Two impressive milestones occurred at the end of the 2008-2009 academic year – Arizona State University graduated its first class of students from the nation's first degree-granting sustainability school, and Prescott College graduated its first set of Ph.D.'s in Sustainability Education. It's so inspiring to see students graduate well equipped to help create the change needed to steer the world in the right direction – not that sustainability program graduates alone will be able to accomplish this. My hope is that graduates from programs that specialize in sustainability will then spread their knowledge to others, teaching their fellow professors how to integrate sustainability into their courses and leading a community and its individual members into a sustainable future.

These graduations certainly represent the beginning of a greater knowledge of sustainability principles and practices, and students will continue to graduate in the many sustainability-focused programs available. But where will we go next? If we tread carefully, we should be able to make sustainability a common theme in every course that students take. We need to teach students to always consider the externalities of their decisions and to plan for the future rather than for their day to day needs.

Sustainability program grads, sustainability professionals, and youth that will someday have a greater understanding of the principles of sustainability – we're looking to you to lead us to the day when we will all realize the consequences of our actions and will be willing to modify them for the prosperity of our successors.

-Andrea Webster,Publications and Education Coordinator
 

The topic of sustainability and of "greening" IT departments continues to become a more popular area of focus especially on college and university campuses. A recent AASHE Bulletin article highlighted the work The George Washington University (GWU) is doing to green it's IT infrastructure. I caught up with David Steinour, Interim Chief Information Officer at GWU to learn more about the work his office is doing. In David's current position he oversees the day-to-day IT operations for GWU with more than 25,000 users, three major campuses, over 120 buildings and two major data centers. Continue reading to learn more about the innovative work the IT department  at GWU is taking to reduce energy consumption and become more sustainable.

The George Washington University’s IT Department was recently in the news for several sustainability initiatives. Could you describe some of these for our readers?

The Information Systems and Services (ISS) department at The George Washington University maintains its position on the leading edge of higher education technology byimplementing sustainability initiatives that decrease energy use, save resources and improve customer service. Some of our initiatives include:

• Virtualization which is a technology that leverages hardware and software to allow multiple computer systems to run on a single server. The retirement of unused and outdated server equipment reduces energy use and improves customer service. Currently, ISS has virtualized approximately 38 percent of its total server environment, saving more than 700,000 kilowatt-hours, which translates to taking 60 cars off the road. With a goal of 80-percent virtualized to 20-percent non-virtualized servers, ISS plans to significantly reduce its energy use by the equivalent of more than 120 cars off the road.
•  ISS has also implemented Lifecycle Refresh and GWdocuments, both designed to lower energy costs and improve efficiency across the University. Lifecycle Refresh replaces older servers and data center systems with new energy-efficient servers. One new server can replace three to four old servers with no loss in performance, decreasing energy use by nearly 60 percent. GWdocuments reduces the need for physical space required by file cabinets and the use of printing to include paper and toner by consolidating electronic administrative documents into a central storage area, decreasing energy use while increasing the accessibility of all documents.
• Through various student, faculty and staff publications, as well as stated in GW’s computing policy, ISS also encourages the GW community to turn off and/or power down computing equipment when it is not in use. In addition, the department ensures that all equipment given to staff and faculty are already configured to minimize energy consumption.

What role do you believe information technology plays in campuses sustainability efforts?

GW students, staff and faculty share a rich history of promoting environmental consciousness, cleaner living and the best practices of sustainability. GW recognizes that information and communications products and technologies are a growing source of greenhouse gas emissions. ISS supports GW’s commitment to sustainability through the implementation of green initiatives, which are designed to decrease GW’s energy use, save valuable resources and improve customer services.

In what area(s) do you see the biggest room for growth in the campus information technology sustainability field?

Virtualization will provide the largest energy-efficiency impact. Virtualization allows less equipment to do more and eliminates the energy lost in the creation and maintenance of the University’s IT electrical and mechanical infrastructures. By implementing this technology, we can drastically reduce our energy footprint, while simultaneously lowering the cost of doing business.

How are you tracking your progress toward sustainability?

GW is just beginning the “tracking and measurement” journey. We initially started our IT energy efficiency initiatives to reduce costs and increase the speed in provisioning efforts. We are currently in the process of setting our electrical infrastructure to measure and monitor power usage from our data centers and from the server equipment itself. In the future, we plan to track the equipment we will purchase for a new data center—the ratio of Energy Star/EPEAT equipment vs. non-Energy Star/EPEAT equipment.

Is there a particular insight (learning experience or “ah-ha” moment) you have had working on campus IT programs?

