UMBC’s Multicore Computational Center (MC2) unleashes new energies in the race to make computers faster.

By Joab Jackson ’90

Here’s a Silicon Valley secret: Computer microprocessors aren’t getting any faster. The limits of processor technology have been reached. If they ran any speedier, they’d melt their cases. And all those snazzy new desktop and laptop computers on sale at the local consumer electronics store? They seem sprightlier not because they have faster chips, but because they have more of them. New computers usually come with either two or four processors, or “cores.”

And even then the difference in speed may not be all that impressive. Computer makers are learning what restaurant owners already know: Hiring a second cook doesn’t mean pasta will boil more quickly.

The exciting news is that UMBC is on the cutting edge of a discipline, called parallel programming, that may show Silicon Valley – and computer programmers worldwide – how to speed things up.

Parallel processing is a way for computers to spread their applications across multiple processors so that they will run faster. Exploring how to do it – or parallel programming – is the mission of UMBC’s Multicore Computational Center, or MC2.

In July 2007, IBM gave UMBC computer science professors Milton Halem and Yelena Yesha a grant to launch the center with cash and equipment that have totaled more than $1 million over the past three years. Supporting funding from NASA also helped the effort.

“Not only are we ahead of the curve,” says Charles Nicholas, chair of the department of computer science and electrical engineering, “but we hope to stay ahead of the curve…. The partnerships with IBM will let us keep the technologies up to date.”

Halem says that government and private enterprise are in dire need of “trained graduate students who know how to apply the new methods of parallel programming to the problems they face,” Halem says. “We’re one of the few schools in the nation that is teaching these courses.”

Researchers who are using the MC2 are also excited by the chance to map out this hitherto unexplored territory in processing.

“We don’t have a complete picture of how it will work, but it is definitely the trend we’re trying to catch,” says Yesha. “And UMBC is definitely on the frontier of this development.”

Blades and Building

For all the potential power that it offers, the MC2 is not meant to dazzle the naked eye. The center is buried deep in the Information Technology/Engineering (ITE) building on UMBC’s campus in a windowless room. Inside that space are stacked clusters of about 50 IBM ultra-thin computers, called blade servers.

IBM donated a number of these high-powered computers that contain an innovative new type of chip, called the Cell Broadband Engine. The Cell chip, which is used to power PlayStation3, is actually a collection of eight different processors, all in a single package. It also serves as a good introduction for students to parallel processing.

The center was the brainchild of Yesha and Halem, who envisioned a powerful center to spur research and teaching. Its establishment, says Yesha, is a tangible sign of how far UMBC has come in the past 20 years – since the days when students logged on to the school’s VAX mainframe system by going into the basement of the library and grabbing a seat behind a monochrome terminal.

Yesha arrived at UMBC in 1989 as an assistant professor after getting her Ph.D. in computer science at the Ohio State University. Once she settled in, Yesha honed her skills in the sub-discipline of distributed systems, or computing systems tied together from multiple, and sometimes geographically dispersed, components. In 1994, she started to lend a hand to NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, located a few miles south of the UMBC campus, as director of the Center of Excellence in Space Data and Information Sciences (CESDIS) unit.

Her mission? Solving large problems with parallel programming. “I appreciated the power of big supercomputers, and worked with supercomputers for a number of years,” she says.

It was at CESDIS that Yesha met Halem, who was the assistant chief information research scientist and chief information officer at Goddard. Halem also saw the potential power of parallel processing, having overseen the construction of the first supercomputer built entirely from thousands of processors, called Goodyear. (It is now in the Smithsonian.)

When Halem retired from NASA in 2002, he signed on at UMBC to teach and continue his research. Of like minds, Halem and Yesha won grants and government awards to expand research into parallel programming, with MC2 as the culmination of this work.

All Together Now

Computer industry companies such as Intel and Microsoft have also begun to fund research into parallel programming, but computer science research faculty member John Dorband, who is MC2’s chief computational scientist, bluntly says that “the results are rather mediocre.”

As the former head of system software research for the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Dorband is entitled to talk some smack. He also knows a thing or two about how to get computers to pull together as a single entity.

In the early 1990s, while Dorband was working at CESDIS, he and two other colleagues refined a way to lash low-cost computers together so that they work in harmony as a single machine. Called “Beowulf Clustering,” the approach can be used to build machines as powerful as the dedicated supercomputers used for weather forecasting and other humongous jobs, but at a fraction of a supercomputer’s multi-million-dollar price tag.

It is hard to overestimate the influence Beowulf has had in supercomputing. Today, over 80 percent of the world’s 500 most powerful supercomputers are clusters. And the center is hoping to apply the lessons that Dorband and others have learned in supercomputing to making more common applications, such as your spreadsheet or e-mail reader, run faster.

Using multiple processors at once can be a challenge for several reasons, Dorband explains. For one, you don’t want to break up the job in such a way that whatever gains in speed achieved would be offset by the additional work needed to manage the job across all the processors. Also, how do you get two different processors to communicate with one another the results of their computations?

These are the types of tricky problems that students – and their professors – tackle at the MC2.

From Master to Student

The Multicore Computational Center is already having a big impact on teaching at UMBC. The university offers a number of parallel programming classes with hands-on experience – including an elective class for undergraduates.

“Basically we are creating people who are able to take advantage of this thing. There are very few experts in this field,” Yesha says.

Nicholas concurs, observing that MC2’s presence on campus is “giving students access to hardware and to interesting problems that otherwise they wouldn’t have come across.”

The MC2 has also come in handy in research. For David Chapman, a UMBC graduate student, the center has been an invaluable resource for understanding how to work on such large datasets. Chapman’s latest research project will show how using the cell processors could help the search engine giant Google – and other search engines – index the Web more quickly.

“The architecture is very different. It forces the programmer to design the problem around the hardware,” Chapman said of the Cell processor. “If you write your code one way, it runs slower than a regular processor, but if you rewrite it for the machine, it runs 100 times faster. It’s a tricky thing.”

UMBC researchers also use the MC2’s cluster for numerous scientific and mathematical projects. The muscle of many processors has been especially useful for those projects that involve summarizing complex relations within sprawling data sets.

For instance, Halem led an effort to develop a system that would analyze large sets of infrared earth imagery to show how the climate changes in a given region over a period of time. Such work, done in conjunction with NASA Goddard, has already helped better characterize recent fluctuations in global temperature. Another UMBC professor, Tim Finin, plans to use the cluster to analyze how people interact with each other across the hundreds of thousands of Web logs (or blogs) on the Internet. Who takes the lead in spurring online communication?

In particular, Finin is looking to develop ways of having a computer automatically identify who the most influential individuals are across many different communities, from knitting aficionados to wine lovers. When people post and comment and point to each other’s blogs, they leave behind links. These links allow Finin and his team to identify leading members of these groups by looking to where the links point.

This is easy to do with a few blogs, but for thousands, the work can expand rapidly. To do this, the group uses what is known as matrix-multiplication, a tedious process of multiplying one large group of numbers with another large group of numbers.

Fortunately, it is a problem that can be broken into smaller subsets – one for each computer core. Now Finin’s research group wants to expand the research to hundreds of thousands of blogs. For this, the multicore computers would be essential.

Another project Finin has embarked on with the MC2 involves helping computers reason more deeply about human writing and speech. Can a computer tell that a newspaper article is about basketball star Michael Jordan – and not about Michael Jordan, the English soccer goalkeeper?

Finin is developing a way that computers can use a large number of descriptive words, such as an online encyclopedia, to build up vocabulary and make meaningful relations between different sets of words. (Such as “Michael Jordan” and “basketball.”)

