The Baltimore Code Craftsmanship meetup group will hold its monthly meeting at 7:00pm on Thursday, February 20 in room 107 of the Sondheim Building on the UMBC Campus. The meetup is for students, faculty and software developers in the Baltimore area that care about the quality of their work and want to practice and improve their programming skills, share what they know and learn new things from others.

This is a hands on coding user group with no presentations. Each meeting will be a dojo where we will go through a challenging software craftsmanship exercise that focuses on clean code, test-driven development, design patterns, and refactoring. We will pair up and practice on a kata in order to learn and apply the values, principles, and disciplines of software craftsmanship. Come with your laptop equipped with your favorite programming and automated unit testing environment. If you don’t have a laptop, come anyway, we will need only one laptop for every two people. Be prepared to pair up, learn, share and have fun!

Join the meetup and register to attend at the meetup event page.

Frost announces the addition of Fourth Monkey Media to the roster of the distinguished Unity2HTML5 Developer Partner Program providing each accepted development partner with early access to the extremely sought after Unity2HTML5 GDK beta release.

The international gaming community now has Castle Builder available via the Odobo platform and leveraging the latest HTML5 technologies with Rabcat's latest release.

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After Maryland was hit with heavy snowfall last Thursday, WYPR’s Maryland Morning looked into the question: how do our older neighbors plan for and deal with this kind of weather? Sheilah Kast, the program’s host, spoke with Erickson School Dean Judah Ronch about tips and suggestions for helping elders during snowstorms.

Ronch discussed how elders can be vulnerable when they lose power and heat in their homes during storms, which can make them more susceptible to injury, cause them to become disoriented and it can even spoil food which can lead to lack of nutrition.

“That affects both body and mind. Their thinking gets to be a little less clear, and they may make decisions which really aren’t typical of what they can do,” Ronch said.

Ronch added you can help elders by creating a buddy system and forming relationships before storms and emergencies happen. He said having a plan in place and making sure the person has everything they need in advance can go a long way.

“Having a checklist of what the person needs, for example, do you have enough food, do you have enough water, do you have all the medications you would need for let’s say a four to five-day period?” Ronch said. “I think those who are checking in on older adults should check in before, during and after the event.”

You can listen to the full interview on WYPR here.

UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, takes your questions.

Q. UMBC has made significant investments in creating physical spaces where collaboration in pedagogy and research can flourish. And the movement toward a new Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Building promises to take that effort even further. Why is it important that there are physical spaces in which to do this sort of collaboration? And, stepping back and looking at the larger picture: What other research collaboration efforts at UMBC are you most excited about?

– Richard Byrne ’86, English

A.  What’s important as we build a new facility, such as the proposed Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Building, is to remember that our faculty are collaborating across disciplines, and that more and more UMBC faculty are collaborating with their colleagues at the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB).

Our deans and department chairs are actively looking for ways to work with our new Vice President of Research, Karl Steiner, and with our Provost, Philip Rous, to address different requests for proposals from the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation which are increasingly focused on interdisciplinarity.

It’s also important to listen when our Dean of the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences, William LaCourse, and others say that they need spaces that can be used by people in multiple departments and how the research and the teaching that they do is increasingly being accomplished in teams that solve problems by combining different disciplinary perspectives.

What that all means is that we need flexibility in the research facilities themselves – the sort of flexibility that you see built into in the foundation of our joint project with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute to create the Collaboratory.

We need to be able to make changes in our research facilities as priorities change at national agencies or right here on campus.

As far as research collaborations here at UMBC go, I think the future of our campus is heavily tied to our ability to collaborate with University of Maryland, Baltimore. We are increasingly working with the different schools there, including medicine and pharmacy. More and more faculty are getting to know each other at both campuses and looking at ways they can collaborate. So we will see collaborations on cybersecurity and health care, or between environmental science and health.

There are exciting new state initiatives that are going to help us do this. They will help us build research endowments and to boost the research park and other research infrastructure on our campus – by supporting research faculty and emphasizing not only tech commercialization, but also broader research on campus in disciplines that extend beyond science and engineering. The latter is particularly important as we think about the policy implications of our work and as we attack problems that pose major challenges in our society, including the achievement gap and income inequality.

