Learning from New Zealand Public Policy

 

On January 18, leaders in public policy from across the U.S. will convene at UMBC for a one-day forum, “What Did We Learn Over There? Public Policy in New Zealand Through American Eyes.” Hosted by the University’s Center for Health Program Development and Management (CHPDM), the event will bring together for the first time individuals who studied in New Zealand as Ian Axford Fellows in Public Policy. The Axford Fellows program was established by the New Zealand Government in partnership with the private sector to give outstanding American professionals opportunities to study, travel and gain practical knowledge of economic, social and political reforms and management of the government sector.

Eight former Ian Axford Fellows will give presentations, and the program will be placed in context with remarks by Robert Reischauer, President of the Urban Institute and former chair of the Ian Axford Fellowships selection committee; Annette Dixon, the World Bank’s Director of Strategy and Operations for Europe and Central Asia Region; and Peter Watson, CEO of the Dwight Group and current chair of the Axford selection committee. UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski and CHPDM Executive Director Chuck Milligan will speak, and faculty and students will also attend.

John O’Brien, CHPDM’s director of acute care policy and an Ian Axford Fellow in 2005, was inspired to bring former Fellows together to foster an ongoing dialogue about policy issues. “My six months in New Zealand allowed me to think broadly about how health care delivery systems work, and to question my own assumptions of how systems can and should work,” he said.

Though dwarfed by the United States in size and population, New Zealand faces many of the same issues that confront this country. Health care, the environment, taxes, ethnic diversity and education are but a few of the topics that past Axford Fellows have investigated. “One of the benefits of studying New Zealand is that the relationships across seemingly disparate topics are more apparent than in a large country like the United States,” said O’Brien. “Discussion among forum participants is likely to generate fresh insights and novel approaches that otherwise might not be considered.”

CHPDM is dedicated to improving the health and social outcomes of vulnerable populations through research, analysis and evaluations on behalf of government agencies and foundations. Formed in 1994 in a unique collaboration with the Maryland Medicaid program, the Center is actively engaged in the academic and research programs at UMBC, and partners with other University centers and departments on research initiatives, forums and symposia related to federal and state health policy. As a member of the University community, the Center offers research and employment opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, and currently employs eight UMBC alumni.

For more information on CHPDM, visit www.chpdm.org.

(1/10/06)

 

 

 

 

Studying South Asia

 

In the past decade, UMBC Associate Professor of Political Science Devin T. Hagerty’s region of expertise, South Asia, has gone from being an understudied corner of the globe to one of the most closely watched.

In 1998, India and Pakistan added nuclear weapon capability to what was already one of the tensest borders in the world. 9-11 made the world focus on Afghanistan, the Taliban, stopping the spread of Al Qaeda and the continuing search for Osama Bin Laden. Then Oct. 7’s devastating earthquake in the disputed Kashmir region added humanitarian disaster to the already volatile sociopolitical mix in this global flashpoint.

“It’s a horrible, horrible situation,” Hagerty said. “Comparisons of disasters are kind of ghoulish, but in terms of lives lost, the suffering of survivors, and the magnitude of the cleanup ahead, the earthquake will dwarf Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.”

According to Hagerty, the earthquake’s aftermath will challenge the resiliency of both Pakistan’s citizens and its leader, President Pervez Musharraf. “ Pakistan is still a very poor country. The literacy rate is low, especially for women, and opportunities for women are scarce. Health care is generally poor. There’s also a big drug addiction problem plus many ethnic divisions and internal rifts.”

“It’s hard to think of a leader in a more precarious position than Musharraf,” said Hagerty. “The West perceives him as not doing enough to fight terror or find Bin Laden. But it’s important to realize that he sent Pakistan Army forces to the lawless border region to fight Al Qaeda and other violent fundamentalists. That’s something unprecedented in Pakistani history. I have more sympathy for him than most Western observers.”

According to Hagerty, while some criticisms of the U.S./Pakistan relationship are valid, national security concerns win out. “We need the Pakistanis’ information and access — something only they can give us right now in the Muslim world. If there were a rupture in our relationship with Pakistan, we would lose our ability to be effective on the ground in southern Afghanistan, where the Taliban is reconstituting itself, for example.”