“These uses were not possible before without having access to this computational power,” Yesha says. Knowing a thing or two about working in tandem, the center’s managers are now banding with the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of California San Diego, and the University of Minnesota to start a multi-institution “National Center of Excellence” for parallel programming. The group has applied to the National Science Foundation for funding of this project. If this partnership moves forward, it will no doubt push the frontiers of parallel processing even further.

“The uniqueness of the UMBC facility is not just the iron and the configuration, but also the intellect and the brain power we have in terms of our staff,” Yesha says. “They know how to not only configure and operate it, but also take advantage of it in a number of different dimensions.”

Sketches to Shovels

Right now, the site is marked on campus maps as Parking Lots 9 and 16. But next summer, the university hopes that shovels will be busy breaking that ground to build a new $150 million Performing Arts and Humanities Facility.

At a forum held at UMBC in late April, architects showed off the latest plans for the new building, which is slated to be built in two phases between 2010 and 2014. The first phase will house the Theatre and English Departments – as well as the Dresher Center for the Humanities and the Linehan Scholars Program – and include a new 250-seat proscenium theater.

University planners hope to start the second phase immediately upon the completion of the first section in 2012. That piece of the project will give four additional departments – Music, Dance, Ancient Studies and Philosophy – new homes, and will be capped by new dance and concert halls. Both phases will include new classrooms.

In addition to being a linchpin of UMBC’s humanities education and a magnet for artistic events in the larger community, the university and the design team – Grimm and Parker Architects and William Rawn Associates – are also aiming for a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification. The new facility would be the first building on campus to qualify for this third-party rating of the building’s environmental efficiency.

The plans are contingent on approval of the funds by Maryland’s legislature next year.

— Richard Byrne ’86

Reconnecting Alumni

Greg Simmons ’04, M.P.P. was named UMBC’s Vice President for Institutional Advancement in late December – a position that includes leadership on alumni issues for the university. He has worked at UMBC in a number of positions, including stints at The Shriver Center, in Corporate Relations, and as a Special Assistant to the university’s president, Freeman A. Hrabowski, III.

UMBC Magazine talked with Simmons about his career, the recent $100 million campaign for UMBC and his vision for alumni relations in the next few years:

Q. How were you attracted to UMBC and to institutional advancement work?

I originally became connected with UMBC as an undergraduate, not even knowing that the work I was doing – as a tutor for at-risk kids – was a program that was run by UMBC. I was a tutor at Loyola College for the Choice Program. After I graduated, I went out West and spent a year working with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, and then came back to Baltimore to work with the Choice Program as a case worker in East Baltimore.

During that that year, I started to understand — OK, there’s a university that runs the Choice program. And then at the end of that one year contract, I had the chance to move up to campus to run the undergraduate internship program. I got to interview with Michele Wolf and John Martello. I was actually applying for a job in community service, and John said, “Really, I see you as someone who’d be better working with the corporate community and the business community. Maybe you like community service, and you always can do that. But I see you working with a different stakeholder.” And I said, “All right, I’ll give that a try.”

So I ran the internship program for five years at the Shriver Center. And it was great. I met a lot of students and a lot of companies. What I really got a sense of was what [Freeman A. Hrabowski, III]’s mission was in terms of building relationships with companies, and getting people to understand the quality of UMBC through the partnerships that we have.

I see the internships and the full-time hiring as the base of the pyramid, and as I got more comfortable in understanding the different parts of the pyramid, I was interested in seeing what happened at the higher order of the pyramid. And when there was an opportunity to work in corporate relations, and fundraising, and corporate partnership development, I took that chance to work with [former UMBC Vice President, Institutional Advancement] Sheldon Caplis and with the president. I did that for a couple years before going to work directly for the president on a number of different initiatives. It was just a great experience. Almost an apprenticeship.

When the chance to come back to advancement came up, I took it for a couple of reasons. First, it was to see if I could take the things I learned with [President Hrabowski] and use them on a day to day basis. I wanted to be able to manage people. I wanted to be responsible for programs. I wanted to be able to build in some areas that I thought we could get stronger.

And as I stepped into this role, people asked me: “Did you ever see yourself being a professional fundraiser?” I don’t think anyone ever sees themselves as a professional fundraiser. I see myself as someone who cares deeply about this place. The programs and the people and the students. And it’s very easy for me to get excited about that. And whether it’s a company or an individual or a federal agency, I feel very good about helping people understand how their investment can make this place stronger. This place has given me a lot of tremendous opportunity. It’s introduced me to a lot of very smart and talented people. If I can take the skills and ability that I have to put those people and those programs in a place where they can be successful, that’s very exciting for me.

Q: UMBC is near the end of its $100 million campaign. What’s your assessment of that effort and its impact?

It is a big campaign for us. It’s only the second campaign that UMBC has ever had. And if you look at an institution of our profile and size, most of the research would say – and our own feasibility study suggested – that we could only do an $80 million dollar campaign. And we’re here, at the end of a seven year campaign, on the threshold of breaking $100 million. It’s a real testament to the people and the programs. The academic leadership. And the way that we’ve helped people in the region and across the country understand the value proposition of UMBC.

So to raise $100 million is a big deal. And it’s something that the entire campus community can take pride in.

As I think about what’s happening in the economy right now, and what has to happen going forward, we knew that because of our age and where our alumni are, that our alumni would have to have a role in this campaign. But we really need to see this campaign as a staging platform for the next campaign. Of our $100 million goal, the alumni portion of that was $3 million or 3 percent. So what we really are looking forward to now is “How can we help alumni see themselves as part of our fundraising going forward? How can they, in the future, have a bigger part in our fundraising, How they can really take pride in this place and invest in places that are going to make us stronger in the future.

It is a difficult time to raise money, whether you’re a business or a nonprofit. The things were doing now is letting people know what things are really important to us. Student based need, Particular programs where there are strengths – or where we have to invest heavily to continue the momentum. How do we help people see in a clear way the impact of their giving .That’s not something that we have always put a premium on – and it’s more important than ever, because peoples’ giving habits are changing.

Q: What’s your vision of alumni relations in the next few years?

I think we have to completely rethink how we connect with our alums. Geographically, we’re in a place where 90% of our alums are within 90 miles of campus. It’s a great opportunity. There are alums driving up and down I-95 every day to get to work or get home. But they can’t see the campus from the highway, and you almost forget that we’re right there…They haven’t had a chance to see how we’ve grown and changed.

My vision is: How do we make our alumni a central part of the campus on a daily basis. How do we make it easy for them to interact with our students and faculty? How do we become a destination for them, whether they’re looking for additional education, or they want to go to a lacrosse game or a basketball game, or whether they want to go to a theatre performance or meet an author or a scientist?

Nobody owes us their philanthropy. We have to make people understand why we’re deserving of it. And part of that is getting them to come here. Whether they’re a graduate from the 70s or graduating this year, we have to get them to understand that this is their place – and it can be as strong as they want it to be.

— Richard Byrne ’86

From Patapsco to Punts

When it comes to age, the University of Cambridge in England has a 757-year head start on UMBC. But more Retrievers are making the leap to graduate study at the second-oldest university in the English-speaking world these days – some of them via their selection for prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarships.

Three UMBC alumni – Ian Ralby ’02, modern languages and linguistics, M.A., intercultural communications, Simon Gray ’08, chemical engineering, and Philip Graff ’08, physics and mathematics – are currently enrolled at Cambridge through these highly-competitive awards. Two other UMBC alumni – Ian’s brother Aaron Ralby’ 05, modern languages and linguistics and Skylar Neil ’06, ancient studies – are also studying at Cambridge.

These alumni say that the Cambridge experience is different in many ways from their time at UMBC. “It’s a bit surreal,” says Neil, “attending lectures, going to formal dinner, conducting research in buildings older than one’s home country!”

