All posts by: UMBC News Staff

Three Retrievers Named to America East All-Academic Squad

Three-fourths of UMBC’s opening day backline earned 2011 America East Conference Men’s Soccer All-Academic team honors, the league announced today.

Seniors Vince Savarese and Andy Streilein and junior Liam Paddock were among the 12 student-athletes named to the team. Savarese is one of five America East players to repeat as a member of the team. The four-year letterwinner started his final 65 games of 70 in the black and gold. He served as a team captain this season and is earning his degree this semester in Business Technology Administration. Continue reading “Three Retrievers Named to America East All-Academic Squad” →

UMBC Researchers Survey Voters About New Voting System

On November 8, 2011, absentee voters in Takoma Park, Maryland, will have the option to verify their votes for mayor and city council using a new Internet voting system called Remotegrity. Internet voting has been used to elect government officials before (for example, in Switzerland, Estonia and Norway), but what is new here is that voters mail in paper ballots and use the Internet to independently verify that their votes have been received by the city and recorded correctly. Anyone can check online that the recorded votes were tallied correctly.

Continue reading “UMBC Researchers Survey Voters About New Voting System” →

Daniel Barnhart Named Director of Off-Campus Student Services

From Nancy Young, Vice President, Student Affairs

I am pleased to announce that Dr. Daniel Barnhart will be joining our division as the new Director of Off-Campus Student Services (OCSS). Dan comes to UMBC from Stevenson University with many years of prior experience in off-campus student services, student activities, veteran affairs and the military. He received his doctoral degree in Education from George Washington University and earned a Counseling degree from Wake Forest University. His demonstrated leadership skill, best practice research and strategic visioning will be valuable assets to the department of OCSS and the Division of Student Affairs. We do not yet have a firm start date, but I hope you will join me in welcoming Dan at danbarnhart@yahoo.com.

I would like to thank the search committee for the time and energy they shared on behalf of our students to identify outstanding candidates, organize the interview process and make recommendations based on evaluations. Under the leadership of Anne Scholl-Fiedler (Career Services), Chair, and Fritzie Charne-Merriwether (VPSA), VP liaison, the committee completed their work efficiently, effectively and professionally. Please join me in recognizing the work of Anne, Fritzie, Dale Bittinger (Admissions), Hans Cooper (Registrar),
Donna Huynh (OCSS), Abdias Irizarry (Commons) and Andrea Wynter (Transit). Our students and our campus will benefit from their efforts for years to come. Thanks also to colleagues across the division and camps who interviewed and submitted feedback to the committee.

I would also like to recognize Ben Goldberg and the staff of OCSS, Eraline Sabino, Donnell James and the Commuter Assistants, for keeping their department operating smoothly during the past year. Ben’s leadership as Acting Director has been instrumental in keeping program and service delivery coming off without a hiccup during this interim period. Ben will continue his leadership in OCSS, the division and the campus as he resumes his role as Assistant Director of OCSS in a full-time capacity and focuses on doctoral work as well.

Great people are key to our students’ success! Thank you in advance for helping make Dan’s transition to our division a smooth and pleasant experience.

UMBC on “60 Minutes”

UPDATE (11/14/11): The segment is now available to view online here. A transcript is available here.

UPDATE (11/05/11): The airing of the “60 Minutes” piece on UMBC has been postponed. It is now tentatively scheduled for Sunday, Nov. 13, at 7 p.m.

After many months of filming on campus, “60 Minutes” plans to feature UMBC on its program this Sunday. What’s the bad news? It’s all too familiar: the United States continues to graduate too few students, particularly minorities, in science, technology, engineering, and math. The good news: “60 Minutes” focuses on UMBC as a place that gets it right.

We appreciate the recognition – but, more importantly, the opportunity to raise the visibility of this critical issue. We hope that you will tune in Sunday, Nov. 6, at 7 p.m. and encourage others to do so as well. (Of course, we have to give you the disclaimer that “news happens,” and the lineup could change.)

As you watch, you will see a well-executed production, not the months of taping, research, and editing. You certainly won’t see the messy outtakes. Transformation in higher education happens in much the same way. It’s a process, not a product. What started in 1988 with an idea for a select program for African-American males in science, math, and engineering – the Meyerhoff Scholars Program – has blossomed into a broad culture of student achievement at UMBC.

Lessons from the Meyerhoff program, for example, inspired scholars programs for undergraduates in the arts, humanities, public affairs, and teacher education. More recently, the Meyerhoff experience with group study informed course redesigns for first-year courses in science, engineering, and psychology. And, in turn, lessons from that initiative now have UMBC working to infuse active learning throughout its curriculum.

But these few examples aren’t the story. What we have worked toward over the past 25 years at UMBC is a culture that goes beyond “project mode” when it comes to improving undergraduate education.  More than a particular program, department, or initiative – we are an entire community that works relentlessly to improve the educational experience we provide.

