Saturday, October 22, over 350 students, faculty members, and guests gathered at UMBC for the 14th Annual Undergraduate Research Symposium in the Chemical and Biological Sciences. Fourteen UMBC students took home awards — five in biochemistry and molecular biology and nine in the biological sciences.

The symposium included more than 200 posters. Forty-five faculty and graduate student volunteers selected 70 posters as first or second place winners in 37 categories. The winning students were presented with framed certificates and will receive gift cards to an online bookstore.

The daylong event has become a major annual symposium on the East Coast for presenting undergraduate research. This year featured poster presentations by students representing 40 institutions from eight states and Washington, D.C.

Michelle Starz-Gaiano, an Assistant Professor of Biology at UMBC, says the event, ”is a great opportunity for students to learn to talk about their research in an understandable way to a broad audience.”

Niambi Brewer, a winner in the symposium agrees. She says that each time you present your work, “you learn different and better ways to get your point across. It’s always a rewarding experience.”

Bill LaCourse, Interim Dean of the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences says, “The event, is designed to promote and recognize undergraduate research across the region by providing a juried, multi-institutional opportunity for students to present their work in a professional manner.”

UMBC President, Freeman Hrabowski gave the opening remarks. Dr. Rachel Brewster, Associate Professor in Biology at UMBC, gave the midday plenary lecture, “Getting the Brain into Shape: Mechanisms of Neural Tube Morphogenesis.”

The Undergraduate Research Symposium in the Chemical and Biological Sciencs is sponsored by UMBC through a grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health. The annual event is planned and organized by faculty and staff in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry in UMBC’s College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences.

As a photographer for the Baltimore Sun, A. Aubrey Bodine’s photography captured Maryland life. On Saturday, November 19, the Baltimore Sun will auction of over 7,000 of his prints.

Tom Beck, chief curator at the Albin O. Kuhn Library, was on “Midday with Dan Rodricks” on November 17 to discuss the library’s Bodine collection, which contains over 3,000 Bodine prints.

“He was the person who I think single-handedly invented our cherished traditional Maryland imagery,” said Beck.

The full conversation can be heard here.

Recent polls indicate that America thinks congress is a lost cause.  Is the solution to hand over leadership to a younger generation? Will the momentum of Occupy Wall Street propel young people to greater levels of civic engagement?

Those are the questions that Craig Berger, student life’s coordinator for campus and civic engagement, discussed on WYPR’s “Midday with Dan Rodricks” on Thursday, November 17.

“What I think is interesting about the Occupy Wall Street movement is how it has been institutionalized,” said Berger. “Millennials like institutions, they like to work together, but in this case the institutions are failing them. So they’re creating their own.”

The full conversation can be heard here.

Michelle Scott, associate professor of history, will head to South Africa this winter to work with students on issues of diversity.

Scott is a Resource Faculty in the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow-SSRC Graduate Initiatives Program, which aims to transform the academy by eradicating racial disparities on the faculties at colleges and universities in the United States and South Africa.  She and five other Resource Faculty Fellows have been invited to lead a seminar at the University of Capetown, South Africa, for graduate students. The seminar will deal with diversifying the academy and finishing the dissertation.

Scott has also been asked to speak at a cultural exchange program with students from Wesleyan, Williams, Duke, Oberlin and the Emory Summer Institute for HBCU students. She will be in South Africa from January 3, 2012, to January 14.