UMBC welcomes The Poet’s Brush collection by Lo’Ch’ing to the Fine Arts building this semester. Lo’Ch’ing’s exhibit is a collection of Chinese ink paintings inspired by landscapes. His pieces follow time, in that the viewers can see the progression of the environmental changes that arrived with newer generations.

Each painting is on a very unique canvas medium: fabric. They are spread across a roll, reminiscent of a scroll, of structured fabric textured with a subtle floral pattern. From the particular details to the canvas presentation, the paintings accentuate the Chinese culture in a beautiful way.

Lo’Ch’ing’s focus on landscapes reflects a new, interesting perspective on scenes that may be common to most spectators. He refreshes the scenes with a unique use of color and shape in order to encourage the spectators to find meaning.

Lo’Ch’ing’s use of color carries the story of his paintings. Paintings with nostalgic tones, depicting landscapes inspired by aged experiences, showcase bold colors. Bright pinks, oranges and blues capture viewers’ eyes, attract them and evoke a sense of optimism and joy.

Some of these bright paintings are sprinkled with gold flecks. This adds to the overall cheerful and passionate tone. It almost makes the meaning decadent and regal, associating the past with a greater, more valued time.

Paintings depicting recent revolutions in technology utilized a dark color scheme. For example, inventions that contributed to technological advancement, like airplanes and high-rise buildings, were painting in black and were extremely geometric. Some portions of these paintings were either absent in color or red, contributing to a lifeless and passionate, yet angry, mood.

This may have been done to reflect Lo’Ch’ing’s views on the present world. However, though it is advanced and luxurious, it is still quite dark and morbid. It does not possess the freedom the past seemed to radiate.

While Lo’Ch’ing might not be trying to say that the past is good and the present is evil, his paintings were still created to make a statement: The world, as we see it, has changed. Through advancements, growing generations, wars, victories and environmental death, the world has indeed changed.

Lo’Ch’ing’s Chinese ink paintings are a lovely reflection of his culture and personal perspective on the changing world. He effectively shows spectators how he sees the world and encourages them to form their own interpretations.

The exhibit is open on Tuesdays through Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. until March 17. The Poet’s Brush is truly a beautiful exhibit that can touch each spectator in an individual way. The exhibit evokes emotion and thought. People leave having viewed landscapes in a different light. They can truly say that they have left feeling different than they had before.

"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 and faculty to donate new and gently used professional clothing at collection bins around campus from February 26th - March 16th.

To aid in the collection of these items, Career Center staff will be stationed at 3 spots on campus on Tuesday, March 13th from 8:00 to 9:15 am. You can find us at:
Commons Drive drop-off, Administrative Drive drop-off, and the Fine Arts Circle.

Starting February 26th, Professional Clothing can be dropped off at the following on-campus locations:

• Career Center, Math/Psych 201:   8:30 am – 5 pm (Mon-Fri) 
• The Mosaic Center, The Commons 2B23:   10 am- 7 pm (Mon- Thur), 10 am- 5 pm (Fri)
• Residential Life Office, Erickson Hall:   8:30 am – 5:00 pm (Mon-Fri)
•  The Shriver Center, Public Policy Building 1st Floor:    8:30 am – 5 pm (Mon-Fri) 
• Human Resources, Administration Building 5th floor, 532:   9 am – 4 pm (Mon-Fri) 
• Division of Professional Studies, Sherman Hall East-4th Floor (reception near elevators): 9 am- 3:30 pm (Mon-Fri)

Items that will be accepted: dresses, shell tops, button-up shirts and blouses, skirts, blazers, dress pants, garment bags, belts, ties, skirt suits and suits.

Items that will NOT be accepted: jewelry, handbags, shoes, and general accessories.

For more information on accepted items, check out the link here.

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 March 29 & 30 2018 when you will be able to pick up a FREE professional outfit.***

On UMBC Giving Day, alumni, students, faculty, staff, and friends will join the #BlackandGoldRush by giving to their favorite UMBC causes, and by inspiring others to give. Throughout this marathon day of giving, participants will have chances to help unlock giving challenges to drive additional support for areas they want to help.

Your gift will have an even bigger impact than usual thanks to some generous alumni, parents, and employees who stepped up to give special challenge gifts for the day. You can designate your gift to support UMBC’s Computer Science and Electrical Engineering department at https://gritstarter.umbc.edu/p/umbc-csee/ or go to the giving day site (after the stroke of Midnight on February 28th) and explore other projects to support.