Our “ah-ha” moment came after we first implemented virtualization. We initially adopted this technology to cut costs and increase our reaction times. However, we found that virtualization also significantly reduced our energy consumption and related costs. Out of our energy efficiency initiatives, the savings from virtualization was more than five times that of the next best initiative. As we continue to expand our sustainability tracking, I’m sure our “ah-ha” moments will continue.

Are steps being taken in procurement and purchasing decisions that affect sustainability and information technology at GWU?

As part of the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, GW has committed to adopting an energy-efficient appliance purchasing policy. The University is purchasing Energy Star-rated products whenever possible. With the onset of recent market advancements for computer equipment with an Energy Star rating, GW is committed to buying such. This applies to both GW’s data centers and computing labs. Additionally, GW is recommending students purchase personal computers that have an Energy Star rating.

We are currently in the process of opening a new data center on our Foggy Bottom campus. In the coming months we will be migrating to the new building and plan to be fully operational by the beginning of 2010. Due to the nature of what a data center is, they consume a large portion of the campus’ energy.

During the data center project, we identified several opportunities to make improvements, save energy and money, and extend the life of the data center. These areas include designing and building the data center with environmentally friendly systems and purchasing products that operate more efficiently and use less power, which will reduce energy costs by up to 40 percent. Additionally, we will be implementing more virtualized systems, which will reduce the number of physical servers by leveraging hardware and software to allow multiple systems to run on a single server.

When the new data center is fully operational, we plan to have 80-percent of systems virtualized. These energy saving purchases will save the University more than 1.4M kilowatt-hours, which translates to taking more than 120 cars off the road and over $1.7M over the next 5 years.

Has there been any work (such as a life cycle assessment) to assess the environmental impacts of the IT services at GWU?

We have not completely assessed the environmental impacts of the IT services at GW because we are just beginning to track the impact of our initiatives. We currently consider how we decommission equipment and utilize Lifecycle Refresh, a lifecycle replacement program for our hardware. However, we have not tracked what happens to the equipment after we turn it over to an e-cycling vendor. Additionally, the University sponsors a program for students, faculty and staff members to dispose of e-cycling materials (batteries, ink cartridges, computer monitors and computer parts, and cell phones) during move-out days at the end of the semester.

In what ways are students involved in your work?

The University has a created an Office of Sustainability that partners with students, faculty and staff to implement operational and academic sustainability initiatives, including leadership programs, building standards, energy efficiency, recycling, transportation and academic programs. Specifically within ISS, we inform the GW community about our green IT efforts and provide information about how they can make a difference. The 2009-2010 technology-related magazines that are distributed to students, faculty and staff will feature a spread about ‘Green Living and Computing,’ where we will debunk myths and provide energy consumption guidance as it is related to their technology equipment.

What advice would you give to others in your position who are just getting started?

Review all of the programs and perform some high-level comparisons regarding costs and benefits so that the appropriate resources can be applied to the larger efforts. Also, faculty, student and staff involvement is key. Some projects may not require significant IT resources to perform an IT-related initiative, for example, video conference rooms. Video conferencing is an important element of the sustainability initiative because they reduce the amount of travel needed to conduct face-to-face meetings and classes. Don’t let the initial investment to bring a room online deter you from implementing this tool because these rooms will continually reduce GHG emissions and the ongoing support is more administrative than IT-related.

What are you most looking forward to in 2009?

In 2009, the GW Office of Sustainability will be coordinating a series of discussions on our Climate Action Plan. We in ISS and others across campus will be working together to determine how and when GW can become carbon neutral. This will provide GW with a broader perspective on the impact from ISS and how it compares to the impact of other parts of campus life, such as buildings and commuting. We are looking forward to creating solutions that work for everyone in the GW community.

For those interested in campus climate action planning, many have by now likely visited AASHE's first foray into wikis with our Climate Planning for Campuses: A How to Guide.

However, there are also over a dozen (perhaps significantly more) campuses that have experimented with using wikis to engage a wider audience and develop collaborative websites.

Probably the most well know wiki is the collaborative encyclopedia Wikipedia . The ability to have multiple users collaboratively write a document and add new content that can constantly be changed and updated is what first drew AASHE to use a wiki for our Climate Planning Guide. Indeed, it is our hope that this "living" document will continue to become a richer source of information as folks in the community contribute to it.

To see some other campus sustainability wiki's visit our related Campus Sustainability Wiki's page.

If you are interested in starting a wiki book on a topic related to campus sustainability, please contact me (niles@aashe.org). 

