This November Maryland voters will decide on four major ballot questions addressing same-sex marriage, expanded gambling, undocumented immigrants’ access to higher education and the new congressional map, and ad spending is expected to reach into the millions.

“We haven’t seen anything like it in modern history,” Donald F. Norris, professor and chairman of UMBC’s Department of Public Policy, told the Baltimore Sun. “It is going to be a political junkie’s absolute dream.”

Norris commented more directly on the gambling referendum in the Maryland Daily Record and Baltimore Business Journal. He told the Record that the referendum ad campaign will “probably be more vigorous than the presidential campaign” in Maryland and that he anticipates the votes will be clearly in favor of gambling expansion.

Update: Norris also commented in the Gazette that ad campaigns for the referenda will likely be more intense than for the presidential race in Maryland.

Amy Froide, Associate Professor of History and Director of UMBC’s Entrepreneurship & Innovation Minor, was invited to give two talks on her current book project, “The Silent Partners of Britain’s Financial Revolution: Women as Investors in Public Stocks, c. 1690-1750,” over the summer.

She presented her research to the History Department at Princeton University in May and the European Women’s History Seminar at the University of London in June.

UMBC head women’s basketball coach Phil Stern announced the hiring of former Retriever standout Carlee Cassidy ’10, media and communications studies and sociology, as the Director of Women’s Basketball Operations.
“I am thrilled that Carlee will start her coaching career at UMBC,” Stern said of his former player. “Carlee was a part of the greatest moment in UMBC women’s basketball history and was one of our most prolific offensive players.”
At the time of her graduation, Cassidy ranked second all-time at UMBC with 1,627 points and 347 free throws made — ranking first in both categories during the Retrievers’ Division I era — and still holds the school’s record for three-pointers (248). She became the first Retriever to earn America East All-Conference honors three times, receiving a spot on the second team as a junior and a senior and garnering first team recognition as a sophomore.
Not only did Cassidy excel in UMBC’s record book, but she also made her mark on the America East record book. The Syracuse, N.Y., native was the first player in nearly a decade to lead the America East in scoring in back-to-back seasons. She ranks 21st in the conference all-time in points and second in three-point field goals made.
Cassidy was a part of the 2006-07 Retrievers who also stamped themselves into America East history, defeating the top three teams in the league standings en route to winning a league championship. The 5-9 guard earned America East All-Tournament Team honors during the 2007 conference championships after scoring a team-best 14 points to help UMBC stun top-seeded and defending champion Hartford in the championship game, giving the program its first-ever league title that season and advancing to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Tournament for the first time.
Following her collegiate career, Cassidy played one season with Forssan Alku Basketball Club in Finland.
“I am very excited about the opportunity to be back at my alma mater and to be a part of the UMBC women’s basketball family,” Cassidy said. “I am eager to continue to learn under Coach Stern and the rest of the staff. I am looking forward to the upcoming season and the continued success of our program in the future.”
This story originally appeared on UMBC Retrievers News.

UMBC head women’s basketball coach Phil Stern announced the hiring of former Retriever standout Carlee Cassidy ’10, media and communications studies and sociology, as the Director of Women’s Basketball Operations.

“I am thrilled that Carlee will start her coaching career at UMBC,” Stern said of his former player. “Carlee was a part of the greatest moment in UMBC women’s basketball history and was one of our most prolific offensive players.”

At the time of her graduation, Cassidy ranked second all-time at UMBC with 1,627 points and 347 free throws made — ranking first in both categories during the Retrievers’ Division I era — and still holds the school’s record for three-pointers (248). She became the first Retriever to earn America East All-Conference honors three times, receiving a spot on the second team as a junior and a senior and garnering first team recognition as a sophomore.

Not only did Cassidy excel in UMBC’s record book, but she also made her mark on the America East record book. The Syracuse, N.Y., native was the first player in nearly a decade to lead the America East in scoring in back-to-back seasons. She ranks 21st in the conference all-time in points and second in three-point field goals made.

Cassidy was a part of the 2006-07 Retrievers who also stamped themselves into America East history, defeating the top three teams in the league standings en route to winning a league championship. The 5-9 guard earned America East All-Tournament Team honors during the 2007 conference championships after scoring a team-best 14 points to help UMBC stun top-seeded and defending champion Hartford in the championship game, giving the program its first-ever league title that season and advancing to the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Tournament for the first time.

Following her collegiate career, Cassidy played one season with Forssan Alku Basketball Club in Finland.

“I am very excited about the opportunity to be back at my alma mater and to be a part of the UMBC women’s basketball family,” Cassidy said. “I am eager to continue to learn under Coach Stern and the rest of the staff. I am looking forward to the upcoming season and the continued success of our program in the future.”