Gray observes that the dress code shifts from black & gold sweats to black tie at many Cambridge events. “We wear academic gowns to dinner and formal attire is assumed for almost all events,” he reports. “I have worn my tuxedo more times this year than I can count, but ask any student here, and they will tell you that is par for the course.”

There are similarities between Catonsville and Cambridge as well – including an emphasis on hard work and hard play. “The rigorous academic environment is enhanced by strong social traditions and commitment to athletics.” says Aaron Ralby, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies. “There is a wonderful natural balance here between academic work, sports, and socializing.”

As a former rugby player at UMBC, Neil was eager to play in the country where the sport began. “I am set to play with the Blues team in our annual Varsity Match against Oxford in a little over a week,” he says, “an honor which probably would not have been possible without the time spent on the rugby pitches at UMBC.”

Those who made the journey from Catonsville to the banks of the River Cam say that UMBC prepared them well for the trip. “I have had some excellent professors at Cambridge,” says Gray, “but nothing to match some of the exceptional lecturers and professors I had at UMBC.”

Aaron Ralby agrees: “Rarely have I felt out of my depth, and whenever I’ve uncovered weaknesses in knowledge, my education at UMBC has provided the tools to go research, learn, and imbibe.”

As fond as she is of the academic rigors and the rugby, Neil reports that there are some things that she misses from her time at UMBC: “The Archaeology Department at Cambridge has been nothing but supportive since my arrival, and is well equipped for an incredibly vast range of research enquiries; however, I do sometimes find myself missing the familiarity and rapport of the Ancient Studies department at UMBC.”

— Matthew Morgal ’09

Green for Green

Think MTV and students and you likely conjure the image of Daytona Beach – and not harnessing biogas from farms. But UMBC Biodiesel Club members Nick Selock, Marsha Walker, Donterrius Ethridge and Angela Nealen may have you thinking again.

In March, just around the time that many students head off to spring break, the four UMBC chemical engineering students won $1,000 in MTV Switch’s “Dream It, Do It Challenge.”

Inspired by Indian inventors who have harnessed cow dung to convert into cheap and environmentally-friendly cooking gas, these four club members pitched their idea to harness horse manure collected at a farm in Burtonsville for conversion to methanol to earn their prize.

The Biodiesel Club has been a strong voice for green initiatives on campus, even powering their own vehicles with a “biodiesel brew” of used cooking oil from local restaurants.

Selock says the prize money “will enable us to purchase and set up an anaerobic digester to collect methane, which is a more potent and harmful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.”

For more information on the UMBC Biodiesel Club, please visit www.umbc.edu/news

— Chip Rose

The importance of community colleges in educating students in Maryland and elsewhere in the United States is often overlooked. So perhaps the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching were underscoring the key role played by community colleges when they named Scott Jeffrey ’81, geography and environmental systems, as Maryland’s 2008 U.S. Professor of the Year.

Jeffrey is an associate professor of geography at the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC), where he is the director of the college’s Geospatial Applications Program. The program teaches students to analyze map data for a wide variety of organizations that range from everyday businesses to Homeland Security Administration.

Competition for the prize was stiff, with 300 nominees vying for awards in each of the fifty states plus Guam. The judging process is an intense, multi-step affair.

“I was shocked,” says Jeffrey, describing his initial reaction to the award. “I was really excited, but I was also shocked because I knew what I was up against.”

The term “geospatial applications,” he observes, “has evolved because of the growth of the industry over the last decade…. There was a lot of overlap in between Geographic Information Systems (GIS), remote sensing, and global positioning systems (GPS), so it became the geospatial field.”

Much of Jeffrey’s teaching in this hybrid discipline takes a practical cast, encouraging students to engage in direct work with local companies. After completing an introductory course in basic theories surrounding geospatial applications, the students’ remaining class work integrates traditional lectures with the completion of client-based projects that prepare them for real world situations.

Students in the geospatial applications program have completed tasks involving everything from poison distribution to vegetation mapping. “The whole concept, what really makes the students attractive when they graduate,” says Jeffrey, “is having done the on-the-ground work that you can show as a portfolio. It gives you credibility.”

The results have been tangible. “We’ve had a student’s map published in a national atlas,” Jeffrey recalls. “We’ve had students win regional conferences. Student maps have been presented at board meetings.”

Jeffrey also has maintained close connections with UMBC. Not only does he teach as an adjunct professor at the university, but he recently created an articulation agreement with UMBC that closely tracks a similar agreement made with Towson University in 2006. The agreement allows students to begin a geographic systems education at CCBC and then transfer these course skills to either university.

“There are no undergraduate institutions in the state of Maryland that offer the depth and breath of (GIS) courses that CCBC offers,” Jeffrey notes. “What ends up happening is that students that get out of my program, when they transfer to UMBC or Towson, they have far better GIS skills then someone who has started at UMBC or Towson in the geography program.”

UMBC will see its first group of CCBC transfer students in the coming academic year, and Jeffrey says that the students who have transferred to Towson have already found success. Yet he adds that the articulation agreement will help these students round out their skills sets.

“When students transfer to UMBC or Towson, they are going to have GIS skills that exceed students that are already in those programs,” he observes. “What they won’t have is the content coursework for the field. What they won’t have is the depth and breadth of the geography field.”

Jeffrey reflects fondly on his days at UMBC, and he proudly cites his experiences in the UMBC geography department and the research projects he worked on during his undergraduate education as his guide in creating the Geospatial Applications Program at CCBC.

“The ability of the faculty [at UMBC] to provide those experiences to me, I have built that philosophy into this program,” he says. “If this program is successful, it is because of that.”

— Matthew Morgal ’09

Kosher and halal dining options began to pop up in the dining halls and other spots on campus over the past few years. Why? A big reason was a joint multiyear effort by a number of groups on campus, including UMBC’s Hillel, the Jewish Student Union and the Muslim Student Association. UMBC Magazine talked with Rella Kaplowitz ’06, psychology (right) and Syed Junaid Hassan ’09, biochemistry and molecular biology about the collaborative process to achieve this common goal.

Why kosher and halal food on campus?

Syed: The main reason was so that Muslims would have an easier time adhering to religious standards without having to compromise. I certainly foresaw a better relationship between Muslims and Jews on campus – and also an opportunity to recruit more students from Jewish and Muslim backgrounds to campus as residents and commuters. Food is a key way to bring people of various cultural or religious backgrounds together.

Rella: Growing up in the Orthodox Jewish community in Pikesville, many of my peers chose other universities. To them, a kosher meal plan was synonymous with a strong Jewish community; if UMBC did not have kosher food, the community must not be very vibrant.

Of course, that couldn’t be farther from the truth. But UMBC’s lack of kosher food was a roadblock for many potential students. As someone who kept kosher, it was hard when my friends would grab food in the Commons and I’d sit and have a soda.

As a leader in the Jewish community at UMBC, I felt it was my responsibility to help enhance the college experience for Jewish students on campus. And once we started talking about kosher food, it made sense to see if we could work on halal food as well, so we contacted the Muslim Student Association. I saw this partnership as a way of building community on campus, especially between two groups that don’t always get along on other campuses.

How did joining forces assist the ultimate success of the project?

Rella: UMBC is one of the most diverse universities of its size, and I think that characteristic carried through to our partnership for kosher food. Jewish and Muslim students, as well as vegetarian and vegan students and those with food allergies, all benefit from having kosher meal options. It didn’t even cross our minds to go at it alone. I hope (and believe) this partnership has encouraged Jewish and Muslim students to collaborate outside of this project as well.

