Art as Collaboration
For over 20 years, composer Anna Rubin has collaborated with dancers, musicians and video artists. As director of UMBC’s Linehan Artist Scholar and InterArts Studies Programs, she brings the spirit of collaboration to the University’s undergraduates. “Some of the most exciting work occurs in collaboration,” said Rubin, who is also an associate professor of music. “All of my roles at UMBC allow me to work with a variety of students and faculty members to help enhance the arts environment at UMBC. There’s a great interest in collaborative work here, which I find very stimulating.”
In addition to exploring individualized study in more than one discipline, students in the VPA/InterArts Studies Program have the opportunity take classes with established artists who visit campus each year. This spring, Rubin and Carolyn Tice, associate professor and chair of social work, will teach Art in Community—open to all students—in conjunction with the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange (LLDE) and Charlestown Retirement Community. LLDE has pioneered dance education with senior citizens as well as the inclusion of older dancers within their company.
Art in Community will give arts, social work, public policy and sociology students a hands-on experience in the use of the arts to promote self-expression, a sense of community and health in senior citizens. Participants will create a collaborative work to be shown on April 29. (Liz Lerman Dance Exchange will also present a public concert at UMBC on February 4.)
“There is an enormous opportunity for our arts students to learn about entrepreneurship in community arts projects such as our collaboration with Lerman Dance Exchange and Charlestown Retirement Community,” said Rubin. “Professional artists often have to be their own fundraisers, teachers, marketers and promoters. In addition, they work with diverse audiences. It is important for our students to see the model of an established company like LLDE, which has created many successful collaborations. The course is also a research opportunity for students from other majors as they examine the efficacy of the program and how it affects a social organization like Charlestown.”
Rubin is excited about the potential for courses like Art in Community, just one example of her lifelong passion for collaboration. After falling in love with composition as a master’s student at CalArts, Rubin began seeking out opportunities to work with other artists. “Once I discovered composition, I couldn’t get enough and pursued every opportunity I could get to work with virtuoso performers, collaborate with other composers and artists and explore computer-generated sound,” said Rubin, who has created over 35 compositions and won numerous awards for her work, most recently from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) and the Aether Festival of Radio Art#1 (Radio Station KUNM, Albuquerque). In May, the acclaimed Da Capo Chamber Players will perform one of her works at New York’s Knitting Factory in a concert showcasing works which integrate electronics with acoustic instruments.
(1/10/04)
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As the national debate on gender and science in higher education heats up, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC)is an excellent example of how a campus can increase the presence andsuccess of women faculty in science and technology.
Led by President Freeman A. Hrabowski, UMBC is a public researchuniversity with a national reputation for academic excellence and diversity. Over the last six years, UMBC has expanded campus-wideinitiatives to attract and support female faculty and graduate studentsin science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields.
"Since 2000, when we first began studies on how to tackle the problem, the number of UMBC's tenured or tenure-track women faculty in the STEM fields has more than doubled from 17 to 36," said Lynn Zimmerman, ViceProvost for Academic Initiatives and Professor of Biology at UMBC.
UMBC now requires all departments to form diversity plans prior to starting faculty job searches. The campus also redesigned its family and medical leave policy to be more visible and attractive to women faculty.
"Good things can happen once there is a genuine commitment to the issue," said Zimmerman. "UMBC's work is by no means finished, but I am excited about our progress in such a short period of time."
Initiatives and Expert Sources on Women and Science:
Hrabowski is leading gender diversity efforts on the campus as the principal investigator for ADVANCE at UMBC, a $3.2 million, five year,National Science Foundation (NSF) institutional transformation grant. ADVANCE is designed to change the campus structure and culture to improve recruitment, retention, career advancement and mentoring for talented women STEM faculty.
"Programs like ADVANCE show that what's good for women is good for the entire university," said Zimmerman, who also leads the university's day-to-day efforts for ADVANCE and other science diversity programs.
