Hello everyone!
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For your convenience, I'm posting the remaining T.E.A.M. meeting dates for the semester. If you have questions between now and then, don't hesitate to reach out to me directly at silas@umbc.edu. Thank you!
Interested in Accounting (Tax / Audit / Consulting)? RSM has a job posting for their Pathways externship available through UMBCworks.
Attached is information about the Pathways Program.
]]>Every Friday, Lilian Cavanagh, accompanied by one to three other University of Maryland, Baltimore County students, enters The Commons’ loading dock and slips into The Commons’ kitchen, an area typically reserved for employees. Instead of getting kicked out, the students are greeted by the kitchen staff who direct them to a large pile of food that is theirs for the taking. Cavanagh, a junior mechanical engineering major, is the president of the Food Recovery Network, a student organization that collects food to donate to local charities. Cavanagh joined the club her freshman year with the intention of lowering food waste to help the environment. She transitioned from director of operations to president this year after the previous executive board members graduated.
The Food Recovery Network is a chapter of a national nonprofit by the same name, which promotes college students across the country to recover perishable foods that otherwise would be thrown out by campus dining halls. According to the Food Recovery Network’s website, the organization started in 2011 at the University of Maryland, College Park. Two years later, UMBC founded its own chapter and has now donated over 7,000 pounds of food. (This figure excludes the current academic year’s donations).
The Food Recovery Network works in collaboration with Chartwells, the company that operates UMBC’s dining services. Chartwells supplies the club with food from Chick-fil-A, Dunkin’ Donuts, Einstein Bros. Bagels and Outtakes. The club collects the food on Fridays because most of the food expires over the weekends and would have to be thrown out.
Lilian Cavanaugh and Eleanor Nancarrow take food from The Commons kitchen to donate to Baltimore area charities. Photo by Alex McKenzie.
“Our relationship has strengthened a lot with Chartwells,” Cavanagh said. “They make it as easy as possible for us.”
Even with the work of the Food Recovery Network, food waste is still an issue on campus. For example, Dunkin’ Donuts and Einstein Bros. Bagels make their food fresh every day and end up having to throw out whatever they didn’t sell each night. Additionally, the Food Recovery Network has facilitated many impromptu collections from the Student Events Board or other student organizations that order too much food for events and are unsure what to do with leftovers.
“Try not to buy more than you need,” Cavanagh advises. “Be more conscientious of what you are throwing out and what you keep.”
Along with food waste, food insecurity is a continuous concern on campus and the surrounding community. The University has supported organizations such as Retriever Essentials, which works to lessen food insecurity on campus through donation boxes for nonperishable foods, and programs like Save-a-Swipe, where meal plan swipes are donated to students who are identified as food insecure. There are several local charitable organizations that help those in the community who are food insecure including My Brother’s Keeper, where the Food Recovery Network donates the food they collect.
Located on Frederick Road in Baltimore, My Brother’s Keeper originated in the 1980s as a place for community members to get coffee and necessities like clothing. It developed into a soup kitchen for 13 years before transforming a year and a half ago into a resource center with a meal service program. My Brother’s Keeper serves home-cooked meals to about 50 to 80 people a day, seven days a week.
“If you’re hungry, you can’t think about anything else,” said Kevin Mason, a licensed clinical professional counselor and the director of My Brother’s Keeper. Mason explained that many members of the community often have to choose between paying their electricity and water bills or getting groceries. “A meal is one stress that we can take off them that week.”
My Brother’s Keeper relies largely on donated food to provide their meals. Each week, the Food Recovery Network makes the ten-minute drive from campus to the resource center with about 50 to 75 pounds of food. The exact amount of food and what kind of food is recovered differs each time. For instance, one week they received over 30 pounds on chicken from Chick-fil-a, in addition to the other food that was donated. Lately, the Food Recovery Network has been donating large quantities of chicken, bagels, mac-n-cheese and donuts.
Kevin Mason poses in front of artwork at My Brother’s Keeper. Photo by Alex McKenzie.