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

Q. How does UMBC prepare students for the real world? What is UMBC doing to instill a work ethic in students?

— Monique Jones Cephas ’92, information systems management

Q. I’m curious to know what UMBC is doing for its students and alumni in helping them to bridge the “backpack to briefcase” gap between the academic world and the professional world? How is UMBC helping students to prepare for professional careers even while they are still students? And, is it enough? What more can be done?

— Tom Briggs ’05, psychology

A. I think the most important strategy we’ve been using for years is getting students involved in internships. Students who have the opportunity to work in companies, in national agencies, and in schools get a sense of what’s important in the workplace. They also learn how to deal with other people. They come to understand that getting an “A” is not enough. You have to be able to collaborate.

And most important, they have the opportunity to see the relationship between expectations in the workplace and the work they’re doing in the classroom – whether it’s in computing or in the broad liberal arts. Students who work as interns or in part-time jobs are far more realistic about what’s possible after college – and far more proactive in seeking interviews for possible jobs. What’s really exciting is that a large number of our students who work as interns are offered full time work even before they graduate.

As far as preparing students, we have the Shriver Center – which encourages students to take advantage of resources on campus for developing a resume, knowing what jobs are available, and for discussing with advisors what kinds of positions one might apply for. And we have the Office of Career Services, which works with people in obtaining both full-time and part-time opportunities. Both offices are very important. They are involved in building partnerships. They can be very helpful to students – and to alumni, who in many cases are coming back for career days and other services.

The Social Security Administration was on campus on April 29. That agency is hiring 5,000 people in the next five months. Twenty percent of the jobs will be on Security Boulevard. It’s an exciting prospect.

Q. What are your feelings on the Obama administration’s initiatives related to science and how do you think they will impact the ongoing programs and initiatives at UMBC and the current graduating class?

— Camelia Owens ’99, chemical engineering

A. I’m fortunate now to be chairing the National Academies of Science Committee on Underrepresented Groups and the Expansion of the Science and Engineering Workforce Pipeline. So I get a chance to see the official papers of this administration, and to listen to the different national agencies talk about particular initiatives designed to broaden participation in science and engineering. I also had the privilege of reading President Obama’s April 29 speech on investment in science fairly early.

What’s very clear is that the president and his advisors agree that we will need to do much more to encourage students to excel in sciences. We need to strengthen math and science teaching at the K-12 level. We need to get more people to think about becoming math and science teachers. And we need to strengthen teaching and learning at the college level to ensure that students remain in science. Our Chemistry Discovery Center, which is funded by the National Science Foundation and the UMBC Annual Fund, is designed exactly for that purpose.

UMBC is uniquely positioned in our country right now to contribute in two broad ways. We produce the highest percentage of students in science and engineering in the University System of Maryland – and the highest of any school, private or public, in the state with the exception of the U.S. Naval Academy. Forty-five percent of our bachelor’s degrees are awarded in science and engineering.

At the same time, UMBC is producing hundreds of liberally-educated students across disciplines. Our society will need both to ensure that America’s future is bright.

According to Google Maps, it takes a little over three hours to get from Catonsville to Morgantown, West Virginia. For James P. Clements ’85, computer science, and ’91 M.S. and ’93 Ph.D., operations analysis, the journey has taken a little bit longer than that – about 27 years, in fact.

But the destination has been worth the drive, which also took detours through The Johns Hopkins University (where he took an M.S. in computer science in 1988) and Towson University, where he has served as provost and vice president for academic affairs for the past two years. On June 30, Clements will arrive in Morgantown to become West Virginia University’s 23rd president.

It’s not hard to see why West Virginia University tapped Clements, whose career as a scholar and researcher took wing quickly after he received his Ph.D. from UMBC in 1993. He was tenured at Towson University only two years after receiving his doctorate.

His ascent in academic leadership has been even more dizzying – including stints as vice president of Towson’s Economic and Community Outreach division, as provost, and a key role in devising and monitoring that university’s 2010 Strategic Plan.

Clements says that the first strides of his time on the fast track began at UMBC. Like many students of his era, he chose UMBC for factors of proximity and cost – and found an unexpectedly rich academic experience in Catonsville.

Clements says that he realized the quality of the education he got when he went out into the workforce. “When I came out, and went to work for industry – I worked for a company called General Physics, which is run by Robert W. Deutsch, who has been very generous to UMBC – I felt so prepared. I was working with people who’d been at some of the top institutions in the country, and I felt that I had an equal level of education to anyone in that building.”

