They never said it would be easy, but they did say it would be exciting. After battling through two rounds of fatiguing overtime, UMBC men’s basketball bested Hartford 90-85 to advance to the America East championship game and defend their title.

While the Retrievers set a comfortable lead after the first half, never trailing, the Hawks ramped their offense and began to close the gap with six minutes left in gameplay. The final moments of regulation time were decided by fouls, with UMBC and Hartford alternating from the free throw line. With 16 seconds left, the Hawks pulled ahead by one. Junior guard K.J. Jackson, sociology, answered the call and sunk one out of his two free throws to tie up the game with 3.7 seconds left, forcing the game to overtime and keeping Retriever Nation on the edge of their seats.

Five minutes were added to the clock and, after a taxing back and forth, UMBC tied again with Brandon Horvath ‘21, financial economics, sinking both of his free throws. Starting with the second overtime, the Retrievers found their footing and pulled ahead, capitalizing on foul shots and pulling out a five-point victory.

“It was a crazy game, but this is what March is all about,” reflects Horvath.

Team mentality

Just after the win, Jackson spoke with the Baltimore Sun’s Edward Lee about the players’ team mentality. “I’ve got Joe, I’ve got Brandon, I’ve got everyone here with me playing just as hard,” he said. “It’s not time to be tired…It’s time to go make plays, and that’s what I did.”

Leading the pack, Jackson accounted for 21 of the Retrievers’ points, with R.J. Eytle-Rock ‘22, psychology, netting 16; Horvath posting up 14; and Joe Sherburne ‘18, financial economics and Arkel Lamar ‘21, sociology, each contributing 12.

Sherburne has been a force both on and off the court during his career at UMBC. He was recently named the 2018-19 Google Cloud Academic All-America® Team Member of the Year for Division I men’s basketball. In addition to his All-American of the Year accolade, Sherburne was also named to the America East All-Academic Team for the third time in his career and to the America East First Team for the first time.

Ready for Vermont

Retriever Nation won’t have a chance to catch their breath from last night’s adrenaline-filled win as there’s still one more victory in this tournament to claim. UMBC travels to Vermont to take on the Catamounts for the second year, to battle it out for the America East Championship title.

The final game is on Saturday, March 16, at 11 a.m. at the Patrick Gymnasium in Burlington. The game will be broadcast on ESPN2, with Retriever watch parties across the nation. UMBC will host a free family-friendly watch party in the Event Center for anyone interested, including community fans. Students interested in attending the game in Vermont have until 2 p.m. on March 14 to secure their spots. More information available here.

Banner image: Brandon Horvath dunks for two during UMBC’s semifinal for the America East. All photos by Maryland Demond ’11 for UMBC.

• It's a great opportunity to gain leadership experience, especially for those interested in becoming a Resident Assistant (RA), Tour Guide, and/or Orientation Peer Advisor (OPA) in the future!
• You can be one of the first to meet the next class of Retrievers
  
• You'll have a chance to promote your own club or student organization
• Get free food and UMBC swag!
  

• Attend a 1-hour training session
• You must live in a traditional on-campus residential hall and be able to host a student in your room
  
• Accompany your guest to a variety of UMBC events (based on their interest), including the RSA Block Party, Musical Theater Club's spring production, (seb) Magic Show, ASU's Layaleena,(seb) Movie Night, Late Night Dining, and more
• You'll need to remain on campus with your visiting student for the duration of the program
  

Baring their hearts, souls and drama – but not their names – students of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County found catharsis in anonymously posting to Facebook this past month. Then, almost as quickly as UMBC Confessions and later UMBC Tea had sprung up, both pages were deactivated by their admins. The student body has since been left to wonder about the admissions made, the page creators and the ethics of encouraging anonymous confessions on social media.

“It was literally a 24 to 48-hour flash in the pan for Confessions. It was there, and then it was gone. Tea lasted for a week after, and I’m pissed off that it’s gone, too,” says one sophomore psychology major. Similar to his interactions with both Facebook pages, he has requested anonymity for this article.

“First impression of the [UMBC Confessions] page were that it was fun, and pretty funny at times! Some people used it to compliment their friends, and that was really wholesome,” shares information technology senior Samuel Becker, “But there was always a gut feeling that it would go downhill fast.”

The subject matter soon became more risqué, to the initial delight of its readers. “It was sex stories and funny things I’ve done on campus. Having sex in my roommate’s bed, having him walk in on us drunk, shitting in the library pond, that sort of thing. I just thought they were funny stories I didn’t want my name attached to,” the previously quoted psychology major explains of his confessions. Denying anything on either page amounted to cyberbullying, he claims, “It was fun.”