“I always feel bad when we give them food with so much sugar,” said Eleanor Nancarrow, a junior studying management of aging services. Nancarrow is one of the newer members of the Food Recovery Network but is dedicated to the club and helps out whenever she can by loading the cars with food and transporting them to My Brother’s Keeper.
Within My Brother’s Keeper, there is a medical center where community members can meet with a nurse practitioner and a dietitian who provide diabetes screenings and assistance to those with cardiovascular health issues. Diabetes awareness and education are a focal point for My Brother’s Keeper because it is increasingly prevalent in the community.
In addition to the medical center, My Brother’s Keeper has a job hub to help people get into the workforce and to learn important computer skills required in most job fields. Other services they provide include case management, therapy, programs about substance abuse, haircuts, clothes, transportation vouchers and more. “This is a place of refuge,” Mason said. “They feel safe and validated here because we maintain dignity and integrity while working with them.”
“No one has to go into their pockets for anything here,” Mason said. “We couldn’t do it without our partners like UMBC.”
]]>Dance performances require the ultimate blend of perfection and freedom, showcased in only a few short minutes of continuous spins, leaps and emotional facial expressions. And even more difficult is finding a unique “voice” for the dance company, separating it from the thousands around the world — something the Baltimore Dance Project aims to do.
Baltimore Dance Project is the resident professional dance company at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. It is, at its core, a democracy — with multiple artistic directors and choreographers working together, opinions and preferences mesh to create performances much like the one this past weekend, where a brightly colored dance with spins and leaps was met by heavy-handed dances of interpretive movements and anguished faces.
The power, however, does not only reside within the faculty. The dancers also have some say in the execution of the dance. Carol Hess, one of the artistic directors, has a lot to say about planning the choreography: “In the process of creating the dance, you get more ideas. You find out that your original idea is gonna be better expressed in ways you didn’t imagine before. So it’s about having the human beings in the studio and making the work on those human beings, setting the dance on those people.” She concludes, “The ideas will come from the dancers.”
This dance company stretches beyond the reach of UMBC students and staff. Baltimorean dancers, both groups and soloists, are invited to perform in Baltimore Dance Project shows, creating a diverse mix of sound and movement. Not only that, but this company performs on campus and all over Baltimore and Maryland.
At the end of the day, the interpretation from the audience is what matters most. As with all art forms, if the message of the art does not reach the audience, the goal of the artists is not met. Baltimore Dance Project recognizes this. However, it takes a more abstract approach to sending its message to the audience — in that the dances are literally abstract.
In its latest show, one of the dances had three people on stage — two dancers and a violinist. The two dancers, dressed all in white, moved with and against each other, the male dancer often lifting the female dancer and placing her elsewhere on the stage. At one point, he lifted her sideways onto her shoulders and she walked across the wall, feet silent on the dark background.
Because this particular dance was so abstract, no single interpretation is correct. A choreographer may have expected a certain reaction, but in the end, every person has their own experiences which influence how they view the dance.
Hess speaks to this, saying, “Sometimes audiences feel like they have to get the right answer.” But there is no ‘right answer.’ She continues, “It’s not clubbing you over the head saying ‘no you got the answer wrong!’ It might not be a response that the choreographer envisioned, but we can’t envision what’s going on in everybody’s mind.”
Baltimore Dance Project allows fellow humans to see beauty in dance, without forcing any meaning behind it.
]]>"UMBC Suits You" is collecting new and gently used professional clothing as part of Career Month.
Students will have the opportunity to learn about dressing professionally and will then be able to select one free outfit to use in their job search. We are asking staff, faculty, alumni, and affiliates to donate new and gently used professional interview attire clothing at collection bins around campus from February 18th - March 3rd.
Starting February 18th, Professional Clothing can be dropped off at the following on-campus locations:
Clothing donations will be used to benefit UMBC students and will not be considered as gift-in-kind or donation to UMBC. Clothing donations are not eligible for a tax-deductible receipt. Any leftover clothing will be donated to local non-profits.
