All posts by: Magazine Editor

UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III takes your questions.

Q. Innovation is something that you talk about in many venues across the country, and you’ve been acknowledged as an innovator in higher education. How do you view the overall importance of innovation in the university and the nation as a whole? How does UMBC instill a desire to innovate in students, faculty and staff?

— Richard Byrne ’86, English
Editor, UMBC Magazine

A. I talk a lot about Daniel Pink’s book A Whole New Mind and the need to have a balanced approach to solving problems. His new book is titled Drive and it’s a book about how true motivation – the motivation that creates sustained change – occurs not simply because of extrinsic rewards, but because people really believe that it is important to do something.

What’s interesting about UMBC is that people here are investing in creative initiatives not because people told them to do something different, but because they really believe – and they know – that they are empowered to think broadly and differently about the possibilities for the campus.

How does that fit in with innovation? Well it seems to me that to create a climate of innovation, leaders need to say to the community that thinking matters. And they also need to worry less about failure and focus more on a vision of who we want to be. And to do that people need to feel comfortable coming up with ideas that sometimes seem to be kooky. Things that we haven’t really tried before. Whether it’s talking about how we market ourselves, or how we teach and learn, or how we use innovation in research, the fact is that UMBC encourages people to think broadly and differently and creatively.

I would agree with Pink that the secret to high achievement is that people really want to direct their own lives. They want to be able to learn and create new things. And they want to feel empowered to make decisions about the future of the institution and the work that they do here.

That’s what we’re working to do at UMBC. Get away from telling people what to do, and at all levels – students, faculty, staff and alumni – ask everyone to help us think differently about the institution.

I know that I am using students and colleagues to inspire me to think differently. I am constantly listening to their ideas about changes we need to make at the university. The inspiration comes from all around me.

Q. Taking into account UMBC’s overwhelming growth during your tenure, the distinguished honors you have received, and UMBC’s #1 rating as an up and coming university two years in a row, what are your long and short-term goals – both for the university and for yourself?

— Katie Locke ’06, psychology

A. I think the goal is just to continue building quality here at UMBC. Building on the success that we’ve had. Getting the word out about just how excited we are about the work that we do here. The more that people come to our campus and talk to our students and faculty and staff, the more impressed they are.

I just celebrated my 40th wedding anniversary. So I’m a strong believer in stability and building on that stability. My marriage is better than ever and what I see at UMBC is more impressive than ever.

People are always asking: “What else do we need to do?” I say: Keep doing what we’re doing. Focus on the work and the excitement and substance of this work. Emphasize the use of technology and collaboration across disciplines. Find new ways to bring the campus to people.

There’s something very exciting about not knowing how far we can go. We’re constantly evolving.

Have a question for Dr. Hrabowski? Please visit retrievernet.umbc.edu/askthepresident

A modern university such as UMBC thrives on excellence in teaching and innovation in research.

We all know good teaching when it touches our lives and the lives of those close to us. But research poses difficulties in definition and assessment. The work done in UMBC’s laboratories and libraries often takes years to touch the lives of everyday citizens. How do we approach it?

As the UMBC Magazine team applied the finishing touches to this issue, I noticed that all three of our main features in the Winter 2011 edition touch on the role of research in the university.

Our story by Anthony Lane on Yonathan Zohar and his research on fish farming at the Columbus Center in downtown Baltimore is the sort of effort that most readily comes to mind when we think of academic work’s intersection with the larger world. Zohar and his colleagues in UMBC’s Department of Marine Biotechnology are confronting the global problem of depleted oceans with a combination of biological research and the development of new technologies that reproduce breeding environments. It’s research that may reshape our future.

Research can also bring the past much closer to our present. Scott McLemee’s article on associate professor of history Anne Rubin not only lays out the scholarly excellence of her research on the Civil War, but also her position as one of the pioneers in what’s now known as the “digital humanities.” Rubin’s work uses many of the possibilities of the Internet – including videos and interactive maps – to not only make her research on America’s greatest calamity more vivid, but also bring it to a new generation of scholars and students.

