UMBC Alumnus Becomes President of West Virginia University

According to Google Maps, it takes a little over three hours to get from Catonsville to Morgantown, West Virginia. For James P. Clements ’85, computer science, and ’91 M.S. and ’93 Ph.D., operations analysis, the journey has taken a little bit longer than that – about 27 years, in fact.

But the destination has been worth the drive, which also took detours through The Johns Hopkins University (where he took an M.S. in computer science in 1988) and Towson University, where he has served as provost and vice president for academic affairs for the past two years. On June 30, Clements will arrive in Morgantown to become West Virginia University’s 23rd president.

It’s not hard to see why West Virginia University tapped Clements, whose career as a scholar and researcher took wing quickly after he received his Ph.D. from UMBC in 1993. He was tenured at Towson University only two years after receiving his doctorate.

His ascent in academic leadership has been even more dizzying – including stints as vice president of Towson’s Economic and Community Outreach division, as provost, and a key role in devising and monitoring that university’s 2010 Strategic Plan.

Clements says that the first strides of his time on the fast track began at UMBC. Like many students of his era, he chose UMBC for factors of proximity and cost – and found an unexpectedly rich academic experience in Catonsville.

Clements says that he realized the quality of the education he got when he went out into the workforce. “When I came out, and went to work for industry – I worked for a company called General Physics, which is run by Robert W. Deutsch, who has been very generous to UMBC – I felt so prepared. I was working with people who’d been at some of the top institutions in the country, and I felt that I had an equal level of education to anyone in that building.”

When Clements did finally end up in academia as a professor at Towson University, he says that he found it to be “probably the best job in the world. I love to teach. I love writing papers. I love doing research. I love working with the students.”

Yet he soon acquired the itch to try his hand at administration. Clements discovered that he had a knack for the coordination and fundraising that goes along with academic leadership – and also that he liked it. And those talents led him all the way to Morgantown.

Looking back at UMBC from across more than two decades (and across town from his perch at Towson University), Clements feels a lot of pride and appreciation at the growth of his alma mater.

“Let me put it this way: Every time I see [UMBC’s president Freeman A. Hrabowski, III], I thank him for raising the value of my degree,” Clements says with a laugh. “It’s true. Freeman is so dynamic and so charismatic. And it’s not just him. The institution has great faculty members. Great administrators. It has just continued to climb up and up and up. And for me, even though I work at Towson, I love UMBC. It’s been great watching it skyrocket into one of the hottest universities in the country.”

A longer version of this story first appeared in the summer issue of UMBC Magazine.

Visit Clements’ WVU Web site at http:/president.wvu.edu/.

(7/2/09)

© 2007-08 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �

UMBC Darwin Expert Speaks at Library of Congress

When UMBC history professor Sandra Herbert first saw the Charles Darwin Archives at Christ’s College, Cambridge as a graduate student, “It was like finding out Shakespeare had left unpublished plays behind,” she said.

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth on February 12, Herbert, one of the world’s leading authorities on Darwin, will give a lecture at the Library of Congress at 11:30 a.m. February 18. She will discuss her book “Charles Darwin, Geologist,” which explores how geology changed Darwin and how Darwin changed science.

As a distinguished visiting scholar for 2006-07 at Christ’s College in Cambridge, Herbert assisted the university with its plans to celebrate Darwin’s bicentennial and the 150th anniversary of his seminal work “On the Origin of Species.”

Like most students, Herbert, an expert on the history of science, first studied Darwin in high school. “Back then his work was buried in our textbooks,” she said. “I became interested in how evolution affects all things, especially human nature.”

While writing a graduate school paper, she came across one of Darwin’s notebooks. Her curiosity grew, leading to a Ph.D. dissertation and finally a trip to Cambridge to see other Darwin manuscripts.