Special thanks to T. Rowe Price and Polovoy Custom Cleaners for partnering with us on this endeavor.
Any questions or concerns about this project can be addressed to Caroline Bodnar, carolc@umbc.edu, 5-3975 or Jeremiah Sawyer, jsawyer2@umbc.edu, 5-2391.
Women’s basketball coach Johnetta Hayes came to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County last April after the abrupt resignation of former head coach, Phil Stern. Hayes left her position as head women’s basketball coach at Texas Southern University, where she compiled a 115-73 record, to accept the head coaching gig at UMBC with the mission to take the UMBC women’s basketball team back to the top of the America East after enduring three straight losing seasons.
Beyond the America East, Hayes looks to take her experience from her 2017 Tigers team NCAA tournament appearance and apply it to the Retrievers, hoping it will be the key to the first UMBC women’s basketball NCAA tournament appearance since 2007.
Along with Hayes’ experience, assistant coaches TJ Royals and LaDey’ah Forte, who also come to UMBC from TSU, hope to add their perspectives on what it takes to qualify a women’s basketball team for the NCAA tournament.
To round out the high level of experience on the women’s basketball team’s new coaching staff is Christie Rogers. Rogers comes to UMBC from Radford University and brings NCAA tournament experience as recently as last year.
Although the women’s basketball team’s new coaching staff has not led to immediate success, their gameplay mentality and experience is the perfect mix when building for the future. By bringing in her strategies, like accumulating rebounds and looking inside the arc for points, from Texas Southern, Hayes looks to almost completely alter the Retrievers’ go-to plays in hopes of transitioning the Tigers’ success to UMBC.
Luckily, Hayes’ strategy is likely to work since the Retrievers’ team culture still stands strong from last year because there were no graduating seniors. If anything, last year’s two-month national search for a new head coach built up UMBC’s team chemistry as the players leaned on and motivated each other through the lack of official direction. Senior guard Te’yJah Oliver was one of the many players that pushed herself without the authority of a coach. This work led to her impressive season as she averages nearly 19 points a game, putting her in second in points per game out of all the America East.
As difficult as coaching changes can often be, Oliver stated that almost nothing about the program change was hard. “The transition into the new coaching scheme was easy because they were patient with us from the beginning,” Oliver said.
However, this patience came with the expectation that the players would work hard day in and day out in order for the new program to work as soon as possible.
“They challenged my teammates and I from the day they got here,” Oliver stated.
Oliver and the other seniors on the team easily fulfilled the coaches’ expectation for an intense work ethic, making them the examples and leaders on the team. This leadership role has helped them mentor the only new incomer to the Retriever squad, freshman guard Lyric Swann, who has been a key player since conference season arrived. Against America East opponents, Swann is averaging 10.4 points a game which may be enough to earn her a spot on the America East All-Rookie team.
With the players immediately buying into Hayes and her new coaching staff’s scheme of looking to outmatch opponents in the paint, shooting fewer three-pointers and gaining more free throws instead, UMBC is on track to improve last season’s record. While their current record of 7-14 may not indicate that Hayes’ plan is working, eight of their 14 losses have come within 12 points and have tightly contested opponents all season.
Even better, the Retrievers are shooting approximately 10 fewer three-pointers a game this season and, instead, looking for higher probability shots inside of the arc. On average, their ability to get to the paint has led to an increase of six more free throws a game than last season.
These seemingly small changes in gameplay have already been crucial in games like the Retrievers’ first win against the University Hartford Hawks since 2011 on Thursday, Feb. 6. UMBC hopes to take these wins, as well as the success from Oliver and Swann, and build off them as they enter the final half of their conference games.
Currently, the Retrievers sit in eighth place (3-7) in the America East with only two wins separating them from the top four. As of rankings on Feb. 8, they are slated to play the University of Stony Brook Seawolves (22-1 overall, 10-0 conference) in the first round of the America East tournament. Even if the team’s leadership and new play style is not enough to raise them to a tournament run, Hayes and her coaching staff are building for the future.
