Interdisciplinary study is a concept and a major that has been underrated for decades. However, this under-appreciation does not align with the fact that interdisciplinary jobs are commonly found in the workforce. The Interdisciplinary Studies program allows students to explore interdisciplinarity and break the barriers between fields here at UMBC.

According to Dr. Stephen Freeland, director of the Interdisciplinary Studies program, “the Interdisciplinary Studies program is only one of many interdisciplinary activities on campus. In fact, there are many explicitly interdisciplinary departments on campus.”

These include departments such as the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, as well as the Department of Africana Studies. “Our role is to cover the things that aren’t covered by all the other interdisciplinary activities. We exist between the colleges,” said Dr. Freeland, “We can and do facilitate connections between departments and existing separate colleges amongst other things.”

Such programs are crucial in providing students a chance to study material spanning multiple fields. The knowledge of more than one field is often extremely beneficial to the workplace because it fosters creativity, flexibility, and adaptability within emergent markets. 

Aniebiet Jacob, a freshman computer science major, realized that this variety of knowledge is an advantage after her internship involving biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health.  “Depending on what your workplace is tackling, it’s never just tackling one subject,” she said, “Especially in research, everything is connected.”

Interdisciplinarity allows students to investigate this emergence of fields that are the result of the natural evolution of human knowledge. Programs advocating for interdisciplinary studies help close communication gaps between departments, enabling further advancements in society.

Despite these benefits, the aforementioned under-appreciation of interdisciplinary studies continues to exist. Some students still do not realize the importance of the Interdisciplinary Studies program at UMBC and how common interdisciplinary workplaces are becoming.

Rosa Rada, a senior interdisciplinary studies: food systems policy major, is one student who proves that this program is vital to the careers of many. “Given that I’ve just accepted a prestigious post-graduate fellowship opportunity that is exactly in-line with my degree aspirations, I can attest to the effectiveness of the program,” she said, “Most of all, I credit the Interdisciplinary Studies program for cultivating a deep sense of intellectual curiosity within me that I intend to carry with me for the rest of my life.”

When it comes down to it, the interdisciplinary studies major is, simply put, a personalized major. Staff in the program work with students to find an educational path that is right for them.

With the world evolving quickly into blended fields of study and personalization, individualized, interdisciplinary majors should also become commonplace. “Education is one of the biggest investments you can make in your life,” added Dr. Freeland, “Why wouldn’t you seek to individualize that if you’re going to individualize something as trivial as your entertainment?”

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Women in the STEM fields have faced much opposition in their fight for equal representation. At UMBC, this fight is still going strong.

As a flourishing, academic-based university, it is one of UMBC’s responsibilities to inspire other educational opportunities to continue and expand the movement. Though there are many programs at the university that promote women in STEM, there is always more that individuals and groups can do to normalize the concept of STEM-educated women across the country.

The Center for Women In Technology is one of the many programs that focus on empowering women in STEM at UMBC. Since its establishment in 1998, it has been “dedicated to increasing the representation of women in the creation of technology in the engineering and information technology fields.”

CWIT also does outreach activities, in which they “are focused primarily on reaching Maryland high school girls…to increase girls’ knowledge of and enthusiasm for ITE careers.”

Even so, these outreach activities are not nearly as impactful as they could be. “CWIT doesn’t have the resources to do extensive outreach to pre-college students,” said Dr. Penny Rheingans, director of the CWIT scholars program. “So many students have ruled out studying technology before they even arrive at college.”

Outreach to pre-college students is essential to building confidence in young women who are passionate about STEM subjects. As a woman in STEM, Dr. Rheingans has had her fair share of difficulties. “At times, it’s taken all my considerable stubbornness to keep striving,” she commented, “the support of other women (and men who get it) have made all the difference.”

Getting more women into STEM is not only helpful to the careers of young women. In Dr. Rheingans’s experience, this movement helps scientific and technological fields because “diverse teams create better and more robust technology.”

