All posts by: UMBC News Staff

Kimberly Moffitt, American Studies, in The Baltimore Sun

In a Baltimore Sun op-ed, Kimberly Moffitt, assistant professor of American studies, criticizes the number of “promotion ceremonies” held for schoolchildren and questions whether “milestones” are being overemphasized.

While acknowledging the appeal for parents of celebrating their children’s accomplishments, Moffitt noted that such ceremonies can involve valuable time and considerable financial resources from our already-strapped school systems, and proposes an alternative awards program more modest in scope for the whole of a school, with divisions in terms of elementary and middle school.

Moffitt wrote that the recently-released Maryland School Assessment (MSA) scores for Baltimore “[confirm] that more instruction time, not less, is needed for all of our children. And limiting the weeks of planning, rehearsing, celebrating and then ‘promoting’ our children might prove to be one area where we can help shift our educational culture to the business of educating, and not prematurely celebrating.”

The piece, “Too many celebrations, not enough education,” appeared in the Baltimore Sun on July 16.

Robert Provine, Psychology, in Scientific American

Psychology professor Robert Provine’s latest book Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond  as reviewed in the August 2012 issue of Scientific American.

Anna Kuchment, senior editor for the magazine, wrote in the “Recommended” section that Provine “has written a charming ode to ‘Small Science’—science that does not require a large budget or fancy equipment but that is interesting nonetheless. Taking examples from his own research, some of which involved nothing more complicated than stalking graduate students and observing how and when they laugh, he explains the origins of some of the most prevalent, but often overlooked, human behaviors.”

David Rosenbloom Joins Ancient Studies Department

The Ancient Studies Department is delighted to announce the arrival of Dr. David Rosenbloom as an Associate Professor of Ancient Studies.

Rosenbloom is a specialist in Athenian tragedy and comedy. His research in Greek tragedy resulted in a new edition of the Persians and a co-edited volume, _Greek Drama IV: Texts, Contexts, Performance_, as well as many articles for _Blackwell’s Encyclopedia of Greek Tragedy_. His next books will be the _Blackwell Companion to Euripides_ and __A City of Scoundrels: Culture and Hegemony in Classical Athens, among others.

Most recently, Rosenbloom has been a senior lecturer in the Classics Department at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, where his excellence in teaching was known. His outreach there to Classicists and non-Classicists alike demonstrate his own love of the disciplines that are taught in the Ancient Studies Department. He has also taught at Johns Hopkins and Princeton in the United States.

He and his family are particularly happy to be returning to the Baltimore area. He is excited to be coming to ANCS and UMBC at a time when the Humanities are receiving such great emphasis and to a department where Latin and Greek continue to be highly valued.

Dr. Sanjit Karmakar ’12, Physics, in The Baltimore Sun

Recent Ph.D. Sanjit Karmakar ’12, physics, was featured in an article published by The Baltimore Sun July 13th.

The focus of the article was on Karmakar’s work in “ghost imaging,” where a picture can be taken without actually “seeing” the object which is being photographed. The camera the physicist designed utilizes the light of the sun as the source for images, which are generated on a computer using mathematics associated with quantum physics. This process can be used to generate images of objects on other continents and planets without the distortion of traditional photography, according to the piece.

Speaking on the still-unknown aspects of the nature of light, Karmakar was quoted as saying that “[m]any people still don’t understand its true properties,” something which the odd-looking camera described as “look[ing] like a cross between an 1890s camera and a bulky steamer trunk” by reporter Jonathan Pitts is hoped by the physicist to address more on for his students, as well as his own work.

George Derek Musgrove, History, on NPR

On July 13, George Derek Musgrove ’97, history, and new addition to UMBC’s history faculty, was a guest on “Tell Me More,” where he spoke with guest host Maria Hinojosa about the history of government investigations into African-American politicians.

Musgrove is the author of Rumor, Repression, and Racial Politics, and spoke of his investigations into the increasing numbers of legal investigations of black elected officials from the 1960s and 1970s onward, or what he calls “harassment ideology.”

“When I sat down to a study of post-Civil Rights Era black politics when I first entered graduate school, I was interested in figuring out what happened when all the marching stopped, what happened when black folks shifted from protests to politics. And as I was going through a bunch of records, I just kept finding black elected officials claiming that the government and the news media was out to get them, that there was literally a conspiracy to undermine black leadership,” he said.

“And so I wanted to look into it. I wanted to understand if, in fact, this was going on. But more than figure out whether or not there was a conspiracy or there was a pattern, I just wanted to figure out what it meant that black folks believed this, even if it wasn’t true. And so the book is a product of trying to answer those two questions.”