In 2001, UMBC appointed Janet Rutledge Associate Dean of the Graduate School. Rutledge was instrumental in bringing the PROMISE program to UMBC. Through this $2.5 million NSF grant, UMBC leads an effort by Maryland's three public research universities to increase the number and diversity of Ph.D. graduates in the sciences and engineering who go onto academic careers.
As the first African American female to receive a Ph.D. from Georgia Tech's electrical engineering program, Rutledge knows firsthand the challenges that women and other minorities face in academia. "There's a feeling of invisibility," said Rutledge, who focused on the scarcity of minority science Ph.D.s at the NSF prior to coming to UMBC.
In 2000, Zimmerman and fellow biological sciences professor Phyllis Robinson founded UMBC's faculty group Women in Science and Engineering(WISE). The informal support group for women STEM faculty became the foundation for ADVANCE and other efforts at UMBC.
In 2004, UMBC was one of only five U.S. institutions to receive an award to establish a Clare Boothe Luce Professorship. The Clare Boothe Luce Program is among the most significant sources of private support for women in science, engineering and mathematics in the U.S. When hired,the new professor will make UMBC's Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering faculty over 50 percent female.
UMBC is home to the Center for Women and Information Technology (CWIT),which is dedicated to strengthening the nation's technology workforce by increasing the participation and advancement of women and girls in information technology (IT) and IT careers.
Claudia Morrell, Executive Director of the Center, has led a dramatic expansion at CWIT, including the development of a scholars program with a 93 percent retention rate and a $6.5 million increase in scholarships,research, and program funding.
Anne Spence is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at UMBC and a member of WISE and CWIT's Advisory Board. An aerospace engineer, Spence is used to the challenges of being a woman in a technical field.
"One of my college professors told me that women should not be engineers, so I got the highest grade in the class to prove him wrong," she said. "When I graduated I had six job offers. I did encounter initial resistance, but I was always able to get rid of it by proving myself."
Spence is a volunteer for CWIT's annual educational outreach event,Computer Mania Day. The event works to break stereotypes by building interest in technology among middle school girls, their parents and teachers via hands-on education and mentorship. She is also an advisor for UMBC's chapter of Mentor Net, a national mentoring program for women studying engineering and computer science.
]]>Using Physics to Synchronize Clocks
Even the most accurate timepieces are almost certain to disagree by at least a few seconds, which can be problematic for applications such as telecommunications, satellites, wide area networks (WANs) and global positioning systems that rely heavily on time synchronization. But thanks to sophisticated computations and high-speed electronics, distant clocks with separations of thousands of miles can be synchronized within a just few nanoseconds—one billionth of a second.
Physics Ph.D. students Alejandra Valencia and Giuliano Scarcelli, under the mentorship of Dr. Yanhua Shih, conducted an experiment to show that tighter synchronization of distant clocks may be possible by utilizing quantum physics. “We used the quantum entanglement of photon pairs to achieve clock synchronization,” said Scarcelli.
By sending two entangled photons down optical fibers, the research team was able to detect synchronized events with picosecond—one trillionth of a second—accuracy over a distance of three kilometers. Synchronizing clocks in global positioning satellites to within a picosecond might make it possible to locate objects at the earth’s surface within millimeters. The team’s research, first published in Applied Physics Letters and Science News last September, might have a role in a future space-based observatory.
Valencia and Scarcelli enjoy working under the guidance of faculty members who are considered among the top-ranking physicists in the U.S. In addition, since the University— ranked 16 th nationwide for NASA funding—has close relationships with NASA, the National Institute of Science and Technology and other research institutions, Ph.D. students also have the opportunity to network with other scientists in the region.
Having traveled from their respective native countries, Italy and Colombia, Scarcelli and Valencia have found UMBC to be a home away from home. Alejandra appreciates that Shih and other professors here treat their students like fellow researchers and value their ideas. “Back home this kind of relationship does not exist. We are not as close to professors as we are here at UMBC,” said Valencia.
(1/4/05)
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The Science of Snow
There are good reasons why Baltimore goes berserk about winter weather: Like many areas along the Mid-Atlantic, it often sits on the “rain-snow” line, or 32 F line, which makes storms difficult to forecast. “Small errors in predicting a storm’s track and intensity can mean all the difference between being on the warm side and getting mostly rain, or the cold side and mostly snow,” said Jeff Halverson, research associate professor at UMBC.