UMBC has many additional programs that promote this diversity. Programs such as the Meyerhoff Scholars Program, WISE, Sondheim Public Affairs Scholars, and the Sherman STEM Teacher Education Scholars Programs all advocate for the increase of women in STEM. There are also clubs, such as The Reach Initiative, that support young women interested in STEM-related majors.

Unfortunately, these types of programs on their own do not have enough power to even out the playing field between men and women in the workplace. A clear example of this is the ever persistent wage gap between male and female workers. In even the highest paying jobs, women only “make a mere 64 percent of what their male peers earn.”

In addition to the wage gap, there is very little representation of women in STEM. Though women make up almost half of the workforce, they make up “just 24 percent of workers in STEM fields.”

To eliminate these disparities, programs at UMBC need to focus on large-scale outreach to women interested in STEM outside the university. This will allow UMBC to be a role model for other universities and set an example for how society should approach the unequal balance of women in STEM careers.

For those wondering what they can do to help this movement individually, Dr. Rheingans leaves one final piece of advice: “Do what you love and talk about why you love it. Challenge preconceptions about who creates technology or what they’re like. “

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Betsy DeVos and her new administration may only be in the beginning stages of their authority, but there is no doubt that they have made the general public feel uncertain about the future of education. DeVos has plans to install a program that would provide vouchers for children attending public schools who want to transition to charter and private schools.

There have been few words from DeVos on issues relating to possible college reform and which programs will leave or stay. However, after she told Bernie Sanders that, “there’s no such thing as a free lunch,” some have assumed that combatting college tuition and rising debts will probably not be considered a monumental priority during her years in office.

In the face of this new leadership, “gainful employment,” an Obama administration law, may not have a future. The law was implemented in order to prevent prospective students from being granted loans if they had unknowingly planned to attend an unaccredited school. This bill was intended to protect students from accidentally attending and becoming saddled with debt by a fraudulent school.

The law required that any public or private school for higher education would only receive government funding in the form of loans if they could prove that their students are prepared and have established a pattern of receiving jobs after graduation. The primary goal of this law is to weed out any fake/scam schools, which have recently grown in number and are also getting most of their money from tax-funded college loans.

With the current charge of the education system, the gainful employment law has an uncertain future. The law definitely has a place in Washington and should be expanded upon in order for harsher measurements to be doled out due to high student debt. However, DeVos, who was the former president of the fraudulent Trump University, may not have the best interests of individual students in mind when making decisions.

The now-defunct Corinthian College was a repeat aggressor of this transgression. Currently, Corinthian owes one billion dollars for defrauding its students. Alicia Stevens, a former student of the fake institution, stated that during a job interview the interviewer told her, “your degree isn’t any good.”

Eighty six percent of the money for-profit universities receive are from government loans and funding. This is necessary as many students need these loans in order to even consider attending college. However, when the government irresponsibly hands out tax-payed loans to schools that will not support or elevate its students, they are then investing in a scam which will eventually hit the students the hardest.

Creating stricter guidelines for the gainful employment act as well as enforcing severe and consistent check ups of all universities will be a step towards addressing the increasing monetary issues with colleges in America. By limiting the loaning process of money to low-performing colleges, students will be able to avoid some of the troubling accounts of for-profit companies. These schools will then no longer be able to take advantage of government loaning systems and, most importantly, the students.

The post Protect college students by keeping the gainful employment law appeared first on The Retriever.

In today’s modern world, nearly every student has all the information they could ever want right at their fingertips. While beneficial in many ways, this also makes it fairly easy for them to only consume the news that reflects their own opinions and biases, creating insular bubbles in which many students are content to live.

In order to give students more exposure to the way that the “other side” thinks, college campuses should begin to bear more of the responsibility of popping students’ bubbles. This is especially important on a campus like UMBC’s, where one is generally more likely to encounter an outspoken liberal than an outspoken conservative.

Because of society’s current, deeply-entrenched political divides, it is more important than ever before to focus on engaging in constructive dialogue between groups of people on both sides of the political spectrum. A university is a prime place to begin cultivating the skills necessary to have this sort of conversation. This can be difficult to do, however, when a college campus does not facilitate these discussions.