Hagerty’s writing and research continues to underscore the importance of South Asia. He recently completed two books: co-authoring with Sumit Ganguly Fearful Symmetry: Indo-Pakistani Crises in the Shadow of Nuclear Weapons (Oxford University Press and the University of Washington Press) and editing South Asia in World Politics (Rowman and Littlefield). He is also the editor of Asian Security, a pioneering academic journal that takes a global, interdisciplinary look at security issues in the region.

“From the end of the Cold War to 9-11, we pulled back from the South Asian region and forgot about it, obviously in hindsight a terrible foreign policy mistake,” Hagerty said. “In my opinion, the Bush administration feels it has no choice right now but to ally with Pakistan. It’s a tough situation, but I always tell my students that if you like your answers nice and neat and consistent, then maybe international relations isn’t the field for you.”

Read more about Hagerty at www.umbc.edu/research.

(12/20/05)

 

 

 

Strong Market Demand for UMBC Research Park Buildings

International property development and investment firm Grosvenor announced today the sale of two buildings at bwtech@UMBC, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s on-campus research and technology park, to Baltimore-based Merritt Properties, LLC.

Merritt acquired the 63,000 square foot three-story building at 5521 Research Park Drive, delivered in 2001 and fully occupied by RWD Technologies, and the 60,000 SF 5523 Research Park Drive building delivered in mid-2004. 5523 Research Park Drive is leased to multiple tenants including BDMetrics, Inc., Edwards and Kelcey, Invoke Systems, Convergent Technologies, Physicians Practice, Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology Center, and other organizations including several UMBC program offices.

The sale includes transfer of a long-term ground lease for the two building lots, totaling approximately eight acres. However, the sale terminated Grosvenor’s prior development agreement and plan for the remainder of the 41-acre site.

“Our successful sale of bwtech@UMBC is part of Grosvenor’s overall U.S. strategy to concentrate our holdings in four major markets -- Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco -- while focusing on urban office and boutique retail product,” said Andrew Galbraith, Senior Vice President, Grosvenor. “In divesting this suburban office park, we found a perfect match with Merritt Properties, which is locally based and has developed more than 13 million square feet of office, flex, and industrial property in the Baltimore-Washington corridor.”

"We were pleased to see such high market demand for our buildings," said Ellen Hemmerly, executive director of the UMBC Research Park Corporation. "Our team was also delighted to have a top-notch manager like Merritt Properties on board who will maintain the high standards and reputation in the real estate industry that Grosvenor had established so well with bwtech@UMBC."

"We look forward to working with UMBC and are excited about the acquisition of these two Class A office buildings which help further strengthen our position in the marketplace,” said Robb Merritt, Vice President of Merritt Properties.

Merritt manages several other top properties in the greater Baltimore region, including Columbia Corporate Park, Columbia Corporate Park 100, Beltway Business Park, Schilling Square, Timonium Business Park
and Merritt Owings Mills.

About bwtech@UMBC:
bwtech@UMBC allows tenants to benefit from access to UMBC’s expertise, students, technology, programs, and facilities. Businesses moving to the Research Park, which is part of Maryland’s Southwest Enterprise Zone, may receive tax incentives in exchange for creating new jobs and making capital investments.

UMBC began planning for a new research and technology park in the early 1990s, based on the success of similar endeavors in other parts of the U.S. In 1998, UMBC forged ahead with its approved plan for a research and technology park that would house more mature companies, potentially including “graduates” of the techcenter@UMBC incubator program. UMBC searched for a development partner and ultimately selected Grosvenor, based in part on the firm’s experience in developing other research parks including one at The University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

About Merritt Properties, LLC:
Merritt Properties, LLC defines its mission simply: Creating Homes for Businesses. Since 1967, this privately held commercial real estate firm has developed more than 13 million square feet of industrial and office properties in the Baltimore/Washington area. Merritt designs, builds, leases and manages their properties for the long-term and is committed to providing the highest quality service to all of its customers. For more information about the company, please visit www.merrittproperties.com.

About Grosvenor:
Grosvenor is a privately owned real estate development and investment company that has been active in North America for more than 50 years. The Company’s North American portfolio consists of more than six million square feet of space, including office, retail, industrial properties, and residential units. Internationally, Grosvenor has interests in properties with a total value of $20 billion, with operating companies in the Americas, UK and Ireland, Continental Europe and the Australia/Asia Pacific region. For more information about the Company, please visit the Grosvenor Web site at: www.grosvenor.com.