Cassie Le agrees with Becker’s assessment. “I initially thought it would be spicy and fun, until I started seeing nasty, racist and false things written with people’s full names sometimes included,” expresses the recent graduate. She was one of the first to question the place of the page within the community, declaring its behavior felt more appropriate for a high school than for a university. “I was just reminding people that we’re all supposed to be adults, and we shouldn’t do uncool things,” she explains.

A 2015 study in France found that, while 68.7 percent of those surveyed believed anonymous posting represented more viewpoints, 83 percent thought it fostered hate speech, as reported by the French radio station RFI. Shortly after UMBC Confessions went live, there were posts on the school meme page decrying it for cyberbullying, and it was soon deactivated. UMBC Tea subsequently arose to fill the void, before meeting the same fate days later.

“The only people that really got called out were actually shitty people – like pedophiles, stalkers and cheating exes. But once again, people got scared of the potential for cyberbullying, and it got taken down. It’s a shame,” laments the psychology major. He has his own theories as to who created the pages, implicating anyone from an Honors College sophomore to admins of the university meme page. Now, although he enjoyed both pages, he views the university as “way too sensitive” to ever let another reboot endure.

Becker, who is also a co-creator and current admin of the school’s meme page, does not believe the pages should be revived. “It crashed and burned with spam, and turned into a toxic rumor mill,” he contends, and some of the surviving screenshots indeed showcase a degree of vitriol. “Because in their nature, people feel shielded behind a spotlighted veil of anonymity, and say things that they would not typically say in a more public setting. So people use this to say compliments to their friends, post jokes, saucy revelations, be jerks or even sometimes post legitimate complaints. But mostly just be jerks,” he says.

These are not the first confessional-style pages for the university, as Becker cites similarly failed Twitter counterparts from 2013 and 2017. “Failure sort of seems intrinsic with these platforms,” he says. Just as they are bound to die, they are likely bound to spawn new creations from time to time, marking another feature in UMBC’s increasingly social media-dominated history.

After 35 years of service as a staff member at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Executive Administrative Assistant Teresa Lupinek has decided to retire. In a message sent out to the UMBC community on March 1, President Freeman Hrabowski announced that Lupinek would retire on April 1, describing her as someone who “approached each of her roles with incredible professionalism, integrity, and poise.” A farewell reception was held in the Library Gallery on March 6 to celebrate her time of service at the university.

Lupinek’s career at UMBC began in January of 1984, when she took her role as an office secretary in the Biological Sciences building. She would type up letters that then-Chairman Keith Porter dictated, and also typed exams and grants for other faculty members. This work allowed her to learn how to type on a word processor, a machine similar to a typewriter but with the technological editing capabilities of the Word or Google Docs applications. “I didn’t even know where to turn it on until I was trained,” recalls Lupinek. Although she admits her tasks were serious, Lupinek enjoyed the university’s environment, describing it “as a fun place to work.”

She eventually transitioned to work in the Career Center, where she took charge of business duties and training students and staff, as well as leading graphic print production for Career Center events. Then in 2012, she became the Executive Administrative Assistant to President Hrabowski, where she “excelled in supporting the President’s Office with scheduling and the creation of meeting briefings and agendas in a highly demanding, fast-paced environment,” according to a message sent out by Hrabowski. Hrabowski also credits Lupinek for collaborating with campus leaders regarding the recognition of non-exempt staff within the Plan of Organization, “resulting in the creation of the Non-Exempt Excluded Staff Senate shared governance group.”

During her time here at UMBC, something that really stood out to Lupinek was, as she recalls, “the ongoing culture of UMBC under good leadership — first with Chancellor Michael Hooker and then with President Freeman Hrabowski — to inclusively contribute to the success of our students.” While Lupinek notes that UMBC has had its trials, she believes that the university nevertheless has held strong to these beliefs.

As for her retirement plans, Lupinek says, “I look forward to enjoying more time with family and cultivating long neglected interests.” Lupinek also hopes to see new talent stepping up to take over her role as Executive Administrative Assistant. Meanwhile, she will miss the friendships she has established over her time at UMBC, as well as witnessing “students developing their paths to accomplishing good things.” As for the legacy she plans on leaving behind, Lupinek commented on it being one of “respect, encouragement and ongoing love for learning.”

"Academic culture is a curious and conflicted thing.  On the one hand, it holds out the allure and occasionally the reality of being a 'community of scholars.' On the other hand, it is a culture infamous for fragmentation, isolation, and competitive individualism--a culture in which community sometimes feels harder to come by than in any other institution on the face of the earth"

--Parker Palmer in Creating Campus Community, 2002.

No matter how long you’ve taught, there is always something you can learn from your colleagues. But if, as Parker Palmer laments in the quote above, you generally prepare and teach your classes in isolation, you may wish you had more opportunities to have the kinds of conversations that would enrich your teaching practice, help you improve student engagement, and deepen your sense of belonging to a community of scholars. Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs) at UMBC fill this niche: An FLC is a cross-disciplinary group of 6-12 faculty who meet regularly throughout an academic year in a casual atmosphere to investigate a teaching-related topic of mutual interest. 

The Faculty Development Center is currently seeking proposals for new FLC topics. Funding is available to support 3-4 new FLCs in 2019-20. Any UMBC faculty or staff member with an interest in investigating a particular need, issue, or opportunity related to teaching and learning may propose a topic for a year-long FLC that they would like to participate in with colleagues. Proposals should describe the importance of the topic in 1-2 paragraphs in order to entice other UMBC faculty/staff to join the FLC. Approved topics will be announced in late April.

The deadline for topic proposals is April 1, 2019. Please forward your proposal to fdc@umbc.edu.

Some current and recent FLCs have devoted their attention to topics such as:

• Writing questions to foster deep learning and engagement 
• Cultivating critical thinking: Integrating information literacy into course content
• Flipping the classroom
• Getting students to READ: Scaffolding students’ Reading, Engagement, Analysis, and Discovery through texts
• Improving student writing: Exploring evidence-based feedback methods
• Teaching sustainability & climate change
• Incorporating student technology into the classroom

For further information about Faculty Learning Communities at UMBC, please consult the FLC page on the Faculty Development Center's website. If you would like to discuss your idea in more detail, please contact us at fdc@umbc.edu.

On Mainstreet Ellicott City, tucked away in a tiny corner next to Taylor’s Collective, is the Artists’ Gallery. The Artists’ Gallery showcases local artists’ work and helps them promote their pieces to the community. 

In the gallery, one can expect to find a variety of media from oils to ceramics, woodcuts to photographs and everything in between. Currently on exhibition until March 24 is Leah Lewman’s “Fire and Flood” collection.

Lewman’s inspiration comes from the severe flooding during 2016 and 2018 of Historic Ellicott City. In her artist statement, Lewman writes, “The earth is constantly changing. With the toll that humans are taking on the planet, nature seems to be defending itself with geological extremes—fire and water.”   

The entire breadth of “Fire and Flood” presents eerie images of towns being destroyed by nature.

In Lewman’s piece “Whole Town Underwater,” an old-town street is being overwhelmed with water and, in the distance, a red car is being carried away by the current. Lewman writes, “Humanity has tried its best to create solid, unchanging cityscapes to safely house the growing population, but at a certain point, nature always seems to take back what is rightfully hers.”

In “Whole Town Underwater,” this human landscape is being washed away by nature. Water covers about two-thirds of the wood panel which represents how merciless nature is towards the landscapes built by humans. People find comfort in believing that their homes are permanent and that their structures are sound, but, in reality, everything humans build is only temporary. Nature dictates the lives of people.

Thus, human shelters are dependent on natural phenomena.  Lewman’s pieces do not exclusively deal with flooding, they also depict the power of fire. Lewman writes, “But change isn’t only here [Ellicott City]—fires in California are erasing ever more of the human landscape than the water is here in our little town.”

Her piece “Burning House” depicts a crumbled house being destroyed by flames, with smoke drifting through the air and calm gray mountains standing in the distance. Lewman uses bright yellows and oranges for the fire and contrasts these warm colors with the cool, dreary gray colors of the house and background.

This contrast emphasizes the power of the fire and the dramatic lighting shows the strength of the flames. While the house is burning in the foreground, the mountains in the background lie unaffected and rest in a silent calmness.

A stream can constantly change its path and move in different directions, prairies can handle constant cycles of wildfires and still regrow—man-made buildings are unable to change their locations or resist natural phenomena.

Lewman’s pieces show the incompatibility between the man-made landscape and the natural landscape. As humans claim more of the natural world and reap its resources, nature retaliates with its own destruction. “Fire and Flood” helps viewers to remember the power of nature and the temporary nature of our own existence.

We have an abundance of binders (multiple sizes and colors) available for the taking!  

Please contact Amy Barnes:
amyb@umbc.edu
5-3979
PUP 252