While student organizations like UMBC Progressives have brought various political speakers to campus, those speakers tend to reflect the views that many UMBC students already hold. The speakers have included people from organizations such as Progressive Democrats of America and NARAL Pro-Choice. While there are other political experts on campus at times who share valuable information with the student body, these experts once again tend to reinforce the values already held by UMBC students.

If UMBC is truly committed to teaching its students to think deeply and critically about the issues at hand in today’s society, it is vital that it makes more of an effort to facilitate political dialogue across both sides of the table by bringing more political speakers of varying ideologies and beliefs to have conversations with UMBC’s student body.

When asked if UMBC Progressives would consider bringing a speaker to campus who holds an ideology contrary to that which tends to permeate political discourse at UMBC, founder of the organization and senior American studies and political science major Richard Elliott said, “I don’t think it would end well.”

He expanded to say, “I am of the belief that political opinions are more than policy: it breaks down into culture. The two most common ones are at total opposite ends of the cultural spectrum and, as such, political debates are cultural debates. And cultural debates almost always end without anyone’s opinion changing and with lots of yelling and angry faces.”

What Elliott said is by no means untrue. People’s political beliefs are often a product of the culture in which they were raised, and thus political debates are often filled with passionate people who seem unlikely to change their minds. But if society is to make any sort of equitable progress, it is vital to find ways to move past the anger associated with political debates and instead channel it into constructive dialogue.

The “other side” is not just going to go away; that should be more evident by now. UMBC should be a leader in cultivating minds that can move past divisive rhetoric in order to have the conversations that matter, instead of simply ignoring them in favor of preserving a comfortable, but ultimately detrimental, bubble.

The post UMBC should facilitate more dialogue across both sides of the political spectrum appeared first on The Retriever.

Deborah Rudacille, professor of the practice in English, has received a Guggenheim Fellowship for Science Writing. She is one of only two recipients in the category this year, and one of 173 new fellows in all fields, selected from a pool of more than 3,000 applicants from the U.S. and Canada.

Rudacille will spend the 2017 – 2018 academic year researching and writing “The Family Disease: Alcoholism, Addiction, and Inheritance.” This work continues her legacy of writing about scientific topics for broad public audiences in a way that is engaging, nuanced, and resonates with her readers.

The English professor’s previous writing has focused on topics such as gender identity, working class communities, animal rights, and autism. “In all of my work,” she shares, “I’m always trying to illuminate something that I feel is not very well understood.”

“I think the more knowledge that is generated and the more we understand things, sometimes things that we find very scary or frightening, the better we are able to make good policy decisions and personal decisions on the basis of science,” Rudacille explains.

In her new project, Rudacille plans to focus on how addiction affects family, friends, and colleagues of those who struggle with it, noting that almost everyone has been touched by addiction in some way. She’ll interview people struggling with addiction or in recovery and their personal networks, as well as researchers in fields such as neurobiology, genetics, psychology, and sociology.

“I’m a believer in the disease model of addiction, but I’m also not discounting the social factors,” Rudacille notes. “I’m interested in teasing all that out and also helping to reduce the shame and stigma around addiction.”

“One of the things I admire most about Deborah’s work is her dedication to articulating the stories…of those who cannot or will not speak for themselves, as well as her willingness to attend to the historical context that informs these stories,” shares Orianne Smith, professor and chair of English.

Dean Scott Casper, of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences, says, “With the Guggenheim Fellowship, Professor Rudacille is being honored for what makes her work so exemplary, and so important for UMBC: her humanistic approach to essential scientific issues.”

After publishing several books, Rudacille shifted her focus to teaching and shorter writing forms. She joined the UMBC faculty in 2012, and since then has created four new courses and taken steps with colleagues in the English and biological sciences departments to develop a minor in science writing. When she returns to UMBC, Rudacille says, “I’m sure I’ll develop new courses based on having the time to think through ideas about new approaches and new topics.”