This story originally appeared on UMBC Retrievers News.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s pick of controversial Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan as his running mate is the subject of Tom Schaller’s latest Salon column, “Ryan pick in 5 easy steps.”

The political science professor explores what Romney’s VP selection means for the election and the GOP’s feature, starting with the arguments that Romney is playing it safe with the nomination and “the Romney camp clearly believes that a base-mobilizing strategy, rather than a swing voter-conversion strategy, is its best chance to win the White House.”

Schaller also argues that Ryan’s selection is further evidence the national GOP has become a “House-dominated party” as opposed to a presidential-oriented one. This “congressionalization of the Republican Party” is the topic of his forthcoming book from Yale University Press.

The UMBC men’s soccer program was selected to finish fourth in the 2012 America East Conference race by the league’s eight head coaches.

The Retrievers placed fourth in the conference in 2011, earning a place in the six-team postseason tournament for the third consecutive year. UMBC had played in the league’s title game in both 2009 and 2010, winning the championship and advancing in the NCAA Championships in 2010.

Read the full press release here.

An August 14 piece by Fan Yang, assistant professor of Media and Communications Studies, for FlowTV discussed the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London.

“How London Responded to Beijing in the 2012 Olympics Opening Ceremony” contrasted the London ceremony with that of the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, noting that the Danny-Boyled production of July 27th “follow[ed] a rather simple strategy: whatever China did, we do the opposite.” These differences ranged from an individualist vs. collective ethos, to a comparatively light-hearted party atmosphere as opposed to 2008’s manifestation of “the [Chinese] Communist Party’s burning desire to be recognized globally” as a great power on the international stage.

Yang also detailed the reactions to the two ceremonies, pointing out that viewers were more ready to criticize China’s cermony, even as London’s contained some of the same issue.  Yang concludes:

“Implicit is a commentary on the human cost of China’s rise, a display of mass subject that offers an opening to critique the real productive conditions of the information age. This representation of subjectivity stands in stark contrast to Boyle’s boy-meets-girl-via-cell-phone story. In that new-media-saturated narrative, the society of spectacle operates in full force: machine commodities displace social relations, screens blind players from seeing the game, and class consciousness is fragmented by the hidden codes of the communications network.”

Andrew J. Sherman ’83, political science, has forged a career that is bursting with achievements. He is a senior partner in the global law firm of Jones Day, a faculty member at Georgetown University Law Center and an adjunct professor at both the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University and the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland College Park. He is also the author of 21 books including Harvesting Intangible Assets: Uncover Hidden Revenue in Your Company’s Intellectual Property and Mergers and Acquisitions from A to Z, as well as a motivational title: Road Rules: Be the Truck. Not the Squirrel.
What ties all of this activity together in Sherman’s view of his career is his passion for education. “That is my true purpose in life,” he says. “To educate, whether in a client’s board room or in the classroom.”
Sherman’s path to a UMBC education was hardly traditional. Growing up in the Philadelphia area, he expected to spend his entire life there. However, when he was in 11th grade, his father moved to Baltimore. That same year, the family homestead burned down, and his mother and siblings headed out to Los Angeles. “It was a matter of going a few miles down I-95 or moving 3,000 miles away,” says Sherman. “I opted for Baltimore.”
Needing a single course to obtain his high school degree, it was suggested to Sherman that he apply for early admission to college. Fully acknowledging that he didn’t have the strongest credentials, Sherman bought a clip-on tie and talked his way into UMBC.
The entrepreneurial 20-year-old dropped out of the university after only two years when Aerobic Tennis, a fitness and training program he developed for tennis players, landed on the cover of Baltimore magazine. That success was heady stuff at first, but after a couple of years of operating in an economy with bad inflation and a volatile capital market, Sherman finally returned to UMBC to finish his degree in political science.
“I am very proud to be a UMBC alum,” says Sherman. “I came having barely been admitted to a school that does not have a business major and have become one of the top business minds in the country.”
Sherman’s message to students mirrors the one that is implicit in his own story: academic pedigree can be overrated. “Don’t think of yourself as a second-class citizen because you didn’t go to Harvard or Stanford,” he notes. “If you study the leaders of many companies, you will see people who did not rest on their academic laurels, but relied on their work ethic, emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills.”
Encouraged by George R. LaNoue, a professor in UMBC’s political science department, Sherman headed to American University School of Law, graduating from that school in 1986.
Even as a first-year law firm associate, Sherman was already branching out into the publishing world, authoring a book titled One Step Ahead, which focused on the business and legal aspects of business growth. “While in law school I had written a monthly column for Nation’s Business, the magazine of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,” recalls Sherman. “The book came about when I was approached by a New York publisher to gather my columns into a book [with a release date that] coincided with the 1986 White House Conference on Small Business.”
The opportunity that presented itself so early had its upsides and its challenges, Sherman observes. “I unintentionally came out of the gate as a ‘published expert,’” he says, “and then spent the next 30 years working to become that leader.”
Sherman’s client list these days includes large corporations such as Caterpillar, Apple and Walmart. But he still concentrates much of his attention to working as the legal and strategic adviser to rapid growth companies. “Many of the companies I work with had a rapid growth path that went dormant,” he says. “They had big growth plans, but then realized they needed the right advisers to make things work.”
Or, put another way, all of Sherman’s writing and teaching are tied back to the basic principle of helping companies avoid some of the speed bumps along the way to sustaining success. He aims to insure that they expand and flourish, not – as he puts it – “grow and blow up.”
Sherman acknowledges that his own greatest challenge is time management. He has a hard time saying no to things that interest him. Saying yes to an invitation to join the advisory board of a Washington, D.C. non-profit, for example, leaves Sherman trying to figure out how to get everything done.
“I have a demanding law practice,” he says. “But I love being a lawyer, teaching and writing… when you stop loving what you do, it is time to change course.”
— Mary Medland