The University’s Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET) is home to NASA Goddard Space Flight Center research professors/weather and climate experts like Halverson and Ali Tokay who can help explain the science of snow. In addition to their research on global rainfall (Tokay) and tropical weather (Halverson) the pair also take turns teaching Geography 311: Weather and Climate, where students often ask about the nor’easters that occasionally dump over a foot of snow on the Mid-Atlantic.
There’s a good reason why the 50 million residents of the Northeastern urban corridor stretching from Richmond to Boston are hit by big snows fairly frequently. “The corridor’s unique geography puts its cities in a meteorological cross-hairs,” said Halverson. “The warm Atlantic Gulf Stream supplies abundant moisture, and the Appalachians ‘dam up’ or trap cold Canadian air, factors that often combine for significant snow events.”
“UMBC is in an interesting part of the U.S.; the rain-snow line can be just on top of us,” said Tokay. “If you recall December 5, 2003, UMBC was closed due to snow, but no snow was observed in greater Washington.”
Tokay, who devotes about a week of his class to winter weather, studies the microphysics of all types of precipitation. Throughout his career he’s used both high and low tech ways to study snow and ice, from yardsticks and buckets to a modern instrument called a disdrometer that measures the size, fall velocity and shape of individual snowflakes.
As a graduate student at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Tokay once braved a 22-hour blizzard to photograph individual snowflakes under a specially fitted microscope. “All snowflakes are six-sided, but it’s true as they say that no two are identical,” said Tokay. “They come in several shapes including needles, dendrites, columns and plates. Measuring snowfall is not an easy task, and running in and out of our building every five minutes at frigid temperatures was not fun, but we meteorologists live for that sort of thing.”
So what sort of winter is predicted for Maryland this year? Halverson said that official forecasts for early winter look normal, i.e. equal chances of snow or rain. “But the data suggests to me that the Mid-Atlantic is in an upswing of severe snowstorm activity and I would predict an active year with two to three major snowstorms.”
12/20/2004
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The best way to relieve congestion on Route 32 between Interstate 70 and Route 108 in Maryland is to adopt the State Highway Administration (SHA) plan to widen Route 32 to four lanes, according to a study by graduate students in the UMBC Department of Public Policy.
The study, Maryland Route 32: A Policy Analysis, examined alternatives for addressing the congestion on the heavily traveled, undivided two-lane stretch of road in Howard County. The SHA proposed that the road be widened to four lanes, with interchanges and service roads, and received an exemption from the Maryland's Smart Growth law to allow state funding for the project. However, community activists and environmental groups oppose the SHA plan, and one group has announced that it will file suit to stop state funding for the $220 million expansion.
]]>Helping to Save the “Other Bay”
While Mid-Atlantic residents are often reminded to preserve the beauty and health of the Chesapeake Bay, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Upal Ghosh recently did some hard-hat meets high-tech fieldwork to help protect the West Coast’s most famous bay from cancer-causing pollutants.
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), carcinogenic chemicals often found in waterways near cities and industrial areas, are at the heart of Ghosh’s research. Commercial fishing is banned in the San Francisco Bay due to high PCB levels in the fish. Many other U.S. port areas are in a similar state, including the Chesapeake Bay watershed, where PCB contamination has caused warnings against eating fish from most major rivers.
Ghosh helped develop an innovative approach to sediment clean-up that trades a white lab coat for a hard hat and wading boots. His technique uses a heavy-duty machine—the AquaMog—as a sort of underwater rototiller to mix activated carbon into contaminated Bay sediment.
“This process binds up the PCBs into the carbon, making them less available to bottom-dwelling organisms and fish and less likely to escape into the surrounding waters,” said Ghosh. “It’s the first time researchers are doing this in a large area using heavy equipment.”