Syed: Unfortunately, the process to bring halal food to campus is still ongoing, though we are getting some assistance from Chartwells (the current food provider at UMBC). It has added volume to the call for UMBC and state universities in Maryland to provide services for students of varied religious backgrounds. It has also given the Muslim students an added sense of responsibility in both working for their own benefit as well as working with other organizations.

How do you both feel about this effort as a legacy that you are leaving to campus life?

Syed: As far as my own legacy is concerned, I was only a participant, trying to be humble and not overstep my bounds. Ideally, more than remembering who did the work, I hope that there are new individuals after I leave UMBC who are willing to take on this responsibility.

Rella: There is an old Jewish tale about a man who is planting a carob tree. Someone walks up to him and says: “Why are you planting this? It won’t bear fruit for at least 70 years, and you will be long dead by then.” The man replies: “I eat from the carob trees that my ancestors planted for me, so I plant this tree for my children.” It wasn’t easy to work on a project I was skeptical would ever come to fruition, and most certainly would not happen in my time at UMBC. But at the same time, it taught me a lot about thinking of future generations of Jewish UMBC students.

In four decades at UMBC, W. Edward Orser’s research and teaching have helped uncover American triumphs and tragedies in city neighborhoods, small towns and parklands.

By Richard Byrne ’86

Forty years ago, when W. Edward Orser arrived in Baltimore as a young professor in American studies at UMBC, he was also planting himself in new soil. Orser had studied at Randolph-Macon College and Yale University before he and his wife, Jo Annette, were among the first waves of those who answered John F. Kennedy’s call to service in the Peace Corps. They spent two years in Ethiopia before he returned and took his Ph.D. at the University of New Mexico.

Yet Orser has done more than simply take root at UMBC. As a researcher and teacher, he has thrived. His 1994 book, Blockbusting in Baltimore (University of Kentucky Press) blazed a path for scholars and policymakers with its nuanced yet pungent analysis of how racism and opportunism transformed the racial makeup of West Baltimore in the late 1950s and early 1960s. And his research has also been accompanied by a knack for creating and leading classroom projects that meld the best practices of scholarship with a keen sense of the possibilities of public history.

“Ed Orser has also been among the most active and effective teachers in bringing students into his research,” says John Jeffries, dean of UMBC’s College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

Those projects left a trail of books, pamphlets and exhibits that have knit the university more closely to its surrounding communities – and created avenues for local citizens to investigate and reflect upon their own communal history.

“His intellectual passions have helped make UMBC a nationally recognized site for exemplary scholarship in the field,” says Patrice McDermott, chair of the American Studies department. “But we also benefit from Ed Orser’s belief in the power of community to shape and sustain the core values of our campus, our department and our classrooms. His true gift is his ability to inspire others to join him in the pursuit of these ideals.”

Orser says he has sought to take advantage of the opportunities that a focus on place can have in understanding America’s story.

“How do you ground the American experience in something you can get your hands around?” asks Orser. “I always thought it was helpful to bring things down to a certain scale. Maybe because that’s as much as I could try to get my mind around, but also it is because in some ways, that’s where we live our lives.”

For Orser, the opportunities to teach and research great controversies of race and economics and war and peace have abounded in UMBC’s environs.

“I keep on trying to get students to look at what’s so nearby,” he says.

Town and Country

Orser’s earliest effort to get students to examine UMBC’s backyard came in 1972, when he led an American studies senior seminar in an examination of nearby Ellicott City – which was then a faded mill town still years away from its restoration and revival.

“We think of Ellicott City today as a booming place,” he observes, “but in the ’50s and the ’60s, before I came [to UMBC], it was pretty much on its last legs…. I think the notion of it that was so exciting was that we were trying to look at the community as a whole. It was something you could get your hands around: oral interviews, photographs and other records.”

Each student focused on an aspect of the community’s history and decline. “We put together a little book at the end of the semester,” Orser continues. “And the title we gave it – which was from one of the oral interviews – was ‘The Train Doesn’t Stop Here Anymore.’”

Another early seminar project focused on Patapsco State Park. When Orser discovered that the park was built during the New Deal by the Civilian Conservation Corps [CCC], his interest was piqued. But when it also turned out that the camp used by the CCC was used by the federal government as its first camp for conscientious objectors in World War II, the professor knew that a teachable – and researchable – moment was on offer.

“The remnants of the old camp were there,” Orser recalls. “And that connected up with students at the time who were concerned, as I was, about the Vietnam War and the peace movement. So we did interviews with people who had been in conscientious objector camps – and if not that one, then others.”

Tales of Two ’Villes

These projects led to an even wider array of explorations, including one in nearby Catonsville. Students dug into old photos, census records, fire insurance atlases and maps to reconstruct how Catonsville grew from a modest community along the Frederick Turnpike into a thriving community. And the results of the Catonsville History Project, which was led by Orser and UMBC professor of history Joseph Arnold, were unveiled in exhibits at UMBC and in the community – and then published in 1989 in a book, Catonsville 1880 to 1940: From Village to Suburb that is still available for sale at the Catonsville Public Library.

It is, however, the local participation and input in the research process that Orser particularly insists on highlighting.

“There were local people who had done a wonderful job of creating a Catonsville room at the local public library,” he recalls. “They had gathered photographs, begun to do oral histories. They were diligent. There are always people like this in communities, who squirrel things away and have a good instinct, but they didn’t know how to take the next step. Make these things available. Organize them.”

Another student project led by Orser investigated the small African-American community of Cowdensville, which had existed since at least the 1840s on the southeast edge of what is now UMBC’s campus.

Jean Flanagan ’97, American studies, was one of the students who sketched out the history of the community, which was centered on an African Methodist Episcopal Church. Now the managing editor of the Moorefield Examiner in West Virginia, she says that the researching and interviewing skills that she acquired while compiling oral histories for the project have proven invaluable to her in her subsequent career.

Past adding to her skills, however, Flanagan adds that Orser “taught me there is much more to history than what is written in books. There is the life of everyday people, and their day-to-day struggles and triumphs in the context of ‘textbook’ history are what real history is about.”

The Cowdensville study, she adds, strengthened UMBC’s ties to the local community. “Some Cowdensville residents remarked it was the first time they had set foot on the UMBC campus,” says Flanagan. Orser is also proud of how the body of scholarly knowledge about the region has been advanced in the work of students on these projects.

In the Cowdensville study, for instance, Orser notes that “residents were fairly sure, from oral histories, that their families went back to before the Civil War, and that they were free and were property owners. But they couldn’t come across documents to nail that down. One of our students traced the family names back as far as the 1840 census, and established that there were members of that family that were free and property owners.”

The Cowdensville project also spurred Orser to write his own paper about a little-known case taken on by future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall in the mid-1930s. Orser’s paper, which was published in Maryland Historical Magazine in 1997, argued that Marshall’s failed attempt to win the right for Cowdensville students to attend white high schools in Baltimore County foreshadowed the lawyer’s ultimately successful efforts in Brown vs. Board of Education to strike a fatal blow to segregation in schools.

Blocks as Battlefields

Excavating untold stories of the region’s contentious race relations in student projects is important to Orser. And classroom discussion also led him to the idea for his most significant scholarly achievement – the comprehensive study of racial upheaval in West Baltimore housing in the 1950s and 1960s.

“It came on my radar screen when I had students in my classes doing family histories,” Orser recalls. “It would come up in the family histories of white students and in family histories of black students.” It would turn out that their families at one point or another had crossed the same territory. So it was clear to me that this was a very difficult moment.”

“Blockbusting” was a practice in which real-estate agents would sell a house on an all-white block to an African-American family. Often, the sale would ignite a panic amongst the other white residents on the block, who would sell at a loss to move away. The real-estate agents would then sell the properties at a profit to African-American families who would then move in.

