As the school year progresses, students find themselves spending more time studying than before. As a result, students spend more time creating and participating in study groups. However, not all students find study groups to be effective. Some students find that studying alone is more effective than studying in groups.

One such student is Nikki Kehl, a sophomore computer engineering major. Kehl states that “when studying in groups, working together helps [students] realize [their] mistakes.” This ability to recognize mistakes before turning in an assignment allows students the opportunity to fix their mistakes and get a higher grade.

Kehl also stated another advantage to working in a group while studying is the “ability to share notes and to help each other learn any material that may have been missed while taking notes in class.” This ability to share notes, as well as teaching each other is a vital part of what makes working together in groups so effective.

“By sharing with each other, and helping each other understand the concepts that are being presented in a different way, I find myself understanding more of the concepts,” Kehl added.

However, not everyone agrees with Kehl in the opinion that studying with other students is the most effective or beneficial way to study. One such student, who has asked to remain anonymous, stated that they find it less effective to study in groups due to their studying style. They claimed that they “do better when [they] cram right before a test or an exam, rather than studying beforehand, as [their] ability to remember things short term is greater than [their] ability to remember things over the course of a few study sessions.”

This was not the only cause for this anonymous student to prefer studying alone rather than in a group. They also stated that “when studying with other people, whether it be friends or classmates, [they] feel that the other people are a hindrance rather than helpful.” They believe this because “the other people can provide distractions, and conversations can get off track quickly when working with other people.”

Surprisingly, not as many students agree with this student in believing the cost of studying with others outweighs the benefits. Out of a group of students that were randomly interviewed in the commons, a majority stated that they prefer to study either in a group or with their friends or peers. Some continued to say that studying became even more effective when studying with friends or peers within their class or that were focusing on the same subject that they were.

While it appears that the majority of students prefer to study with friends or peers, not everyone will agree to do so. In the end, do what is most effective for you, whether that be studying by yourself or in a group. Study hard, and be successful this semester.

As the school year progresses, students find themselves spending more time studying than before. As a result, students spend more time creating and participating in study groups. However, not all students find study groups to be effective. Some students find that studying alone is more effective than studying in groups.

One such student is Nikki Kehl, a sophomore computer engineering major. Kehl states that “when studying in groups, working together helps [students] realize [their] mistakes.” This ability to recognize mistakes before turning in an assignment allows students the opportunity to fix their mistakes and get a higher grade.

Kehl also stated another advantage to working in a group while studying is the “ability to share notes and to help each other learn any material that may have been missed while taking notes in class.” This ability to share notes, as well as teaching each other is a vital part of what makes working together in groups so effective.

“By sharing with each other, and helping each other understand the concepts that are being presented in a different way, I find myself understanding more of the concepts,” Kehl added.

However, not everyone agrees with Kehl in the opinion that studying with other students is the most effective or beneficial way to study. One such student, who has asked to remain anonymous, stated that they find it less effective to study in groups due to their studying style. They claimed that they “do better when [they] cram right before a test or an exam, rather than studying beforehand, as [their] ability to remember things short term is greater than [their] ability to remember things over the course of a few study sessions.”

This was not the only cause for this anonymous student to prefer studying alone rather than in a group. They also stated that “when studying with other people, whether it be friends or classmates, [they] feel that the other people are a hindrance rather than helpful.” They believe this because “the other people can provide distractions, and conversations can get off track quickly when working with other people.”

Surprisingly, not as many students agree with this student in believing the cost of studying with others outweighs the benefits. Out of a group of students that were randomly interviewed in the commons, a majority stated that they prefer to study either in a group or with their friends or peers. Some continued to say that studying became even more effective when studying with friends or peers within their class or that were focusing on the same subject that they were.

While it appears that the majority of students prefer to study with friends or peers, not everyone will agree to do so. In the end, do what is most effective for you, whether that be studying by yourself or in a group. Study hard, and be successful this semester.

Walking into the carnival, the chatter of hundreds of students and families is mixed with the hum of machines running. The sparkling lights and low din lent an inviting atmosphere to the young, energetic crowd. Saturday Oct. 14, for the last day of homecoming, UMBC held a carnival on Erickson Field, with rides and games for all ages. The carnival was the culmination of homecoming week, and one of its most popular events.

“I expected much less than what was given, because all of the rides were fun, felt safe, and the lines were beautiful because there weren’t any,” said Isabel Rayner, a freshman biochemistry major.