Robert Provine, Psychology, in The Washington Post Magazine

The Washington Post Magazine announced a humor-writing contest in the July 15th issue. The research of Robert Provine, professor of psychology and author of the forthcoming book Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond, was cited the print edition invitation.

Provine is also the author of Laughter: A Scientific Investigation.

Prizes include $1000 for a written piece, $140 for a Twitter joke, or $300 for a funny photo. Learn more about the contest – including submission guidelines – here.

Donald Norris, Public Policy, in The Gazette

Donald Norris, professor and chair of public policy, recently spoke with The Gazette for on efforts to create a Maryland House of Delegates single-member subdistrict in Montgomery County, which would ostensibly aid in the election of a Latino lawmaker to represent a largely-Latino area.

Those in favor feel that such a subdistrict would be beneficial in strengthening populations with common backgrounds and interests, while skeptics argue that these efforts could do long-term harm by creating uncompetitive seats and limiting chances to unseat incumbents. Norris listed a number of complexities to the single-member issue, speaking of issues involving parochialism, partisanship, the benefits and drawback of at-large districts and the history of redistricting, among others.

The story, “Single-member districts offer mixed-bag for minorities,” ran on July 13.

Tom Schaller, Political Science, on Salon

In a July 12 piece for Salon entitled “Will Obama’s Bain blows land?” Tom Schaller, professor of political science, analyzed the president’s emerging strategy of focusing on Mitt Romney’s history with the investment firm Bain Capital. Schaller expressed doubts that these critiques will work. ” After all, Obama’s populist record is mixed: undeniably strong on some issues (expanded healthcare coverage, student loans and payroll taxes), and spotty if not weak on others (Wall Street prosecutions and reform, extension of Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and job outsourcing),” he wrote.

Schaller concludes the piece by writing that “even if the president, given his own economic record over the past three-plus years, struggles to advance economic populist critiques along policy lines, the Obama campaign will mount a powerful populist critique of Romney as a businessman and politician who literally embodies all that’s wrong economically with America right now.”

Stephanie Archer-Smith ’85, Psychology, Named Executive Director of Local Meals on Wheels

Stephanie Archer-Smith ’85, developmental psychology, was recently named the executive director for Meals on Wheels of Central Maryland.

“We are delighted to be able to hire someone as experienced and capable as Stephanie to lead Meals on Wheels of Central Maryland,” said board president Jonathan Wachs.  “She is well-qualified for the post, and her strengths and abilities are tailor-made to lead our organization into the next phase of growth and sustainabiliy.”

Archer-Smith, who received a graduate degree at the University of Baltimore, her served as senior vice president of operations for St. Vincent de Paul of Baltimore for the past eight years, where “she played a key role in securing capital expansion funding, ensuring quality operations, adding and increasing program growth as well as boosting annual revenues,” according to a press release available on Meals on Wheels of Central Maryland’s website.

You can learn about Meals on Wheels of Central Maryland and its mission in the Baltimore area here.

New Play From Alumna Erica Smith ’03, Theater, Debuts

The Mobtown Players are producing the latest play by Laurel resident and alumna Erica Smith ’03, theater. The play is entitled Come Out and Say It, and was chosen from among three by local playwrights which were given staged readings last fall by the Mobtown Playwrights Group (MPG), according to theater website BroadwayWorld Baltimore.

The synopsis given on The Mobtown Players’ website goes as follows:

“Five people. Four pros. Three murderers. Two lovers. One miscalculation. As Vale deals with the aftermath of a heist gone wrong, he sees his plans—and his life—fall apart before his eyes.  In Come Out and Say It, forgiveness is not quite as simple as it seems.”

The play’s run begins July 13th, and ends two weeks later on July 28th. Tickets can be purchased through Brown Paper Tickets here.

Dan Ritschel, History, on Maryland Morning

Dan Ritschel, professor of history and director of the Center for History Education, was a guest on Maryland Morning during a July 11th segment on Maryland’s newly-added government assessment test for high school seniors.

The test, which will be first given in 2017, was part of a new law passed by the Maryland General Assembly this spring. Ritschel spoke of the importance of the test’s introduction, but noted also that other fields – including his own – remain somewhat neglected as the high school level.

“There used to be a Maryland performance assessment in history until 2002, and following the introduction of the federal No Child Left Behind legislation, the Maryland Department of Education scrapped the testing of history,” he said. “So what we’re left with is the testing of U.S. government at the high school level – and I think it’s a wonderful thing that it’s been returned – but I think we shouldn’t forget the fact that history hasn’t been tested at the state level since 2002.”

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