Hatching a Fruitful Research Career

 

At a recent research conference on parasitoid wasps, Presidential Fellow Kate Laskowski not only turned heads as the only undergraduate student attending, the poster that she presented on her research won first prize, beating out all other presenters—including graduate students and post-docs.

Laskowski’s field work on the wasps, a fascinating insect that could someday help us better understand human aging, sparked a passion for research that changed her life. “When I started at UMBC, I was pre-vet with an interest in wildlife pathology,” Laskwoski, a biological sciences major with a chemistry minor said. “But Professor Jeff Leips was my academic advisor and at the end of my freshman year he offered me the chance to some fieldwork.” She’s been studying the wasps ever since.

Leips, assistant professor of biological sciences, says that the wasps’ creepy means of reproduction was the inspiration for the Alien series of science fiction thriller films. The wasps literally rob the cradle of other insect species, injecting their eggs into living fruit fly larvae. The tiny time bomb lies dormant for four to five days until the larva pupates, or spins a cocoon around itself. Only then does the baby wasp hatch, killing its host and simultaneously providing itself with a food supply and a comfy, secure home in which to grow.

More importantly to Laskowski is the wasps’ interaction with fruit flies or Drosophila, the standard studied life system for geneticists. A particular fruit fly gene, known as Ddc, seems to be an enzymatic tradeoff between how long the fly lives and how well they can avoid a parasitoid attack. Long-living flies are more likely to get hit, while those better resistant to wasp attacks seem to be shorter-lived. Laskowski and other researchers are interested in what else Ddc can teach about the human aging process.

In addition to her accomplishments in research, Laskowski is also a founding sister of Alpha Sigma Kappa, a sorority for women interested in technical studies that includes majors in computer science and other physical sciences. Laskowski’s career goal now is to become a professor, and she plans to work for a year after commencement and then begin graduate school.

Leips is not surprised at Laskowski’s progress. “Kate is a dedicated, talented student who is going to have a great research career someday,” he said.

More information about UMBC research is available on UMBC’s Research Site.

(12/13/05)

 

 

 

Cross Country Captures America East Title

 

Not surprisingly, Robert Cartwright ’80 felt a bit of déjà vu watching his son, Ryan, cross the finish line at the America East Conference Championship in Binghamton, NY, last month.

Almost exactly 30 years before – as a freshman economics major at UMBC in 1975 – his team also came from behind to win the Mason Dixon cross country conference championship.

“This is such a coincidence, it’s just unbelievable,” said the elder Cartwright, of Perry Hall, an All Conference performer during his years at UMBC. “It sort of choked everybody up.”

The father-son connection was just the icing on the cake for this year’s men’s team. Picked fifth in the pre-season rankings, they placed five runners in the top 16 to take the Division I conference title. The team later finished 21 st overall in the NCAA Mid-Atlantic Regional meet, with the women’s team placing 22 nd.

Runners Izudin Mehmedovic and J.J. Wetzel earned all-conference accolades for their performances in the America East conference, while head coach Murray Davis and staff were selected as men’s coaching staff of the year for the conference.

“It’s really nice to be able to be successful at all levels,” said Davis, who is in his fifth season coaching the team. “So many things have to come together for a season like this.”

UMBC recently honored the 30 th anniversary of the 1975 cross country team’s Division II conference title during Homecoming. Like the current men’s team, their predecessors were not favored to win.

“I was just a freshman. We were a young school and we didn’t have such a good record,” said Cartwright. “Then, all of a sudden we started winning meet after meet, and nobody could really believe it.”

Cartwright’s son, Ryan, a senior information systems major, was UMBC’s sixth finisher during the American East conference and third for UMBC at the Mid-Atlantic Regional meet.

The pair started running together after Ryan was injured playing soccer in middle school. The father gave his son tips, and soon encouraged him to join his high school track team.

“I would run with him for about a year and I couldn’t keep up with him,” said Ryan. “Later on, though, I got better. He would say, ‘I was successful (running at UMBC), maybe you would be, too.’”

Over the years, the pair has accumulated numerous running medals and trophies. And though the elder Cartwright no longer competes, he can always look to the father-son awards wall in his basement for inspiration.