Andrew J. Sherman ’83, political science, has forged a career that is bursting with achievements. He is a senior partner in the global law firm of Jones Day, a faculty member at Georgetown University Law Center and an adjunct professor at both the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University and the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland College Park. He is also the author of 21 books including Harvesting Intangible Assets: Uncover Hidden Revenue in Your Company’s Intellectual Property and Mergers and Acquisitions from A to Z, as well as a motivational title: Road Rules: Be the Truck. Not the Squirrel.

What ties all of this activity together in Sherman’s view of his career is his passion for education. “That is my true purpose in life,” he says. “To educate, whether in a client’s board room or in the classroom.”

Sherman’s path to a UMBC education was hardly traditional. Growing up in the Philadelphia area, he expected to spend his entire life there. However, when he was in 11th grade, his father moved to Baltimore. That same year, the family homestead burned down, and his mother and siblings headed out to Los Angeles. “It was a matter of going a few miles down I-95 or moving 3,000 miles away,” says Sherman. “I opted for Baltimore.”

Needing a single course to obtain his high school degree, it was suggested to Sherman that he apply for early admission to college. Fully acknowledging that he didn’t have the strongest credentials, Sherman bought a clip-on tie and talked his way into UMBC.

The entrepreneurial 20-year-old dropped out of the university after only two years when Aerobic Tennis, a fitness and training program he developed for tennis players, landed on the cover of Baltimore magazine. That success was heady stuff at first, but after a couple of years of operating in an economy with bad inflation and a volatile capital market, Sherman finally returned to UMBC to finish his degree in political science.

“I am very proud to be a UMBC alum,” says Sherman. “I came having barely been admitted to a school that does not have a business major and have become one of the top business minds in the country.”

Sherman’s message to students mirrors the one that is implicit in his own story: academic pedigree can be overrated. “Don’t think of yourself as a second-class citizen because you didn’t go to Harvard or Stanford,” he notes. “If you study the leaders of many companies, you will see people who did not rest on their academic laurels, but relied on their work ethic, emotional intelligence and interpersonal skills.”

Encouraged by George R. LaNoue, a professor in UMBC’s political science department, Sherman headed to American University School of Law, graduating from that school in 1986.

Even as a first-year law firm associate, Sherman was already branching out into the publishing world, authoring a book titled One Step Ahead, which focused on the business and legal aspects of business growth. “While in law school I had written a monthly column for Nation’s Business, the magazine of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce,” recalls Sherman. “The book came about when I was approached by a New York publisher to gather my columns into a book [with a release date that] coincided with the 1986 White House Conference on Small Business.”

The opportunity that presented itself so early had its upsides and its challenges, Sherman observes. “I unintentionally came out of the gate as a ‘published expert,’” he says, “and then spent the next 30 years working to become that leader.”

Sherman’s client list these days includes large corporations such as Caterpillar, Apple and Walmart. But he still concentrates much of his attention to working as the legal and strategic adviser to rapid growth companies. “Many of the companies I work with had a rapid growth path that went dormant,” he says. “They had big growth plans, but then realized they needed the right advisers to make things work.”

Or, put another way, all of Sherman’s writing and teaching are tied back to the basic principle of helping companies avoid some of the speed bumps along the way to sustaining success. He aims to insure that they expand and flourish, not – as he puts it – “grow and blow up.”

Sherman acknowledges that his own greatest challenge is time management. He has a hard time saying no to things that interest him. Saying yes to an invitation to join the advisory board of a Washington, D.C. non-profit, for example, leaves Sherman trying to figure out how to get everything done.

“I have a demanding law practice,” he says. “But I love being a lawyer, teaching and writing… when you stop loving what you do, it is time to change course.”

— Mary Medland