UMBC will be seen as a major driver of the economy, not just because of our science and engineering infrastructure and strengths, but also more importantly and more broadly, because faculty are working across disciplines to solve problems in our society and to create a cadre of leaders – humanists, artists, policymakers, teachers, social workers – who can address critical problems in the wider world.

That is why we have invested heavily as a university in creating spaces where faculty and students in the arts and humanities and social sciences can collaborate with each other. It’s important that our pioneering Imaging Research Center, one of the engines of interdisciplinary research and collaboration, is located on the first floor of the Information Technology and Engineering Building. We also are only months away from the opening of the second phase of our Performing Arts and Humanities Building. Soon, our music and dance students will have new spaces to explore their arts in the same way that our theatre and English students have explored new vistas in the first phase of the building.

We have tangible strengths and opportunities across disciplines at UMBC – and we’re finding the spaces to nurture them so that they grow even stronger.

To send a question to President Hrabowski, click here.

Universities are filled with people who have great ideas.

In fact, the view that universities act as a repository of great ideas has a firm hold on the public imagination. Students go to classes to obtain these ideas. Professors pore over tomes or fiddle with knobs and text tubes in traditional laboratories. And universities didn’t gain a reputation of “ivory towers” where ideas were chewed over in isolation out of thin air.

Yet I hope this issue of UMBC Magazine may help you rethink the notion of our university as a place that contains ideas  Because if the feature stories in this issue have a common theme, it is that the great ideas our faculty, students, alumni and staff have at UMBC don’t exist only to be debated or discussed or memorized. They also form the basis for doing and making.

Our feature on innovative spaces for research and teaching highlight the energy and intelligence behind creating spaces where the best new thinking can be taught and acted upon. Whether it’s a CyberHive at the bwtech@UMBC that seeks to spark collaborations in the university’s burgeoning technology fields, a joint project (“The Collaboratory”) between the College of Natural and Mathematical Science and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute that will change teaching at UMBC, or an off-campus studio for visual arts graduate students that takes artists into the surrounding neighborhoods, the university is increasingly finding spaces for its community to think and create.

This article also points to another wonderful trend: UMBC alumni are carrying the banner of doing and making from the university into the local community.  Betamore – a business incubator founded by Greg Cangialosi ’96, English – and The Foundery – created by Corey Fleischer ’05, ’08, M.S., mechanical engineering – are perfect examples of places where thinking is transformed into tangible acts of creation.

This same culture of creation is also present in Kathryn Masterson’s profile of Amy Hurst and Shaun Kane, assistant professors of human centered computing at UMBC, the culture of making is also at the heart of this duo’s work.

Hurst and Kane are rising stars in the field of accessibility and assistive technology for the disabled, and the community that they have created in UMBC’s Prototyping and Design Lab (aka “The Pad”) has drawn students and faculty from across disciplines into active collaboration.

It’s not just applied research and better ways of teaching that are being forged at UMBC. As Elizabeth Heubeck ’91 discovered in her profiles of five couples who found love at UMBC, relationships that last a lifetime are also being created at UMBC.

We hope this issue inspires you to reflect your own great idea and ask the question: “What can I do to make it happen?”

 – Richard Byrne ’86

PHONE HOME

Once in a while you might get a call asking for your support for UMBC and its mission.

The person on the other end of the line? A UMBC student.

Five nights a week, UMBC students assemble at Alumni House and reach out to alumni and parents via the university’s Phonathon. The program was brought back to campus in 2011 after being outsourced to a third party for eight years.

Dayna Carpenter, UMBC’s director of annual giving, says that the university made the change because it was students who could make the most tangibleconnection to donors.

“People were really excited to talk to actual UMBC students and to have meaningful conversations,” said Carpenter.

Success is measured in numbers – and giving is up since the switch was made. But the relationships built by the Phonathon effort are just as important. Students and alumni swap stories about their time at UMBC, and a few students have received internship and job offers from alumni whom they’ve connected with during a phone call.

Logan Wern, UMBC’s Phonathon coordinator, says that students’ understanding of philanthropy has also increased: “Many of our students realize and understand the importance of fundraising and the good it does here on campus.”