Hundreds of students attended the event throughout the day. Admission to the carnival was free, but there was a $5 flat fee to access all of the rides. Main attractions included a large drop tower, an alien-themed gravitron and a rainbow ride. The lines were full, but moved quickly. If patrons did not like rides, there were also obstacle courses as well as many games to keep busy. The games were free to play and very popular. Basketball was a common choice, as was a water gun game.

“Backyard games like corn hole and ladder toss are a really fun way to get outside and play a simple game,” said Rayner.

The sizzler, a ride that propels students around a central pole, was one of the day’s most popular rides.

“My favorite ride was the sizzler, but it was the free carnival games that really took the cake!” exclaimed Viviana Angelini, a freshman global studies major.

Food was taken care of by a variety of food trucks with a few different options that kept patrons interested. The food held an interesting range of styles rather than solely traditional carnival food. Options included smoothies, ice cream, hamburgers, Korean and Greek cuisine. Organizers handed out free cotton candy, making many students happy. An alumni tent was available all day for graduates to receive free shirts and other souvenirs. The tent also included a bar for those with valid identification.

Towards the beginning of the day, carnival-goers enjoyed a small petting zoo, as well as large prizes and face painting. Many families came with small children, an unlikely atmosphere for a college carnival. However, it showcased campus’s active role in the surrounding community in allowing students to include their families in the festivities. As the day went on, some attractions such as the petting zoo and select carnival games were retired, but the rides stayed active the entire day.

“I wish there had been a ride where we go upside down though,” Angelini commented, echoing the sentiment of many students who longed for more thrill.

The carnival was available from 12-9 P.M., allowing plenty of time for students to visit. Students that purchased the $5 ride pass received a wristband, allowing them to leave and come back for rides later in the day. Between the variety of activities at the carnival and the men’s soccer game, students were able to enjoy their last day of homecoming in whatever way they chose.

Walking into the carnival, the chatter of hundreds of students and families is mixed with the hum of machines running. The sparkling lights and low din lent an inviting atmosphere to the young, energetic crowd. Saturday Oct. 14, for the last day of homecoming, UMBC held a carnival on Erickson Field, with rides and games for all ages. The carnival was the culmination of homecoming week, and one of its most popular events.

“I expected much less than what was given, because all of the rides were fun, felt safe, and the lines were beautiful because there weren’t any,” said Isabel Rayner, a freshman biochemistry major.

Hundreds of students attended the event throughout the day. Admission to the carnival was free, but there was a $5 flat fee to access all of the rides. Main attractions included a large drop tower, an alien-themed gravitron and a rainbow ride. The lines were full, but moved quickly. If patrons did not like rides, there were also obstacle courses as well as many games to keep busy. The games were free to play and very popular. Basketball was a common choice, as was a water gun game.

“Backyard games like corn hole and ladder toss are a really fun way to get outside and play a simple game,” said Rayner.

The sizzler, a ride that propels students around a central pole, was one of the day’s most popular rides.

“My favorite ride was the sizzler, but it was the free carnival games that really took the cake!” exclaimed Viviana Angelini, a freshman global studies major.

Food was taken care of by a variety of food trucks with a few different options that kept patrons interested. The food held an interesting range of styles rather than solely traditional carnival food. Options included smoothies, ice cream, hamburgers, Korean and Greek cuisine. Organizers handed out free cotton candy, making many students happy. An alumni tent was available all day for graduates to receive free shirts and other souvenirs. The tent also included a bar for those with valid identification.

Towards the beginning of the day, carnival-goers enjoyed a small petting zoo, as well as large prizes and face painting. Many families came with small children, an unlikely atmosphere for a college carnival. However, it showcased campus’s active role in the surrounding community in allowing students to include their families in the festivities. As the day went on, some attractions such as the petting zoo and select carnival games were retired, but the rides stayed active the entire day.

“I wish there had been a ride where we go upside down though,” Angelini commented, echoing the sentiment of many students who longed for more thrill.

The carnival was available from 12-9 P.M., allowing plenty of time for students to visit. Students that purchased the $5 ride pass received a wristband, allowing them to leave and come back for rides later in the day. Between the variety of activities at the carnival and the men’s soccer game, students were able to enjoy their last day of homecoming in whatever way they chose.

Every so often, we chat with an alum about what they do now and how they got there. Today’s guest, George Derek Musgrove ’97, history, is an alum-turned-faculty member whose latest book, Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital, explores Washington, D.C.’s relationship to race over the last four centuries. We caught up with him ahead of the book’s November public launch.

