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As the nation confronts generations-worth of structural racism, UMBC’s community is digging deep to learn, reflect, and take action for long-term change.

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When Jasmine Lee describes the challenges of the last few months, she talks about them in terms of “multiple pandemics at once.” The first was COVID-19, which continues to wreak public health and economic destruction, and leaves many questions ahead unanswered. 

The second, says Lee, director of Inclusive Excellence in the Division of Student Affairs at UMBC, was the swell of despair and outrage surrounding not only the death of George Floyd in late spring, but the ongoing deaths of Black people, and the rise of a collective desire for action. While so much of what needs to be done is systemic in nature, the impact has felt incredibly personal for many, including Lee.

“I’ve heard some use the term ‘intergenerationally tired’…and I think, particularly for Black folks, that is very real,” says Lee. 

In the wake of nationwide protests and a pronounced desire to make lasting change, UMBC’s communities have harnessed distance learning tools in recent weeks to host workshops, trainings, and discussion circles on everything from how to become better allies and disrupt systemic racism, to smaller specific meet-ups meant to offer support during these difficult times. Further action from UMBC’s Office of Equity and Inclusion, with partnership from many other groups on campus, is also in the works.

“There’s a very clear sense of exhaustion in many forms due to historical and generational trauma that continues to be seen today,” says Lee, one of a handful of faculty, staff, and students to have spearheaded workshops in recent weeks. “But in the midst of it all, I’m seeing people who are taking up the mantle in ways that they haven’t before.”

Banding Together Through Learning

With the university closed to most in-person interaction, one might assume it would be difficult to implement weighty discussions of this sort. However, within days of the first nationwide protests in early June, the myUMBC network lit up with opportunities for online training and learning, and ways of expressing frustration and hope.

Amelia Meman ’15, gender and women’s studies, assistant director of the Women’s Center, wrote an early post on the center’s blog about “calling in white people and non-Black people of color” and providing resources to help allies move from being performative to authentic. The center, along with UMBC’s Mosaic Center and other campus groups, have also offered a variety of learning and self-care programs for students, staff, and faculty.

Mid-way through June, staff from the Division of Student Affairs led more than 70 members of the community in a “Virtual Circle for (Aspiring) Anti-Racist White Allies.” Co-facilitators Jeff Cullen, director, Student Conduct and Community Standards, and Lauren Mauriello, assistant director for Residential Life, shared information about White privilege and discussed the span of behaviors that encompass both overt and covert White supremacy. 

“We thought we would create space for 50, and we quickly rocketed past that,” says Cullen, who along with colleagues has helped to ramp up Restorative Practices initiatives on campus over the last five years. The June discussion group now intends to break off into smaller groups to tackle questions that came up in the circle, many of them centered around ways of dismantling racism on the individual and system levels.

“These are the questions that people have, so let’s start there…so maybe in the coming weeks and months folks can get together and begin tackling those problems and questions” in a grounded and purposeful way, Cullen says.

More than 600 community members tuned in for “The Many Faces of Structural Racism,” a panel including Black professors of psychology, education, and political science, as well as staff working in Student Affairs and the Office of Equity and Inclusion. Led by Kimberly Moffitt, director and professor, Language, Literacy, and Culture and affiliate professor, Department of Africana Studies, the conversation covered everything from the histories of structural racism in education and voting, to ways of breaking down these persistent barriers.

UMBC Student Government Association President Mehrshad Devin ’22, biology and physics, attended the panel knowing that students were interested in getting and staying involved in between semesters, and hoping to find routes for his own work within the SGA.

“The panel answered a myriad of questions regarding how UMBC is dealing with these concerns and helped ease students’ minds a lot,” says Devin, who found what he heard aligning with his own plans. “It was heartwarming to see that the university was actively listening to the members of the community and making the changes they saw fit, and doing so in such a quick manner.”

