instrument, and the NOAA/JPSS CrIS
instrument, and his models of the instrument hardware are also used
worldwide by many meteorological centers (Europe, Japan, New Zealand,
Australia, etc.).

Scott was very well known to students in the Atmospheric Physics
Ph.D. program, who often took advantage of his in-depth knowledge of
atmospheric spectroscopy and radiative transfer for their classes and
thesis research.  He was always ready and willing to help anyone who
asked, including outside academics and industry.

Scott worked very closely for over 15 years with the AIRS Project
Office at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.  His advice and algorithms
were highly valued by JPL and he will be missed by many there.  One of
his last activities was to influence changes to the in-orbit operation
of the AIRS instrument in order to preserve the integrity of the
climate record produced by that instrument.

Scott’s quiet manner belied his intense commitment to integrity and
quality in everything he did.  He was one of those un-sung heroes of
science, quietly doing first-rate work with no interest in personal
accolades of any sort.  Unknown to many, Scott had a encyclopedic
knowledge of many topics, ranging from World History to Music, and he
was always happy to have friendly discussions on any topic.  His
presence and camaraderie, and willingness to help everyone, will be
missed by many.

Private services were held for Scott, and condolences may be sent to the Hannon family at 6614 Jacks Court, Mount Airy, MD 21771.

Their study concludes, “the Dream Act would generate $66 million in economic activity for each incoming new class of undocumented students.” See the website of UMBC’s Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research (MIPAR) for the original working paper: “Private and Government Fiscal Costs and Benefits of the Maryland Dream Act.”

NPR’s political news site and Inside Higher Ed link directly to the study itself. Other media referencing Gindling and Mandell’s findings include the Chronicle of Higher Education, Baltimore Sun, Gazette, Washington Times, Washington Examiner, Capital News Service and Delmarva Now.

William R. Soltesz ’72, financial economics and mathematics, one of UMBC’s early Student Government Association presidents, passed away on September 13 at his home in New Jersey. He was 62 years old.

Soltesz, who grew up in Catonsville, served as president of the SGA from 1970 to 1971, and “was pivotal in working with faculty and students to keep the university open during a time when many other fledgling universities closed due to student riots and political pressures related to the Vietnam War,” his obituary reports.

Read an essay about these times at UMBC by Soltesz’s classmate, former Retriever Weekly editor Manus O’Donnell ’72, English, here.

Soltesz later received his M.B.A. from Loyola University in Baltimore, and served as vice president or chief financial officer for several Fortune 500 companies, including Alexander and Alexander and Sara Lee’s Shasta Beverages Division in Baltimore. At the time of his passing, Bill had served as the C.F.O. of Budd Van Lines in Somerset, NJ for over 20 years. He served on the Chester Borough (N.J.) Zoning Board and enjoyed swimming, the study of foreign culture and history through extensive world travel, and studying the American Revolutionary and Civil Wars.

Soltesz’s daughter, Tracy Soltesz ’01, political science, recalls that her father was especially touched by the teaching of Dr. John M.Titchener, emeritus professor of philosophy, who worked with Soltesz closely on various SGA initiatives throughout his tenure. Soltesz is also survived by a son, two brothers, and two grandchildren.

Interment will be this Friday, November 9, at 2:30 p.m. at the Lake View Memorial Park, 2724 Liberty Road, Sykesville, MD, 21784. A memorial reception will be held afterwards from 4 to 6 p.m. at The Rumor Mill Fusion Bar & Restaurant at 8069 Tiber Alley, Ellicott City, MD, 21043. Alumni and friends are welcome to attend and share stories. For questions, please email kesrya@gmail.com.

If you’re on campus regularly, it’s easy to see the excitement building this semester about both the 20th anniversary of Dr. Freeman Hrabowski’s presidency here and the launch of the Hrabowski Fund for Innovation, a fund created by Dr. Hrabowski to promote new thinking in the classroom.

We’re equally excited to share this video (below), featuring Vice President of Institutional Advancement Greg Simmons, a 2004 graduate of UMBC’s master’s of public policy program, as he talks about the fund, Dr. Hrabowski’s legacy, and how we can all help keep UMBC strong. Enjoy!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNSn7tQR1GQ]

Support the Hrabowski Fund for Innovation by clicking here.