“He has a lot more awards than I ever got,” he said. “I’m really proud of him.”

(11/28/05)

 

 

 

From UMBC to Costa Rica

 

Just a few months after graduating from UMBC, Justine Wagner, Spanish and economics ’04, traveled to Costa Rica on a Fulbright Research Award.

Wagner conducted research for a study on the effects of government social spending on poverty at the Institute of Economic Science Research of the University of Costa Rica with Professor Juan Diego Trejos, who has worked with UMBC Professor of Economics and Wagner’s mentor, Tim Gindling.

As part of her award, Wagner also had the opportunity to attend a Fulbright Enhancement Seminar in Honduras, where Fulbright Scholars studying in Central America presented their research. “The seminar was really the capstone of the whole experience; it was great to meet with other young scholars and discuss our work,” said Wagner.

At UMBC, Wagner took advantage of the many opportunities available to support research by undergraduates. As a sophomore, she spent a semester at the University of Granada. In her junior year, she began working with Gindling on his research on minimum wages in Costa Rica and received a Provost’s Undergraduate Research Award, which she used to travel to Costa Rica in order to collect data, talk with government policy makers and meet Costa Rica researchers. It was on this visit that she first met Trejos. Wagner then presented her work at Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day in her senior year, and published in an article in the 2005 UMBC Review.

Wagner said that her experiences at UMBC were invaluable and that she received a great deal of support. “The community of faculty and staff at UMBC want to see the best for every student,” she added.

“Justine was an excellent research partner,” said Gindling, who has received two Fulbright Fellowships to conduct research and teach in Costa Rica. “She has the ability to both work well with others and also the initiative to take a research problem and solve it on her own. The combination of fluent Spanish and knowledge of economics was especially valuable for our research project and for her ability to obtain the Fulbright Fellowship.”

Wagner is now using her skills and experience in economics at the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division, where she is a research analyst, but she is also interested in applying her interest in language and international affairs in a graduate program.

(11/14/05)

 

 

 

17 UMBC Aging Experts to Take Part in Nov. 18-22
Gerontological Society of America Science Meeting

UMBC's Center for Aging Studies will be well-represented this weekend as 17 of its researchers present at the 58th annual scientific meeting of the Gerontological Society of America (GSA), the world’s largest and most prestigious multidisciplinary scientific conference devoted to gerontological research.

According to Kevin Eckert, dean of the Erickson School of Aging Studies at UMBC, 17 faculty and doctoral student researchers from UMBC’s Center for Aging Studies will present research posters, papers and/or participate in symposiums at the Orlando, FL conference.

“It’s an honor for UMBC to present a significant amount of research at the top scientific meeting of gerontologists in the world,” said Eckert. “We’re especially excited to present research findings on assisted living that include faculty as well as several doctoral students.”

UMBC is building a national reputation for aging studies, thanks to a strong foundation of research built by The Center for Aging Studies. The Center is affiliated with the University’s Department of Sociology and Anthropology and the new Erickson School of Aging Studies at UMBC, which Eckert leads. UMBC also partners with the University of Maryland, Baltimore on an interdisciplinary, multi-campus doctoral program in gerontology, one of a handful nationally.

The GSA meeting was originally scheduled to take place in New Orleans, but was relocated in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The conference’s closing session will address the lessons learned from Katrina on how government, communities and families can respond more effectively to the needs of the elderly during natural disasters. The closing session will be moderated by Charles Longino, president of the GSA and the first visiting professor to join the UMBC Erickson School of Aging Studies faculty.

According to Eckert, the highlight of the conference for UMBC will be the Saturday, Nov. 19 symposium, “Interpersonal Dynamics in Assisted Living.” The ethnographic study dispatched interviewers to large and small assisted living facilities across Maryland to speak directly to residents about their experiences. “UMBC researchers will be presenting real stories of family relationships around assisted living decision making, what life is like for residents, what it’s like to work in one and the relationship between residents and physicians in assisted living facilities,” Eckert said.

About the Gerontological Society of America:
Founded in 1945, the GSA’s membership includes some 5,000+ researchers, educators, practitioners, and other professionals in the field of aging. The Society's principal missions are to promote research and education in aging and to encourage the dissemination of research results to other scientists, decision makers, and practitioners.