Correction: The print version of this story and the online version of this story incorrectly identified the women’s basketball player in the picture. This has been updated online, and a print correction will be found in Issue 9.
]]>"UMBC Suits You" is collecting new and gently used professional clothing as part of Career Month.
Students will have the opportunity to learn about dressing professionally and will then be able to select one free outfit to use in their job search. We are asking staff, faculty, alumni, and affiliates to donate new and gently used professional interview attire clothing at collection bins around campus from February 18th - March 3rd.
Starting February 18th, Professional Clothing can be dropped off at the following on-campus locations:
Clothing donations will be used to benefit UMBC students and will not be considered as gift-in-kind or donation to UMBC. Clothing donations are not eligible for a tax-deductible receipt. Any leftover clothing will be donated to local non-profits.
Special thanks to T. Rowe Price and Polovoy Custom Cleaners for partnering with us on this endeavor.
Any questions or concerns about this project can be addressed to Caroline Bodnar, carolc@umbc.edu, 5-3975 or Jeremiah Sawyer, jsawyer2@umbc.edu, 5-2391.
***Students be on the lookout for more information about UMBC Suits You Clothing Closet occurring on April 1 & 2, 2020 when you will be able to pick up a FREE professional outfit.***
SUMMER 2020
Interdisciplinary CoLab is a 4-week paid summer internship on narrative-based research offered to undergraduate UMBC students. Participants work in interdisciplinary student teams to create effective narratives about our campus, our larger communities, and our lives. Their research results in public-facing products, such as websites, apps, or videos. Open to all majors, it is an excellent opportunity for students in STEM fields to learn to tell effective stories and for students in social science and humanities fields to gain research and technical skills.
Participants receive a $3000 stipend and a scholarship for a 3-credit internship course. The internship commitment is 30 hours per week (Monday - Friday, 9:30 am – 4:00 pm) during the 4-week Summer Session One, which runs from Tuesday, May 26th - Friday, June 19th.
Low cost summer housing is available in on-campus residence halls and apartments.
For more information, and to apply, please visit:
https://summer.umbc.edu/beyond-the-classroom/colab
SUMMER 2020 PROJECTS
1) A Protocol Manual for Urban Forest Health as Citizen Science: From Patch Sample to Public Advocacy
Project Leader: Dr. Jennifer Maher, English
Project description
The mission of the non-profit organization Baltimore Green Space is "to be a leader and partner in ensuring the communities’ open spaces and forest patches are considered priority assets in the growth and redevelopment of Baltimore.” The organization supports scientific documentation of the “social, health, environment, and economic benefits” green spaces create. The goal for this interdisciplinary team of student researchers will be to produce an urban forest health research protocol manual. Building on the collaboration of Baltimore Green Space, Dr. Matt Baker’s Summer Forest Patch Project, and community land stewards, the CoLab team will create the field manual to enable other advocates of forest health to develop persuasive, evidence-based information related to urban forest health for policymakers and the general public.
Required skills and abilities for applicants
Student members of the interdisciplinary team should share the following traits: intellectual curiosity, strong written and oral communication skills, leadership ability, and solid research skills. Ideally, the team would have student expertise in:
• Environmental science
• Rhetoric/technical communication
• Web design and video editing
2) Jazz and Justice: An American Art Form as Civic Deliberation
Project Leader: Dr. Earl Brooks, English
Project description
Celebrated trumpeter Wynton Marsalis calls jazz a model of participatory democracy and integration. Its performance as well as its complex history bridge the divides between art, rhetorical invention, and civic deliberation. At a time when democracies around the world are grappling with the immense challenges of polarization, wealth inequality, mistrust of institutions, and a media landscape that is as disorienting as it is informative, the history and vitality of jazz takes on a new importance. What does jazz teach us about navigating the issues that paralyze and fracture public consensus? This CoLab attempts to wrestle with such questions by exploring the local history of jazz in Baltimore. Students will work with the Baltimore Jazz Alliance to create content to educate the public about the history and importance of jazz for their newsletter and website.