Along the way she was surprised to find that the naturalist often most associated with biology was actually more of a geologist as a young man. This discovery led to Herbert’s recent book “Charles Darwin, Geologist,” which won the Geological Society of America’s Mary C. Rabbitt Award, the American Historical Association’s George L. Mosse Prize and the History of Science Society’s Levinson Prize for Historical Work in the Life Sciences as well as the Albion Book Prize given by the North American Conference on British Studies.

“Sandra is simply one of the world’s leading authorities on Darwin and one of UMBC’s preeminent scholars,” said John Jeffries, Dean of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at UMBC.

When asked her thoughts on Darwin’s lasting legacy and the ongoing challenges to his theories across the globe, Herbert referred to one of her favorite Darwin writings from his 1838 “Notebook B.” In it, Darwin refers to animals as “our fellow brethren” and muses that “we may be all netted together.”

“Darwin is seen as a hero and a villain,” she said. “The reason we react so strongly is because of the profound implications of his work on our understanding of human nature. I agree with his sentiment that we are all netted together. We are closer to animals than we sometimes think.”

Herbert recently retired as director of the program “the Human Context of Science and Technology” and professor of history at UMBC.  She is also editor of the “Red Notebook of Charles Darwin” (1979) and “Charles Darwin’s Notebooks, 1836-1844: Geology, Transmutation of Species, Metaphysical Enquiries” (1987).

Herbert’s lecture at the Library of Congress will be held in the Pickford Theater on the third floor of the James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, DC  A book-signing will follow the lecture, and the science reference staff will display Darwin items from the Library’s collections.  The event is free and open to the public; tickets or reservations are not needed. More information is available online.

(2/12/09)

© 2007-08 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �

UMBC Honors Outstanding Alumni

The UMBC Alumni Association will present Outstanding Alumnus/a and Distinguished Service Awards to six exceptional alumni at the 2007 UMBC Alumni of the Year Awards Ceremony and UMBC Annapolis Reception on Feb. 7 at the Loews Hotel in Annapolis. The honorees have demonstrated unwavering service to the University and achieved distinguished professional and personal accomplishments. The award recipients are:

2007 Outstanding Alumnus in Engineering and Information Technology
Robert S. Marshall ’88, Mechanical Engineering

As president and CEO of AWS Convergence Technologies, better known as “WeatherBug,” Marshall pioneered the networking of weather instrumentation and cameras using the Internet, making it the largest exclusive weather network in the world. “WeatherBug” delivers real-time, local weather to broadcast television stations, schools, businesses, local, state and federal government agencies, including the National Weather Service.

2007 Outstanding Alumna in Humanities
Patricia A. Smith ’74, Ancient Studies

A distinguished attorney, Smith has served as an advocate and advisor for the State of Maryland and its citizens. Smith has acted as People’s Counsel for the State of Maryland, a special solicitor and chief counsel to the Baltimore Police Department for the City of Baltimore and as an administrative law judge in the Maryland Office of Administrative Hearings. Smith also held the positions of assistant United States Attorney for the District of Maryland and assistant attorney general in the Office of the Attorney General for the State of Maryland.

2007 Outstanding Alumnus in Natural and Mathematical Sciences
Joseph P. McCloskey ’81 M.S., ’83 Ph.D., Applied Mathematics

For nearly 40 years, McCloskey has been employed with the National Security Agency where he works as a senior cryptologic mathematician. McCloskey has received numerous citations, including the prestigious Presidential Rank Award in 2006 and the President’s Award from the Crypto-Mathematics Institute, the agency’s oldest learned society, in 2001. An author of more than 80 professional papers, he has taught one course each semester at UMBC for 20 years.

2007 Outstanding Alumnus in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Eric A. Carlton ’91, Africana Studies

At age 29, Carlton made history when he became the youngest high school principal in the nation. Since then, he has directed his passion for education in launching the Banner Schools, a private company that partners with public school districts to provide a successful educational environment for at-risk youth. With three schools – one in Chicago, Miami and another to open in Detroit, the company assists nearly 500 middle-and-high school students from troubled environments. A former UMBC SGA vice president and president, member of the men’s soccer team and tutor for the Shriver Center’s Choice Program, Carlton has received numerous accolades for his services as an educator.