More information online at:
http://www.geron.org/
http://www.agingconference.com

About the Center for Aging Studies at UMBC:
The Center for Aging Studies is a hub for faculty, undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral research activities on the policy and sociocultural dimensions of aging in the United States. The Center is the administrative and intellectual home for currently funded research (exceeding $5 million) on such topics as long-term care quality, consumer direction, physician/older patient interactions and practice, among others. Working with the doctoral program in Gerontology, housed jointly at UMBC and the University of Maryland Graduate School, Baltimore, the Center has greatly increased the contributions and visibility of UMBC faculty and students on aging-related issues of State and national importance.

About The Erickson School of Aging Studies:
The Erickson School of Aging Studies at UMBC was established in April 2004 with a $5 million commitment from John Erickson, CEO and founder of Erickson. The School’s goal is to become the preeminent resource for education, research and policy on services for the mid-life and older population.
To achieve this vision, the School will expand upon existing strengths at UMBC in public policy, aging and health services research through credit and non-credit educational programs and activities.

UMBC, an Honors University in Maryland, is a four-year, public research university that is home to leading experts on aging who are active in research, education, and service in the field of gerontology. It is one of a handful of universities in the nation to offer a Ph.D. in Gerontology.

More information online at:
http://www.umbc.edu/erickson

Caught Stealing: Debunking the Economic Case for D.C. Baseball
by Dennis Coates and Brad R. Humphreys

Dennis Coates is a professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County; Brad R. Humphreys is an associate professor in the Department of Recreation, Sport and Tourism at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Executive Summary
District of Columbia mayor Anthony Williams has convinced Major League Baseball to move the Montreal Expos to D.C. in exchange for the city’s building a new ballpark. Williams has claimed that the new stadium will create thousands of jobs and spur economic development in a depressed area of the city.

Williams also claims that this can be accomplished without tax dollars from D.C. residents. Yet the proposed plan to pay for the stadium relies on some kind of tax increase that will likely be felt by D.C. residents.

Our conclusion, and that of nearly all academic economists studying this issue, is that professional sports generally have little, if any, positive effect on a city’s economy. The net economic impact of professional sports in Washington, D.C., and the 36 other cities that hosted professional sports teams over nearly 30 years, was a reduction in real per capita income over the entire metropolitan area.

A baseball team in D.C. might produce intangible benefits. Rooting for the team might provide satisfaction to many local baseball fans. That is hardly a reason for the city government to subsidize the team. D.C. policymakers should not be mesmerized by faulty impact studies that claim that a baseball team and a new stadium can be an engine of economic growth.

Link to article

While some UMBC departments help train first-responders, the faculty, staff and students in the department of Geography & Environmental Systems(GES) recently helped make sure that emergency workers could accurately navigate the realities of homeland security in America.

In a project that alternately chilled the blood and got the creative juices flowing, the GES department’s Cartographic Services Lab worked with the U.S. Department of the Census’ Map Division to produce approximately 150 map symbols for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

Joe School, director of the lab (one of only a handful of full-service map-making facilities at U.S. universities), teamed up with Tom Rabenhorst, a lecturer in the UMBC GES department. Each semester, Rabenhorst guides his cartography students as they produce final project maps for real-world clients such as local state parks and the Baltimore Bicycle Club.

The UMBC team of Rabenhorst, School and Pat Hipp, Ethan Wells, and Mike Sturtevant, three undergraduate students specializing in Cartography & GIS, began brainstorming and sketching ideas for symbols representing many unpleasant scenarios—looting, chemical exposures, FEMA disaster field offices, hijacked planes and unexploded bombs—in order to represent homeland security-related incidents, operations, infrastructure and natural disasters.

According to Rabenhorst, “The creative process of coming up with symbol ideas was fun, but the reality of how they would be used was sobering. It’s indicative of how the U.S. has changed since 9/11. Six years ago we’d never thought that we’d have to map this kind of thing.”

According to School, a growing pipeline of partnerships and alumni employment between UMBC’s Geography and Environmental Systems department and federal agencies helped make the project happen. “The project came to us primarily because of our contacts at the Department of Census,” School says. “We have three UMBC alumni working there now and we hope to continue training skilled mapmakers for homeland security-related work in the federal agencies.”