Lee also held a very well-attended two-day workshop on “Cultivating Skills While Disrupting Racial Injustice,” which invited community members of all backgrounds to examine steps they might take to disrupt structural racism, explore options for active allyship, and more. As a university, it is important to understand what needs fixing so action can happen, says Lee, from standard implicit bias training, to expectations for hiring.

“Part of action is acknowledging that it’s okay for people to be in different spaces and at different levels in this progress, and providing the appropriate scaffolding in education and training and accountability that meets every single person wherever they might be,” says Lee.

Steps to Structural Change

Without action, talk does little to change things. And, as Keisha Allen, assistant professor, Education, noted during the “Many Faces of Structural Racism” panel, now is the “time to get to work!”

In late June, UMBC’s Office of Equity and Inclusion (OEI) rolled out a new Inclusion Council, made up of faculty, staff, students, and alumni. With a promise of “living out our UMBC values and…taking action,” the group will meet monthly to create and enact a plan for the university based on feedback acquired from the entire community.

Candace Dodson-Reed ’96, English, chief of staff and executive director of OEI, is ready to look at this time as an opportunity to continue to make lasting change. As an alumna of color, she says she has deeply felt the frustration and trauma shared by so many.

“I think the question for many of us here is how are we at UMBC going to look in the mirror and make incremental changes—both short-term and long-term—to get at the challenges that we have on our campus,” and beyond, she says. Among the goals of the new Inclusion Council will be to develop a specific roadmap of change.

“These challenges have been going on for a long time in our country, so it’s acknowledging that this is traumatic, and then also a sense of what we can do to make things better on our campus” she says. “I’m feeling that from our Black community, but also from all kinds of people who want to be allies, and who want to show up in this work.”

Updates about the Inclusion Council’s work will be made regularly on the OEI website. The group will meet once a month and build out work groups and subcommittees including folks from across UMBC.

Devin, one of several students to sit on the Inclusion Council, is encouraging students to stay engaged. He is also seeking new students to serve on Council work groups and subcommittees.

“My biggest advice to students is to reach out and voice your opinions. Your voice matters,” he says.  “Admin, faculty, and student leaders at UMBC will listen to you and will help you achieve the change you want….It is more crucial now than ever for students to stay engaged with everything that is happening at UMBC and around the world.”

UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski mirrored this sentiment in his closing remarks at the “Many Faces of Structural Racism” panel, urging the community to listen, to vote, and to be willing to look at oneself—and one’s everyday actions—with an honest eye.

“I would challenge us all to look in the mirror. This is not a time to be defensive, it is a time to realize that we can be much better,” he told the group. “There is much to do on every level…it’s not enough to say what we have done. The question is what has not been done. To listen to the voices of our faculty and our staff, and most importantly our students….There are many ways to be involved. UMBC is a special place and we can be even better.”

* * * * *

Learn more about ongoing programming and Inclusion Council activity on the Office of Equity and Inclusion website.

Header image by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC Magazine.

UMBC’s Fei Han has received a COVID-19 Accelerated Translational Incubator Pilot (ATIP) award for research to help predict and reduce patients’ risk of being hospitalized due to COVID-19. He will further develop the Hilltop Pre-AH Model, a preventative risk model, to apply to pandemic conditions.

Han is a senior data scientist at The Hilltop Institute who develops predictive analytics related to healthcare. The ATIP award he has received provides seed funding for University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) and community researchers to rapidly address issues related COVID-19 or the causal virus SARS-CoV-2. ATIP’s focus is on prevention measures that can improve public health.

“I am excited that I have the opportunity to help with COVID issues and practice data science for the public good,” shares Han. His project with a UMB collaborator is one of ten selected to receive funding, from among forty applicants.

Fostering innovative research

Han is collaborating with co-PI Zachary D.W. Dezman, assistant professor of emergency medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine. Their project, “Reducing Patient Risk through Actionable Artificial Intelligence,” will estimate individual-level risks of hospitalization due to COVID-19 and other communicable diseases for Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries across the state of Maryland. 