The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and the U.S. Navy supports ongoing evaluation of the technology. To test the process, the team exposes caged clams in the sediments and then measures their PCB uptake. Ghosh also checks the water quality at treated sites to monitor PCB levels being released into the Bay watershed.
The San Francisco Bay project is a collaboration with Stanford University faculty and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Ghosh and Richard Luthy, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, have a patent pending on the technology application.
The research team was recently awarded a project by the DOD to do a more extensive pilot demonstration study at the same site. Ghosh also receives funding from the Environmental Protection Agency to test the technology on freshwater sediments from areas of environmental concern near the Great Lakes.
“I’m excited that a technology I conceived five years ago is now going into field trial,” said Ghosh. “There is a great potential to revolutionize the way we clean up contaminated waterways in the future.”
For more details about these and other research projects at UMBC, watch the home page for the debut of a new online home for UMBC research. If you know of UMBC research projects with a positive impact on people’s daily lives, please e-mail information to researchnews@umbc.edu.
12/13/2004
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Helping to Save the “Other Bay”
While Mid-Atlantic residents are often reminded to preserve the beauty and health of the Chesapeake Bay, Assistant Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering Upal Ghosh recently did some hard-hat meets high-tech fieldwork to help protect the West Coast’s most famous bay from cancer-causing pollutants.
Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), carcinogenic chemicals often found in waterways near cities and industrial areas, are at the heart of Ghosh’s research. Commercial fishing is banned in the San Francisco Bay due to high PCB levels in the fish. Many other U.S. port areas are in a similar state, including the Chesapeake Bay watershed, where PCB contamination has caused warnings against eating fish from most major rivers.
Ghosh helped develop an innovative approach to sediment clean-up that trades a white lab coat for a hard hat and wading boots. His technique uses a heavy-duty machine—the AquaMog—as a sort of underwater rototiller to mix activated carbon into contaminated Bay sediment.
“This process binds up the PCBs into the carbon, making them less available to bottom-dwelling organisms and fish and less likely to escape into the surrounding waters,” said Ghosh. “It’s the first time researchers are doing this in a large area using heavy equipment.”
The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) and the U.S. Navy supports ongoing evaluation of the technology. To test the process, the team exposes caged clams in the sediments and then measures their PCB uptake. Ghosh also checks the water quality at treated sites to monitor PCB levels being released into the Bay watershed.
The San Francisco Bay project is a collaboration with Stanford University faculty and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Ghosh and Richard Luthy, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford, have a patent pending on the technology application.
The research team was recently awarded a project by the DOD to do a more extensive pilot demonstration study at the same site. Ghosh also receives funding from the Environmental Protection Agency to test the technology on freshwater sediments from areas of environmental concern near the Great Lakes.
“I’m excited that a technology I conceived five years ago is now going into field trial,” said Ghosh. “There is a great potential to revolutionize the way we clean up contaminated waterways in the future.”
For more details about these and other research projects at UMBC, watch the home page for the debut of a new online home for UMBC research. If you know of UMBC research projects with a positive impact on people’s daily lives, please e-mail information to researchnews@umbc.edu.
12/13/2004
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Studying the Aesthetic Lives of Children
In addition to teaching at UMBC, for the last few years Honors College Professor of Visual Arts Ellen Handler Spitz has traveled the U.S. and abroad to discuss her research on the relationship between children’s books and the inner lives of children. Spitz was both honored and elated to receive one of only six Clark Fellowships at the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts last summer. The coveted fellowship for art historians from all over the world enables them to write scholarly works in the peaceful and collegial setting of the Berkshire Hills. Spitz used her time to finish her newest book on the aesthetic and imaginative lives of children for projected publication by Pantheon, a subsidiary of Random House, in January of 2006.
In her last book, Inside Picture Books (Yale University Press, 1999), which has been translated into Italian, Japanese and Korean, Spitz examined how picture books shape our childhood and adult lives and explored the profound impact of the experience of reading to children. She revealed how classic picture books transmit psychological wisdom, convey moral lessons, shape tastes and implant subtle prejudices. The London Times’ Quentin Blake said, “What is engaging about Spitz’s book is its mixture of perception, warmth and commitment … This is a valuable contribution to a subject which asks for serious consideration: what children’s books are, and what they do, and what important and curious introductions to life are taking place as we turn the pages together.”
