Slow start, but steady finish for UMBC’s casual carpooling program

Carpooling at UMBC used to appear obsolete, but now with the growth of more events and an active myUMBC page, it has become more accessible.

   Carpooling always sounds like a positive idea. Students who commute can save money and gas while being environmentally friendly and connecting with fellow classmates. Carpooling had a slow start at UMBC because students were not always comfortable approaching each other to make that initial plan and connection.

To help solve this connection issue, on Friday, Feb. 6, 2015, Off Campus Student Services, (OCSS) sponsored an event titled Carpool Connection to help students find others to carpool with and to learn more information about the carpooling program at UMBC in general.

Even though carpooling began as a weak program with few student participants, events like Carpool Connection and new features on the myUMBC page have made it a more convenient and accessible source of transportation for students.

On the Casual Carpooling myUMBC page there are now discussion boards where students can post their need for a carpooling partner. Students post the area they are coming from, if they need or want to offer a ride, the days and times most convenient and fun facts about themselves.

One UMBC student has recently shared her experience on the myUMBC page, “UMBC Carpoolers Tell Their Stories.” She gave a positive account of what happened when she decided to get involved with the carpooling program.

“I was no longer traveling this grueling distance and combating annoying traffic alone to attend class at the crack of dawn,” said Christine Garrahan Senior Geography & Environmental Systems major. “I was now commuting with a companion in the journey of completing school. And it felt less lonely.”

There is also a new carpooling lot located behind the Public Policy building in lot 4. Here, A-permit, carpooling students that have acquired the necessary carpooling permit are able to have a convenient spot to park until 10:30 a.m.

Safa Zahangir, junior biology major said, “The problem was people didn’t know, but now it is more ongoing … carpoolers don’t have to look for spots.” The lot with marked spots for carpooling students was set up to create a more appealing experience.

All of these events and changes to the myUMBC page make carpooling more appealing than before, but the issue stands whether or not these resources are actually improving numbers.

Many of the recent posts on the Carpooling Connection page have gone unanswered. Students looking for rides from various places in Maryland sometimes will hear no response from a fellow classmate.

If a student receives a response from someone with a similar schedule and that is in close proximity, carpooling is the way to go. Now that UMBC offers parking in convenient spots close to the Commons and right behind Public Policy, commuters should take advantage and check out the site.

There are posts that are looking for rides from various areas like Parkville, Perry Hall, White Marsh, Columbia and Reisterstown. The convenience and accessibility are out there, students that want to carpool just need to use resources like the discussion board and the events put on by OCSS.

Carpooling is starting to come alive here at UMBC, but there is still more that needs to be done. The discussion board makes connecting easy, but there needs to be more awareness brought to the students.

So if you need a ride to school, you should check out the carpooling myUMBC page.

Small classes engender more learning in universities

UMBC’s lectures are currently in the province of the professor to decide whether or not the lecture component of the class is mandatory. It should stay this way.

Universities are always trying to optimize the attendance and participation of students in lectures and classes as a method of bringing up the graduation rate and average GPA of the school. One way to do this is to diminish the lecture size. This has all the benefits of discussion based classes without having to resort to team based learning. However, UMBC does not have many of these smaller classes in places they perhaps should.

Smaller classes have the benefit of being more personal and allowing there to be discussion between the students, as well as between student and professor. Part of the problem with large lectures is that students are overwhelmed, both by the impersonality and by the amount of information disseminated without actual hands-on practice. In smaller classes, students feel more comfortable asking questions and clarifying information.

Smaller classes are also easier for professors to teach. They can tailor their class to the students. Students show up for class more often. Students who do show up actually listen, and they are more accountable for schoolwork.

Even though there are not that many small classes here at UMBC, teachers do prefer them. Gib Mason is a certified public accountant and director of the UMBC Training Center, and also teacher of an entrepreneur class at UMBC. “I was delighted the class only had 20 students in it. It is more intimate with fewer students; more so than even a class of around 30 students,” said Mason. He also stated that it engenders an “environment of participation, presentation and teamwork, and there is a high level of engagement in the classroom.”

Many universities are taking the initiative to pick up these benefits by making their larger lectures smaller, including such universities as M.I.T., University of Maryland and Harvard. These universities are making their lectures, physics classes specifically, smaller and more hands on. The benefits are manifold, as the universities have seen a decrease by 50% in their failure rate and an increase in attendance from 50% to 80%.

