Winter 2016

Firm Foundations – Jill Randles

/ 3 minutes of reading

Jill Randles Assistant vice provost and assistant dean for undergraduate education Jill Randles manages the university’s programs to boost undergraduate student success – including an array of first-year programs that get new students off to a flying start. What follows are edited excerpts from a recent UMBC Magazine interview with Randles. Read our full story about how staff built UMBC’s infrastructure for student success. On her early days at UMBC: I started at UMBC in 1992, so I started the same year Freeman became president. He’s the only president I’ve known at UMBC… I came here thinking I would do… Continue Reading Firm Foundations – Jill Randles

Firm Foundations – Jack Suess

/ 7 minutes of reading

Jack Suess Jack Suess ’81, mathematics, and M.S. ’95, information systems, is the director of UMBC’s Division of Information Technology (DOIT) and a witness to UMBC’s amazing growth in this key area of 21st century academia. What follows are edited excerpts from a recent UMBC Magazine interview with Suess. Read our full story about how staff built UMBC’s information infrastructure. On his professional path into computer science at UMBC In those days, computer science was under mathematics. I was majoring in math, and in my sophomore year, I was doing the applied math track. And somebody said, ‘Well, if you… Continue Reading Firm Foundations – Jack Suess

Firm Foundations – Green & Growing

/ 5 minutes of reading

UMBC boasts no ivy, and no classical columns. But as a university designed as a primarily-commuter campus in the turbulent 60s, it was also born free of any traditional restraints on how a campus should look. The low-slung Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery was the only one of the first wave of campus buildings that did not incorporate brick. Designers of the initial UMBC campus created buildings that were contemporary, accessible to all, and, as Joe Rexing, director of facilities management puts it, “forward-looking.” Rexing, who came to the university in 2004, adds that “[UMBC] is not as bound… Continue Reading Firm Foundations – Green & Growing

Firm Foundations – Green & Growing

/ 5 minutes of reading

UMBC boasts no ivy, and no classical columns. But as a university designed as a primarily-commuter campus in the turbulent 60s, it was also born free of any traditional restraints on how a campus should look. The low-slung Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery was the only one of the first wave of campus buildings that did not incorporate brick. Designers of the initial UMBC campus created buildings that were contemporary, accessible to all, and, as Joe Rexing, director of facilities management puts it, “forward-looking.” Rexing, who came to the university in 2004, adds that “[UMBC] is not as bound… Continue Reading Firm Foundations – Green & Growing

Up on the Roof – Winter 2016

/ 4 minutes of reading

UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, takes your questions. The role of UMBC’s staff members in the story of the university’s rise to prominence is often overlooked. What are your reflections on how UMBC’s staff members have contributed to the institution? — Richard Byrne ’86, English People don’t think about how important staff members are until something doesn’t go well. If things are going well, everyone’s happy, and no one even thinks about the fact that the place is operating as it should. What people don’t know if they have not been involved in the operation of the institution is… Continue Reading Up on the Roof – Winter 2016

To You – Winter 2016

/ 3 minutes of reading

What’s your UMBC story? And what part does your UMBC story play in the narrative of a pioneering university that is now 50 years old? So much of what we have learned at UMBC Magazine over the seven years that we have been publishing has come from exploring both of those questions. Sometimes it’s a profile of an alumna or an alumnus doing amazing things in their lives. It’s also the stories about the breakthroughs that our faculty make in – and across – disciplines, or their innovations in teaching that help UMBC students succeed in learning and growing as… Continue Reading To You – Winter 2016

The News – Winter 2016

/ 5 minutes of reading

Story Time UMBC celebrates its formal 50th anniversary in September. But two years ago, before the calendar turned to 2015, a small team on campus began creating a new way for UMBC alumni and others in the university community to share five decades of stories about what it means to be a Retriever. In late February, just as momentum towards the celebration of the anniversary starts to intensify, the fruits that work will be unveiled in a new website called Retriever Stories. A New Way to Tell Our UMBC Story Of course, Retriever Stories will celebrate the pioneering five decades… Continue Reading The News – Winter 2016

Making Medicine Mobile

/ 10 minutes of reading

UMBC researcher Govind Rao wants to bring the bounty of the information age to a drugstore near you. By Joab Jackson ’90 “You’re watching history being made.” I am in the basement of UMBC’s Center for Advanced Sensor Technology (CAST), speaking with its director, Govind Rao. The “history” that Rao speaks of is a large metallic suitcase, filled with snaking tubes and strange components, being attended to by a swarm of graduate students. The suitcase is an early prototype of a device that might, one day, be able to produce many medicines the world needs. What’s happening in this basement… Continue Reading Making Medicine Mobile

How To – Winter 2016

/ 4 minutes of reading

Create Your Own Theatre Festival —With Zach Michel ’09, geography and environmental systems, president of the Charm City Fringe Festival Zach Michel ’09, geography and environmental systems, arrived at UMBC not quite knowing what career he wanted to pursue, but confident that “this was the right place for me to figure it out.” Michel’s enthusiasms included the performing arts, economics, and the great outdoors. Eventually he settled on geography as a career path, and landed a job with the National Geographic Foundation after graduation. Yet Michel never lost his passion for performing, including acting and writing short films. He became… Continue Reading How To – Winter 2016

Firm Foundations – Finding Paths

/ 6 minutes of reading

UMBC’s reputation as a place where companies find terrific employees didn’t come out of thin air. The quality of its students and the reputation of its faculty for innovative teaching and attention to student success played a foundational role in building that pedigree. Yet it was UMBC staff members who built on that foundation to help students succeed in an increasingly competitive job market and forge UMBC’s widely acknowledged reputation as a magnet for employers looking to make the right hire. Betty Glascoe was there at the beginning, hired by UMBC in July 1970 to start a program (“The Placement… Continue Reading Firm Foundations – Finding Paths

Discovery – Winter 2016

/ 10 minutes of reading

Safety First It happened at Target. It happened at JPMorgan Chase. It happened at the federal Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Hackers have relentlessly pilfered millions of social security numbers, financial records, and fingerprints, opening an abyss of anxiety about the future of privacy in a digital age. For Richard Forno, the director of UMBC’s graduate program in cybersecurity, each new computer breach is a testament to human folly. “The OMB hack hit close to home,” he says. “My information was there. My fingerprints were there.” Before arriving at UMBC in 2010, Forno worked for nearly two decades as… Continue Reading Discovery – Winter 2016

Firm Foundations – Books & Bytes

/ 5 minutes of reading

The ways that universities physically store knowledge – and allow the community to access it –are at the heart of the enterprise of learning and research. What is a university without its library – and its mainframes? The UMBC story usually begins with its doors opening for classes in September 1966. But, that’s skipping ahead a chapter. Or 25,000 chapters, to be precise. On February 1, 1965, UMBC’s very first employee arrived on campus. Fresh out of graduate school and six months of active duty in the Army Reserves, 24-year-old John Haskell was hired to build what we know today… Continue Reading Firm Foundations – Books & Bytes

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