Orser’s initial research turned up numerous tales of the practice. But Blockbusting in Baltimore was the first systematic look at the practice, using census data, historical documents and even telephone directories of the era.

“One of the things about oral accounts is that you’re always skeptical,” Orser says. “You need to be wary. Maybe people are exaggerating. So I did what I did with a lot of other projects… I went to the census. And sure enough, it is so vivid.”

Orser developed a method of looking at how blockbusting radically altered certain blocks in the Edmonson Village section of Baltimore. “What I found there is that it was not a 10-year process,” he observes. “It was a one-month process on particular blocks.”

Blockbusting in Baltimore has spurred numerous subsequent studies of the phenomenon in other cities, and Jeffries asserts that the book “is one of the finest histories written about the resistance to integration.” What remains with Orser about the study of blockbusting, however, is the sheer trauma that the experience inflicted on blacks and whites alike who were caught up in it. – and the difficulties in navigating the terrain of racial conflict that occurred so relatively recently.

“Race is such a sensitive issue and so complicated and so hard to treat fairly,” says Orser. “The hardest thing with the book was to try and represent the experience fairly. There were harder feelings than I felt willing to report.”

Parks and Progress

Orser’s recent work has plunged him more deeply into public history, and specifically how the public interacts with one of the region’s recreational pleasures: the Gwynns Falls Trail. Last year, he published a book, The Gwynns Falls: Baltimore Greenway to the Chesapeake Bay (The History Press), which expanded on a series of trail markers that Orser created in his role as urban historian for a National Park Service-funded project.

The Gwynns Falls traces the use of the trail by Native Americans and its early explorations by John Smith through its key role in the burgeoning Baltimore economy of mills and other industry in the 18th and 19th centuries. It takes the reader up to the present day, in which the grand 1904 Baltimore parks plan proposed by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. set aside the land that is now enjoyed by so many as a hiking and biking trail. Orser calls tracing the history of the development of specific paths of egress and ingress “horizontal archaeology,” and says that it can be remarkably revealing.

“If you take any corridor of an urban area like Baltimore, and you follow it – York Road, Reisterstown Road, Edmondson Avenue – you have this incredible chronology of the history of the area: from early settlement and changes that have happened over time.”

Orser says that “the Gwynns Falls captures my imagination in a similar way. It is a stream valley that even today is – parts of it still – very urban, out of sight, out of mind land.”

As he pursues his explorations of local history and the possibilities of rooting that work in specific places, Orser also continues to mentor students and help them create change in communities. Just last year, Simran Noor ’08, political science and American studies, created a plan for redeveloping the Coppin Heights/Greater Walbrook area of West Baltimore under Orser’s direction. (Noor’s research was recently published in the university’s undergraduate research journal, UMBC Review.)

Noor says that Orser “spent endless hours giving me feedback on my work and meeting with me both in and outside of school to develop the project. Using much of what I had learned from [him], I was able to develop a strong plan.”

Rooting the study of history in the local, Orser says, “gives you a feeling that you have some way of defining it.” But in that definition, he concludes, there are multiple layers of complication that enrich the study, rather than simplify it.

“The tighter you draw your circle,” he says, “the more you realize how complex history is.”

With Karin Readel, Senior Lecturer, Geography & Environmental Systems

You never know when or where extreme thirst might occur. Exploring ancient ruins in the Amazon, you drop your canteen into a snake-filled gully. Or you’re hiking in the Appalachian woods, miles from a water fountain.

Or, maybe you’ve always craved a sip of the water in UMBC’s Library Pond. No need to fret. With the help of Karin Readel, senior lecturer in UMBC’s Geography & Environmental Systems program, and her sidekick, Bob the dog, you can have your lake and drink it, too.

— Jenny O’Grady

A WORD OF CAUTION
In an ideal world, you might run a simple $2 fecal coliform test on your water before drinking it, like we did in Readel’s lab before the filtration process. However, this isn’t always possible. Please be careful of where you get your water, and always think before you drink.

Click here to view the video.

In a developing world awash with suffering, Jeffrey Wilkinson ’89, interdisciplinary studies, has used his medical skills to focus on a very specific problem for African women: a hugely debilitating condition known as obstetric fistula.

Obstetric fistula occurs in women who undergo a difficult childbirth or are victims of sexual violence. The fistula is a hole that appears between the rectum and vagina or between the bladder and the vagina. It often develops after prolonged labor, and the condition causes incontinence and infections, as patients cannot hold in their urine or fecal matter.

The United Nations Population Fund estimates that two million women remain untreated for obstetric fistula in developing countries – and at least 50,000 to 100,000 new cases occur each year. Treatment requires a relatively simple and low-cost form of reconstructive surgery, but most fistula patients can’t afford the $300 that pays for the surgery and post-surgical care.

That is where Wilkinson – a physician with the Duke University Center for Minimally Invasive Gynecologic Surgery – enters the picture. He moved to Tanzania in 2008 to perform fistula surgeries at the Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre (KCMC), a Duke partner facility, in the town of Moshi, near Mount Kilimanjaro.

Wilkinson received his medical degree from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. As a urogynecologist (a subspecialty of obstetrics and gynecology that deals with incontinence), he has helped many patients that he says are “the most underrepresented and vulnerable group of patients you can possibly think of…without power, money or voice.”

The surgeries at KCMC are covered by the center’s own budget, government grants, the African Medical and Research Foundation, and other donations. Wilkinson and the OB-GYN team at the center are also teaching Tanzanian health workers how to do emergency obstetrics as a preventative measure to avoid maternal mortality and fistulas.

Wilkinson’s colleagues say he has made a big difference in the countries where he has worked. His efforts featured prominently in a recent article in the New York Times, which highlighted the work done by Wilkinson and his Tanzanian colleague Gileard Masenga at KCMC.

“The work he is doing on behalf of women in the developing world and as a representative of our Duke faculty set him apart from the average physician,” said Haywood Brown, chair of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at Duke University Medical Center.

Masenga, a senior obstetrician and gynecologist and one of Tanzania’s leading experts on fistula surgery, agrees. “The KCMC obstetric and gynecology department has improved and benefited from his presence in term of improved patient care, teaching and clinical oriented research,” he says.

Wilkinson took several short trips to Niger between 2004 and 2008 where he treated fistula patients and grew increasingly interested in working full-time in Africa. When he moved to Tanzania last year, he traveled with his wife, a family physician, and their two young children.

Wilkinson says the most common reason for maternal mortality and prevalence of fistulas in a country like Tanzania are delays in seeking and receiving obstetric care during childbirth.

“There are insurmountable odds against women,” he says. “It’s fortunate that most labors can occur without major problems on their own, or else this would be a much more widespread problem.” Looking back on his days at UMBC, Wilkinson says that his interdisciplinary studies have helped him manage the different issues and fields he grapples with in his current job.

“Our work isn’t just doing a surgical fix to a patient’s problem. We also address the psychological and social aspects of condition, as well as the financial and economic issues, the science behind it, the statistics, and the epidemiology,” he said. “The [interdisciplinary program]… has helped me a lot in understanding the problem of obstetric fistula and maternal mortality.”

— Eliza Barclay

After 9 a.m. – and until the last classes of the day – UMBC is a busy place.

The Commons and Quad and Academic Walk bustle with students and faculty and staff going busily about the business of learning. Classrooms and labs are filled with the sounds of lectures and discussions – or the concentrated silence of experiments and exams. The parking lots are full – and parking services employees write tickets to the scofflaws.

But there is also a great deal going on at UMBC and in its vicinity before most people turn their cars onto the Loop or exit a bus each morning. So we asked writers and photographers to set their alarms and capture some of the morning sights and sounds of the campus waking up. These early birds found not only their worms – but much more.

