When most people imagine New Zealand, they conjure images from “Lord of the Rings” which was filmed there.

The island nation in the South Pacific is truly as beautiful as the pictures suggest with high Alp-like mountains, fjords, hot springs and tropical forests.

But New Zealand, about the size of California also suffers from earthquakes, lots of earthquakes… approximately 250 per year.

Earlier this week a brutal earthquake struck near one of the country’s largest cities, Christchurch. The tremor incurred terrible human cost: 75 dead and over 300 missing. Much of the town of 400,000 is without water and electricity and will likely remain that way for the foreseeable future.

Rescuers are still locating people buried in the rubble. Meanwhile strong aftershocks continue to frighten residents.

Just like the tragic earthquake in Haiti in 2010, the images from the devastation are shocking and saddening.

A sobering reminder of the brutal forces lurking just beneath our feet.

The Supreme and silent type: Clarence Thomas goes five years without asking a question.

As Libya goes down, the price of gas is going to go up!

You thought your grocery bill was bad? A man in India has 39 wives and almost 100 children.

Chicago elects first new mayor since 1989…you’ll never guess who it is.

And, the most popular baby name of 2011 is “Facebook…?“

Champions in the Water

From the very beginning, emphasis was on the team. In the first month of practice, Chad Cradock ‘97, head coach of the swimming and diving teams, called out the names of student athletes and had them  describe what the team meant to them. Students cited their determination, their sacrifice, their love of the sport and their support for each other. The men were hungry for another championship and the women were not about to let the men hog the spotlight. “It created such a positive environment,” Cradock said.

It looks as if that positive environment paid off. Both men’s and women’s swimming and diving teams clinched 2011 America East Championships, the eighth consecutive such victory for the Retriever men and the third crown won by the women since they joined the conference.

“The coaches and staff are really proud of our athletes for buying into the hard work,” said Cradock. “They’re not your average student athletes. They get up and swim at six in the morning, then come back in the afternoon to train again.”

There were several stand-out athletes at the championship, and some new records were set. Brad Reitz ’11 earned the “Male Coaches’ Award” with 223 points earned during his four years as a Retriever. At the championship, he broke both the school and pool record for the 200-yard butterfly with a time of 1:47.26.

Abbey McKenney ’12 earned the award for “Most Outstanding Female Swimmer.” Her 100-yard freestyle time of 49.66 seconds is a new record for both UMBC and the America East Championship.

Johan Rohtla ’14 was named “Most Outstanding Male Rookie,” after he won gold and set a school record in the men’s 200-yard backstroke with a time of 1:46.80, breaking a record he had set earlier that day by 1.5 seconds.

Several other Retrievers earned medals and contributed to their teams’ victories. Pierre De Waal ’11 earned gold in the men’s 1,650-yard freestyle, Eric Jones ’11 won silver in the men’s 100-yard freestyle and John Mendenhall ’12 brought home the silver medal in the men’s 200-yard breaststroke.

In the women’s 200-yard butterfly, Tara Morrissette ’13 earned silver and Jennifer Kotonias ’13 brought home bronze. Amy Fay ’13 won bronze in the women’s 1,650-yard freestyle and set the second-fastest time in school history.

UMBC also brought home the award for “Men’s Co-Coaching Staff of the Year.” Cradock said they earned the award “solely on the performance of our men.”

Elsewhere in what was a busy weekend for UMBC athletics, the men’s track and field team took fourth place and the Retriever women took sixth at the America East Indoor Championships, earning three gold medals in the process. Read more about track and field here.

(2/22/11)

Committed Modernist

It’s been a big year for Jessica Berman, chair of English: she was recently elected to the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) board, is putting the finishing touches on a book that she has been researching and writing for the past six years and is co-editing a new book series.

“The scholarship that I do bridges that distinction between a national literature department, like UMBC’s English department, and what we think of more properly as comparative literature,” she said. Berman’s work across these two fields allows her to bring a unique perspective to the classes she teaches. It is also getting her noticed in the scholarly community: Berman’s recent nomination and election to the board for the ACLA, the principal society in the United States for scholars whose work involves cross-cultural literary study, signals that she’s one of the premier voices in this field.