2007 Outstanding Alumna in Visual and Performing Arts
Sheila López ’92, Visual and Performing Arts -Theatre

After earning her M.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama, López founded Antecesores, a non-profit organization in Buffalo, NY, that advances, nurtures and celebrates Latino cultures through theatre. Antecesores (translated as “ancestors”) focuses in particular on programs for children, to allow them to explore and discover their cultural heritage.

2007 Distinguished Service Award
Eli Eisenberg ’86, Interdisciplinary Studies

Eisenberg is connected to UMBC through both service and philanthropy, as a member of the board of UMBC’s Alex. Brown Entrepreneurship Center, the “Exceptional by Example” Alumni Campaign Committee and the 2016 Alumni Strategic Planning Committee. In addition, he has endowed a scholarship in the name of his parents that supports two students per year. Eisenberg is founder and principal of VPC, Inc., a company providing multimedia production services, event management and studio and technology systems design. Guests at UMBC’s Commencement ceremonies and the 40th Anniversary celebration have seen VPC’s technical expertise at work.

To register for the UMBC Annapolis Reception and obtain more information, visit http://retrievernet.umbc.edu/annapolis or contact UMBC’s Office of Alumni Relations at alum@umbc.edu or 410-455-ALUM.

(1/22/07)

© 2006-07 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �

UMBC Mama�s Boys Celebrate Five-Year Anniversary

When they entered UMBC as freshmen, Jordan Hadfield ’07 and James “Jeeves” Murphy ’08 were searching for the right singing group. Both had performed in a cappella groups in high school and wanted to strengthen their backgrounds in singing. But there wasn’t a group on UMBC’s campus.  

Meanwhile, in the basement of Potomac Hall, freshmen Ray Remesch ’08 and former student Chett Miller ’07 were also discussing the possibility of starting up an a cappella group. Remesch had been in his high school choir along with a few rock bands and Miller was interested in contemporary a cappella.

Through instant messaging, the two duos found one another and decided to go to lunch together. Just like that, a singing group was born on campus.  

“In the beginning, we solicited everywhere,” said Hadfield. “We met singer Joe Garifo ‘09 when he was coming down to do his laundry.”

In the beginning, the Mama’s Boys (whose name was almost “Fetch”), was more focused on entertaining than singing. Hadfield said they were intentional about entertaining and being humorous.

“We were really better entertainers than vocalists,” said Hadfield. “We were really proud of it though because we were authentic.”

Things seemed to move quickly for the Mama’s Boys during their first year on campus. They played several shows and were embraced by UMBC audiences. By the end of the spring semester, they were recognized as an official student group.

In the past five years, the Mama’s Boys has grown into a strong vocal community. Auditions are more competitive, and the group sings regularly at events. They’ve played shows in Scituate, Massachusetts; New York, New York; Ocean City, Maryland; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, including many others. Their rigorous practice schedule (three times a week for two hours) and commitment to performance has led to popularity on- and off-campus. They now play four large seasonal shows on campus along with a myriad of smaller events.  They’ve even inspired some other groups on campus to start their own singing groups: the Cleftomaniacs, the Stilettos and Taal-Capella, a newly-formed male Indian group.

“We invite each other to performances and collaborate on songs with each other,” said Steve Gilmore ’09, music director. “Our audiences love it.”

From the start, the group has valued their friendship with one another as much as singing.

“I’ve made a great group of friends,” said Gilmore, “and not just in the group but through the members and their outside friends.”

In honor of their five-year anniversary, the Mama’s Boys will perform a founder’s day celebration and luau on Saturday, May 9, 6 p.m., in the Engineering building, Lecture Hall 5. They will play a mix of new and old music, and the Cleftomanics and Stilettos will also perform. The event will be in the Engineering building, Lecture Hall 5.

