Walk In Advising Hours July 14th-18th
Got a question? Need registration clearance? Stop on by! 

Monday, July 14th:
10am-11:30am

Tuesday, July 15th:
10am-11:30am

Thursday, July 17th
1:30pm-3pm

Friday, July 18th
By appointment only

Advisors are also available by appointment.

The UMBC community was deeply saddened to learn that Dr. Rita Sloan Berndt ‘71, psychology, passed away on June 17 of lymphoma. Born in Baltimore and raised in Catonsville, Berndt first attended the Institute of Notre Dame, ‘62, and continued her education at UMBC after her first son was born. Her final degrees, ‘75, M.A. psychology, and ‘77, Ph.D. cognitive psychology, were earned at the Johns Hopkins University.

After her graduation from Johns Hopkins, Berndt became a faculty member in the neurology department at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. She worked as a full-time professor and studied those who suffered from aphasia – the loss of the power to use or understand words – and retired in 2008. Dr. Sheila Blumstein calls Berndt a “force in the fields of aphasia and neuroscience” and credits Berndt as one of the reasons aphasia is better understood today.

While her work and education were deeply important to Berndt, her obituary in The Baltimore Sun explains that she had a great enthusiasm for all aspects of life:

She loved to travel and spent many summers at Great Gott Island in Maine. She also traveled each year to Italy with friends and loved going to Yellowstone National Park to watch the wolves.

The couple shared a love of athletics, and her husband remembers Dr. Berndt keeping a pair of Converse hightops and socks in the trunk of their car until they were in their 30s, in case they spotted a game of basketball they could join.

A celebration of Berndt’s life will be held at UMBC on July 16 at 11 a.m. in the Performing Arts and Humanities Building. A private burial will follow in the fall at Great Gott Island.

Learn more about Dr. Berndt’s life and legacy.

The Institute of Marine and Environmental Technology (IMET) received a three year, $600,000 grant from the Philip E. and Carole R. Ratcliffe Foundation to implement the Ratcliffe Environmental Entrepreneurs Fellowship Program. IMET is a research institute supported by UMBC, University of Maryland Baltimore’s School of Medicine and the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science.

The fellowship program supported by the grant will help young scientists gain leadership and business skills that will allow them to introduce their research to a commercial market. IMET Director Russell Hill commented, “This is a tremendous opportunity not only for IMET but also for investors, business people and citizens in the region who will benefit from economic development flowing from this new program.”

Click here to read more.

Maryland company looking to turn Iowa trash into fuel

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts has awarded Maurice Berger, CADVC, a $100,000 grant in support of his forthcoming curatorial project, Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television. Berger was awarded $50,000 by the Warhol Foundation to support the research of Revolution of the Eye in 2012.

This exhibition and publication project represents the first collaborative institutional effort between the CADVC and the Jewish Museum in New York, where Maurice holds the title of Consulting Curator. The grant will be administered by The Jewish Museum.

Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television is currently scheduled to be open at the Jewish Museum in New York in May 2015. The exhibition will have a major national tour, traveling to additional venues through 2017 including The Addison Gallery of America Art, Andover, MA; The Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago; Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, CA; and Nova Southeastern University of Art, Ft. Lauderdale. The exhibition will be on display at the CADVC in the fall of 2016.

About Revolution of The Eye:

“From the early-1940s through the mid-1960s, a dynamic new visual medium emerged in the United States that, in its risk-taking and aesthetic experimentation, paralleled the cutting-edge nature of modern art: television. The revolutionary and uncharted medium attracted younger television executives, writers, producers, and directors. Scores of socially and culturally progressive and predominantly Jewish network executives, producers, directors, art directors, and writers—figures such as Paddy Chayefsky, William Golden, Leonard Goldenson, Robert Kintner, Ernie Kovacs, Dan Melnick, William S. Paley, David Sarnoff, Frank Stanton, David Susskind, and Rod Serling—mined the aesthetic, stylistic, and conceptual possibilities of a new and powerful technology. These innovators worked in a cultural milieu far less constricted by the competition for box office revenue and the censorious production codes then preoccupying the motion picture industry.

As the geographic focus of the networks shifted from the Hollywood movie studios to a television industry initially centered in New York, the proximity of these innovators to the city’s dynamic artistic and cultural community—particularly the avant-garde art and philosophies of the New York School, an artistic milieu also with a significant Jewish presence—would result in a powerful conceptual and stylistic synergy between modern art and early television.”

More information about the exhibition and the grant is available at the Warhol Foundation’s website.