“It feels like a great accomplishment to have been able to continue work in this field and to have been recognized as a scholar at a national level,” she said.

Berman’s appointment to this board is an obvious choice based on her current scholarly work. Her recently completed book, tentatively titled “Modernist Commitments: Transnational Modernism between Ethics and Politics,” is at the cusp of a growing trend in the study of modernism because she looks at how authors influenced each other across national borders. This means that in addition to well-known modernist writers like James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, the book discusses writers from regions including the Caribbean, India and Spain. “In comparative literature you’re always thinking about how a text circulates,” she said. “When you come across somebody that nobody’s worked on or who people don’t really know exists, there’s a very exciting sense of discovery.”

The book also examines how these writers were influenced by and responding to each other and the political events of their times. “It’s really hard to shake this idea that if you are trying to complicate the picture of the world [as modernist writers do], it takes you away from concern with the world. I don’t think the two are mutually exclusive.”

Berman is helping to develop the field of transnational modernism in other ways, too; a new book series that Berman is co-editing called “Modernist Latitudes,” published by Columbia press, is seeking out and connecting scholars in this area of research. Berman and her co-editor, Paul Saint-Amour of the University of Pennsylvania, are selecting books for the series that consider modernism in new or understudied ways. When “Modernist Commitments” is published in late 2011 or early 2012 it will be the third book in the series.

With so many recent accomplishments, Berman isn’t slowing down. In fact, she’s already getting excited about what she expects to be her next book, a study of how modernist writers migrated not only between countries, but between media. As always, it’s a fresh approach to her field.

(2/21/11)

Cyber Games

As a senior at UMBC majoring in computer science, Max Spector has spent long hours in the classroom learning the theories and principles that explain how information systems work. He has studied the vulnerabilities that can cripple and corrupt these systems, and he talks rapid-fire about such hacking techniques as “buffer overflow attacks” and  “ARP spoofing attacks.”

But for Spector, who aspires to a career in cybersecurity, what happens in the classroom is only one part of his education.

“In a class, there’s not a lot of, ‘Here’s a computer, and here’s someone attacking you,” explains Spector, who is president of the UMBC Cyber Defense Team. Theoretical knowledge is vital for defending a computer system, but textbooks and lectures can’t simulate the adrenaline surge brought by a real cyber attack.

“What do you do if hackers are already inside your server?” he asks excitedly. “How do you get them out?”

Helping Maryland students and young professionals experience the challenge and excitement that this real-world element brings to cybersecurity is a big reason why UMBC, Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) and other partners are planning the first-ever Maryland Cyber Challenge and Conference (MDC3).

The October event will bring new and experienced teams together to hone their skills in an event that combines the strategy of a chess tournament with the relentless pace of a sporting event.

 “Maryland colleges and universities have a critical role to play in preparing students for careers in cybersecurity and related fields,” explains UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski. “This event will support those efforts by encouraging the development of valuable cybersecurity skills in a competitive setting.”

Founders of the event include SAIC, UMBC, the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA), the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development (DBED), and the Tech Council of Maryland (TCM).

Orientation sessions for teams in each of three divisions — high school, collegiate and industry and government professionals — will be held at UMBC in March and April. Two qualifying rounds will be conducted online using SAIC’s Cyber Network Exercise System (CyberNEXS), a scalable training, exercise and certification system.

The final rounds of the challenge will be held at the conference Oct. 21-22. High school teams will compete in a cyber defense challenge, while collegiate and professional teams will go head-to-head in a “capture the flag” scenario. Winners of each division will receive their trophies and awards at a formal ceremony at UMBC.

For members of the UMBC Cyber Defense Team, the event creates a new focal point on their calendar, serving as a “championship” for a state that has rapidly emerged as a national leader in cybersecurity.

Spector is excited. Though UMBC’s team is less than two years old, it has already been successful, making it in 2010 to the Mid-Atlantic Regional competition of the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition.

With the new Maryland Cyber Challenge and Conference, Spector sees an opportunity for more students and young people to get a taste of both the challenges and rewards of cybersecurity work: “It’s preparation for the real world.”

For more information, visit http://bit.ly/fWJdcX.