5:15 Crew Club Practice—Baltimore Rowing Club Cherry Hill

It’s April, and it’s snowing. A high school crew team has already turned tail and canceled practice. A few UMBC rowers look expectantly to Renee Foard ’00, chemistry. “You can row in the snow,” she says, in perfect coach deadpan.

Minutes later, they ease their yellow eight-seater into water that is several degrees warmer than the air surrounding them at this hour. The coxswain, Allison Tullier ’12, shouts drills from the stern. In the dark, with the city lights twinkling, the boats resemble airplanes on a runway.

The sun rises slowly behind the team as they cut through the wake of nearby shipping crafts, rounding a buoy just off the coast of Fort McHenry. The red in their cheeks is not sunburn.

“People think we’re crazy,” says Foard. “But I love it. There’s a lot of grace to this sport.”

— Jenny O’Grady

6:00 Early Reveille—Retriever Activities Center

“One one thousand! Two one thousand!”

UMBC’s ROTC cadets are powering through a regimen of calisthenics and three grueling rounds of push-ups. As much as the routine tones the bodies of future Army officers, it also creates camaraderie.

“Really a tight-knit group,” observes Staff Sergeant Michael Bishop. “They go to breakfast after training, those that don’t have class, and attend a lot of events together.”

At 6:32 a.m., the group assembles outside the Retriever Activites Center to begin a two-mile run along the inner-circle of the loop. The first runners appear in the distance 15 minutes later.

One female cadet reaches the finish line at 6:50 a.m. and asks: “We’re not the last, are we?”

After the run, the cadets gather in a circle and reflect upon their morning session.

One sweaty cadet quips: “Should we do caterpillar pushups?” He’s greeted with a collective and exhausted reply in the negative.

— Matthew Morgal ’09

6:20 Leggo My Breakfast—UMBC Campus

They say that the early bird gets the worm, but the truth of the matter is this: On most any university campus, the mealtime options available to willing and waiting wildlife are more like a Vegas all-you-can eat buffet.

On a recent morning, amongst a random assortment of discarded peanuts, popcorn, puffed rice particles and – Mmmm! – red-flavored gum, one lucky squirrel finds the ultimate prize: a lightly toasted blueberry Eggo waffle.

Dash the physics of it all, it must be thinking. Hunger triumphs over mass as this tenacious grey squirrel

darts from beneath the bushes to pick up the waffle. It takes a guarded bite, and carries its windfall back to its secret lair. No syrup necessary.

— Jenny O’Grady

6:45 Open and Quiet—Albin O. Kuhn Library Atrium

Either physics lecturer Eric Anderson’s class is tough, or his students are very motivated. Or maybe both.

By 7 a.m., five people in the Albin O. Kuhn Library Atrium are studying for Anderson’s physics test at 8 a.m. Three of them have been there since 6 a.m. No one is dozing off.

Compared to the atmosphere in the open-all-night Atrium during finals week, Porter observes that 6:30 a.m. isn’t all that early – or late, depending on your perspective.The Atrium is also preferable to a steering wheel. Commuter Aimee Porter ’11 is prepping for the same exam. “We come to the library because we don’t like studying in the car,” she says.
“Studying here keeps us awake because we’re not in our dorm rooms,” says Rose Wilson ’10.

“You should see this place around 3 a.m. There are sleeping bags all over the place,” says Porter.

— B. Rose Huber

7:00 UMBC Campus

I have always been a morning person. The drive to work is easier – and with less traffic and stopping, it’s also more environmentally friendly. Sometimes the world gives you a treat, and the gate to the parking lot is open, and you drive right through. You have your choice of parking spaces.

Then there’s the view. As one walks down the hill from Lot 16 on a bright sunny morning, one sees UMBC’s campus in its quiet beauty.

Freshly waxed and buffed floors greet you with a shiny smile. Mostly I look at my calendar and prepare for the day—or catch up on emails. Department chairs can’t plan for the day. Everyone else does it for you. The most you can do is be ready for what may come.

If I have the time, I’ll walk the building, greet others who started the day early, and appreciate the wonderful life with which I have been blessed. 

— William R. LaCourse Chair & Professor of Analytical Chemistry Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

7:20 Breakfast Is Served—UMBC Dining Hall

The building shines like a beacon through the rain and gray dawn sky. There is warmth inside. And food.

There are no lines in the dining hall at opening time. No fight for a table big enough to fit the group. At this hour, most students are alone, moving silently with trays and textbooks balanced precariously. Only two people – both studying – sit in the half-darkness near the salad bar.

The low murmur of workers preparing food and the distant clang of dishes punctuate the silence. The steam from empty warming trays curls upward to the red and yellow mottled lamps above.

Crew team members and ROTC cadets arrive. The hall gets more boisterous. One girl from the crew team is on a mission for fruit. She drafts team members and they return bearing an armload of apples and a single orange.

The main fruit gatherer is barefoot the entire time. But don’t tell the dining hall staff. It’s probably against the rules.

— Kaitlin Taylor ’09

8:00 Fine Arts Building

Senior music major Danielle Spaeth ’09 is used to keeping odd hours. A flute player since fourth grade, she regularly practices 10 hours a week, most of them in the early morning. Only 10 days away from her senior recital performance of a Bach sonata, Spaeth was up till 3 a.m. the night before, talking with her husband, Brandon, who is a senior airman with the U.S. Air Force’s military police in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

“He’ll sometimes end up calling me during practice,” she says. “Whenever he gets to call is completely random.”

They were married in November, 2008. Brandon is scheduled to return home this fall. Until then, she waits, and practices, her wedding ring gleaming as her fingers dance delicately on the keys.

— Chip Rose

8:30 Choosing to Make a Difference—Choice Program Office

At an early meeting, Chase York [YEAR] and other workers in the Shriver Center’s Choice Program huddle in a meeting room to talk about what’s happening with the at-risk high school students for whom they serve as counselors and monitors. Workers tend to pull 50 or 60 hours a week, supporting the students whom they have been assigned.

York heads out to visit her assigned students at schools after the meeting. At Catonsville Middle School, the conversation with her student ranges from bowling to disgust about the school’s gym uniforms.

At the Catonsville Center for Alternative Studies, York’s student has refused to complete an art assignment: Draw an elephant with seven legs. Her concern over attendance issues and poor grades is met with apathy.

So York dangles the promise of a trip to McDonald’s in return for renewed focus on schoolwork. The prospect of fast food seems to do the trick.

— Matthew Morgal ’09

Watch our feature coverage here.

Donna Lewis ’86, English, leads a double life. She earned her law degree at the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore and is currently an attorney with the Department of Homeland Security after 12 years in private sector litigation.

But away from the office, Lewis is a humorist who draws cartoons, writes and performs stand-up comedy. (In 2007, she competed in the Washington Post’s “Funniest Fed” stand-up competition.)

UMBC Magazine asked Lewis how she squared the law and the laugh. She argues that they are more intertwined than you might think:

When people find out you’re a lawyer who dabbles in the funny side of life, they respond in one of two ways. Half of the people make the typical lawyer jokes. (I don’t do lawyer jokes.) The other 50 percent find it impossible that a lawyer knows anything about what’s funny. (Much less that a lawyer could be funny.)

Lawyers and laughing? Please.

But then the questions begin. And this is how I answer the ones they ask – and the ones I wish they’d ask.

When did you get funny?

I didn’t realize the value of humor while I was in college or law school. I certainly appreciated good humor, but I firmly subscribed to a clear dichotomy between work and play. For any “serious” endeavor like school or work, I would flip on my somber switch very quickly.

The funny business came from a very practical professional need. After a few difficult years in litigation, I began to notice the weight and burden of my clients’ pain. Individuals would come into the office with fears and stress that distorted their perspectives to the point that they were not thinking rationally.