NAME: George Derek Musgrove
MAJOR: History
GRAD YEAR: 1997
CURRENT JOB TITLE: Associate Professor of History, UMBC

What made you decide to study post-WWII U.S. history, and what specifically led you to the subject matter for Chocolate City?
I have always approached history as a way to inform activism, and I have always looked to my parents’ generation for those lessons. My father was involved in Black Power activism and my mother was deeply influenced by the Black Arts movement. That naturally led me to pursue post-1945 history.  I wanted to understand what political and cultural struggles had shaped the world in which I lived and how. I also wanted to understand what worked and what did not in previous struggles, specifically struggles for African American equality.

I came to the topic of D.C. history quite by chance. In 2009, when I was still teaching at [the University of the District of Columbia], my African American history course under-enrolled.  As per an unfortunate university policy, the class was cancelled and I was assigned another course on the spot: History of the District of Columbia. A Baltimore native with no background in D.C. history, I stumbled through the ensuing semester, hurriedly reading any book on the District I could get my hands on just moments before heading to class.

The following year, I shared this story with my colleague, Chris Myers Asch, a D.C. native who had returned to his hometown and taken a position at UDC. Together we tackled the D.C. History course, and we jointly rewrote the syllabus. After teaching the course, both of us mused that “someone” should write a good survey text on race and democracy that captured students’ attention and addressed the themes we emphasized in the course. Enterprising historian that he is, Chris thought that that “someone” should be us. He wrote a proposal in 2011 and suggested that I join him in producing just such a book. I did.

Chocolate City isn’t your first book…do you have any other projects that we should look out for?
My other book projects focus on black politics on the post civil rights period.  My first book, Rumor, Repression, and Racial Politics: How the Harassment of Black Elected Officials Shaped Post-Civil Rights America, explores black elected officials’ allegations of state repression between 1965 and 1995.  I hoped to understand African American leadership’s evolving relationship to the government in the years after passage of the Voting Rights Act.  I am currently working on an exploration of black power politics and culture during the years that I came to political maturity, tentatively titled “We must take to the streets again”: The Black Power Resurgence 1983-97.  My generation was fascinated by our parents’ civil rights and black power exploits, and we tried to bring back many of their ideas and activist projects in the 1980s and ’90s as a way to push back against the Reagan Revolution and the urban crisis.

Tell me a little bit about your post-UMBC career path, and how it eventually led you back to UMBC.
After graduation I headed to NYU to pursue a Ph.D. in history.  I was lucky enough to secure a full scholarship for my graduate study through the efforts of several members of the UMBC administration, principally Earnestine Baker, who had connections with the NYU Medical School where she had placed a number of Meyerhoff Scholars. After leaving NYU, I secured a postdoc at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where I taught very well-to-do students from the New England private school circuit. The experienced convinced me that I would prefer to teach working- and middle-class students, so I headed to the University of the District of Columbia. I was happy teaching the predominantly working-class student population at UDC, but […] having come up with the example of Dr. Hrabowski as what a college president should be…I made an effort to work for that administration by returning to UMBC. When a job opened in the history department in 2012, I jumped at the chance.  

What’s the one piece of advice you’d give to an incoming UMBC student, and why?
I will give them the same advice that was given me: take control of your educational experience and mold it into something unique that suits your particular needs and aspirations.  Students have a choice: they can listlessly move through a proscribed curriculum like they did in high school, or they can figure out what training they need for their chosen career and secure it.  With the support of advisors like President Hrabowski and historian Rebecca Boehling, I chose the latter. I knew I wanted to be a historian, so I actively searched for the classes that would help me to understand the profession and my place in it; secured internships that gave me hands on experience in the field; and studied abroad to give myself perspective on the peculiarities of my country and chosen subject. This directed approach to my major made me an attractive candidate for a Ph.D. program at NYU. It set me on the path to becoming a historian.

Chocolate City will launch publicly with a lecture and book signing at the National Museum of African American History and Culture on Thursday, November 2. Advance registration required; click here for more information.

Got exciting news to share with us? Send in a Class Note for the next print edition of the magazine!

The Center for World University Rankings (CWUR) named UMBC as one of the top universities in the world according to their 2017 report released last week. UMBC lands in the top 1.9% of higher education institutions worldwide and joins only four other institutions in Maryland on the list. More than 27,000 organizations were evaluated, making the CWUR the largest ranking of global universities.

