The Shriver Center coordinates this undergraduate scholarship program, funded by the France-Merrick Foundation. Now in it’s 20th year, this scholarship is available for students who demonstrate an exemplary commitment to service, leadership, and civic engagement on the UMBC campus and in Baltimore City.   The France-Merrick Scholarship Program seeks to combine service and reflection, build relationships, and strengthen networks to affect meaningful change.

Fellows are awarded a scholarship that goes towards tuition, mandatory fees, and room and board expenses.  This will not exceed $15,000 for Maryland students, $22,000 for out-of-state students.  In 2015-16, Fellows will engage in service connected with Baltimore City;  serve in leadership roles (which includes convening meetings for the France-Merrick Scholarship Program), support meaningful professional development, and serve as ambassadors of service at UMBC.  For 2015-16, two Fellows will be selected.

Scholars are awarded a scholarship of up to $1,500.  In 2015-16, Scholars will engage in service connected with Baltimore City, support meaningful professional development, participate in meetings, and serve as ambassadors of service at UMBC.   For 2015-16, five Scholars will be selected.

Applications for the 2015-16 cohort are NOW available on-line, and will close on Monday, August 24, 2015, at 5 pm.  Awardees will be notified in early September.

For more information, please visit The Shriver Center's website at:

Rick Forno, Graduate Program Director for Cybersecurity and Assistant Director of UMBC's Center for Cybersecurity spoke with the Baltimore Sun and Technical.ly Baltimore recently about hacktivism in the Baltimore riots and a recent ZeroFox report that analyzed social media to identify prominent activists, potential threats, and/or agitators during the riots.

ZeroFOX under fire for social media ‘Threat Actors’ report during Baltimore riots (8/5/2015)

City faced cyberattacks amid chaos and unrest on the streets (7/31/2015)

UMBC alums are taking off into new realms as advancements continue to be made in space exploration and engineering. Erika Nesvold ’09, mathematics and physics, M.S. ’11 applied physics, Ph.D. ’15 physics, and Isaac Matthews (M15) ’07, mechanical engineering, are both receiving attention for their incredible work within the aerospace community.

Erika Nesvold ’09, mathematics and physics, M.S. ’11 applied physics, Ph.D. ’15 physics, co-developed a 3-D model of the star Beta Pictoris to observe the development of warps and eccentric rings and track collisions among the particles. The modeling technique entitled, SMACK, Superparticle-Method Algorithm for Collisions in Kuiper belts, tracks the interaction between the star, its disks, and the other of its plants known as Beta Pictoris b. Nesvold along with SMACK’s other co-developer, Marc Kutchner, have created a video that outlines the stimulation that provides an in-depth look at the progression of Beta Pictoris.

Watch here.

Isaac Matthews (M15) ’07, mechanical engineering, shares his journey to becoming an aerospace engineer at NASA. Matthews describes some of NASA’s current work in expanding its human spaceflight capability from the Low Earth Orbit, which they are currently operating under, to a new program entitled “Orion.” Matthew also discusses the importance of perception when overcoming challenges while understanding the benefits of working as a team in order to go far.

Click here to read the full article.

Have a story of your own to share? Tell us about it in a class note.

New member Gloria Opoku-Boateng has provided photos of the April 2015 Initiaion Ceremony.

In this picture:

Eileen Patton, Past President of the PKP, with Gloria Opoku-Boateng

Given all the race and class-based violence, anti-blackness rhetoric in the media and the subsequent backlash from white-identified people and groups, there is a growing need for mindful, supportive education for white children. 

Here is a short list of resources that was just sent out on the Social Justice Training Institute's listserve by various social justice educators and activists.  

What White Children Need to Know about Race, Ali Michael and Eleonora Bartoli, Independent School Magazine
While white parents’ intention is to convey to their children the belief that race shouldn’t matter, the message their children receive is that race, in fact, doesn’t matter. The intent and aim are noble, but in order for race not to matter in the long run, we have to acknowledge that, currently, it does matter a great deal. If white parents want their children to contribute to what researchers Matthew Desmond and Mustafa Emirbayer describe as a “racially just America”2 in which race does not unjustly influence one’s life opportunities, their children will need to learn awareness and skills that they cannot acquire through silence and omission.

On Parenting
We need to deal with our discomfort and talk to our kids about racism, By Meghan Leahy, The Washington Post
Since the horrific shooting in Charleston, the questions have been pouring in, mostly from white parents. “How do I talk to my children about what happened?” “How do I explain racism to my 6-year-old?” “How do I talk about this level of violence?” “How can I support African Americans in my community?”

In the latest essay for his Race Stories column in The New York Times, Maurice Berger, research professor at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, examines the research of photographers Martin Parr and Ruben Lundgren, whose exploration of Chinese photobooks has resulted in The Chinese Photobook, published by Aperture. Largely unknown in the West, the photobooks, dating from the early 20th century to current times, document a nation undergoing profound cultural change.

“The sheer quantity of important Chinese photobooks that remain unexamined by scholars within and outside of the country suggests that considerable work remains to done,” says Berger. “In this context, The Chinese Photobook represents an auspicious beginning rather than a definitive end, a turning point in unearthing a long-overlooked history and narrowing the comprehension gap between East and West.”

Read “In China, the Photobook as Art and History” and view the photographs at The New York Times Lens blog.

Berger’s Race Stories column, which appears monthly on The New York Times website, is “a continuing exploration of the relationship of race to photographic portrayals of race.”

The High Zero Foundation, a small, vital nonprofit group that runs a weekly experimental music series and produces two music festivals each year in Baltimore is looking for a part time book keeper to assist with ongoing transactions, preparing tax time, and reporting. Optimally, we are looking for someone skilled who lives in or near Hampden (where we are located) and who is willing to make bank deposits, can work in Quickbooks Online, and is willing to work very part time (we have some burst of activity, but probably less than 300 transactions a year), on an hourly basis.