The ATIP award is a grant competition held by the UMB Institute for Clinical and Translational Research. The competition is funded through a partnership between UMB and Johns Hopkins University through the National Institutes of Health National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences Clinical and Translational Science Awards Program. That program helps support high-quality translational clinical research and fosters innovation in research methods, training, and career development.

Public healthcare solutions

Han’s project is an extension of the Hilltop Pre-AH Model developed for the Maryland Primary Care Program (MDPCP). Physicians in the program received access to large patient data sets that they hoped could improve their ability to provide care. But they lacked a mechanism to process the data into actionable information to care for their patients. 

The Hilltop Institute uses data analytics and translational research to provide solutions for publicly funded healthcare. When MDPCP approached Hilltop with this problem, Ian Stockwell, chief data scientist, was confident that Hilltop’s advanced learning machine models could generate a solution. After all, they were built to process big data to predict the risk of adverse events. 

Stockwell worked on the problem with Hilltop senior data scientists Fei Han and Morgan Henderson for over a year. Then, in October 2019, they launched the Hilltop Pre-AH Model. 

The model uses Medicare claims data and a series of factors based on diagnoses, procedures, medications, healthcare utilization, demographics, and environmental and geographic factors to create a value identifying each patient’s level of health risk. Primary care providers then use this as a tool to identify patients who would benefit most from intensive primary care coordination. This type of care can effectively prevent hospitalization for routine care conditions. 

Data science improves patient care

As a result of this initiative, 500 primary care providers with almost 350,000 patients across Maryland are now able to better coordinate the care for those most at risk of preventable hospitalization. 

“The reason why I’m so proud of this work is that I feel it has a real impact on patients,” says Stockwell. He explains, “Primary care practices are overwhelmed. They have seen phenomenal growth over decades. The tool gives physicians a way to effectively triage the resources they have.”

The Hilltop Pre-AH Model fills a market need as a preventative risk model for public healthcare that draws from an extensive catalogue of risk factors. This unique feature allows a user to apply conditions particular to specific events, populations, or data sets, and it will still model the risk appropriately. 

Han will now expand the Hilltop Pre-AH Model by applying new events and features to help healthcare providers prospectively identify individuals at risk of hospitalization from COVID-19 and other communicable diseases. Both Henderson and Stockwell are joining his collaboration with Dezman to extend this work. 

“It is not building a new model,” says Stockwell. “It is adding capacity to our current model that will allow it to answer this new question.”

Banner image: Fei Han, senior data scientist, at The Hilltop Institute. All photos are courtesy of The Hilltop Institute.

Nihira Mugamba ‘21, political science and Africana studies, has been named a 2020 Newman Civic Fellow—the sixth UMBC student to earn this public service award. The fellowship honors her work promoting literacy in Uganda and the United States. 

Mugamba has been dedicated to this cause for years, from her days as a Girl Scout. She earned her Girl Scout Gold Award as a high school student by creating a reading program for a kindergarten class in Uganda, where her family is from. The Girl Scouts describe the Gold Award, the highest honor a Girl Scout can achieve, as “the mark of the truly remarkable.” 

Committing to social change

Nihira Mugamba.
Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11

Mugamba has sustained her commitment to expanding literacy during her undergraduate years at UMBC. As a sophomore she interned at the Parliament of Uganda, where she worked alongside the education committee. During her internship, she was able to continue her work with the kindergarten reading program. She has also volunteered for two years in Baltimore City Public Schools as a literacy fellow.

This type of long-term commitment to social change is precisely what the Newman Civic Fellowship honors. The year-long fellowship supports each recipient in further developing their social change and leadership skills through regional and state gatherings. Fellows are paired with mentors and become part of a national network of peers. They support each other in finding solutions for challenges facing communities locally, nationally, and internationally. 

“Nihira is an exceptional volunteer, organizer, and leader passionate about working within communities in need of support,” shares President Freeman Hrabowski, who supported her nomination. “She is committed to improving educational outcomes for underserved students and families through professional practice and policy.”