Spitz previously held fellowships at the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities in Santa Monica; the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University (formerly the Bunting Institute); the Center for Advanced Study, Stanford University; and the Center for Children and Childhood Studies, Rutgers University. She has taught and/or lectured in England, France, Israel, India, the Netherlands, Austria, Spain, Russia, Canada, GREECE, and the People’s Republic of China. In addition to many articles and reviews, she is the author of Art and Psyche (Yale, 1985), Image and Insight ( Columbia, 1991), Museums of the Mind (Yale, 1994) and SHE co-edited Freud and Forbidden Knowledge (N.Y.U., 1994) and Bertolucci’s Last Emperor (Wayne State, 1998).
At UMBC, Spitz teaches interdisciplinary honors seminars in philosophy, psychology, literature, the performing arts and visual culture. “I am thrilled to teach in UMBC’s Honors College, a program that sets high standards for our students and helps them to go anywhere they want to go. I am very interested in contributing to excellence in public education; my desire is to engage students in critical and imaginative thinking and to inspire them to engage in new ideas while deepening their understanding of disciplinary traditions. It is wonderful to be able to do this at a university with dedicated colleagues and a dynamic president who is interested in fostering a strong humanities program.”
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High Marks for Leadership
Educators Bradford Engel ’89 and Jacques Smith ’70 are dedicated to building innovative learning communities and creating opportunities for students and teachers to develop leadership skills. They are two examples of the mission of the UMBC education department: to research teaching and learning, and to develop caring, thoughtful, knowledgeable and skilled teachers who are responsive to children, families and the community.
“My vision for a high school leadership class was to provide the tools necessary so that students could become leaders at home, in the community and at school,” said Engel, who was recently named the 2005 Maryland Teacher of the Year—the State’s highest honor for teachers—by the Maryland State Department of Education. (Two other UMBC alumni— Sharon Grimes ’90 and Kevin Mulroe ’98—were finalists for the award.)
A social studies teacher and department chair at Kent Island High School on Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Engel founded the Mentor Advisory Program (MAP), in which small student groups receive leadership training from teachers and community leaders. “I believe in offering students encouragement and helping them experience success everyday, while promoting a desire to face new challenges,” said Engel.
In the three years since MAP was founded at Kent Island High, standardized test results have improved, attendance rates have increased and the number of disciplinary referrals has dropped by nearly 30 percent. The program is also becoming a model for other Maryland high schools.
Like Engel, Jacques Smith, a principal at Meade Middle School in Anne Arundel County, believes that teachers should reach beyond curriculum and method to help children realize their full potential. Meade Middle is part of UMBC’s Professional Development School program (PDS), which creates learning communities that provide training for teachers and administrators as well as achievement programs for students. “UMBC interns learn a lot in our classrooms, but we learn, too,” said Smith. “They bring their new ideas and enthusiasm from the University and put it into action.”
Principals are critical to the positive atmosphere of their schools,” said Barbara Bourne, UMBC’s PDS coordinator for Anne Arundel County Public Schools. “Having been appointed principal before Meade Middle opened, Jacques played an important role in its design and development. Visitors can’t help but notice evidence of his management: a bright, clean and orderly school.” Meade Middle was recently named a Maryland State ” Exemplary School” for Positive Behavior Intervention Strategies.
A valued member of the community, Smith has received several grants to support community relations, including one that funds a community liaison. It’s hoped that creating a trusted presence in the neighborhoods surrounding Meade Middle will help Smith and his teachers build essential relationships with parents.
Smith also looks for ways to provide professional development for teachers. He recently took several teachers to National Middle School Association Conference in Minneapolis, and they returned with renewed enthusiasm for teaching and new strategies to share with their colleagues. “Jacques is a strong and compassionate leader who respects and values his staff in ways that help them become leaders as well,” said Bourne.
Learn more about teacher training at UMBC.
(11/15/04)
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