So I began to use the humor that I had always saved for after hours. My clients became more relaxed as a result. And when I began using humor with other lawyers and with judges, I became a more effective professional.

So you’re a funny lawyer? Does that harm your credibility?

There’s a big difference between being a class clown and a funny lawyer. Class clowns just want attention. They often can’t distinguish between a good joke and a bad joke, or between positive attention and negative attention.

Being a funny lawyer is about strategy. It’s about the bigger goal of getting your audience on board in a fun and positive way. In fact, it’s all about the audience. When you’re dealing with people, you’re dealing with conflict. And in the law, conflict is the name of the game. The entire goal is to resolve the conflict. The key in utilizing humor as a tool in that process is to maintain a seriousness and depth in addressing the subject matter while also balancing a healthy respect for the fact that you’re dealing with humans and not robots.

What’s harder, litigation or standup?

Standup is, without a doubt, the hardest. Making people laugh and laugh and laugh is ridiculously tough. Litigation is easy by comparison. In litigation, you know exactly what you’ve got and you deal with it. You’ve got the law on your side or the facts on your side. Sometimes, you’ve got nothing on your side but a losing case.

In standup, though, all you have going for you or against you is you. A bad night of standup is just truly awful. It just makes you want to cry and disappear off of the face of the earth. Unfortunately, all it takes is one good night of standup to make you keep coming back for the humiliation.

What did comedy teach you about practicing law?

My theory is that if everyone took an improvisation class, there would be a lot less conflict in relationships and in the world. My theory rests on a major concept in improv, commonly called “Yes, and…” It works like this: One character speaks and/or acts and then the next character in the exercise must somehow indicate agreement by continuing the chain of action or conversation. “Yes, and…” keeps the improv scene moving and keeps it from ending.

This exercise is the opposite of a conversation habit that most of us are used to: “Yes, but…” If you listen at home and at work, you’ll notice that many people respond with “Yes, but…” or some similar variation. In litigation, especially, I had gotten so used to the notion of debating and arguing that I would always automatically disagree with the other side.

What I’ve learned as I have matured professionally is that two sides – even opposing sides – usually have more in common than they think. If they start from a point of agreement, they can iron out their differences much faster. “Yes, and…” will get you to a more efficient and painless resolution than “Yes, but…”

With an audience, the goal is always to keep them laughing. In law, keep them agreeing. At home, keep them doing both.

What should you never do in law or in comedy?

The same rules work in both environments. Don’t say things that make people groan. If you don’t have a good joke, why make one? Don’t take cheap shots. You don’t need them and they’re not effective. Say less, not more. Some of the funniest people I know, both on stage and in the courtroom, are the quietest. But when they’re funny, they’re really funny. And finally, don’t use foul language. There’s no need for vulgarity. Sure, you can get away with it in today’s culture. But that’s not a good reason to do it. Rely on your material, your timing, your strategic use of silence and just enough good manners and appeal to keep your audience on your side.

Advice for someone who thinks they’re funny?

Take an improv class. Then take a stand up class. Write a funny article. Draw a cartoon. Do something funny. If you feel funny or if people think you’re funny, you may just be funny. So go be funny!

Shakespeare: Page to Stage

Michele Osherow is one of UMBC’s rising stars in the humanities. An assistant professor of English, she serves as director of the Humanities Scholars Program and as the associate director of the Dresher Center for the Humanities. Osherow also runs a monthly Shakespeare reading group and organizes events such as an April marathon reading of Shakespeare’s sonnets – put together with UMBC associate professor of theatre Alan Kreizenbeck.

But Osherow’s Bard-ic efforts don’t stop at the edge of Hilltop Circle. In addition to having won multiple awards as an actress, she is also the resident dramaturg at the Folger Theatre in Washington, D.C. It’s a job in which Osherow uses scholarship and a love of theater to aid in getting Shakespeare plays such as The Winter’s Tale – produced by the Folger, appropriately enough, last winter – from the page to the stage.

“The role of the dramaturg is essentially the scholar in the rehearsal room,” Osherow says. But the job starts long before the actors turn up for the first read-through of lines.

“The majority of my work is done actually before the rehearsals start,” she says. “I will work with the director on concept. Why are we attracted to this play? Actually, I carry it around in my pocket for awhile. What’s the story that we want to tell? And how are we how are we going to make that classical – that 400-year-old – story accessible to a modern audience? There’s a lot of discussion, and a lot of arguing, and a lot of reading that goes on.”

Dramaturgs also tackle the daunting task of cutting Shakespearean texts down to a playable length. What’s editing the Bard like?

“It’s actually kind of fun,” says Osherow. “And it’s often a case where I make more cuts than a director does.” But she adds that the point of the cutting is to clarify language and plot points and, of course, make sure that Shakespeare’s wit and humor land with the intended effect.

Dramaturgs add as well as subtract, observes Osherow. “I will suggest some scholarly work [to the director],” she says, “because the idea is to infuse the production with a kind of scholarly energy that can be helpful, as opposed to getting in the way of a story.”

The dramaturg also answers actors’ questions about context. Osherow says that in her experience, such context is “particularly helpful for women. Shakespeare gives us some very strong women, but those women were unusual – especially considering the constraints placed on women.

“Women were supposed to be chaste, silent and obedient,” Osherow continues. “Silence was equated with chastity. A woman who spoke a lot was called a ‘whore.’” In a play like The Winter’s Tale, where Queen Hermione remains dignified and even silent under the mistaken assault leveled on her virtue by her husband, Osherow argues that knowing that context is key for actors and for the audience.

“Hermione’s refusal to speak in certain situations is not because of fear,” Osherow says, “but because she is a true gentlewoman.”

— Richard Byrne ’86

No NO = No Migraines

Pain relievers can often “take away” a headache. But those who suffer migraines often find it much harder to obtain relief. Elsa Garcin, an assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, is investigating ways that might someday directly attack the migraine at its creation.

Her migraine work builds on research she has already done on immune systems problems like arthritis and inflammation. In the human body, nitric oxide (also known as NO) plays many roles. It is the molecule that regulates blood pressure and transmits signals between nerve cells. As part of the body’s immune response, NO also attacks bacteria, viruses, and tumors. But a problem can arise: If the immune system makes too much NO, says Garcin, “it also attacks your own molecules.”

Trying to lower NO levels in just one part of the body is a tricky problem. The three respective enzymes that produce the molecule to regulate blood pressure, carry nerve signals and perform immune work are almost identical. Block one enzyme to reduce the overall presence of NO in the body and you can get awful side effects from having also interfered with the other two.

Garcin has found a way to be more choosy, she and 20 colleagues reported last fall in the journal Nature Chemical Biology. She solved the targeting problem by making a drug molecule that binds most strongly to the immune version of the enzyme.

Designing this discerning drug molecule proved tricky, since the three enzymes are identical in shape at the place where they produce nitric oxide. Finding the right enzyme is also crucial because that specific target is also the place where a drug would bind in order to block the enzyme.

Using a technique called x-ray crystallography to look at the 3-D structure of the three NO-producing enzymes, Garcin discovered that the immune-system enzyme has what she calls a “sweet spot” – located far from the spot where the enzyme makes nitric oxide. That distance allowed her to design a drug molecule that not only blocks the NO-producing site but also possesses an extension that reaches around to bind specifically with the immune enzyme at its sweet spot.

The extension on the experimental drug molecule allows the immune version of the enzyme and the drug molecule to become inseparable, thus shutting down overproduction of NO. The extension, she says, makes the drug molecule bind 3,000 times more strongly to the immune enzyme than to the other two.