(2/9/11)

Eco-Education

A first-year seminar class offered this semester is giving students the chance to explore environmental issues from a humanities perspective. The class, Sustainability in American Culture, focuses on eco-literacy; that is, an awareness of how cultural influences can affect our relationship with the environment.

“In a humanities course, it’s possible to think about thing like culture, discourse and language and how those things shape our thinking and how our thinking shapes our interaction with the environment and the natural world,” said Rita Turner, ’11 Ph.D., language, literacy and culture, who is teaching the class. Turner’s dissertation is based on developing curriculum to cultivate environmental awareness in high school and college students, so when she heard that the university was testing the idea of having graduate students teach first-year seminars she jumped at the chance to use her materials.

The class allows students to approach environmental issues from multiple perspectives, rather than just learning the science of the environment. For example, students read about how everyday items are produced, wrote creative pieces from the perspective of nonhuman beings in the environment and created digital stories about places.

“We look critically about what’s said in the media, how our attitudes are shaped, what metaphors we use to talk about the natural world and what rights we have,” said Turner. By discussing popular discourse on the environment, Turner hopes to empower her students—many of whom are science majors who plan to work on environmental issues —to understand and critique the range of factors that contribute to our attitudes about the environment.

“I like the fact that we can step into the gray areas instead of being in the black-and-white place that we normally are when it comes to classes and answers,” said Heather Harshbarger ’14, chemical engineering.

 “I was surprised at how much information the class covered,” said Jennie Williams ’14, social work. “Not only did the curriculum focus on conservation, but it also explored consumerism, corporate power, political influence and even art and creative reflection in nature.”

Williams, an avid recycler and vegetarian, said that she was aware of environmental issues before taking the class but that it has expanded her view of these issues. “I have definitely become more aware of consumerism in the American culture and it has motivated me to stay active in education and projects of environmental protection,” she said.

Turner said that teaching the class has helped her to hone the curriculum that she will present with her dissertation, and she looks forward to being able to share what she learned in a real classroom with her dissertation committee. Teaching the class has reinforced her belief that students should learn to think critically about the environment. “This sort of humanities piece of the puzzle is missing, and I feel like there’s a real need for that,” she said.

(12/6/10)

Excellence & Affordability

UMBC is one of 50 public institutions in the United States recognized by The Princeton Review as a “Best Value College” offering a combination of educational excellence and affordability.  The ranking was announced February 22 on the Today Show and in USA Today.

The honor is the third major national distinction UMBC has received from leading higher-education rankings publications this academic year. For the second year in a row, UMBC was named America’s #1 “Up-and-Coming” national university by U.S. News & World Report’s Best Colleges Guide.  The University was also included on Kiplinger’s Best Value Public Colleges list.

The Princeton Review recognizes UMBC, a research university with nearly 13,000 students, for  attracting serious students and supporting them with undergraduate research opportunities throughout the Baltimore-Washington region and beyond. The campus location near BWI-Marshall Airport gives students access to internships with government agencies, nonprofits and leading private-sector companies.

 “UMBC provides a distinctive undergraduate education to outstanding students, many of whom go on to prestigious graduate schools and professional opportunities. We’re delighted to be recognized by The Princeton Review’s list of ‘Best Value Colleges,’ ” said UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III.

The Princeton Review selected schools by using institutional data and student opinion surveys. Broadly speaking, it examined factors covering undergraduate academics, costs and financial aid. A school’s academic rating was derived from admissions and other institutional data and student opinion surveys.

A school’s financial aid rating was based on data about tuition, fees, room and board and need-based financial aid packages and student opinion surveys regarding award packages and the service provided by a school’s financial aid office.  Approximately seventy-seven percent of students at UMBC receive some financial aid in the form of scholarships, loans and grants.

Dale Bittinger, director of undergraduate admissions and orientation, said, “Being named to the ‘Best Value Colleges’ list once again is something that we are proud of as it reaffirms, among many values, our commitment to attracting a highly diverse community of high-achieving students.”

UMBC was also named a “Best Value College” in 2009 and in 2008 was ranked the second “Most Diverse Student Body”  in The Princeton Review’s “The Best 368 Colleges: 2009 Edition.”

(2/22/11)