UMBC’s Mock Trial team spends a lot of time on the road. This academic year, they’ve already been to four invitational tournaments at schools across the Mid-Atlantic, with trips to UPenn and Georgetown coming up within the next several months. They’ve been able to travel the country, hone their rhetorical skills, and represent our school’s commitment to inclusive excellence thanks to donors like you, who helped the nationally-ranked Mock Trial team raise more than double their fundraising goal for this semester.

The financial support is vital to Mock Trial’s development as a group, says UMBC senior Dylan Elliott ’17, history, a pre-law student and Mock Trial’s current president. He says that more funding leads to more opportunities to attend tournaments, which means more time spent traveling together…”which can drive us crazy at times, but it’s also really good for us,” he says.

Mock Trial has proven popular both among students who plan to attend law school and those who do not, and attracts participants from a wide variety of majors. “I think people get different things out of it,” say Elliott, citing the public speaking experience, critical thinking skills, and competitive atmosphere as some benefits of the program.

For Elliott himself, Mock Trial was what confirmed his decision to continue on to law school: “I played sports from elementary school up through high school, and I realized after I did my first Mock Trial competition that I missed that kind of team competition, that camaraderie…which is something that Mock Trial gave me again.

“It helped me realize that I do enjoy the court advocacy [aspect], and helped me develop public speaking skills.”

Elliott also says that UMBC has one of the more diverse teams on the competitive mock trial circuit: “[We have] lots of different nationalities and ethnic backgrounds and religions, and I think that’s great because UMBC is like that.” With diversity in background also comes diversity in perspective, which comes in handy when coming up with ways to approach the cases they’re assigned each year.

“There’s a lot of different minds in the room,” Elliott says, “which makes us better.”

For more from our Mock Trial students, check out the video below…

You can help create student success stories like this through our crowdfunding site, GiveCorps.

Pigtown Main Street seeks a veteran to serve as a part-time Communications and Special Events Coordinator, through The Mission Continues Fellowship.  The position is a six-month assignment: from April to October 2017.  Pay is $11.53-$13.46 per hour.

Pigtown Main Street is a 501c3 community development nonprofit organization in Pigtown, a low-to-moderate income neighborhood of Southwest Baltimore.  Our mission is to revitalize the Washington Boulevard commercial corridor, Pigtown’s main business artery.  We believe that all great neighborhoods have thriving business districts. These locally-owned restaurants, shops and nightlife create jobs for the local community and memorable places that improve quality of life and support property values for surrounding residents.  We are an accredited member of the National Main Street Center and a founding member of Baltimore Main Streets.

Responsibilities:

·        Provide administrative and logistical support to the organization’s street festivals and community events.

·        Manage the organization’s social media accounts, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Nextdoor.

·        Produce e-mail newsletters.

·        Promote local businesses and events to print, radio, tv and online media outlets.

·        Attend and prepare minutes at committee meetings.

·        Assist with various other marketing and promotional activities, as needed.

Qualifications:

·        Applicants must be strong writers.  Experience in any of the above areas is a plus.

This position is offered through The Mission Continues Fellowship.  Applicants must meet the following criteria:

·        Honorably discharged veterans having served a minimum of 24 months (total) after September 11, 2001, are eligible to apply. Applications with less than 24 months of service will be considered if serious injury and or extenuating circumstances prevented further service. Various characters of discharge will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

·        Veterans applying for fellowship must have completed all military obligation and no longer serving with the National Guard or Reserve. Veterans on terminal leave or part of the IRR/ING may apply.

·        All applicants will be subject to a background check as part of the application process. Individual circumstances will be discussed on a case-by-case basis. Host organizations may also require their own background screening as a condition of service.

For more information about The Mission Continues Fellowship, please visit missioncontinues.org/fellowships/

To apply, see UMBCworks post 9287982

In the six days following the election which saw the stunning upset of Secretary Clinton and the ascension of President-elect Trump to the highest office in the land, over 300 instances of hate crimes have been reported. A Silver Spring, Maryland church was defaced with the words, "Trump Nation, Whites Only." The Hope Well Baptist Church in Greeneville, Mississippi was burned before the election, and spray painted with "Vote Trump." The list, obviously, goes on. President-elect Trump, for his part, issued an incredibly strong condemnation of the violence by telling people to "stop it." Considering the usual rhetoric he has utilized to condemn things with which he disagrees this is a strong message indeed.

http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/hundreds-hate-crimes-reported-election-splc-n683761

Colossians 3:12-14 - “Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another if any of you has a grievance against someone. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.”