Garcin is now looking for ways to interfere with the brain version of the enzyme that produces NO, while leaving the other two enzymes unperturbed. Finding a way to do so might eliminate a key trigger for migraines. “If you target this one but do not target the one in blood pressure,” she says, “there’s a potential for migraine treatment.”

— Lila Guterman

Research Rewarded

As the Spring 2009 semester ended, three UMBC faculty members received prestigious awards that will allow them to travel and continue research in history, emergency health services and biology.

• Kate Brown, associate professor of history, was named a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow for 2009. She is working on a tandem history of two cities (Hanford, Washington and Maiak, Russia) that were located near the world’s first two plutonium plants.

• Brian Maguire, clinical associate professor of emergency health services, has won a 2009 Fulbright Scholarship. He will travel to Australia to pursue research on the occupational risks among ambulance personnel.

• Stephen Miller, associate professor of biological sciences, has won a 2009 Fulbright Scholarship. He will travel to Germany to continue his work on the origins of multicellularity – the ability of higher plants and animals to create many different kinds of cells.

The Good Stuff

Theresa Good has a knack for forging the demands of a career in science into tangible rewards: cutting-edge research in Alzheimer’s disease, prestigious awards for her research and mentoring, and intense camaraderie with colleagues. As a professor of chemical and biological engineering, Good excels in motivating and training her students to untangle thorny research problems, all the while creating lifelong collaborations with them and with other colleagues.

In February, Good was named a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineers, a distinction bestowed upon the top two percent of the field. And in 2007, she won UMBC’s Donald Creighton Memorial Faculty Award for Graduate Student Mentoring.

The accolades come as no surprise to current and former graduate students. “She’ll give you the freedom you need as a researcher to make the project your own and to pursue ideas that others may not,” says James Henry, a former graduate student who is now an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Louisiana State University.

Good’s research explores why the brain’s nerve cells die in Alzheimer’s disease. “Most of the questions we ask are trying to understand the relationship between the structure of the [Alzheimer’s] protein and how it interacts with cells,” she explains. To do the work, she and her students develop new tools and techniques, including new spectroscopy methods. Some of the findings, such as the ability of certain polymers to lessen the toxicity of Alzheimer’s proteins, could even lead to treatments for the disease.

Though her methods and discoveries have influenced other scientists, none of her attempts to stop Alzheimer’s disease has yet reached the clinics where doctors are grappling with the disease. “I’m not going to become rich anytime soon,” she laughs. “But it’s probably contributed to the way that people think about targets for disease and some of the approaches we can use.”

Good grew up near Rochester, N.Y., and taught science in the Peace Corps in the Democratic Republic of Congo before getting a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She then taught at Texas A&M University before joining the faculty at UMBC in 2002. To celebrate her promotion to full professor in 2007, she bought herself a 26-foot sailboat, in which she often sails with her students on the Chesapeake Bay.

Good also encourages students to run the Annapolis Ten Mile Run alongside her each year. In the first few years, Good jokes, “I told them that if they didn’t allow me to beat them, I wouldn’t sign their forms to graduate.” Now, she says, “they don’t have to pretend to go slower than me.”

While the honor from the engineering institute is flattering, Good says, she was even more touched by the mentoring award since she was nominated by her own students. “I think I do some good research,” she says, “but what I really produce is people.”

— Lila Guterman

Nine Digit Histories

From behind his large, tidy wooden desk at the Social Security Administration’s headquarters in Woodlawn, Larry DeWitt, ’04 M.A., history, will happily discuss the philosophical underpinnings of social insurance and the importance of knowing the past when making future decisions about the nation’s economic safety net.

But DeWitt, the historian at this vast federal agency and the lead editor of weighty new tome of primary source material about the agency, Social Security: A Documentary History (CQ Press) can’t conceal the plain truth. He is just itching to get out of his seat and show off his collection.

It doesn’t take long to see why. The adjoining office is crammed with pamphlets, placards, books – and even old agency telephone directories. A wartime poster reminds why it’s important to hold on to Social Security cards: “Replacing 1.8 million cards last year cost Uncle Sam the price of 550 jeeps.”

Dig deeper into one file, and there’s a shopworn report from 1952 about problems with account numbers. In another, a 33 1/3 rpm record with comedy bits from Woody Allen, Bill Cosby and Bob Newhart – each introduced by a 30-second pitch for Social Security from Nipsey Russell.

Suddenly, DeWitt scampers up a small ladder. “Ooh, let’s see if I can find…” he says, eventually retrieving another public service announcement, this one recorded by Johnny Mathis.

The Social Security history tour continues in a small museum just a few steps down the hall. DeWitt points out a 1795 pamphlet by Thomas Paine calling for creation of an old-age insurance scheme, the earliest US proposal for social insurance he has found. (He adds, with a laugh, that back then, 50 was considered old age.) There is a pen used by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to sign the 1935 law establishing Social Security is on display, as well as the agency’s first PC – purchased for $9,600 in 1983 and reliant on two floppy disks. Still more artifacts and documents fill a musty overflow storage room upstairs, but DeWitt hopes a new museum and archives set to open in August will have room for it all.

The attention to its past is a bit surprising for an agency best known to many for doling out nine-digit numbers. But while most government offices don’t share such a commitment to their history, DeWitt points to others, like the military branches, which do share it.

“An institution this large and this important in American life has to have a sense of its history,” he explains, pointing out that Social Security is the largest single category in the federal budget. Nearly 51 million Americans – retired and disabled workers and their dependents, and survivors of deceased workers – will receive $650 billion in benefits.

DeWitt began his working life as a Social Security claims representative in Los Angeles 31 years ago, and has been the historian here since 1995. In addition to setting up exhibits and giving tours of the museum, he also manages the archive, helping those inside and outside the agency with research, and does his own writing and research on the institution and the program’s legislative history.

Attracted to UMBC because of its welcoming approach to mid-career professionals and part-time students, DeWitt completed his master’s in historical studies in 2004, writing his thesis on a little-known program run by the Social Security Administration that provided assistance to the families of Japanese-Americans who were interned during World War II and helped internees with relocation and job placement when they were released.

DeWitt is now working on a Ph.D. in public policy, and plans to write his dissertation about the tenure of Arthur Altmeyer, a high-ranking executive during the first two decades of Social Security who oversaw the program’s founding, as well as its first major expansion, to include dependents and survivors. Somehow, he also maintains a personal website, www.larrydewitt.net, which touches on history, philosophy, public policy, and poetry.

After he retires from his historian’s post, DeWitt hopes to teach at a university. But his documentary history of the agency’s past is already providing a new tool for those who teach about America’s social contract. Social Security: A Documentary History was intended for university libraries, and it relies on primary documents, such as speeches, committee reports, congressional testimony, and letters – many drawn from the agency’s archive – to trace the legislative development of the program.

It’s weedy stuff for the general reader. But for students of the program, such a complete overview in a single spot, with detailed treatment of expanding benefits to new categories of workers, indexing payments to the inflation rate, and other issues is invaluable. It is also clear evidence that today’s debates about privatization and solvency really aren’t new. Not convinced? Check out the debate over 1939 amendments, designed to shrink the size of the program’s projected surplus – deemed too tempting while the federal budget was in constant deficit – or a 1983 report from the Cato Institute that pushes for private accounts.

DeWitt doesn’t like to weigh in on current arguments. But he insists that those who do should know their stuff. “We historians believe that in order to understand contemporary policy debates correctly, you need to have a historical context for them. And that’s what we try to provide,” he says. “We don’t take positions. We try to show how we got to where we are.”

For all his Social Security knowledge, there is one historical detail that eludes DeWitt. In that familiar photograph of Roosevelt signing the program into law, surrounded by dignitaries such as Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, who is the bow-tied man standing at the back? “If I could solve this, I could retire.”

— Holly Yeager