Investing in literacy

Mugamba, born and raised in Silver Spring, Maryland, came to UMBC with a vision. Over the past few years, she has worked to define her specific interests within political science, and to imagine a career pursuing her commitment to social change. “This all seems so straightforward when I talk about it,” explains Mugamba. “But it was a path whose dots didn’t connect until recently.” 

In her sophomore year she was referred to UMBC’s Sherman Center for Early Learning in Urban Communities. There she was introduced to her mentor, center director Mavis Sanders, professor of education, who was impressed with Mugamba’s vision. Sanders remembers Muganda telling her she wanted to become Secretary of Education.

Mugamba, wearing orange jacket, with The Shriver Center literacy fellows.

Mugamba was a great fit for the center’s Literacy Fellows program, a collaboration between the Sherman Center and UMBC’s Shriver Center. The program pairs college students with a Baltimore City elementary school. Fellows visit a classroom and work with a teacher throughout the semester, helping students develop reading and writing skills. Mugamba became a Sherman Early Literacy Fellow at Bay-Brook Elementary/Middle School.

“Nihira is exceptional. Reflective, goal-oriented, and highly organized, she has been critical to building the Literacy Fellows program at Bay-Brook,” shares Mavis Sanders.

Mugamba enjoyed the work so much she soon became the programs’ student coordinator. This experience helped her to better understand educational disparities that can exist between neighboring communities.

Education policy from the ground up

During the 2019-2020 winter break Mugamba returned to Uganda to deliver donated books to the kindergarten where she created a reading program years earlier. She was surprised at the growth of the students in the few years that passed since her first trip. 

Thank you card from Ugandan kindergarten class to Mugamba.

Magamba realized the connections between her work with children in Uganda and in Baltimore. In both places, she found that consistent communication and long-term relationships led to more successful community-engaged work.

In addition to all this community work, Mugamba served as president of UMBC’s Africana Studies Council. In this role she organized important on-campus discussions about current issues in communities in the African diaspora. 

Mugamba sharing information about Africana Council.

She noticed that her academic work, internships, volunteer work, and leadership positions began to have a similar theme and purpose. Each activity led her to realize her passion for bringing people together for a common cause. And often that cause centered around education.

Mugamba now sees a clear path for herself in international education policy. “I have no doubt that she will achieve her goals,” says Sanders.

Forging a future in community engagement

With a clear sense of purpose, the rising senior is embracing her new fellowship. The Newman Civic Fellowship will help her further develop the skills needed to support social change at a large scale. She is excited to have access to the program’s large peer network and is already learning about different paths to civic engagement. 

Mugamba is also preparing for life after graduation. She plans to earn a master’s degree in education at UMBC and become a teacher in Baltimore City before working in education policy at the federal level. She also hopes to return to Uganda someday to create an education-focused nonprofit.

“I didn’t know when I was a Girl Scout that it would be the foundation to a life in community-engaged work,” says Mugamba. “Looking back, I now see how much I’ve learned about the real needs of communities by being an active part of them—lessons that I will carry well into the future when I help to develop and implement education policy.”

Banner image: Mugamba working with students at Bay-Brook Elementary/Middle School. All photos courtesy of Mugamba unless otherwise noted.

Congratulations to Utsav Shashvatt for the first place winner for the first CSAWWA virtual poster competition! 

All three winners are 

1^st Place – Utsav Shashvatt (UMBC, Recovery of Ammonium, Phosphorus, and Potassium from Source-Separated Urine Using Donnan Dialysis)

2nd Place – Liu Jiang (UMD College Park, Understanding the Role of Microbiological Processes in Removing PFAS from Environment)

3rd Place – Xiaojue Chen (UMD College Park, Adaptation and Acclimation of Anaerobic Ammonium Oxidation (Anammox) Process to Environmental Conditions and Inhibitors)

By John Rennie Short, professor, Public Policy, UMBC

Cities around the world are emerging from pandemic shutdowns and gradually allowing activities to resume. National leaders are keen to promote economic recovery, with appropriate public health precautions.