The guy had listened to me talk during several sessions at a pastors’ conference…Toward the end of the week, he decided to drink a cup of coffee with me and risk saying it straight. It went something like this: “You don’t fit. You’ve got the roots of a fundamentalist, but you don’t sound like it. Your theology is narrow, but you’re not rigid. You take God seriously, but you laugh like there’s no tomorrow. You have definite convictions, but you aren’t legalistic and demanding.” Then he added: “Even though you’re a firm believer in the Bible, you’re still having fun, still enjoying life. You’ve even got some compassion!”

“You’ve even got some compassion!” Like, if you’re committed to the truth of Scripture, you shouldn’t get that concerned about people stuff-heartaches, hunger, illness, fractured lives, insecurities, failures, and grief-because those are only temporal problems. Mere horizontal hassles. Leave that to others. Our main job is to give ‘em “the gospel.”

Isn’t there an all too familiar trend that the more conservative one becomes, the less compassionate? I want to know why. Why either-or? Why not both-and? I’d also like to know when we departed from the biblical model. When did we begin to ignore Christ’s care for the needy?

Maybe it was when we realized that one is much easier than the other. It’s also faster. When you don’t concern yourself with being your brother’s keeper, you don’t have to get dirty or take risks or lose your objectivity or run up against the thorny side of an issue that lacks easy answers.

If you really want to live, choose compassion over head knowledge. We need both, but in the right order. Come on, let’s break the mold and surprise ‘em. That’s exactly what Jesus did with you and me and a whole bunch of other sinners who deserved and expected a full dose of condemnation, but got compassion instead. Others won’t care how much we know until they know how much we care.
(From Chuck Swindoll’s devotional Day by Day with edits.)

Today let us come to our Lord who chose us and has shown us his “like a mother, like a father” compassions. Let’s pray for our churches that he would let his holiness and “dearly loving us”  be known more fully in us and through us.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vx9Xe8RA6Pk

-AP

It started with a coffee cup. Khaldoun AlGhatrif traces the blue letters with his finger, painted in elegant Arabic calligraphy across the white cup. Shaam. It’s the name of his nine-month-old daughter, he said. “And it’s also how we say Damascus in Syria.” He sets the cup in its place with two others, showing how together their words form the lyrics to a famous song, an ode to the days before the war: Beautiful. I love her. Her name is Shaam.

AlGhatrif, owner of the shop Syriana on Ellicott City’s Main Street, was inspired to sell Syrian handcrafts here when he discovered the ceramic coffee sets online. He was searching for something with his daughter’s name on it when he stumbled across the cups, handmade by an Syrian woman who was struggling to get by. Wanting to support her and other artisans in his beloved and beleaguered Syria, Khaldoun and his brother Majd opened Syriana in July.

Every item for sale is painstakingly crafted by hand and it shows. A beaded tapestry portrays a Syrian streetscape with detail that seems like a painting. A set of purses hang from a shelf like lacy doll dresses, with ribbons tied in perfect bows above ruffled skirts. Sanah Saeefo, the 65-year-old woman who makes them, sells these with the help of her daughters to support her blind husband. Nearby, a shelf is piled with tiny ornate camels and finely engraved Turkish coffee pots.

A shelf on the opposite side of the store holds boxes covered in wooden mosaics sprinkled with mother-of-pearl inlays, kaleidoscopic patterns of wood slivers so small you’d need reading glasses to count them all. AlGhatrif describes how craftsmen collect little triangular sticks, bunching them together in patterns and slicing off the ends to create a smooth mosaic surface.

The Syrian civil war, a five-year conflict that has killed around 400,000 people and displaced over 11 million Syrians, looms quietly in the backdrop of Syriana’s story. The store, AlGhatrif insists, is politically neutral, supporting civilians no matter their side in the conflict. But violence and instability complicate business logistics. Transporting goods from anywhere but Damascus can be prohibitively dangerous. Still, AlGhatrif wants to show people that there is more to Syrian culture than the conflict. “It’s not about wars and fighting and terrorism,” he said. “We have a rich culture, art and music and different traditions, that together create a beautiful textile.”