For more information, visit www.umbcmamasboys.org.

To watch videos of the UMBC Mama’s Boys, visit www.youtube.com/user/umbcmamasboys.

(5/1/09)

© 2007-08 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �

UMBC Named One of Nation�s �Best Value� Public Universities

The Princeton Review has included UMBC in its “Best Value Colleges for 2009” list. UMBC is one of 50 public institutions in the United States recognized for offering a combination of educational excellence and affordability.

The honor is the second major national distinction UMBC has received from leading higher-education rankings publications this academic year. UMBC is among the Top 5 national universities recognized as innovators by U.S.News & World Report Best Colleges Guide, along with George Mason, Clemson, University of Southern California and Arizona State University. Other schools on the list include Drexel, Northeastern, University of California – Irvine and Ohio State.

The Princeton Review recognized UMBC, a 12,000-student research university, for attracting serious students and supporting them with undergraduate research opportunities throughout the Baltimore region. The campus location near BWI-Marshall Airport gives students access to internships with government agencies, nonprofits and leading private-sector companies in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C. markets.

Seventy-three percent of students at UMBC receive some financial aid in the form of scholarships, loans and grants. The average amount of debt for graduating students is $20,572.

“UMBC attracts outstanding students who compete well for outstanding graduate schools and professional opportunities. We’re delighted to see this recognized by The Princeton Review’s list of ‘Best Value Colleges,’ ” said UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III.

The Princeton Review selected schools by using institutional data and student opinion surveys. Broadly speaking, it examined factors covering undergraduate academics, costs and financial aid. A school’s academic rating was derived from admissions and other institutional data and student opinion surveys. A school’s financial aid rating was based on data about tuition, fees, room and board and need-based financial aid packages and student opinion surveys regarding award packages and the service provided by a school’s financial aid office.

Dale Bittinger, director of undergraduate admissions and orientation, said, “Being named to the ‘Best Value Colleges’ list tells others what we already know, that UMBC offers an exceptional undergraduate education across the disciplines for high achieving students.”

In August 2008, The Princeton Review ranked UMBC second on its “Most Diverse Student Body” list in its annual college rankings book, The Best 368 Colleges: 2009 Edition.

(1/8/09)

© 2007-08 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �

ACTiVATE Program Success Sparks National Award, Additional Funding

In just three years, UMBC’s ACTiVATE program has trained 70 female entrepreneurs who have formed 12 new companies. This success has just been acknowledged with a 2007 Innovation Award from The Association of University Research Parks (AURP) and a new $50,000 grant from one of the program’s original funders, the Maryland Technology Education Development Corporation (TEDCO). 

ACTiVATE (Achieving the Commercialization of Technology in Ventures through Applied Training for Entrepreneurs) trains women to take technologies developed by Maryland universities to market. The program was recognized by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) 2007 Government Results and Accountability Performance Assessment Report, which covers best practices and programs from all fields of science and engineering supported by the NSF.

“ACTiVATE gives opportunities to women who are underrepresented as entrepreneurs while strengthening tech commercialization from Maryland’s research universities,” said Ellen Hemmerly, executive director of the UMBC Research Park Corporation. Hemmerly, a past president of AURP, was instrumental in the establishment of ACTiVATE. She also recently received the Catonsville Chamber of Commerce’s Business Person of the Year award for her efforts to grow the bwtech@UMBC Research and Technology Park, which includes a high-tech business incubator, accelerator, research park and other UMBC entrepreneurial ventures.

Companies started by recent ACTiVATE participants include: EncorePath, built on a unique rehab technology for stroke victims developed by University of Maryland, Baltimore physical therapists; Foligo Therapeutics, which has received significant funding as it focuses on new treatment therapies for ovarian cancer; and Traxion Therapeutics, a biotech firm developing new drugs for chronic pain. In October, EncorePath received $74,345 in funding from TEDCO, and Founder and President Kris Appel has won first prize in business plan competitions from the MIT Enterprise Forum of Washington-Baltimore and the Rockville Economic Development, Inc.

