Honors College Professor Ellen Handler Spitz recently traveled to Sewanee, Tennessee to participate in the Program on Child, Family, and Community Development in Rural Appalachia. The program is co-sponsored by the University of the South, Scholastic Books, and the Yale Child Study Center.

In addition to presenting a public lecture at the University of the South library on Appalachian-based children’s books, Spitz taught several classes jointly sponsored by the psychology and arts departments and read aloud to children at three elementary schools and two day care programs sponsored by the program and the university.

The trip took place April 14-18, and it was Spitz’s third time participating in the program. A major goal of the program is to research the surrounding community, a former coal-mining region facing challenges, with the goal of making a difference in the quality of life for its inhabitants. For more information on Spitz’s participation in the program, click below.

PSYC 230 Hears from Ellen Handler Spitz
Reading Appalachia Exhibit, with Dr. Ellen Handler Spitz

One of the things that makes UMBC great is how wonderful our alumni, students, faculty, and staff are. Because of these amazing people, UMBC often finds itself “in the news,” so each week, we’ll be sharing with you a round-up of the most newsworthy achievements from our community.

• Richard Forno, Cybersecurity, in American City and County
• Jean Fernandez, English, Presents at BMA and Everyman Theater
• Manil Suri, Mathematics, Writes New York Times Op-Ed on Recent Beef Ban in Parts of India
• Renetta Tull, Graduate School, Interviewed on Global Webcast
• Govind Rao, CAST, Receives Grant from the National Capital Consortium for Pediatric Device Innovation

Read more at UMBC Insights!

CSEE Alumna Dr. Claudia Pearce ('89 M.S., '94 Ph.D., Computer Science) has an article Beyond Watson in the Spring issue of UMBC Magazine. Dr. Pearce is a Senior Computer Science Authority at the National Security Agency and recipient of UMBC's 2014 Alumna of the Year Award in Engineering and Information Technology.

The article describes the technologies behind IBM's Watson Deep Question Answering system and it's significance for the development of future intelligent systems.

"Part of the answer may be found in a series of Beyond Watson workshops and other activities involving university, government, and industry partners, including one held at UMBC in February.
          We’re looking at things like natural language, which is at the core of the ultimate computer human interface. Think back to Star Trek, when Spock would say something like: "Computer, what is the probability the Klingons will attack the Enterprise in this sector of the galaxy?" The computer would often engage in a back and forth interaction with Spock, asking for more information or clarification before offering one or more scenarios (and probabilities supporting those scenarios) to aid the crew of the Enterprise in their next move. When we can ask a computer a question and then engage in a dialogue with it in this way, we can freely use computers to their best advantage. This sort of exchange allows us to hone in on an answer (or answers) to our question, supported by knowing both how the information was derived and what level of confidence to place in it.
          Envisioning such a model opens up new vistas. We may not be limited to retrieving existing answers from Wikipedia-like text, but use all available data to elicit answers to non-obvious questions, or to queries that have never been asked. We might also dispense with arcane interfaces that are poorly matched to both the task at hand and the needs of users and consumers."