Our faculty, staff, students, alumni, and partners have worked tirelessly, and often behind the scenes, to breathe life into that work. UMBC’s successes are your successes. Thank you for your continued support, and enjoy the spotlight!

Michael Fallon, English, to Read from and Sign Books

On Thursday, November 10, Michael Fallon, senior lecturer of English, will read from his two new books of poetry:

“Since You have No Body,” winner of the 2011 Plan B Press Poetry Chapbook Competition

“Overall, Since You Have No Body is about making peace with the organic, as well as the ontological world, with death, with the shadow, and hence with the void…” -Contest Judge, poet Corey Mesler

and

“The Great Before and After”

In The Great Before and After, George C. Tumulty, a comic everyman, contemplates the origins and fate of himself, humanity, and the universe, raising the big questions.

Books will be available for purchase, and light refreshments will be served. The even twill take place at 4:00 p.m. in UC 310.  For more information, visit here.

Rebecca Boehling, History, Speaks at Leo Baeck Institute

On Tuesday, November 1, Rebecca Boehling spoke at the Leo Baeck Institute about her new book, “Life and Loss in the Shadow of the Holocaust: A Jewish Family’s untold Story.”  Boehling was joined by her co-author, Uta Larkey.

The institute, which is located in New York, is a research library and archive that contains the most significant collection of source material relating to the history of German-speaking Jewry, from its origins to its tragic destruction by the Nazis and continuing to the present day.

Katie Smallwood ’09, American Studies, in Urbanite

Katie Smallwood ’09, American studies, is one of the organizers of a new project entitled “Baltimore: Place to Place.”  Smallwood and her co-organizer,  Katie Shinsato, randomly distributed Baltimore sites among about 25 participants, who shot, framed, and reflected upon their assignments. The results of the project will be on display at the Windup Space through November.

“We wanted to celebrate place and how the space around you can be important to different individuals for various reasons. We wanted people to have to go to places they either knew really well or had never been to before and to have an experience there,” Smallwood said.

The project was covered in an Urbanite story entitled “The Purpose of Place,” which appeared online on November 1.

There is a free opening reception at the Windup Space (12 W. North Avenue) on Friday, November 4, at 7 p.m.

Sonya Caesar, Language, Literacy and Culture on PBS Nightly Business Report

Sonya Caesar, cohort 13, Language, Literacy and Culture, appeared on a PBS Nightly Business Report segment on student debt. Caesar is on staff at the Community College of Baltimore County, where she is spearheading a campus-wide financial literacy campaign. She discusses what students know and don’t know when it comes to taking on student debt – the challenges of managing their money and paying back student loans which are never erased from their records.

The espisode aired on Tuesday, October 25, and can be watched here. The segment on financial literacty begins at about 17:00.

Caesar previously wrote and co-produced a mini documentary, “Beyond the Classroom Walls” for CCBC. The short film is one component of the campus’s financial literacy awareness campaign.

Book by Ellen Handler Spitz, Honors College, Translated to Serbian

A book cover with black and white human silhouette imagery.

“Art and Psyche,” a book by Ellen Handler Spitz, honors college professor of visual arts, has been translated into Serbian.
Through the book, Spitz explores three principal psychoanalytic approaches to art. The first considers the relations between an artist’s life and work; the second focuses on the work of art itself; and the third encompasses the intricate relations between a work of art and its audience or beholders. To illustrate her discussion, Spitz draws on a variety of art forms, including painting, sculpture, literature, music, and dance.
The book was originally published by Yale university Press, and has previously been translated to Italian.

Christopher Corbett, English, in the News

Professor of the Practice of English Christopher Corbett’s latest essay in Style magazine discusses the complications surrounding recent improvements made to his home.

“They say no jobs were added to our economy last summer but that is just simply wrong. Half my neighborhood was under construction. The other half was thinking about it. And I was doing my part, too. I have the canceled checks to prove it,” he concludes.

The essay, “Home Improvements,” is featured in the November 2011 issue of the magazine.

Corbett was also interviewed by the Associated Press about the 150th anniversary of the transcontinental telegraph. The article can be found here.

Jody Shipka, English, in “Master Hands”

Jody Shipka, associate professor of English, is featured in a new work. “Master Hands, A Video Mashup Round Table,” is a unique experiment in digital publishing that is featured in George Mason University’s journal enculturation.

Through the project, scholars created video mashups using the same source footage – a 1936 video entitled Master Hands – and respondents discussed the mashups. Artists had to use footage from Master Hands, could not provide a companion text, had to create a mashup that was no longer than ten minutes and were not permitted to see anyone else’s work until all five were completed. Five respondents will spend the next week discussing the mashups. At the end of the week, the conversation will be closed and the comments will remain as part of this publication.

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