“I believe part of what I’ve been doing at UMBC is giving students the same kind of support that I received from my many mentors as I grew my career, and also passing on skills to my students,” says Rudacille. “In another 10 or 15 or 20 years, one of them is going to be getting a Guggenheim or a Pulitzer or some other prize and I’ll be able to say ‘I taught them!’”

Image: Deborah Rudacille outside the Performing Arts and Humanities Building at UMBC. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Populations of iconic birds that spend most of the year in Australia have been declining for decades, despite conservation efforts. A new study has revealed a major hurdle far from the birds’ Australian habitat—a problem that can’t be solved through science alone.

“We’ve seen bird populations plummeting in Australia,” says Colin Studds, “but the thing affecting their populations is actually happening thousands of miles away in China.”

Studds, assistant professor of geography and environmental systems at UMBC, shows in a new study in Nature Communications that a critical factor in the shorebirds’ decline is how dependent they are on mudflats in the Yellow Sea, between China and South Korea, during migration.

The shorebirds, including species of godwit, curlew, and sandpiper, are “cultural keystones” in Asia, says Studds, and some are found nowhere else in the world. “They’re so visible they help people understand biodiversity loss, which in this case happens across borders.”

Many of the birds follow a migratory path from their non-breeding grounds in Australia to breeding sites in the Arctic, via rest stops in the Yellow Sea—a corridor known as the East Asian Australasian Flyway (EAAF).

“These birds may spend several weeks refueling before they continue their migration,” says Studds. Scientists have long believed that degradation in the quality of stopover sites could be related to population declines, but, Studds says, “There was no smoking gun.”

Studds’ new study provides one. He analyzed citizen science data collected between 1993 and 2012 on 10 key species to see if a relationship emerged between reliance on the Yellow Sea as a migration stopover and rate of population decline. What he found was dramatic. The more a species relied on the Yellow Sea mudflats, the faster they were declining. Even though the birds only spend 1-2 months of the year at the mudflats, it was the most important factor in determining the population trend, Studds found.

As a researcher, Studds seeks “to understand what influences population trends of migratory animals,” he says, with a particular focus on the effects of changing land use and climate. “For different species, a different part of the year may be the key part of whether their populations rise or fall.”

Collaboration among scientists was critical for the success of the study, Studds emphasizes. The work that led to this result “started over 40 years ago, when people had the vision and anticipated the need to count birds across the entire continent,” he shared. “It’s only that prescience that allowed us to answer this really important question.”

The birds need protection, but implementing conservation policy can prove difficult, Studds notes. “There are multilateral agreements in place on paper”—most notably the EAAF Partnership, a grouping of 36 governments and other organizations, but the pace of change on the ground is frustratingly slow,” he explains.

The results of Studds’ study stress the need for international cooperation, despite these challenges. “If we’re going to halt these declines and hopefully someday reverse them,” he says, “it will take commitment from all the countries involved.”

Image: An Eastern Curlew; photo Dan Weller.

Carpool: Save Gas to Cut Air Pollution... and contribute to National Parks! 

This April, Zimride is partnering with the National Park Foundation to help our users across the nation Blaze New Trails! For every new user or new ride posted to Zimride during the month of April, Zimride will donate $1-up to $20,000 - to the National Park Foundation's Active Trails Program. Help do your part to keep our National Parks beautiful!!

Parking on campus

Concerned about parking on campus? Don't worry, there are designated spots for those students who carpool in Lot 4 until 10:30am! A benefit of using Zimride is better parking on campus! Sign up, post a ride, and find fellow carpoolers!

What is UMBC Zimride?

Zimride is a fun and easy way to share the seats in your car or catch a ride. With Zimride, you can find UMBC friends, classmates, and coworkers going the same way you are.

Who can use this site?

UMBC Zimride requires a valid UMBC ID & password. Once you have joined you may connect your Facebook with your Zimride profile.

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UMBC Zimride helps you offer or request rides for commutes, road trips, and popular events. If you have a car, split costs by offering rides. If you don't have a car, find rides where you need to go.