Primary people are listed, anyone can generally help with any Issue.

Foundation Disbursement Checks:                              Dennis

Departmental Deposits:                                                Michele

Scholarship Payments:                                                Patty

Textbook adoptions:                                                    Sandy

Travel and Registrations Faculty                                 Michele

Travel and Registrations Grad Students                       Patty

Travel and Registrations Seminar speakers                 Sandy

Office Supply orders:                                           Michele / Creighton

D Card (copying or Skylight room)                               Sandy

Announcements on video screen                    Sandy / Michele / Dennis     

Web Site events                                              Sandy / Michele / Dennis                 

Web site stories                                                            Dennis

Room scheduling (Chemistry rooms)                      Any of the staff

Scheduling in other buildings                                   Sandy / Dennis

Check Distribution                                             Sandy / Michele / Dennis

Petty Cash                                                                    Michele

Petty Cash over $50 (CBI food)                                      Sandy

Tests, quizzes, syllabi                                                   Sandy

Building issues   (Temperature, leaks, etc.)                   Dennis

Fedex                                                                            Michele

**If the Primary person is not available, please feel free to ask any staff member for assistance!

The economics department Student Investment Fund was highlighted in a Baltimore Sun July education supplement article featuring student entrepreneurship at colleges and universities in Maryland. The fund began in 2010: “The primary objective of the fund is to provide participating students an opportunity to gain valuable hands-on experience in security research, valuation of risky assets, asset allocation, and portfolio management, and, in turn, to increase the marketability of UMBC students in industries such as equity research, investment banking, commercial banking and corporate finance,” said Chunming Yuan, an assistant professor of economics and faculty adviser to the program. Bradlee Kilgore ’15, economics, is also quoted in the article and participated in the fund as an undergraduate. He is now an associate analyst at T. Rowe Price. “We are able to act as security analysts and portfolio managers, which gives those of us who want a career in the financial industry hands-on experience,” he said. Michael Gardner and Nathan Hefner, founders of NeighborhoodNet, were mentioned in the article for winning the second annual Cangialosi Business Innovation Competition coordinated through the Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship. They won $5,000 and a membership at Betamore for their software platform that supports community association websites. Michael Leung, a junior computer science major who served as team lead for HueBots, was quoted in a separate article featuring colleges and universities staying ahead of the curve with technology. He talked about how many people at the Microsoft Image Cup were impressed with the UMBC team’s game because it was fully completed while others were still in the development stages. “The judges were blown away and everyone loved it. Even though we did not win first prize, they all know who UMBC is now.” To read more about the HueBots competition, read “Gaming Gets Real,” on the UMBC website. Note: The online version of the Baltimore Sun education supplement is not yet available. 

As images were released from NASA’s historic New Horizons mission to Pluto, Mehdi Benna was quoted in a Baltimore Sun story and described the significance of the event. He said the science of the mission is most important and determining how Pluto’s history fits in the story of the formation of the solar system.

“By completing the flyby of Pluto, we will have visited all the nine planets of the traditional solar system — the way we know it, the way we were taught it in school,” said Benna, a Center for Space Science and Technology (CSST) planetary scientist.

Benna told the Sun that the key data being collected during the mission is on the origins of the solar system.

“Pluto is part of basically a family of what we call the Kuiper Belt objects,” he said. “By looking at these objects, basically, we’re looking at the remains of the formation of the solar system. These objects actually were the building blocks of the outer planets.”

“The most compelling result will be these images, these high resolution images beyond anything we were able to gather through remote observation from earth,” Benna said.

Read “UMBC scientist calls Pluto flyby a different kind of history lesson,” in the Baltimore Sun.

Several UMBC biological sciences faculty and staff were featured in a Nature article on July 15 about the benefits of active learning in science courses. Neuroscientist Sarah Leupen was quoted in the story and described a question that spurs interesting discussion in her introductory physiology class: You’re innocently walking down the street when aliens zap away the sensory neurons in your legs. What happens?

“We usually get lots of vigorous debate on this one,” said Leupen, who spends most of her class time firing such questions at her students. “It’s lovely to experience.” Leupen said the students grapple with the material they learn by discussing the options in teams. And if a team gets a question wrong, she says, “that’s usually a good thing — because then they really remember it.”

Jeff Leips, a professor of biological sciences, is also quoted in the article and said it requires compromise to get past simply communicating factual knowledge covered in a course. “You have to accept that you can’t cover everything to the same level,” he said.

Linda Hodges, a biochemist and head of the Faculty Development Center at UMBC, is the author of a forthcoming book on overcoming obstacles to education reform. She noted that for many scientists, active learning can be at odds with their beliefs about teaching content and the factual knowledge covered in a given course.

Read “Why we are teaching science wrong, and how to make it right,” in Nature.

The economics department Student Investment Fund was highlighted in a Baltimore Sun July education supplement article featuring student entrepreneurship at colleges and universities in Maryland. The fund began in 2010: “The primary objective of the fund is to provide participating students an opportunity to gain valuable hands-on experience in security research, valuation of risky assets, asset allocation, and portfolio management, and, in turn, to increase the marketability of UMBC students in industries such as equity research, investment banking, commercial banking and corporate finance,” said Chunming Yuan, an assistant professor of economics and faculty adviser to the program. Bradlee Kilgore ’15, economics, is also quoted in the article and participated in the fund as an undergraduate. He is now an associate analyst at T. Rowe Price. “We are able to act as security analysts and portfolio managers, which gives those of us who want a career in the financial industry hands-on experience,” he said. Michael Gardner and Nathan Hefner, founders of NeighborhoodNet, were mentioned in the article for winning the second annual Cangialosi Business Innovation Competition coordinated through the Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship. They won $5,000 and a membership at Betamore for their software platform that supports community association websites. Michael Leung, a junior computer science major who served as team lead for HueBots, was quoted in a separate article featuring colleges and universities staying ahead of the curve with technology. He talked about how many people at the Microsoft Image Cup were impressed with the UMBC team’s game because it was fully completed while others were still in the development stages. “The judges were blown away and everyone loved it. Even though we did not win first prize, they all know who UMBC is now.” To read more about the HueBots competition, read “Gaming Gets Real,” on the UMBC website. Note: The online version of the Baltimore Sun education supplement is not yet available.