See what you missed the first time… after you closed your eyes.

Don’t forget The Big Screen Throwback Thursday Theater Bus Trip to see Jaws is this Thursday evening! $3 tickets are on sale at the CIC, and we’ll be shuttling people to and from the theater from campus!

PS: Why is this event name so long? I just keep making it up as I go along.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CimFrnWexx0&w=560&h=315]

Glass may be fragile. But the process of making it is not for the delicate of hand or heart. Tony Baney, a second-generation glass blower who works in UMBC’s glass shop, manages to keep his cool even while working with his hands ungloved amid Pyrex as hot as 1,500 degrees Celsius. On the floor near his feet, a cardboard box of broken shards bears the sign: “Tony FIX ME please!” A nearby radio blares “Beast of Burden” by the Rolling Stones.

Read more at umbc.edu/magazine.

There are so many ways to leave a legacy.

By all accounts, over her many years at UMBC, Dr. Alice Robinson, a founding professor in theatre, left legacies in the broadened hearts and minds of countless students here. After her passing, her legacy lives on through a scholarship fund aimed at the very students she taught.

(Click on the photo at right to enlarge the full piece in UMBC Magazine.)

We are inspired by the gifts Dr. Robinson gave to UMBC.

What will your legacy be?

At AASHE 2011 last October, Julie Newman (Sustainability Director, Yale University) and Shana Weber (Sustainability Manager, Princeton University) hosted a workshop on “Framing a research agenda for campus sustainability”. For those not able to attend, an attendee did capture a partial transcription of the session here.

The importance of thinking further about the topics raised in that workshop came up recently as I was reading a study from Jasleen Kaur, a researcher at Los Alamos National Laboratory who is also a doctoral student at Indiana University’s School of Informatics. Her research paper, “Evolution and structure of sustainability science” examines the rapidly growing body of research in sustainability science. Her research has shown that the number of authors writing about sustainability has doubled every 8.3 years between 1974 and 2010.

This is quite remarkable and I admit, had me recalling a recent comic about the word “sustainable” becoming "unsustainable".

Returning to Kaur’s research, she also unearthed the academic disciplines most contributing to the research in sustainability science and found that 34 percent of published research is from the social sciences, followed by biology with 23 percent and engineering with 22 percent. The below chart provides a further breakdown of represented academic areas (image courtesy of Indiana University):

A press release from IU regarding the research is available here.
The full paper is available for download here.

Returning for a just a moment to the comic strip referenced above, are two fascinating Google Ngram graphs for the word sustainable. Here is the word “sustainable” since 1800
and since 1960. (For background on how Google’s Ngram viewer works go here.)
As a colleague pointed out, the "since 1800 chart" is strikingly similar to the global warming hockey stick chart that is one of the most assiduously referenced Wikipedia entries of all time. The comic strip hits close to home.

What can we deduce from all of this growth? Some of the conclusions are quite obvious – major scientific and societal challenges facing humans are being rigorously studied. However, like Newman and Weber at AASHE 2011, I’m not convinced there is a unified practice of sustainability research underway (related: has this growth in research resulted in significant societal sustainability performance?).Far too often, the disciplines contributing to this research remain siloed into existing departments and are not adequately engaged in interdisciplinary research.

At the same time, I'm not convinced that the higher ed (HE) sustainability movement needs its own sector-specific sustainability research agenda – many of the challenges institutions face and are overcoming go beyond the confines of the campus and influence (or should) the broader community. Separating the HE sustainability movement from the broader societal sustainability movement is a silo we need to avoid.

Thoughts or observations? Share comments below.

All images courtesy of Indiana University

February’s Designs of the Month!

Have you ever wondered who designs the weekly posters and fliers in the bathrooms and around campus? Our designers create them! February’s weeklies were designed by Stefanie, who focused on the significance of Black History month.

More to come next month!

Members of the Alumni Relations staff traveled north last week to meet up with Boston-area alumni and cheer on the women’s basketball team as they took on the Boston University Terriers. Enjoy the slideshow below, and check out more photos from the trip on the UMBC Alumni Flickr page!