A job in industry after his graduation in 1985 did not sidetrack Clements from his dream of becoming a professor, however. “I started right away on graduate school,” he says. “I didn’t take a semester off.” But he did so at nights and on weekends – at one point even cutting a deal with his employer for reduced hours to obtain his Ph.D. at UMBC.

In a happy coincidence, Clements received his Ph.D. from UMBC on the same day – and in the same ceremony – that his brother Joseph H. Clements Jr. ’85 computer science and M.S and Ph.D., mathematics, received his doctorate. “We were side-by-side on the stage,” he recalls. “It was one of my mother and father’s happiest days.”

When Clements did finally end up in academia as a professor at Towson University, he says that he found it to be “probably the best job in the world. I love to teach. I love writing papers. I love doing research. I love working with the students.”

Yet he soon acquired the itch to try his hand at administration. Clements discovered that he had a knack for the coordination and fundraising that goes along with academic leadership – and also that he liked it. And those talents led him all the way to Morgantown.

The challenges of being president of any flagship state university are immense. They’ve been made even more difficult at West Virginia because of a scandal involving the improper awarding of a degree that rocked the university and forced the resignation of its president, Michael S. Garrison, last year.

Clements acknowledges those unique challenges. He credits West Virginia University’s interim president, C. Peter Magrath, for calming the waters before his arrival. “That has really given me an opportunity to come in and say, as I did when I interviewed on the campus: ‘WVU has been around since 1867. It has a great history. It’s going to have a great future. We just have to get past where we’ve been stuck right now and think about who we want to be in 10 and 20 years down the road.’”

Looking back at UMBC from across more than two decades (and across town from his perch at Towson University), Clements feels a lot of pride and appreciation at the growth of his alma mater.

“Let me put it this way: Every time I see [UMBC’s president Freeman A. Hrabowski, III], I thank him for raising the value of my degree,” Clements says with a laugh. “It’s true. Freeman is so dynamic and so charismatic. And it’s not just him. The institution has great faculty members. Great administrators. It has just continued to climb up and up and up. And for me, even though I work at Towson, I love UMBC. It’s been great watching it skyrocket into one of the hottest universities in the country.”

— Richard Byrne ’86

We were gratified by the enthusiastic response that greeted our first issue. We have also been eager to obtain your constructive feedback. There is a sampling of both on our “From You” page, and we will incorporate the best of your suggestions to create an even better magazine.

As the 21st Century sweeps toward the conclusion of its first decade, readers might be wondering: “Why is the university publishing a print version of this magazine?”

It is a question that seems particularly pertinent in a moment when headlines about the “death of newspapers” and other print media are very much in the air.

You might also be asking: “Just how ‘green’ is the decision to print a magazine?”

Here are some answers.

The university established its new alumni publication in print because alumni – surveyed online and in focus groups held at the university in 2008 – expressed a strong desire to receive a print publication.

The survey group spanned ages and disciplines, and many respondents stated that they continued to read a number of general interest publications (including The New Yorker and Vanity Fair) in their print editions. In addition, more than two-thirds of the respondents read a book every week. So for our alumni, print isn’t dead yet.

Alumni also stated that they associated pleasure, indulgence and the investment of time with their reading of print media. We want your experience of UMBC Magazine to carry those connotations.

Also, as an editor and a journalist who has spent a number of years reporting and writing on media, I can add this observation: Web publications are still grappling with how to present broad swathes of information. The Web is good at creating channels that sort and foreground information of particular interest.

But since our project here at UMBC Magazine is to show connections and expose readers to the university’s progress as a whole, print continues to be the best way to achieve that aim. We are, however, working hard at establishing content on our Web site – and wherever you see the icon, we urge you to look in on our extended versions of stories and multimedia presentations.

On the topic of the environmental footprint of UMBC Magazine, we are happy to report that our publication is striving to be a part of the university’s larger sustainability efforts. You can see how UMBC is going green at our “Sustainability Matters” Web site.

As far as the magazine’s environmental footprint, we made the decision to publish on partially-recycled paper (30 %) from our very first issue – which qualified for the Forest Stewardship Council’s Mixed Sources certification.

Each ton of the Rolland Opaque30 paper on which UMBC Magazine is published reduces our ecological footprint by five trees, 324 pounds of solid wastes, 904 pounds of air emissions and 2,472 cubic feet of natural gas.

So enjoy your new issue of UMBC Magazine – and know that we’re doing our best to not only give you something good to read, but something that’s better for the environment than virgin paper as well.

— Richard Byrne ’86

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.