This is what a university should be aiming for, but this initiative has not yet been adopted by UMBC. Granted, there is often a discussion section, or “discovery” for these large classes, however, discussion sections do not always directly address the information disseminated in the actual class, they are more peripheral.

In addition, the downsides to large lectures are still in place – the drop in attendance, the engagement being limited to a few students in the front row, the low level of retention of the information – and could be remedied by just making the whole class smaller.

At UMBC, the student to teacher ratio is advertised as 20:1, a major selling point for admissions. But this is an ideal ratio – in reality most of the STEM classes are more like 200:1. This is because many of the classes, especially sciences, have larger class sizes due to the necessity of these classes.

So shouldn’t UMBC try to make their small student : teacher ratio an actual fact so students gain more out of the classes?

UMBC does try to gain this discussion quality for the class, with “team based learning” in some of the larger classes. However, this team based learning is not the optimal system, according to many students.

UMBC needs to make many of their lectures smaller to fully optimize the learning potential, and not experience the downsides from large lectures.

In her first season at UMBC, junior guard Capree Garner is already a leader for the women’s basketball team.

Garner spent two years at Harford Community College, where she was a finalist for Community College Player of the Year, before transferring to UMBC. She started off strong for the Retrievers by leading the team with 16 points in her debut game against Eastern University. Since then, she has averaged 18.4 points per game, which also leads the team.

Garner led the team in points in every game this conference season, including 28 points against the University at Albany. Not only has Garner been scoring points, but she has also helped the Retrievers with rebounds and steals. In UMBC’s sole conference win this season, Garner recorded five steals as well as seven rebounds to go along with her 21 points. Each of those were team highs in UMBC’s 68–61 win over the University of Vermont.

Coming out of Springbrook high school, the Silver Spring native scored over 1000 points and was team MVP twice during her four years. Garner dominated at Harford Community College as well, as she scored 22.5 points per game in her first year out of high school. In her final year at Harford, she led the country with 28.1 points per game.

After four years of high school ball and two years at Harford, Garner made the leap to division one basketball. The addition of Garner and other key players has helped the Retrievers improve their win total from last year with still nine games to play.

After a 14 point loss to the University of Maine, the Retrievers will go back on the road for one game at the University of Binghamton. Afterwards, they will come home for two important conference games against the University of Massachusetts Lowell and the University of New Hampshire. Every game matters towards seeding in the conference tournament, and Garner will look to continue her leader of her squad.

UMBC’s men’s and women’s tennis teams traveled down to the Lone Star state for matches against the University of Texas- Pan American and Texas A&M University- Corpus Christi to kick off their spring season.

In the men’s first match of the trip, Texas- Pan American took the first doubles match when their duo of Nikola Crvelin and Hector Ramirez downed the Retriever’s pair of junior Eliott Loubatie and senior Kamal Patel, 6-2 in the No. 3 slot.

UMBC juniors Jaan Kononov and Melker Svard earned the Retriever’s their first win with a 6-3 victory over UTPA’s Miguel Alvarez-Hevia and Elliot Johnstone at the number two doubles slot.

Senior Daniel Gray and junior Alex Drean claimed the doubles point for UMBC with a 7-5 decision in the No. 1 doubles match. Both Gray and Drean achieved singles victories as well, helping the Retrievers beat UT-Pan American 4-3 in the Spring opener.

The women’s team earned their first win of the young season with a 4-3 victory at UT-Pan American. Senior Isabel Aldunate, who returned to action after suffering an injury this fall, was one of the many team members who helped pave the way to this achievement.

In the doubles matches, freshmen Laura Ambrozic and Alice Taylor won 6-2 in the No. 3 slot, and juniors Madlena Kurasz and Shannon Cleary won the No. 1 match, 6-4.

Sophomore Mariami Dolashvili led the way to a 2-0 lead with a win in the No. 2 singles slot. Hanna Victorsson sealed the deal with a 3-1 victory in the No. 6 slot.

Both the men’s and women’s teams saw Texas A&M-Corpus Christi for doubleheaders just a few days later. The Islanders took all four contest against the Retrievers.

On the men’s side, AMCC swept the singles matches in the opening contest, and took two out of three doubles matches. Patel and Loubatié were the lone victors for the Retrievers with a 6-3 win in the No. 3 doubles match.

The women’s team fared only slightly better in their first game, falling 4-1 to the Islanders. Victorsson and freshman Charlotte Tönjann won 6-2 at No. 2 doubles, and Victorsson defeated Islander Kerry Galhos 3-6, 6-2, 6-3, for the Retrievers’ lone point.