Spread the word by using #BlackandGoldRush.

The post UMBC Giving Day #BlackandGoldRush, February 28 appeared first on Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering.

From early in the semester, the University of Maryland, College Park has been in the news for its low African-American student enrollment. According to The Baltimore Sun and The Hechinger Report, College Park stands with the seventh highest gap between African American high school graduates and the university’s freshman class among other state flagship universities. Maryland’s percentage of high school graduates of African-American descent, 36 percent, is triple the percentage of African-American freshman students enrolled in the flagship institution.

UMD president, Wallace Loh wrote of several explanations for the disparity in his op-ed to the Baltimore Sun. Notably, Loh writes of the influence of historically black college universities, often referred to as HBCUs, and other universities that prospective African-American students have at their disposal. In an opinion piece by the student-run UMD newspaper The Diamondback, Loh’s defense of the school’s disparity issues was deemed ineffectual.

UMBC holds a higher proportion, 16.2, of African American students to that of College Park (11.3), according to the Maryland Higher Education Commission. UMBC holds a multitude of diversity-targeted opportunities for African American students and other populations of students, particularly the Meyerhoff program for students in STEM fields. The university holds annual receptions to celebrate talented high school students of color as well.

Assistant Vice Provost Dale Bittinger noted that UMBC has the fortune of being a “historically diverse institution.” “[UMBC is] the one institution in Maryland that has been founded after the Civil Rights Act.” UMBC was established when racism and discrimination were finally fought against with legislation, and that era has influenced UMBC to lead the way in diversity recruitment as a public institution.

According to Bittinger, UMBC recruits prospective students in a variety of ways, many of which center on data. “We have information about student’s academic backgrounds and preparation” such as “standardized test scores, self-reported GPA’s, academic interests, race, and ethnicity” to determine whether students could be “good fits” with UMBC.

Black Student Union president Kamikazi Gahima, a senior financial economics major, believes that UMBC has demonstrated itself to be “extremely diverse.”She noted that increased funding and awareness for the Mosaic Center, a resource at the university that pushes for inclusivity, would further supplement the school’s pride in diversity.

For De’Jia Long-Hillie, a sophomore global studies major and Humanities Scholar, UMBC’s racial diversity was a “major factor” for her when choosing schools. However, she notes that she sees “a large disproportion of white faculty and staff compared to those of color,” particularly in her humanities courses.

Even so, another student, freshman media and communications major Dominique Givens, states that there is “real diversity” in the student body of this campus. Givens believes campus diversity can be improved by “strengthening the role of various cultural clubs on campus.”

When considering attending HBCUs, both students were concerned about misplaced documents and disproportionate costs associated with these institutions. For Long-Hille, the Humanities scholars program by UMBC offered her the security of an affordable education as well.

Both students and faculty agree that UMBC should continue to improve diversity recruitment efforts. According to Bittinger, “We do not take it for granted that we are a place of choice for underrepresented students or others of different backgrounds and ethnicities.”

Bittinger asserts that UMBC is “America-miniature” with its diversity. And just as America evolves its population, many expect UMBC – and all colleges and universities – to follow suit.

The Cleftomaniacs made history as UMBC’s first a cappella group to win first place in the ICCA (International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella) Mid-Atlantic Quarterfinal competition on Saturday, February 3, where they also won an award for Outstanding Choreography. Next month, they will be advancing to the Semifinals, held this year in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where they will compete with some of the region’s best a cappella teams in hopes of continuing on to the finals. I spoke with Clark Elliott, who holds the position of secretary on the Cleftomaniacs’ executive board, about their amazing win and what is in store as they prepare for Semifinals.

Basic question: how does it feel to have won the ICCA Quarterfinals?

It’s really surreal and honestly amazing. After going through the past two years of being, you know, an a cappella group and spending all of the time preparing a set and everything, like, trying our best to get there, we have to go on stage and something inevitably goes wrong, whether it be we can’t hear each other, there’s something wrong with the mics, or we go flat… something has always gone wrong. This year, we got up there and it just felt good. Honestly, I never really noticed any problems. There were a few issues with the choreo here and there, but, I don’t know, it felt great. The first award they announced was the Outstanding Choreography award. When they said our name, we all just freaked out. I mean, that was crazy enough. When they announced that we got first place, everything just kind of like exploded. I don’t know, it was insane. I’m still kind of—it’s been almost a week later, I’m still kind of like in shock, honestly.