All of these interwoven cultures might as well be woven into the shimmering Damask tablecloths, their rich patterns draped over Syriana’s walls and tables. Before the war, said AlGhatrif, there were 2000 looms where these traditional cloths were woven. Today, there are only five. He has made it Syriana’s mission to keep the endangered craft alive, even if that means pushing down the prices he charges customers for the increasingly rare fabric.

Supporting artisans in Syria is only the first step for AlGhatrif. “95 percent of craftsmen who left Syria are no longer working in the field,” he said. He and his brother want to eventually hire Syrian artisans who have immigrated to the U.S., allowing them to continue their craft. Beyond that, he wants to offer his language skills and expertise to help Syrian refugees settle. A woman who goes to the church where his wife, Rasha, takes English classes has put AlGhatrif in contact with nine Syrian refugee families in Maryland — it felt “shameful,” he said, that as a Syrian he was not already helping them. He was delighted when a woman bought a saj, a rounded pan for making flatbread and had it sent to a refugee family in Florida who were missing the bread of their homeland.

AlGhatrif wants to show Americans that Syria is not the sum of its battles. “If you go to Google Images,” he said, “and type in ‘Syria,’ you will see bloody photos. In 2010, you would have seen art. Music.” His eyes wander across the tapestries and treasures of his little store, traditional masterpieces arranged in a sort of shrine to the Syria he knew. “Beautiful things,” he said with a smile.

The post Syriana brings Syrian art to Ellicott City appeared first on The Retriever.

New research published in Science provides unprecedented detail about the structure of the Orientale basin, a huge crater on the Moon. The latest findings offer “an important clue in trying to unravel the formation history of the solar system,” says Sander Goossens, associate research scientist at UMBC’s Center for Space Science and Technology (CSST) and a lead analyst of satellite data for the project.

Two Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft measured the gravitational pull above the crater on a mission in 2012, flying within two kilometers of the surface in some locations. “We were able to use data from GRAIL to make an extremely high resolution map of the gravity field of a feature on the Moon,” says Goossens. “That hasn’t been done before, anywhere in the solar system.”

Goossens explains, “The surface topography of the moon has already been measured very precisely by the ongoing Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, so we have those data in hand.” Those data combined with the new gravitational map allow researchers to better understand what’s going on below the surface. For example, gravitational data reveal high mass concentrations beneath some topographical depressions, which indicates geological processes deep within the Moon. The new data also suggest that the original crater diameter was between 320 and 460 kilometers, and that during impact about 3.4 million cubic kilometers of material was displaced.

Analysis of the data suggests that the moon has been “battered by impacts,” and it’s likely that Earth and other planets experienced the same thing as the solar system took shape, says Goossens. What scientists learn about processes on the Moon that resulted from these frequent impacts may apply to similar moons and planets such as Mars, Mercury, and Earth. “A lot of the planets have a similar make-up, so you can extrapolate,” he says.

Even today, Goossens points out, “Impact cratering is perhaps the most significant geologic process going on throughout the solar system.” Exploring it on Earth is challenging, as surface material is constantly being recycled by plate tectonics, but Goossens would like to see a GRAIL-type mission to Mars, to better understand the relationship between gravity and topography that exists there.

The research team expected GRAIL to map the gravitational field of the Orientale basin to a resolution of about 30 square kilometers. But when GRAIL delivered, “The data were so good,” Goossens says, “that it was easy to double and then double again the resolution.” With such a high volume of data pouring in from GRAIL, “We had to move our processing from our own local computer cluster to a super computer at Goddard [Space Flight Center].”

With their traditional processing program, the team would map the entire Moon at once, but the unprecedented volume of data delivered by the GRAIL instruments meant computations on a moon-sized scale would take an extremely long time to complete, even on a super computer. Goossens responded by developing a new local modeling method that uses data specifically from the Orientale basin area. It allows the team to take advantage of the high resolution data GRAIL provides and complete the processing in a reasonable amount of time.

The hard work the team put in to quickly devise the new modeling method was worth it. Science featured their research, including a stunning full-color visualization of the Moon, on its cover. As it turns out, Goossens says, the challenge of finding the most effective way to process a massive amount of data “is a good problem to have.”

Read “UMBC research analyzes close-up of massive moon crater, a remnant of early solar system” in The Baltimore Sun.

Image: Visualization of the Orientale basin on the Moon from the cover of Science; Ernest Wright, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio.