Chess Powerhouse

Continuing its dominating sweep of collegiate chess tournaments, UMBC’s powerhouse chess team won a record sixth “Final Four of College Chess” April 11 in Brownsville, Texas, at the 2010 President’s Cup.

The annual President’s Cup tournament, which falls just days after the NCAA Division I Basketball Tournament Final Four, determines the top U.S. collegiate chess team in an equally intense round-robin sporting competition.

UMBC defeated University of Texas-Brownsville (UTB) by just half a point to clinch its sixth title in the tournament’s 10-year history. The tournament was hosted by UTB, a newcomer chess powerhouse whom UMBC defeated Dec. 30 to win the 2009 Pan-American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship (the Pan Am). UMBC has won or tied the Pan Am competition a record nine times in the past 14 years, more than any other college in the tournament’s history.

“UMBC had to bring their best game ever to win against the strongest field of chess teams ever assembled at any Final Four,” said UMBC Chess Director Alan Sherman. “(UMBC chess) team captain Sergey Erenburg and Leonid Kritz played amazingly to lead their team against such tough competition.”

Competition was so fierce, Sherman said, that UTB hired a top grandmaster consultant who in the months before the tournament helped the team prepare an opening trick designed specifically to trip-up Kritz, who is the highest rated college player in the Pan Am. The trap contributed to Kritz’s third round defeat, but a victory by Erenburg and a draw by UMBC player Sasha Kaplan clinched the team’s victory.

Collectively, the four teams fielded seven international grandmasters, one woman international grandmaster and 10 international masters. In third and fourth place respectively were Texas Tech University and the University of Texas, Dallas.

UMBC’s chess team players are full-time students first and chess players second, Sherman said. Three team players have earned perfect 4.0 grade point averages and team captain Sergey Erenburg is a candidate for valedictorian this May.
UMBC’s championship chess team: Leonid Kritz, a Grandmaster from Russia; Sergey Erenburg, a Grandmaster from Israel; Giorgi Margvelashvili, an International grandmaster-elect from the Republic of Georgia; Sasha Kaplan, an International Master from Israel; Sabina Foisor (alternate), a Woman International Grandmaster from Romania; UMBC Chess Coach Igor Epshteyn; and Associate Chess Director Sam Palatnik.

Listen to Alan Sherman discuss UMBC’s record victory on NPR’s nationally syndicated Tell Me More.

For more information on the tournament: www.collegechess.org.

(4/12/10)

Heritage of Excellence

The UMBC community mourns the passing of Albin Owings Kuhn, a lifelong farmer who rose through Maryland’s university system to become the founding chancellor of UMBC. Kuhn died of pneumonia at his Woodbine farm March 24 at the age of 94.

“Good gracious, we have so much to thank him for. He was a very special man and a giant, and we’re standing on the shoulders of that giant,” UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski III, said in a March 26 Baltimore Sun story about Kuhn.

“Dr. Kuhn was our biggest cheerleader. He believed in us. He’d call me up and tell me how proud he was of our work, and I’d get tears in my eyes,” Hrabowski said.

Kuhn was heavily involved in the initial planning, development, and construction of UMBC. A University of Maryland graduate (B.S., M.S., Ph.D.), he had been professor of agronomy and head of the agronomy department at what is now the University of Maryland College Park, and executive vice president of the University of Maryland, which included campuses in College Park, downtown Baltimore and the Eastern Shore.

In 1965, Kuhn was given the responsibility for creating UMBC as the newest member of the University of Maryland System. He and his family moved into one of the original farmhouses of the campus grounds. This small gray house became the command center – residence, office, architects’ and builders’ outpost, student and faculty way station. Its porch was the catalog center for the library’s nascent 20,000 volume collection. That farmhouse was later replaced by UMBC’s library, named after Kuhn.

Kuhn was officially chancellor of both UMBC and the University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB), a position he held from 1967 until the University’s second commencement in 1971. At that point, as each campus was acquiring individual leadership, he left UMBC to serve as chancellor of UMB.

History professor Joseph Tatarewicz, an old friend and admirer of Kuhn’s, said to the Baltimore Sun that Kuhn was, “Gregarious, yet self-effacing. He took to educational administration almost effortlessly, and by the early 1960s he was the perfect person to lead the development of a new campus, sorely needed due to the baby boomers’ entering college.”

Every year in his Commencement address, Hrabowski quotes the words Kuhn said to the first graduating class in 1970:

“If you bring to the future the same personal qualities and personal commitment you have brought to this campus as students, good and important things will happen to each of you, as well as to those around you … and the university community will be proud to have played a part in your life.”

In lieu of flowers, the Kuhn family suggests contributions to the Friends of the Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery at UMBC. Checks may be made payable to the UMBC Foundation and sent to Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery, Administrative Offices, UMBC, 1000 Hilltop Circle,  Baltimore, MD  21250.

Excerpt from 1994 interview with Albin Kuhn:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSfE7yCxcEQ

UMBC Heritage of Excellence video featuring interview outtakes with Albin Kuhn:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiL-_-Rlf8A

(4/6/10)

What at the ethical considerations? Does it work? Ask Richard Blissett about his analysis of this issue. Come to URCAD, Wednesday April 28. Hear Richard's presentation at 3:45 p.m. Iin UC 312. Student researchers will be presenting throughout the day.