Recently, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang announced economic growth plans that included creating 9 million new jobs and reducing urban unemployment to less than 5.5%. One surprise was his emphasis on street vending. After decades of trying to clear city streets of vendors, the Chinese state is now embracing them as a new source of employment and economic growth.

I study urban policy and have researched the “informal economy” – activities that are not protected, regulated or often socially valued, including street vending. More than 2 billion people worldwide – over half the planet’s employed population – work in the informal economy, mainly in developing countries. In my view, encouraging street vending as part of COVID-19 recovery makes sense for many reasons.

A long tradition

Hawkers selling almost everything – food, books, household goods, clothes – used to be a common element of U.S. city life. The first pushcart in New York City appeared on Hester Street in 1886. By 1900 there were 25,000 pushcart vendors in the city selling everything from eyewear to mushrooms.

Street vending was a low-cost entry job for recent immigrants. It served as the vital first rung on the ladder of success and still performs this role in many U.S. cities.

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But in New York and elsewhere, urban reformers viewed street vendors as nuisances and public health hazards, and tried to evict them or move them to marginal sites. Shopkeepers often complained of unwanted competition. The wealthy looked down on hawkers for being poor, foreign or both. As urban public spaces were regulated and configured to clear the streets of vendors, large-scale retail capitalism came to dominate the shopping experience.

Mulberry Street in New York City, c. 1900. Bettman/Getty Images

Street vendors and the informal urban economy

Despite these challenges, street vending still thrives in many cities around the world.

For example, in a 2017 study I analyzed street vending in Cali, Colombia with scholar Lina Martinez. We found a sophisticated operation with multiple levels. They ranged from a well-established sector in the busy downtown, with better working conditions and relatively high incomes, to less-accessible markets that provided a gateway opportunity for the poor and recent rural migrants. We also unearthed significant flows of money, and discovered that street vending often provided higher wages than the formal economy.

Many development programs in low-income countries from the 1950s through the early 2000s sought to eradicate street vending. Local governments often took aggressive actions to remove street vendors from public spaces.

Recently, however, many nations have embraced street commerce as a way to reduce poverty and boost marginal groups, especially poor women from ethnic and racial minorities. As one example, since 2003 it has been illegal to remove street vendors from public spaces in Colombia without offering them compensation or guaranteed participation in income-support programs.

Nor did street vending disappear entirely from cities in wealthy countries. It survived in traditional flea markets and farmer’s markets. These lively urban spaces are now augmented by the motorized version of vendor’s street food: food trucks.

Building on food trucks’ success, more cities now are seeking to promote street vending. Advocates in New York City have campaigned since 2016 to increase the number of permits and licenses for street vending, which has been tightly limited since the early 1980s. And street food has become a tourist draw across the U.S.

Street vending during a pandemic

In my view, street vending offers many pluses for cities restarting after COVID-19 shutdowns. First, it can blunt some of the economic pain of the pandemic. Second, it can be configured to encourage social distancing more easily than the internal spaces of crowded shopping malls. Third, many cities are already being reconfigured and reimagined through steps such as widening sidewalks and creating traffic-free streets. These actions create more opportunities for street commerce.

Initial U.S. economic stimulus measures favored big business and the well-connected. Grants, training programs and low-interest loans, designed to help more street vendors get established, would steer support to Americans who are less wealthy and more ethnically diverse. Encouraging this kind of entrepreneurship, with its low entry cost, is a small but significantly more equitable way to stimulate the economy.

Street vending offers still more benefits. It enlivens urban public spaces and increases public safety by making streets vibrant and welcoming. Promoting street vending can generate employment, keep people safe and create the vitality and comity that is the hallmark of livable humane cities.

COVID-19 has forced us to rethink city living. I believe we should take the opportunity to reimagine a livelier, more interesting and more equitable post-pandemic city.

*****

John Rennie Short, Professor, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Header image: Street vending at Eastern Market, Washington, D.C. John Rennie Short, CC BY-ND