Baltimore Choral Arts is seeking a part-time Box Office Manager.

Baltimore Choral Arts is one of Maryland’s premier professional cultural institutions. Led by Music Director Tom Hall, the Emmy Award winning chorus performs throughout the mid-Atlantic region, as well as in Washington, DC, New York, and Europe. The chorus is featured regularly in performances with the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, and its commitment to education and outreach programs into the community touch thousands of school children, senior citizens and others who could not afford to attend a concert.

In the wake of the unrest in Baltimore earlier this year, several UMBC faculty were interviewed by Diverse to share the projects they are doing with students and colleagues to work with the city as it recovers from its first uprising in nearly 50 years.

Beverly Bickel, a clinical associate professor in the language, literacy and culture program, discussed the Imagining America conference, which is sponsored by UMBC in partnership with MICA and Morgan State University. Many conference sessions will focus specifically on Baltimore and address topics such as race, inequality and community-based approaches to spur collective action.

“Part of our commitment in doing that was about how we could use this conference to develop the work in Baltimore,” said Bickel. “We want to use it as an organizing process to strengthen the arts community [in] Baltimore.”

Lee Boot, associate director of the IRC, said that he and some of his colleagues are cautious about not appearing as to have all the answers: “These issues are real[ly] complicated. The whole idea that [the] university alone is [the] purveyor of knowledge is insane,” he said.

“And we’re trying to level that. Another thing that came up is that Baltimore has to take its stories back. … An opportunity that comes out of what happened in April is that now [there is] a wider understanding that those events were results of things that had happened before. We’re trying to say [that] this is not a bunch of bad players, but results of decisions we have made. That’s a line of thought most people are not interested in listening to most of the time.”

Denise Meringolo, an associate professor of history, is working with community partners to create a website that includes original content and documents history in the days surrounding Freddie Gray’s death. The goal is to provide a historical record of diverse perspectives from the people whose lives were directly impacted by the events.

“The thing that’s most important for me [is] that it’s broadly collaborative and puts [the] needs and interests of community first,” Meringolo said. “At this point this is a collection project. … Healing at this time feels like skipping over their pain. I think we’ve got to stop skipping over the pain, so people don’t go from trauma to forgiveness and skip over the hard work. I feel like this [is] the beginning of the hard work.”

Read “Baltimore Higher Ed Institutions Fight to Restore the City” in Diverse.

Target recently announced it is moving away from using gender-based signs in its stores such as removing signs featuring suggestions for boys and girls in certain sections and in toy aisles, removing reference to gender, including the use of pink, blue, yellow or green paper on the back walls of shelves.

Kate Drabinski, a lecturer of gender and women’s studies, was interviewed by ABC 2 TV in Baltimore about her thoughts on the decision.

“It’s kind of sad that it’s such a bold move, but it’s a really bold move especially given how gendered things for kids really are,” she said during a recorded segment that aired on the 11 p.m. newscast on August 10.

Drabinski said gender rules are learned early, such as advertising and society telling girls things for them are pink and purple, while boys’ items are blue. She said she hopes Target’s decision will spur action and conversation on a much larger scale.

“What I hope happens is that this jump starts a conversation about how gender is built into all things that we buy and how we might change that.”

Watch the full segment “Target phasing out some gender-based signs in stores” on ABC 2 TV.

TO: UMBC Community
FROM: Karl Steiner, Vice President for Research and William LaCourse, Dean, College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences

We are delighted to announce the appointment of physics professor Jane Turner as associate director of UMBC's Center for Space Science Technology (CSST), a member of the NASA-supported Center for Research and Exploration in Space Science & Technology consortium.

Dr. Turner is assuming her responsibilities from physics professor Ian George. Our deep gratitude goes to Dr. George for his outstanding leadership of CSST.

Dr. Turner joined UMBC in 1998 and is currently a professor in the physics department. She received her bachelors in Mathematics with Astronomy in 1984 and her Ph.D. in X-ray Astronomy in 1988 – both from the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom. Arriving in the United States in 1988, she first worked as an associate research scientist for the Universities Space Research Association, based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). During her time there, Dr. Turner supported the guest observer facility for the X-ray satellite ROSAT and timeline planning for the GSFC-built Broad Band X-ray Telescope, which flew as part of the ASTRO-1 shuttle mission.

Dr. Turner and her collaborators use X-ray data to pick up signatures of material close to the black hole that lies at the nucleus of an Active Galactic Nucleus. From these X-ray signatures they can learn about accretion onto black holes, and the process of forming a wind that returns gas back to the host galaxy.

UMBC has a strong focus on space sciences, and we are proud of our long-term and mutually beneficial relationship with NASA Goddard through several major centers.

Established in 2006, the Center for Research and Exploration in Space Science & Technology (CRESST) is a cooperative agreement between UMBC, the University of Maryland, College Park, the Universities Space Research Association (USRA), and NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

CRESST researchers cover a broad range of astrophysical studies and instrument development, including high-energy astrophysics, cosmology, gravitational astrophysics, exoplanets, and planetary studies. The Center also works to increase the involvement of minority and women scientists in space science research and facilitate university student participation in such research.

To enhance the effectiveness of our on-campus operations and our interactions with NASA, the Center for Space Science Technology will report to the Office of the Vice President for Research, effective July 1, 2015.