Originally funded with a three-year NSF grant, ACTiVATE’s mission is to form start-up companies based on technologies developed at UMBC, the Johns Hopkins University (JHU), the JHU Applied Physics Laboratory, Towson University, the University of Maryland, Baltimore, the University of Maryland Biotechnology Institute and the University of Maryland College Park.

For more information, visit www.umbc.edu/activate.

(11/6/07)

© 2007-08 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �

UMBC Team Rallies to Win �Final Four of College Chess�

With a final-round surge against its archrival, the UMBC chess team emerged once again as the undisputed kings of the collegiate game by winning the 2009 President’s Cup April 5.

UMBC defeated the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), which served as host for the tournament – better known as “the Final Four of College Chess.

The Final Four victory was UMBC’s fifth in the past nine years.

“This team had a very strong drive to win,” said Alan Sherman, director of the UMBC chess program and a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. “It is nice that our intellectual athletes get the recognition they deserve for their impressive accomplishments.”

One might guess the squad celebrated in Dallas before returning to classes April 6 at UMBC. Instead, Board 2 player Sergey “the Stealth” Erenburg, a 4.0 student, returned to his hotel room after the tournament to study for an upcoming physics exam, Sherman said.

Erenburg won the final match, a 140-move encounter that lasted more than six hours.

The President’s Cup is comprised of the top four finishers from the Pan American Intercollegiate Championship (the “Pan Am”), held each year in late December.

Although Stanford and the University of Texas-Brownsville emerged from the Pan Am as the two other Final Four participants, these top-level competitions remain a UMBC-UTD grudge match.

At the 2008 Pan Am, the two teams tied for first place. UTD won the 2008 Final Four, held at UMBC, by the slightest margin.

While the UMBC team enjoys international prominence, it remains committed to supporting the growth of chess in Baltimore and throughout the state. UMBC hosts the Maryland Scholastic Chess Spectacular May 10, a scholastic chess tournament open to any students in grades 1-12.

The Chess Spectacular will have two sections, one for novice players and the other for those with more experience. The top four finishers in the latter classification are invited to compete in a playoff that features live, move-by-move commentary from an established player.

“It is important to the chess program that we include the community in our activities,” Sherman said. “It has been demonstrated that students who play chess perform better on math and reading tests. Chess is a concrete way to develop young minds.”

(4/6/09)

© 2007-08 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �

UMBC�s Champion Twirler

The grace of a ballerina. The poise of an equestrian rider. The flexibility of a gymnast.

Those are the qualities baton twirlers like Stasi Kowalewski ’10 need to have, according to Stasi’s mother Mardel Kowalewski ‘81. And Stasi, who is the world and national two-baton champion, possesses not only those traits but also a desire to learn.

“You need to have time and patience for this sport,” Stasi said. “You need to want it bad enough to learn it. It still takes me a long time to perfect my routines.”

Stasi, who regularly performs at UMBC men’s basketball games, has been twirling since age seven. She picked up the sport as an alternative to soccer, a game in which she naturally excelled. Always wanting a challenge, Stasi decided to give twirling a try instead. Her mother Mardel, both a former twirler and coach, supported Stasi’s decision.

“Being a former coach, I have the opportunity to help Stasi as both a mother and a coach. But learning when to be a coach and when to be a mom is important,” Mardel said. “Sometimes she just needs me to be her mom.”

Stasi took to twirling immediately and her once-a-week practices at age seven turned into 40 hours a week in the gym today, when she’s not in school. Her normal routine consists of stretching, working on “tricks” and running routines. When she’s not twirling, she works as a coach, providing individualized support to young twirlers. Her rigorous schedule and continuous dedication have resulted in her winning the title of World and National Two-Baton Champion not once – but three times, receiving awards in 2008, 2006 and 2005. She’s performed both in individual and group settings, winning awards throughout categories.

But twirling has its setbacks. Stasi has dislocated her knee three times and has literally lost her teeth in the gym. She once caught the baton and the momentum of the catch forced her hand directly to her mouth.

“I was standing there with my teeth in my hand,” Stasi said. “I was hysterical. It was one of the scariest things that ever happened to me.”

“I never pushed Stasi,” said Mardel. “But I always told her when you’re done, you’re done. She just kept on going.”

The continuous practice, recovery from injuries and love for the sport has only enforced Stasi’s dedication to perform – that and that fact that most twirlers “hang up their shoes” at the early age of 25. But both Stasi and Mardel have twirling plans for the future.

“One of the things we’re looking to establish is a scholarship for twirling,” said Mardel. “We need to get the sport out there.”

Stasi hopes to eventually pursue a law degree. She’s currently working on her bachelor’s in political science and American studies. When it comes to studies at UMBC, both Stasi and Mardel are in agreement.

“UMBC is the best kept secret in Maryland,” said Mardel. “It’s a public school with a private feel. You have to be smart to go to UMBC.”

“I came to UMBC because I wanted a challenge,” said Stasi. “You get what you want out of this school.”

But she also hopes to continue her work as a coach.

“Every twirler’s dream is to coach,” said Stasi. “I would love to pass on my knowledge and someday teach a national title holder.”

Stasi’s immediate plans for the future include twirling for the Washington Mystics and a AAA baseball team. She will also be competing with the seven-time reigning world championship team (the Dynamics) in the 2009 twirling competition in Belgium.

To see a video of Stasi’s half-time performance, click the play button below.

(1/23/09)

© 2007-08 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �

Venus, If You Will

Many theatre companies are born out of a mixture of inspiration and frustration. Take The Venus Theatre in Laurel, for instance.

When its founder, Deborah Randall ’94, theatre, graduated from UMBC, she pursued a career as a playwright and a performer in Washington, D.C. Like many recent graduates, Randall had a desire to succeed in a challenging profession. But she also found some of the roles she played and the theatrical atmosphere that surrounded her to be stifling her creativity. She craved a theatre that valued women and living playwrights.

Randall recalls UMBC theatre professor Wendy Salkind’s advice to her. “Every time I would gripe to her,” Randall recalls, “she’d say: If it doesn’t exist, create it. That was her mantra to me.”

The theatre company that Randall founded in 2001 is dedicated to filling what she sees as a gap in the Baltimore-Washington region, presenting shows with a decidedly female perspective and recent work by contemporary playwrights.

The company is in the middle of its current season, which features new plays that include a fresh look at the experience of women characters in Shakespeare and a contemporary retelling of Medea set in Los Angeles. The series concludes this coming fall with a new World War II memory play called Why’d You Make Me Wear This, Joe? by acclaimed writer Vanda and a comedic look at a very difficult Helen of Troy in a new play called Helen of Sparta.

Randall says that the emphasis on new work – especially by women playwrights – is important to her. A steady cultural diet of reality television and revisiting the classical repertoire, she observes, has meant that “there are so many writers who are not getting an opportunity.”

Finding and nurturing new work, she says, “is part of the life of the theatre…. Finding the pulse in a new work is kind of what I wake up in the morning to do.”

Creating what ultimately became Venus Theatre took time, however. Randall started small, crafting one-woman shows for herself that played in various venues in Washington, D.C. She also started a reading series for women writers and tried her hand at children’s theatre before settling on more adult fare.

After a series of misadventures and mishaps, including one show that had its last week in a D.C. theater interrupted by a street explosion that rendered the space unusable, Randall decided that she needed to find a more permanent home.

The constant scrapping and hustling for space to rent “was not cute anymore,” says Randall, especially after the street explosion. After a long search, she finally settled on a storefront space just off Laurel’s Main Street, which she dubbed “The Venus Theatre Play Shack.” She and a dedicated crew of volunteers transformed the place into a black box theater that’s become a new home base for the company, perched halfway between Washington and Baltimore and drawing from both cities and the surrounding community.

