The Laramie Project

Wednesday, November 30, 2011 - Sunday, December 11, 2011

UMBC Theatre

UMBC ID = $5.00

General Admission = $10.00

• Thursday, 12/8 @ 8pm - Ticket #: 1 of 10

• Friday, 12/9 @ 8pm - Ticket #: 1 of 10

• Saturday, 12/10 @ 8pm - Ticket #: 4 of 10

• Sunday, 12/11 @ 2pm - Ticket #: 1 of 10

Additional tickets for this show are also available through the Theatre Department box office

Luke 1:26-38 (NIV)

²⁶ In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, ²⁷ to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸ The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

²⁹ Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. ³⁰ But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. ³¹ You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. ³² He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, ³³ and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

³⁴ “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

³⁵ The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called^[b] the Son of God. ³⁶ Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. ³⁷ For no word from God will ever fail.”

³⁸ “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.

Reflection

Gabriel’s proclamation to Mary was not only about the birth of Jesus, but it was the fulfillment of a long-awaited promise of the Messiah, the Savior of the world.  As the people had waited for many generations, they were receiving the Son of the Most High, the eternal King whose kingdom would never end.  He was coming in flesh and blood.  Yet, rather than being proclaimed to powerful rulers at the city gates of Jerusalem for all to hear, it was told to a poor young teenage girl in an unknown town for no one else to hear.  While she did nothing to receive this great honor, she did a great thing by humbly receiving the news in trust with a servant’s heart and graciously asking that all of God’s word be fulfilled.

Response

Jesus is no longer a promise to come or long-awaited anticipation, but He is the ultimate fulfillment of God’s word.  Jesus fills everything, all of the missing or broken areas of our lives.  In Him is the fullness of all of life.  As Mary responded with a servant’s heart, may we surrender to God.  Believing that Jesus is the Son of the Most High, let’s confess that there is no one greater or better.  Like Mary, let’s ask that all of God’s will be fulfilled in us, on our campuses, in and through our missional groups and churches.

UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski joined President Barack Obama, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, and a select group of higher education leaders at the White House today for a discussion on college affordability and productivity.

The engagement of college leaders in a frank policy discussion today took President Obama’s college-completion push to a new level. You can read the White House announcement here.

And here’s what the news media is saying:

“President Gathers College Leaders to Discuss Access and Affordability,” The New York Times

“Obama meets with star presidents to talk reform,” The Washington Post

“Hrabowski and Kirwan meet with Obama to discuss price tag for college,” The Baltimore Sun

“Obama Meets With College Leaders as Occupy Protesters Target Student Debt,” Bloomberg

“At White House Meeting on Affordability, a Call for Urgency, Innovation, and Leadership,” The Chronicle of Higher Education

“At the White House Roundtable,” Inside Higher Ed

The Commons SportsZone was packed last month as finalists in UMBC’s 3rd annual Idea Competition — a bi-annual contest of entrepreneurial prowess — made their presentations to a panel of alumni judges and a standing room-only crowd of over 100 members of the UMBC community.

Forty ideas were originally submitted by students, with the top 10 selected for the final round. Winners were chosen by a combination of scores from the voting audience and the judging panel, consisting of three entrepreneurial alums: Greg Cangialosi ’96, English, CEO of Nucleus Ventures, LLC; Delali Dzirasa ’04, computer engineering, President of Fearless Solutions, LLC; and Jeehye Yun ’97, computer science, CEO and President of Secured Sciences Group.

UMBC alumnus and judge Greg Cangialosi was inspired by the innovative ideas from the students. He says, “It is truly inspiring to come back to UMBC as an entrepreneur and to see the amount of energy and the quality of the ideas coming out of the students on campus. The advancements in promoting entrepreneurship at UMBC have been incredible.”

Read more about the competition winners here.

All the winners won cash prizes: 1st place $750, 2nd place $500, 3rd place $250 and Most Creative $250. The Idea Competition was sponsored by the Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship and was part of Global Entrepreneurship Week, a week where universities around the world celebrate entrepreneurship with activities and events for their students, faculty and alumni.

• Are you a female student 25 years of age or older? 

• Are you returning to college to finish your degree? 

• Are you beginning school at the age of 25 or older? 

Margie Burns, lecturer part-time in English, will be included in “Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal,” published annually by the Jane Austen Society of North America (JASNA). Her article, “Comic Resolution, Humorous Loose Ends in Austen’s Novels,” is about Austen’s outrageous comic wrap-ups, endings with a cavalier disregard for painful realism and social awkwardness.

Articles from recent issues of Persuasions are distributed electronically through EBSCO and Thomson Gale.