The men’s team put on a good show in game two, but AMCC eked by with the 4-3 decision. Svard, Drean and Patel all took points for the Retrievers with victories in their singles matches. The Islands won the clinching point with victories in the No. 1 and No. 3 doubles matches.

The women’s team were able to build on their first game, but still fell 5-2. AMCC took a quick point with 6-4 and 6-0 victories in the No. 1 and No. 2 doubles matches, respectively.

Victorsson started the Retrievers off right with a win at the No. 5 position, but AMCC responded with two points of their own. Junior Shannon Cleary brought the visitors within a point of the Islanders, but a three-set decision against sophomore Mariami Dolashvili in the No. 1 singles match sealed the Retrievers fate.

The women’s team will start the month of February in Newark, NJ, with a match against NJIT on the first. The men’s team will be home for their next match, as they host the University of Delaware Feb. 8.

When the UMBC men’s team opened up play this season against Frostburg St. University, they gave the UMBC faithful a reason to be hopeful.

Although Frostburg St. proved to be a much less formidable opponent, any observer would still have gotten excited at what they saw: an improvement in fundamentals.

The passes were crisp; the ball movement never stale or stagnant; and the Retrievers played at a pace for 40 minutes that any division one team would have had to work to keep up with.

And yes, it’s hard to ignore the fact that Frostburg is a division three team. But just one year ago a team of the same caliber took the Retrievers into overtime. Proving that the over 30 point drubbing they put on Frostburg meant we had made improvements.

Then came a loss to Akron. Not a bad loss — the Retrievers were beat by double-digits ,but by the number one team in their conference and at their house. There’s no need to panic.

Then came a loss to local rival Loyola. Once again, there’s no need to lose hope, considering both teams struggled tremendously from the field that night. UMBC shot 26.4 percent and Loyola shot 29.4 percent. It’s not crazy to say the home court advantage is responsible for the meager seven-point victory for Loyola that night.

But after these two losses the ball seemed to be rolling in the wrong direction, and it appeared to have no plans of stopping anytime soon.

A loss to Howard, a loss to Towson, a loss to UMES, all culminating to a 0-9 start. A five-point win against Longwood University stopped the bleeding, but only briefly, as UMBC would lose another eight out of nine.

As this article goes to print the Retrievers have a record of 3–17, 1–6 in the America East Conference. What could be the cause of this rough first half of the season?

The largest looming reason seems to be the loss of their point-guard and best player.

Sophomore Rodney Elliot came in after a stellar America East All-Conference Rookie season ready to lead his team to a turnaround season, only to have his season cut short by a devastating shoulder injury that put him out for the season.

Transfers Cody Joyce, a red-shirt junior, and Wayne Sparrow, a senior, have picked up much of the slack. Freshman Jourdan Grant has played well also, but it seems to not be enough to get them over the hump.

At this point, the Retrievers need some solutions. They showed some promise when they beat Lehigh University, who always puts a strong team on the floor, but they cannot seem to string together a consecutive grouping of wins to gain confidence.

At the midpoint in the conference season, hopefully the Retrievers can get the solutions they need to make the second half something to hang their hats on at the end of the season, instead of something to forget.

UMBC women’s basketball lost to the University of Maine, 56–42, on Sunday as the Retrievers fell to 1–6 on the conference season.

Maine got off to a hot start in the first half, outscoring the Retrievers by 12 points. The Retrievers responded with a strong second half, but it was not enough to make up the gap.

UMBC was hurt by Maine’s three point shooting as well as rebounding. The Black Bears shot 36 percent from beyond the arch and they out-rebounded the Retrievers by 13. UMBC topped Maine in other important statistics, such as points in the paint and points off turnovers. The Retrievers scored 21 points off turnovers, while Maine only picked up 12.

Junior guard Capree Garner had another strong performance for UMBC, scoring 13 points as well as picking up five rebounds and one assist. Nine of those 13 points came in the first half, which was the most on the team.

Sophomore guard Taylor McCarley also supplied quite a bit of offense with a team-high six assists paired up with six points. McCarley was the only Retriever to clock in all 40 minutes of the game.

UMBC also saw solid production from sophomore forwards Pandora Wilson and Amanda Hagaman off the bench. Wilson secured four rebounds as well as nine points, good for second on the team. Hagaman picked up four points and two rebounds in 20 minutes of play.