Randall recalls her time at UMBC fondly. “I was a nontraditional student,” she says. “So I was a few years older than everyone else. I had been to community college, worked for three years, sown some wild oats…. I wanted to squeeze everything I could out of the experience.”

Along with Salkind, she counts professors Xerxes Mehta and Alan Kreizenbeck as influences on her current career path. Randall also recalls that her roles in a production of Peter Weiss’ Marat/Sade (directed by Mehta) and in Cinders – a play by Polish playwright Janusz Glowack, directed by Kreizenbeck – were particularly memorable.

Though Randall still writes plays (one of her works, Molly Daughter, is included in Anthracite! An Anthology of Pennsylvania Coal Region Plays, which was published by the University of Scranton Press), she says that she “has ended up more of a producer and a director than a writer and actor anymore.” Running a theatre company also involves a lot of logistics and fundraising.

But Randall’s commitment to helping produce new works by playwrights – especially women playwrights – remains a primary challenge that she’s happy to take on. With the classics, she observes, “all the kinks have been worked out in a way.” New work, she says, is where the sizzle and satisfaction is.

“If it has been done too often,” she says, “it doesn’t interest me.”

This story by Richard Byrne ’86 originally appeared in UMBC Magazine. (www.umbc.edu/magazine)

For more information about Venus Playhouse, visit http://www.venustheatre.org/.

(11/2/09)

Weidong Zhu Recognized for Engineering Innovations

Have you ever wondered how engineers can tell if a structure needs repairs? Weidong Zhu, professor of mechanical engineering at UMBC, is determined to make this process easier and more accurate. In conjunction with his graduate students, he has developed a unique method for testing and monitoring stationary objects for structural soundness.

The Daily Record recently recognized Zhu’s work by naming him an Innovator of the Year. The awards program recognizes Maryland individuals and companies that have created a product, service, program or process that has had a positive effect on their business, industry or community.

Zhu, whose research focuses on continuous system vibration and structural damage detection, is being recognized for his development of a vibration-based damage detection method that uses changes in natural frequencies of a structure to accurately detect the locations and extent of structural damage. Currently, structural damage can be detected through either visual inspection or ultrasonic testing, but these methods are not as thorough and have limited accuracy in detecting internal damage.

With several mechanical engineering graduate students in his Dynamic Systems and Vibrations Lab at UMBC, Zhu has developed new modeling techniques and inverse algorithms for structural damage detection. “Much of the work we do is theoretical, but it all has applications in industry,” says Zhu. These techniques have been used to test the lightning masts’ structural soundness at Baltimore Gas and Electric (BGE) electric substations. Testing can be done from the ground level, greatly reducing the employees’ risk for injury. His group is currently applying the methodology to other structures such as transmission towers, pipelines and cables, and the work is supported by the National Science Foundation and the American Society for Nondestructive Testing.

Zhu has also worked with other industries. In particular, his group has developed traveling cable and hoist cable vibration models for Otis Elevator, Mitsubishi Electric and ThyssenKrupp Elevator. A native of China, Zhu was recently named a Visiting ChiangJiang Scholar Chair Professor in General Mechanics by China’s Ministry of Education. For his three-year appointment, he will conduct short-term research at the Harbin Institute of Technology in the field of dynamics and vibration, with the goal of developing a collaborative research program with Chinese universities. Zhu has previously received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation for his work on continuous system vibration.  

Zhu is most proud of the achievements of his students, who have gone on to prestigious jobs in both academia and industry, such as the United Technologies Research Center, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, A.O. Smith Electrical Products Company and Lockheed Martin Corporation.

Zhu received his Innovator of the Year Award on October 14 at an awards ceremony at the American Visionary Art Museum.

(10/19/09)