The Baltimore Code Craftsmanship meetup group will hold its monthly meeting at 7:00pm on Thursday, January 16 in the ITE building on the UMBC Campus. The meetup is for the students and software developers in the Baltimore area that care about the quality of their work and want to practice and improve their programming skills, share what they know and learn new things from others.

This is a hands on coding user group with no presentations. Each meeting will be a dojo where we will go through a challenging software craftsmanship exercise that focuses on clean code, test-driven development, design patterns, and refactoring. We will pair up and practice on a kata in order to learn and apply the values, principles, and disciplines of software craftsmanship. Come with your laptop equipped with your favorite programming and automated unit testing environment. If you don’t have a laptop, come anyway, we will need only one laptop for every two people. Be prepared to pair up, learn, share and have fun!

Join the meetup and register to attend here.

Robert Deluty, associate dean of the graduate school, has published a new volume of poetry, “Opening the Doors of Perception.” In his review, Richard M. Berlin writes:

“From the drama of the opening poem, to the shock of the finale, Robert Deluty’s latest collection throws open all the doors. And the light that enters illuminates the humor at the center of our joys and heartbreak. Best of all, his poems let us see ourselves from a fresh angle, especially our shared humanity. Once again, Deluty has created a volume to treasure.”

“Opening the Doors of Perception,” as well as all of Dr. Deluty’s other books, may be purchased at the UMBC Bookstore.

Didn’t have a chance to see the 2013 winter commencement ceremonies? UMBC has recorded the Graduate Ceremony on Thursday, December 19 and the Undergraduate Ceremony on Friday, December 20.

Undergraduate Commencement

Graduate Commencement

The Ludei and Goo Technologies partnership now offers WebGL games with high-end HTML5 graphics to mobile platforms including Apple’s iOS and Google’s Android.

Thousands of WordPress users now rely on the automated genius of ShrinkTheWeb for their automated screenshot needs.

Professor Marie desJardins received a research award from the National Science Foundation focused on increasing the expertise of Maryland high school teachers for teaching computer science, with the ultimate goal of increasing the number of computer science classes offered in Maryland and the number and diversity of students taking them.

The project, CS10K: Collaborative Research: A Structured CS Principles Approach to Professional Development for Maryland High School Teachers, is led by Dr. desJardins and will involve collaborators from the Computer Science department at the University of Maryland, College Park, and high school teachers from Charles County and Baltimore County. The NSF award will provide $845,000 in funding over a three year period and is part of the Computing Education for the 21st Century (CE21) program, which aims to build a robust computing research community, a computationally competent 21st century workforce, and a computationally empowered citizenry.

The project is also part of the CS 10K community, which works to make computer science accessible in high schools. The nationwide effort has a goal of getting rigorous academic computer science courses into 10,000 schools taught by 10,000 well-prepared teachers. The project pays careful attention to the inclusion of women and minorities–groups that have been traditionally underrepresented in computing.

The project will develop and evaluate professional development activities focused on increasing the expertise of Maryland high school teachers for teaching computer science. Experienced higher education faculty and highly effective high school teachers will collaborate to train other high school teachers to develop and offer a college preparatory CS curriculum. In the first year, an initial cohort of 12 master teachers will collaborate with the project leadership team to develop standardized classroom materials based on the CS Principles curriculum and then offer the CS Principles course in their home schools. In the second year, the project staff will train less experienced teachers in the CS Principles curriculum, and in the third year, the leadership team will demonstrate scalability by supporting the delivery of multiple independently funded regional workshops. The project’s ultimate goal is to achieve significantly increased interest of Maryland students in studying and pursuing careers in computer science.

Greg Couturier, a Peaceworker Fellow affiliated with UMBC’s Shriver Center, recently wrote an op-ed published in The Baltimore Sun about the current state of Baltimore’s juvenile services. In his commentary titled “A plea for moral imagination,” Couturier argues more needs to be done than simply spending money to combat juvenile crime.

“Instead of putting delinquent youth in facilities that have been proven to exacerbate violent behavior, many researchers are now calling for a push toward evidence-based, family-centered and community-based interventions, such as multi-systemic therapy, functional family therapy and various types of social education programs,” he writes.

Couturier is currently earning his Master’s of Social Work at the University of Maryland, Baltimore and works with the UMBC-Lakeland project as his service placement. He has also spent time as a Shriver Center Choice Fellow, and credits his experience during that time with inspiring him to find solutions for youth development. In his column, he calls on Baltimore City officials to think more creatively about peace-building initiatives in the new year while increasing funding for youth development programs.

“Such a resolution would be a proactive investment in the social capital of our city’s youth, an untapped asset that would bring boundless returns,” he writes.

You can read the full op-ed in The Baltimore Sun here.

Professor Charles Laberge, director of UMBC’s undergraduate Computer Engineering program, was recently recognized by the Radio Technical Commission for Aeronautics (RCTA) for more than thirty years of service helping to develop technical standards critical to aviation safety. RTCA is a private, not-for-profit association founded in 1935 to provide a public-private partnership venue for developing consensus among diverse, competing interests on critical aviation modernization issues in an increasingly global enterprise.

Dr. Laberge’s work was cited in an article the December issue of the RTCA digest, Spotlight on Volunteers: Communications Expert Advances Aviation Safety, for his leadership and contributions to standards for aviation communication. “Chuck has been invaluable to RTCA’s work for many years – we could not have accomplished what we have without his expertise and the long hours he has spent advancing aviation safety,” said RTCA President Margaret Jenny.

“Chuck LaBerge serves as Chair of RTCA’s SC-222, Inmarsat AMS(R)S, which has been working since October 2008 to produce several guidance documents focused on satellite systems capability. Chuck is known industry-wide for his expertise in radio signal processes and interference and brings a wealth of knowledge to the Committee’s work. Chuck has a long and active history of contributing to RTCA products and first became involved with RTCA in the late 70s, helping to produce DO-177, a MOPS document focusing on Microwave Landing System (MLS) Airborne Receiving Equipment. He has made substantial contributions to 20 RTCA documents, not including document updates.”

Dr. LaBerge describes the the work of the RTCA Special Committee 222 as defining the standards for satellite communication services that allow aircraft passengers to place telephone calls and access the Internet while in flight, especially in oceanic airspace. His previous RTCA work had focused on the special constraints that support pilot and controller communications related to the safety and regularity of flight along national and international air routes.

Professor LaBerge began working on RTCA standards at the Honeywell Aerospace Research & Technology Center, where he worked from from 1975 to 2008, achieving the position of Senior Fellow. While there, he completed a PhD in Electrical Engineering at UMBC in 2003. In 2008, he joined UMBC as Professor of the Practice, where he currently teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in computer engineering, helps teach the popular Introduction to Engineering class (ENES 101) and directs the undergraduate computer engineering program.