Winter 2014

Up on the Roof – Winter 2014

UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, takes your questions. Q. UMBC has made significant investments in creating physical spaces where collaboration in pedagogy and research can flourish. And the movement toward a new Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Building promises to take that effort even further. Why is it important that there are physical spaces in which to do this sort of collaboration? And, stepping back and looking at the larger picture: What other research collaboration efforts at UMBC are you most excited about? – Richard Byrne ’86, English A.  What’s important as we build a new facility, such as the proposed… Continue Reading Up on the Roof – Winter 2014

To You – Winter 2014

Universities are filled with people who have great ideas. In fact, the view that universities act as a repository of great ideas has a firm hold on the public imagination. Students go to classes to obtain these ideas. Professors pore over tomes or fiddle with knobs and text tubes in traditional laboratories. And universities didn’t gain a reputation of “ivory towers” where ideas were chewed over in isolation out of thin air. Yet I hope this issue of UMBC Magazine may help you rethink the notion of our university as a place that contains ideas  Because if the feature stories… Continue Reading To You – Winter 2014

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The News – Winter 2014

PHONE HOME Once in a while you might get a call asking for your support for UMBC and its mission. The person on the other end of the line? A UMBC student. Five nights a week, UMBC students assemble at Alumni House and reach out to alumni and parents via the university’s Phonathon. The program was brought back to campus in 2011 after being outsourced to a third party for eight years. Dayna Carpenter, UMBC’s director of annual giving, says that the university made the change because it was students who could make the most tangible connection to donors. “People… Continue Reading The News – Winter 2014

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Rooms to Grow

UMBC alumni, professors and students find new spaces and places for innovation. Photography by Marlayna Demond ’11 * * * * Much of the journey of creation takes place in the space of the human mind. Yet that journey is not a solitary one. Intellects require companionship. Great ideas spark new approaches – and more new ideas – when they are tested by conversation and forged in collaboration. And those combinations require spaces to encourage and enhance their work. A research university such as UMBC excels in creating such spaces. Not only do its professors and students create them on… Continue Reading Rooms to Grow

Jill Quinn

Moving in Place – Jill Sisson Quinn ’97, English

The habitat in central Maryland where Jill Sisson Quinn ’97, English grew up isn’t very different from the habitat in central Wisconsin where she lives now. The birds, insects, and trees are similar; you can use the same field guides, she says. Yet when she moved to the Midwest in 2005, she had traded a place full of rivers for one full of lakes, and “it was a huge problem for me,” she says. “I would wake up in the middle of the night and I would feel like I was moving to another planet.” Is this homesickness, or an… Continue Reading Moving in Place – Jill Sisson Quinn ’97, English

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Launch Pad

Professors Amy Hurst and Shaun Kane have created a community that helps  open up the world for people with disabilities through assistive technology. By Kathryn Masterson Every Monday morning at UMBC’s Prototyping and Design Lab (better known on campus as “The Pad”), Amy Hurst and Shaun Kane convene a meeting of students across disciplines who work in the space. Some of the students come to the lab to build things, but many are exploring how to use technology to make computers and the wider world accessible for people with disabilities. Hurst and Kane are both assistant professors of human-centered computing… Continue Reading Launch Pad

How to See the Stars

With Andrew Vaché, laboratory specialist, department of physics By Meredith Purvis We are made of star stuff, as scientist Carl Sagan once wrote, so it’s no wonder we are fascinated by the night sky. But stargazers who live inside the halo of light pollution thrown up by cities, the wonders of the stars can be difficult to see. Get just a few miles outside those urban landscapes, and one can be wowed by a vast expanse of constellations and solar systems. And if you want to improve the view? Try UMBC’s massive telescope (operated by the Joint Center for Astrophysics),… Continue Reading How to See the Stars

Allan Jirikowic

Heaven, Hell & Eisenhower – Allan Jirikowic ’77, INDS

It’s almost two weeks till Christmas, and Chief Ike’s Mambo Room in the Adams Morgan neighborhood of D.C. has hung up its stockings. There are loads of them—maybe two dozen, dangling out of arm’s reach above the cluttered bar and along an opposite wall. Each bears a name – Doug, Angela, D-Rok, Baby G – painted in glitter glue. I ask the bar’s white-bearded owner, Allan Jirikowic ’77, interdisciplinary studies, (who has probably withstood his share of Santa Claus comparisons) about the stockings, but he would rather talk about a mural – one of many – he’s commissioned for the… Continue Reading Heaven, Hell & Eisenhower – Allan Jirikowic ’77, INDS

Hearts and Minds

Finding Love at UMBC By Elizabeth Heubeck ’91 * * * * Maybe it was a first date at Quadmania. A coffee at the Commuter Cafe. A pizza at Sorrento’s. Ask those who’ve studied and worked at UMBC, however, and you’ll find that many of them didn’t just get their degree or a job at UMBC. They found long-term relationships that are still going strong. As Valentine’s Day approaches, we’ve asked five couples who found their significant other at UMBC to share their stories. We hope you’ll enjoy the ride down memory lane. And feel the love. Katelyn Niu and… Continue Reading Hearts and Minds

Forget the Smoking Gun… – Gus Russo ’72

Catonsville resident Gus Russo ’72, political science is married to the mob. And to U.S. history. He is a writer and investigative reporter specializing in the shadowy netherworld of American crime and politics. Russo has worked on 15 television documentaries for major networks in the United States and elsewhere, and he is the author of seven books – including “Where Were You? America Remembers the JFK Assassination” (Lyons Press, 2013). The 1960s and 1970s (when I was a student at UMBC) were not just defined by musical revolutions, but also by the tumult of politics and conspiracy – and the… Continue Reading Forget the Smoking Gun… – Gus Russo ’72

Discovery – Winter 2014

THE BODY ELECTRIC Monitoring significant developments in a patient’s health outside a hospital can be challenging, but two UMBC researchers – Tinoosh Mohsenin and Gymama Slaughter – have won separate grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to help meet those challenges. Mohsenin received a $100,000 grant from the NSF to develop signal processing architecture to detect seizures. The award of $150,000 to Slaughter from the foundation was to pursue work on nanoelectric probe arrays. When patients are in a hospital, they often are connected to a myriad of monitoring devices. Outside the hospital, however, it is more difficult to monitor for important warning… Continue Reading Discovery – Winter 2014

Sherece West

Changing Communities – Sherece West-Scantlebury ’07, Ph.D. PubPol

From an early age, Sherece West-Scantlebury ’07, Ph.D., public policy recalls being preoccupied by a single question: Why is this community the way it is? It was a question that first took root in West-Scantlebury’s own childhood in Brookyn, where she was born to a single teenage mother and lived in public housing. Her family later moved to Baltimore, where they made ends meet on public assistance. In both places, West-Scantlebury recalls witnessing “the usual ills associated with public housing” – drug addiction, alcoholism, domestic violence and abuse. But she also remembers the working people with big dreams who seldom… Continue Reading Changing Communities – Sherece West-Scantlebury ’07, Ph.D. PubPol

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