One of the efforts that has benefited from the Phonathon is the Retriever Learning Center. The effort was heavily funded by alumni and it is a place beloved (and used) by many students.

“It’s because of the donors’ outstanding support that UMBC is able to offer so many resources for students and alumni alike,” says student caller Jordan Coffie ’14.

– Katharine Scrivener

The RIGHT WAVELENGTH

Public policy and economics professor Tim Brennan has had a distinguished career as an educator, researcher and expert on communications and media. Now, he’s taking it to Washington, where he will serve as chief economist for the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Brennan has been an economist with the U.S. Department of Justice Antitrust Division and senior economist for the White House Council of Economic Advisers. He has also served as a staff consultant to the Federal Trade Commission, advised on competition law internationally, and received the Distinguished Service Award last year from the Public Utility Research Center.

“I am very pleased that Tim Brennan has agreed to join the Commission as our chief economist,” says FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler. “His long and distinguished consideration of regulation, competition and monopoly issues will enable him to contribute immediately and materially to our work.”

Brennan’s research has focused on antitrust, copyright, telecommunications, media policy, electricity markets and related fields. He is also a senior fellow with Resources for the Future, a nonprofit social science research organization that seeks to improve global policymaking on environmental and natural resource issues.

“I expect to learn a lot, and it is an honor,” says Brennan of his new position at the FCC. The commission has a number of leading economists on staff, but has also brought in scholars from academia for several years to provide outside perspectives and advice on challenging issues. Previous chief economists include Steven Wildman from Michigan State University and Marius Schwartz from Georgetown University.

– Max Cole

FRUITFUL LABOR

Most classes offer valuable knowledge and some credits toward a degree.

But three students in a UMBC class on entrepreneurship taught by Gib Mason, economics ’95 (who is also chief operating officer and vice president of administration and finance at the UMBC Training Centers) got something more: a payout for their ideas and jobs helping to make their project a reality.

Josh Massey ’14 , Andres Camacho ’14, and Hashem Kanfash ’16 were students in Mason’s Creativity, Innovation and Invention class who developed a customizable GPS driven navigation app that targets the dynamic environment of college campuses under the name Banana Bones. The app directs users – walking or driving – to desired campus locations, and even creates customizable self-guided tours.

After winning a competition sponsored by the UMBC Alex Brown Center for Entrepreneurship, the mobile app was snapped up by Hanover-based Tecore Networks, a global supplier of 3G, and 4G/LTE mobile network infrastructure.

“Working on this project provided us with real-life understanding of how corporations are formed, built, and acquired,” says Massey.

Massey and his two co-founders students will continue to work with engineers and executives at Tecore to take the app through the final stages of development, and a portion of the funds from the Banana Bones acquisition will support a future collaborative space on the UMBC campus for aspiring entrepreneurs.

“Supporting and mentoring the next generation of entrepreneurs and technologists here in Maryland is a vital part of our future,” says Tecore’s president and CEO Jay Salkini.

– Nicole Ruediger

A PROMISE KEPT

Helping pave the way to success for graduate students from diverse backgrounds is the primary goal of PROMISE: Maryland’s Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (or AGEP). And the Maryland program’s excellence in achieving that goal has been rewarded with an additional five years of funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Founded in 2002 as an alliance between UMBC, the University of Maryland, College Park, and the University of Maryland, Baltimore, PROMISE is the engine for a wide-ranging array of programs (including intensive courses in sharpening dissertation skills and professional development) and mentoring opportunities aimed primarily at graduate students from underrepresented minority communities.

The new NSF grant, which provides  $1,750,000 in funding over the next three years, is aimed at expanding the program across the entire University System of Maryland (USM). The new funding will include expanded activities for postdoctoral fellows and the creation of a new annual graduate student research and careers conference as well as a new conference for undergraduates considering graduate school.

The grant will also allow PROMISE to offer more opportunities for participants in its Professors in Training program to teach at campuses across the USM, as well as institutions like Anne Arundel Community College, the Community College of Baltimore County and the new Ana G. Mendez University Capital Area Campus in Wheaton.

– Richard Byrne ’86