Walk In Advising Hours June 1st-5th

Monday, June 1st
10am-11:30am

Tuesday, June 2nd
1:30pm-3pm

Wednesday, June 3rd
1:30pm-3pm

Thursday, June 4th
10am-11:30am

Friday, June 5th
By appointment only

Advisors are also available by appointment. Our advising offices are located in ITE 202-206. Email and telephone contact information is available here.

Dr. Jodi Crandall

UMBC has announced four recipients in the inaugural round of the Jodi Crandall Fellowship for Research in Language, Literacy & Culture. Named for The LLC Doctoral Program’s founder and professor emerita Dr. Jodi Crandall, the prizes will promote collaborative interdisciplinary research by LLC doctoral students.

“The Jodi Crandall Fellowship will allow our doctoral students to pursue important interdisciplinary research in areas of increasingly pressing importance in our local Baltimore community and internationally; in very general terms, all of the Fellowships in 2015 will study issues involved in communicating across cultural borders,” said Dr. Craig Saper, Professor and Director of The Language, Literacy, and Culture Doctoral program.

The inaugural fellows are:

•  Jermaine Ellerbee for his research titled “Social Context of Education Lab,” in the Social Context of Education Lab Category, with mentor Dr. Susan M. Blunck, and collaborator Dr. Juanita Ashby-Bey
• Erin Berry for her research on “Online Sociolinguistic Practices Among Black Female Millennials at Historically Black Colleges and Universities,” in the Sociolinguistics Lab Category, with mentor and collaborator Dr. Christine Mallinson
• Landry Digeon and Ibrahim Er, for their research titled “Social Context of Education Lab,” in the Digital Publishing Lab Category,” with mentor and collaborator Dr. Edward Larkey

Back row, L-R: Jermaine Ellerbe, Landry Digeon, Dr. Craig Saper; front row, L-R: Dr. Jodi Crandall, Erin Berry, Ibrahim Er

“The LLC Doctoral Program will benefit enormously from the Crandall Fellowships as it helps us establish research clusters and applied research laboratories in our program, and each of the Fellows will do research relevant in those areas,” said Dr. Saper.

The fellowship program was first announced at Dr. Crandall’s retirement celebration in 2012 to support students of the program; the LLC faculty decided it should be named to honor her. Crandall hopes to grow the endowment in the coming years with the help of the LLC community.

“Support for interdisciplinary research in the humanities and social sciences is quite limited. There are always fewer research assistantships for our students than are needed,” she said. “I specifically wanted to start a fellowship to support students and to encourage interdisciplinary, collaborative research between LLC students, LLC students and faculty, or LLC current and former students.”

In addition to acting as the founding director of The Language, Literacy & Culture Doctoral program at UMBC, Crandall is a professor emerita of the Department of Education, as well as a former co-director of UMBC’s TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) master’s program.

Click here to support the Jodi Crandall Fellowship.

As part of the Baltimore Traces: Communities in Transition project, several American studies and media and communication studies students produced a radio series about two Baltimore neighborhoods in transition: Greektown and Station North. Baltimore Traces is an interdisciplinary project and collaborative teaching innovation that produces audio and video oral histories focused on Baltimore residents and neighborhoods.

On Friday, May 22, the radio series aired on WEAA’s The Marc Steiner Show. Bill Shewbridge, professor of the practice of media and communication studies, worked with students in Michelle Stefano’s class, a visiting assistant professor of American studies, to produce an audio journey through the East Baltimore neighborhood of Greektown. The project brought students into the neighborhood where they conducted interviews with local residents and workers to explore the identity, history, and complexity of the community.

Students in Nicole King’s class, an associate professor of American studies, produced a three-part series on Station North. The students conducted several interviews to get a sense of a neighborhood that has been undergoing a great deal of transition. In one of the segments, a student captured audio at Red Emma’s Coffeehouse as workers fed school children and provided a safe place for the community the day after the Monday, April 27 unrest in Baltimore.

To listen to the complete audio segments, click below:
UMBC Students Present Baltimore Traces: Greektown in Transition
UMBC Students Present Baltimore Traces: Station North in Transition

The Baltimore Traces project is ongoing and expanded in the spring 2015 as part of a Hrabowski Innovation Grant, “Baltimore Stories: Emerging Media Across the Curriculum.” Previous collaborations as part of the project include Mill Stories (Michelle Stefano and Bill Shewbridge) and Mapping Baybrook (Nicole King and Steve Bradley). There is a public event scheduled for June 2 focusing on Brooklyn-Curtis Bay and Sparrows Point that will feature members of the two communities who will discuss the challenges they face and possible futures. For more information, click here.

Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, seeks Box Office Associate to assist with upcoming subscription renewals, daytime box office sales, evening box office management, and marketing assistance, in its exciting new Downtown Baltimore home AND at our summer home in Ellicott City. Seeking friendly, patient, outgoing person good with computers and details. Box office experience preferred. PatronManager experience a serious plus. Approximately 15 flexible hours/week varying between days, nights, and weekends.