That’s awesome! So, is there anything you feel like you guys did differently this year that kind of put you over the top? Or did things just go really well?

Honestly, I’m not really sure. I will say that the group that we have right now is, like, we get along really well. Everything feels really organic. There’s no, like, sketchy side-eying or whatever. I don’t know what the terms are, but… we all love hanging out with each other. And we just have fun. I feel like part of is it probably [that] we had a lot of variety in our set, which I want to say probably put us above in the audition, because a lot of the other sets were kind of very similar, each of the three songs. And our four songs I feel like they kind of led into each other, and I know one of the judges, like, on our last song, which is the one I solo in, “Crazy = Genius” [by Panic! At The Disco], had an elevated tempo, and I think he really noticed that.

Going into Semifinals, is there anything in particular you guys are excited about? Anything you guys are trying to improve upon going into this next stage?

In terms of being excited, I think we’re all just really excited to get the chance to move on and perform in Philadelphia in the Verizon Hall, which is this huge, huge concert hall. I don’t know, I just never really thought we’d get this far, just because I know in the past it’s always been like, we go to the Quarterfinals, and we don’t advance. We have fun, but we don’t advance. So, yeah, just moving on in general. In terms of working on stuff, the judges gave us notes, and after reviewing all the footage that we took of the set during the ICCA, we have lots that we need to work on, too. So basically the next month is just us refining that stuff and perfecting everything.

Anything in particular?

Mainly choreo. There’s a few tuning issues here and there. Our mic technique is a big one.

That’s crazy to think about, that choreo is something you need to improve, considering you got an award for it.

I mean, no one’s ever perfect. I personally made a few mistakes. But I mean, you know, I guess when you—I don’t want to sound too full of myself or whatever, but I guess when you perform the way that we did, small mistakes kind of fall by the wayside in the grand scheme of things.

Walk me through the rehearsal process. What’s a day like at a Cleftos rehearsal?

So, we’re focused on ICCA rehearsal, so in terms of that, usually we spend about half the time working on musicality, like, going through the music. If there’s any trouble spots that we have, going through that to review stuff. Doing blend exercises. But mostly just making sure that we can run the music while working on the dynamics, perfecting those. And the other half is spent on running the set with the choreography while also singing, trying to get to that point. Usually AJ Potvin, our vice president and also vocal percussionist, will stand out—he was the head of the choreo committee—he will, like, stand out and watch things, make sure if something happens that needs to be fixed, that we’ll see it or we’ll know about it so we can fix it.

When did you join Cleftos?

I joined my freshman year. I’m a junior now, so that was about two or three years ago. That was the tenth generation of Cleftos.

How do you feel that being part of Cleftos and a cappella in general has improved life at UMBC?

For me, the Cleftos were my first real group of college friends. I came into college having, like, three people here that I actually knew. So getting into the group gave me a base of people to connect with and hang out with, talk to, stuff like that. Over the past few years, I’ve grown a lot closer to a lot of the members, ‘cause at first it was just kind of like, these are people I know, I’ll see them like twice a week, and hang out with them and stuff, but outside of rehearsal I didn’t see them much. I make much more of an effort to actually see them out of rehearsal. We’ve always had a lot of good people. The composition has obviously changed, people graduate and go and we get new members. I’m really happy with the group that we have right now, too. We just get along so well.

Outside of the social aspect, is there anything you can say about how the group has helped you grow musically?

I only did chorus for two years in high school. I’ve learned a lot about musicality and how to sing by being in Cleftos. And everybody knows a little bit about music, but we workshop a lot of stuff so I feel like I’ve learned a lot, definitely. I’ve definitely improved a lot.

For any freshmen or new students who hear the news of you guys winning the Quarterfinals, being really impressed, maybe intimidated, but they want to join next semester, what words of encouragement do you have?

I mean, I wouldn’t be intimidated. When I joined, it was the same kind of thing; a year or two before, that iteration of the Cleftomanics had just gotten the [Outstanding] Choreography award at their Quarterfinals. I don’t really see reason to be intimidated, it’s just like, you come out, you sing. We’re all just a group of people. We love to see people come out and try out and stuff. The more people the better.