The loss continues a tough month of January for the Retrievers. They have won only one game this month, a 68-61 victory against the University of Vermont. This was preceded by a December where UMBC played seven straight road games, which is a great strain on a young team.

“You have to prepare for the unexpected. With a young team we are working on how to play in our system,” Coach Phil Stern said about the stretch of road games.

The month has also been characterized by tough conference road games like at the University of New Hampshire and University of Hartford. Both teams are in the top five of the conference and having to play them on the road makes the win even tougher to achieve.

The Retrievers are nearly halfway through their conference season and they currently occupy eighth place in the conference. The good news is that the University of Massachusetts Lowell and the University of Binghamton are both within one game of UMBC. The Retrievers are also only three games behind Hartford and the University of Stony Brook, with nine games to go.

With two games against Binghamton and one home game against UMass Lowell, the Retrievers are in prime position to move up in the standings. As the new semester begins and the final stretch of the basketball season comes, the Retrievers will have their eye on a higher seed for the conference tournament.

Compiled by the Retriever Weekly Senior Staff

For UMBC students without cars on campus, public transportation can be a godsend. MTA buses, the Light Rail and the Metro open broader areas of Baltimore up to students who would otherwise be unable to enjoy the sights and resources of Charm City.

While students’ access to Baltimore is relatively good — and could eventually get better thanks to the proposed Baltimore Red Line — students have been calling for greater transportation options to places like UMD and Washington DC for years.

It is virtually impossible to get to UMD without a car, and getting to Union Station in DC takes two buses, a commuter train and at least $20 in bus and train fare.

A better transit system to Washington DC would allow for greater pre-professional opportunities such as internships, jobs and volunteer work. For many UMBC students, Washington DC remains a great, untapped resource for jobs and internships purely because the lack of transportation options is prohibitive.

While Baltimore certainly has a plethora of interesting cultural landmarks and museums, it pales in comparison to Washington DC’s seemingly endless collection of attractions. Students would benefit from having a quick and easy way to take day trips to the capital.

Some students have suggested a shuttle between UMBC and UMD, which would allow for greater social interaction among students from both campuses. As it stands, UMBC students who want to visit friends and take advantage of UMD’s nightlife have to take a car and either have a designated driver or find a place to stay at UMD. The same holds true for DC’s nightclub scene.

If more public transportation options were available, students would not only have greater access to more attractions, but they would also have safer and more reliable methods of transportation to and from parties, clubs and bars.

The fact remains that no such options are currently available. Perhaps if students banded together, we could convince UMBC Transit or another service to institute a shuttle route between UMBC and UMD. A survey is travelling around the student body now, trying to make that happen.

In the meantime, the planning of a new east-west Light Rail line is underway that could make parts of Baltimore more easily accessible.

The proposed Baltimore Red Line would stretch 14.1 miles from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services to the Bayview MARC station and would connect to Light Rail, MARC and Metro stations.

Construction is set to take place between 2015 and 2021. While current UMBC students probably won’t be around to reap the benefits of the construction project, future residents of the campus and surrounding areas would be able to enjoy a greater ease of access to places like Canton, Fells Point and Brewer’s Hill.

Although the Red Line’s route wouldn’t fall near UMBC, students could take a number of buses — such as the MTA’s route 35 to White Marsh or UMBC Transit’s Downtown A/B line — to the Inner Harbor and catch the Red Line there.

Public transportation is a great asset for students, and for some, a necessity. Taking advantage of that is important, but more important than that is making our interests known. Either way, it’s bound to grow, and students will over time have access to more and more places in the area.

On February 10 Ellen Hemmerly, Executive Director of bwtech@UMBC, was quoted in a Daily Record story about Under Armour spending $560 million to snap up two tech companies: Denmark-based Endomondo and San Francisco-based MyFitnessPal.

"The acquisitions also serve as encouragement for the innovation communities in Baltimore and the state, said Ellen Hemmerly, executive director of business incubator bwtech@UMBC." Hemmerly told the Daily Record.

“A lot of small companies – not just in the fitness space or the health space – when they build their companies, they’re always thinking about exits,” Hemmerly said. “So when a company can see a major business like Under Armour investing in technologies and buying other tech companies, I think it’s a real encouragement to entrepreneurs that there are potentially exits for them.”

Link to the story is: http://thedailyrecord.com/2015/02/10/under-armour-tech-push-seen-as-good-for-startups/