Required skills and abilities for applicants
This project will require students to build strong written and oral communication skills, facility with multimedia composing platforms (i.e. Adobe Spark, Audacity, iMovie), research skills, leadership ability, logistics, and organizational strategies.
3) People and Places of Baltimore City - An Audio Tour of the Historic Zion Church of the City of Baltimore
Project Leader: Susanne Sutton
Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication
Project description
The Zion Church of the City of Baltimore is one of the oldest churches in the city. Founded in 1755 as “The Evangelical Lutheran Congregation at Baltimore Town,” it serves Baltimore’s German immigrant community. Throughout its over 250-year history, pastors and congregations left their mark on Zion and the city as they led efforts to expand the church, to add a school, and to rebuild after a fire in 1840. Zion Church leaders are looking to modernize the visitor experience to appeal to a wider audience and increase interest in the Church as a central institution in Baltimore. The goal of this project is to produce an audio narrative tour of the historic Church. The CoLab student team will meet with Church leaders, examine historical resources, and, using appropriate technological tools, create audio narratives about the Church and its history for use in a digital visitor guide.
Required skills and abilities for applicants
Team members should have excellent communication and problem solving skills, work well in a group, and be flexible and creative. They should also have an interest in local history. Useful specific skills are: technical skills needed to produce audio narratives and display them and possibly link them to an existing website. Knowledge of historical research methods as well as writing and editing of audience-directed narratives are also important.
4) Radical Literature: Radical Literature in the First Half of the 20th Century
Project Leader: Dr. Kate Drabinski
Gender, Women’s, + Sexuality Studies
Project description
An interdisciplinary team of student researchers will explore UMBC’s Special Collections holdings in radical literature. The collection boasts important primary sources for understanding the history of socialist movements in the United States, and debates within that movement about internationalism, racism, sexism, and other issues. Based on their research, the student team will create an online exhibition for the Special Collections website that will include a historical timeline, digital stories, and 2-4 research essays based on the collection. Additionally, the team will create a pamphlet about the collection that borrows from the style of the documents themselves to advertise the collection. The project’s goal is to make visible the collection’s breadth to encourage researchers, including students, faculty, and researchers from elsewhere, to use the collection.
Required skills and abilities for applicants
Student members of the interdisciplinary team should come to the project with an interest in understanding radical political movements in the past, and strong written and oral communication skills. At least one student should have some experience with graphic design and/or website production. Students will be trained to use the Omeka platform, but it would be helpful to have at least one member of the research team with some familiarity with digital skills.
5) The German-American Cultural Center: Celebrating Baltimore’s History and the German-Americans Who Helped Shape It
Project Leader: Dr. Xenia Wolff
Modern Languages, Linguistics, and Intercultural Communication
Project description
The Baltimore City Heritage Area includes Gay Street, a once vibrant main mercantile thoroughfare. The street has notable examples of late 19th and early 20th century small-scale commercial buildings. The last remaining example of this architecture is the Sexton House / Storefront at 146 North Gay Street, constructed in 1922. It is one of three buildings on the campus of the Zion Church of Baltimore. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places, it will house the German-American Cultural Center. Heritage Walks through City districts give visitors unique glimpses of important landmarks. The German-American Cultural Center will be an important stop along this Heritage Walk. In collaboration with Zion Church leaders, the interdisciplinary team of students will create a well-researched, informative, and entertaining website and a promotional video telling stories of Baltimore’s German-Americans and their role in Baltimore’s history for use in the Center at the Sexton House.
Required skills and abilities for applicants
Diverse skills are needed for the successful completion of this project. The ideal student team will have the following strengths: an interest in local history; ability to work as a group towards a common goal; ability to work with archived texts and images from various sources; interview skills; and web-building and video production skills.
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