CWUR takes eight indicators into account when compiling their rankings, including quality of education (alumni who have won major international awards); alumni employment (as CEOs in companies worldwide); quality of faculty (faculty who have won major international awards); research publications, influence and citations; broad impact; and international patent filings.

UMBC is one of only five institutions in the state of Maryland to make an appearance on the list, along with University of Maryland, College Park; University of Maryland, Baltimore; Johns Hopkins University; and Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. In addition to the global recognition UMBC has attained, the Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education list of nationally ranked institutions recently named UMBC as one of the top universities in the United States.

Photo: UMBC student works outside in 2017.
Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski has joined nearly 800 other college and university presidents in signing a letter to Congressional leaders urging them to pass a long-term, legislative solution to protect “dreamers”—undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children—from deportation. The move follows President Trump’s decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy implemented by President Obama in 2012.

The letter, coordinated by the American Council on Education (ACE), does not put forth specific legislation, but cites polls that show a majority of Americans support a permanent solution that would allow dreamers to remain in the United States. It reminds Congress that DACA recipients are “Americans in every way but immigration status” and “have made incredible contributions to our country and its economy and security.”

“Over the past several decades, researchers have found that students who attend culturally diverse colleges and universities experience greater intellectual benefits than those who do not,” says David Di Maria, associate vice provost of international education at UMBC. “As a world-class university, UMBC is strengthened by the diverse perspectives dreamers bring to our classrooms, the discoveries they make in our laboratories and the service they provide to communities based here in Maryland, across the United States and around the world.”

The ACE letter is one of several ways UMBC has shown support for dreamers and the positive contributions they make to the United States. As early as November 2016, President Hrabowski co-signed a statement urging business, civic, religious and non-profit sectors to support DACA and undocumented immigrant students, and offering to meet with government leaders to discuss the issue. More than 700 higher education institutions have joined the statement since then. President Hrabowski also co-signed a similar letter to President Trump in March with more than 560 college presidents. In addition, he has signed on to the CEO Action for Diversity and Inclusion pledge, a broader commitment to advance diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

As an institution with students, faculty, and staff from more than 100 countries, UMBC knows the value of bringing diverse minds together in the pursuit of knowledge and solutions to society’s greatest challenges.

“At UMBC, we are committed to supporting all members of our community, and we recognize that each person brings a valuable perspective and set of  experiences to our campus,” says President Hrabowski. “It is important for our country to support dreamers, not only so that they can live fulfilling and purposeful lives, but also so that our country can benefit from the ideas and skills they bring to society.”

Visit UMBC’s Diversity and Inclusion site for more information about resources available to the UMBC community, programs and student organizations dedicated to supporting diversity and inclusion, and related UMBC policies. 

Recently, the Trump administration has allowed almost any employer to claim a religious or moral objection to Obamacare’s birth control coverage under an expansive rollback. This means millions of women will be without access to free or affordable birth control. Trump’s attack was not on birth control, but on the left’s abhorrent obsession with forcing “the other” to pay for their choices.

It means forcing many women to choose between paying for their birth control or paying for their groceries. It will almost certainly mean higher abortion rates and more unplanned pregnancies. Therefore, the administration’s decision to rollback coverage makes little sense since many members are proudly pro-life.

The abortion rate in America has been at an all-time low since Roe v. Wade because of access to birth control. The report by the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports legal abortion, states that the total number of abortions in America fell below a million for the first time since the 1970s.

Turning back the clock on access to contraception also means going back to the days when many women did not have the power to decide if or when to start or expand their families. Therefore, this rollback will likely cause the abortion rate to skyrocket again because of an increase in unplanned pregnancies.

This leads to the burning question: why are men still, in 2017, making choices for women about their bodies? A report from The Guardian has found that 80 percent of nominations for positions in the Trump administration have gone to men. This gives Donald Trump the most male-dominated federal government in twenty-five years. Men outnumber women four-to-one in top positions of the Trump administration.

In addition, birth control pills are not just a contraceptive. Some women use them to regulate hormonal fluctuations. These fluctuations may result in irregular periods, painful menstruation or acne flare-ups. However, even though birth control is not just for sex, women should not have to argue that access to it is necessary for medical reasons.

The medical argument draws attention to the fact that even in the twenty-first century, women are still shamed for having sex. And that being able to avoid unplanned pregnancy after sex is not a good enough reason to have affordable birth control provided.

Regardless, women’s bosses should not be making personal healthcare decisions for them. It is time to do something about men making decisions for women when it comes to healthcare pertaining only to women.