FYI- Senator Officer Hours are held in the office when not in the Breezeway

If you would like to meet with Senator or just learn about SGA in general then, come up to Commons 2B-20!

Writing duo Alex Reeves ’16, acting, and Nell Quinn-Gibney ’17, acting, originally teamed up to create a parody of the Nickelodeon cartoon Kim Possible, performed in a lecture hall in the Information Technology and Engineering building. “That was our first toe-dip into writing together,” says Reeves.

Now, two of their shows opened the same weekend: Proxy, a science fiction play about a world in the near-future where people’s consciousnesses can be immortalized by AI technology, premiered at Baltimore’s Rapid Lemon Productions on October 11. The very next day, The Possible Place, a play about mental health and coping mechanisms, opened as a part of Charm City Fringe Festival. Both shows will run through October 20.

“It’s one of those things where, when you’re telling people about it, unless they’re in theatre, they don’t understand how exciting it is to have your play produced,” Reeves says. “It’s extremely exciting because we wrote [Proxy] and we thought the only people who would care about it would be us and our friends.”

In actuality, their work has garnered far more attention than they anticipated, especially Proxy. Like The Possible Place, Proxy started as a one-act written for Charm City Fringe Festival. The process of writing took a month, only for Quinn-Gibney and Reeves to find themselves a week away from auditions with no idea how the show would end. Eventually, they scrapped the whole thing and started a new draft, finishing it within a week. That is the version that was performed at Fringe Fest, with many UMBC alums rounding out the cast.

“We call our little Fringe group Out of Ink Productions,” Quinn-Gibney explains. “Because we tend to do a lot of very last minute, very intensive, very fast writing.”

But the pair knew there was more to be done with the story. They submitted a portion of the script to a local podcast called Inkubator News Works, which subsequently helped produce a staged reading of the show. Quinn-Gibney and Reeves used this opportunity to add a second act. It was the director of that reading that later brought the script to Rapid Lemon Productions.

But Proxy’s reach has extended even beyond Maryland—its first act is being performed at Gadfly Theatre’s Final Frontier Festival in Minneapolis this November. Quinn-Gibney described Final Frontier as “a queer, science fiction theatre festival. What a niche that we happen to fill!”

Though the productions at Rapid Lemon and in Minneapolis have been fairly hands-off for Reeves and Quinn-Gibney, they’ve been spending much of their time working towards the opening of The Possible Place. They spent the months of August and September writing the show, and began rehearsals in September, while edits were still being made to the script. 

Now that the show has opened, those months of hard work have finally come to fruition. Quinn-Gibney calls opening night “a blast. Extremely high energy, lots of nerves, and an amazing, fun show.”

In the cases of both Proxy and The Possible Place, most of Reeves and Quinn-Gibney’s cast and technical teams are composed of friends they made doing theatre at UMBC—both in the theatre department and in various student organizations. In club theatre, Quinn-Gibney says she “definitely built a really tight core of people who wanted to make the same kind of art as I did.”

Ali Mark ’17, mechanical engineering, originally met Quinn-Gibney and Reeves doing shows with them in student organizations like the Musical Theatre Club. Now, she works with the pair regularly; she designed props for both Proxy and The Possible Place, and is also starring in the latter show. 

For Mark, her long-standing friendships with Reeves and Quinn-Gibney are a big part of what makes it so easy to create theatre with them. “We have all seen each other at our best and worst, which makes the production feel like a safe space where we can throw out any idea and see where it takes us,” she says.

Creative collaboration was a prominent theme of Reeves’s and Quinn-Gibney’s years at undergraduates at UMBC. Reeves was strongly influenced by her time in the Linehan Scholars Program. “The first seminar you take within that program is wonderful because you’re working with so many artists from so many different mediums, and you learn to be a really good collaborator,” she says. 

And those expert collaborating skills reach their peak when she is working with Quinn-Gibney. Both of them describe their writing styles as opposite, but complementary. Reeves is a planner, skilled at mapping out a workable story arc, while Quinn-Gibney can write a scene with impressive speed. 

“We balance each other out really well,” Quinn-Gibney shares with a smile.

Both productions run through October 20. Find tickets and information about Proxy at Rapid Lemon Productions. Tickets and more information about The Possible Place can be found at Charm City Fringe Festival.

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Header image: A scene from Proxy at the 2018 Charm City Fringe Fest, starring Hannah Kelly ’17, Mason Catharini ’16, and MaryBeth Kerley ’17. Photo by Jason Fowler ’18.

UMBC’s Jordan Troutman ‘21, M29, enjoys challenging assumptions. Recently named the student commissioner for the Maryland Higher Education Commission (MHEC), Troutman isn’t studying public policy or political science, like many students involved in governance. He’s a computer science and mathematics major passionate about applying his work at the intersection of technology and policy to improve society. 

Troutman’s research focuses on eliminating biases in algorithms that can lead to unfair outcomes and even impact life-changing decisions. Now, he’s turning his analytical approach and commitment to equity to work representing Maryland college students at the state level.

Representing students across Maryland

Troutman is a thoughtful, organized student whose energy and excitement for tackling new challenges shines through his beaming smile. He will serve as a voting member of MHEC for the 2019-2020 academic year, and sees his role as essential to “provide perspective on what it’s like to be a student right now,” he shares. 

MHEC is responsible for establishing policies for public and private colleges and universities across the state of Maryland. Troutman explains that he learned about the opportunity to apply for the student commissioner role from Dan Barnhart, director of campus life at UMBC. The application process included a recommendation from Barnhart and a nomination letter from President Freeman Hrabowski. 

Making an impact as a leader

Troutman served as a senator on UMBC’s Student Government Association during his freshman and sophomore years. It was through SGA that he learned about how groups like MHEC can impact the experiences of Maryland students at a high level.

As a senator, “Jordan has taken on such issues as academic conduct, more representative information technology, and more activity space for undergraduate students,” says Barnhart. “He communicates well with his peers, models outstanding leadership skills, and is a consummate team player.”

Troutman’s effective leadership style is what inspired Barnhart to recommend him for the MHEC role. “He understands the political system of a campus and works well in that system to accomplish his goals,” Barnhart explains. “All of the work he does in shared governance helps the student leaders, and the campus life department in co-creating amazing experiences for students at UMBC and beyond.”

Identifying biases in technology 

Troutman is a Meyerhoff Scholar and a member of the Honors College who has been engaged in both research and student groups throughout his UMBC years. He conducts research with James Foulds, assistant professor of information systems, on identifying biases in machine learning technologies. Troutman received an Undergraduate Research Award to pursue a new line of research and will present his work at the annual Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day in the spring. 

After he graduates, Troutman plans to pursue a Ph.D. in computer science, with his sights set on working in both higher education as a professor and in industry research settings. He hopes to build collaborations among computer scientists, educators, and policymakers to develop technologies that do social good and benefit people around the world. 

As MHEC’s student commissioner, Troutman looks forward to learning more about the challenges and issues that higher education institutions are facing today, particularly affordability and accessibility. “My role and intention is that when I’m speaking, I’m not speaking for me,” he says, “I’m speaking for students across Maryland.”

Banner image: Jordan Troutman, left, and Dan Barnhart. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.