Our cover story for this issue examines dance at UMBC, and some might wonder just how dance is research. But at UMBC, there’s already an event each year that explicitly links academic research to creative endeavors such as choreography and performance. Known as the Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day (or URCAD), it celebrates undergraduate research (the best of which is published in the annual UMBC Review) and the work of students who pursue the arts with rigor and talent.

This year’s URCAD is Wednesday, April 27, 2011. UMBC’s president Freeman A. Hrabowski, III says that it “is one of the best academic events of the UMBC year because it reflects the strength of our academic program, including the strong relationships between faculty and students, the rigor of research here, and the broad enthusiasm for, and talent in, the creative arts on our campus.” Check out the schedule of events at www.umbc.edu/undergrad_ed/research/URCAD/index.html.

— Richard Byrne ’86

SUPER CAMPAIGN

The high achievement and affordability of UMBC makes the university an attractive option for high school students. But a university built on innovation is always looking to do the job better.

Enter a creative team led by UMBC associate director of marketing Erika Ferrin, Creative Services designer Erin Ouslander ’03 and marketing director Ed Neenan. Together, they created a new advertising campaign depicting high-flying UMBC students in the humanities and social sciences as superheroes using both their brainpower and their desire to enact positive changes in their own lives and the lives of others. The campaign used images and lettering familiar to fans of graphic novels to tell the stories of students including Naomi Jackson ’11, Curtis Schickner ’12, Stefanie Mavronis ’12 and Kimberly Browning ’13 (pictured, left to right, above).

Market research led Ferrin to narratives such as the Twilight and Harry Potter books and films where “smart was considered cool” and in which “normal kids use extraordinary powers to change the world.” The campaign appeals “to an upcoming generation of students coming to UMBC ready to change the world. We want them to know: We’re ready for you.”

The campaign is already helping to attract those super students to UMBC. And it’s also been recognized for its excellence by the university’s peers. The Superheroes campaign won the 2011 gold medal from the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education’s Second District – which covers the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States.

— Richard Byrne ’86

R. SARGENT SHRIVER, 1915-2011

As UMBC Magazine was in its final stages of editing this issue, we received the sad news that R. Sargent Shriver had passed away.

Shriver’s career as an inspiring and innovative leader was a vibrant model of selfless public service. Many who do not follow politics know of his role – in collaboration with his late wife, Eunice Kennedy Shriver – in founding the Special Olympics. The list of his accomplishments as a politician and a diplomat is daunting and included key elements of the “War on Poverty”: the Peace Corps, Head Start, Job Corps, VISTA and Legal Services for the Poor. Shriver was also a vice-presidential candidate in 1972.

Shriver had a special connection with UMBC. UMBC’s Shriver Center, founded in 1993, is named after him and the late Mrs. Shriver. He helped craft the Center’s original mission statement and put together its first national advisory board. The Shriver Peaceworker Program and the Shriver Living Learning Community in Erickson Hall also loom large in Shriver’s campus legacy. In a joint statement, UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, and Shriver Center founder John Martello stated it simply on behalf of the UMBC community: “The Shrivers were our supporters and our friends.”

In his 2004 biography, Sarge, Scott Stossel observed a key similarity between Shriver and John F. Kennedy, the president with whom he achieved so much of note: “[T]he two men shared a great gift: the ability to expand the horizons of the possible, to change our sense of what we can accomplish as individuals and as a nation.”

— Richard Byrne ’86

BREAKING GROUND

The bright sunshine on Friday, September 17 perfectly reflected the mood on campus on a landmark day in UMBC’s history.

On that afternoon, elected officials, leaders of the University System of Maryland and key university philanthropists joined with a broad cross-section of the campus community to break ground on a much-anticipated $170 million Performing Arts and Humanities Building.

The ceremony demonstrated the strength of the bridges that the university has built with local and state government, which helped secure funding for the project. “I’ve never been as happy to see a giant hole in the ground, giant mounds of dirt, and big noisy machines as I have been this summer,” quipped John Jeffries, dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

But much of the ceremony was devoted to strong affirmations of the importance of arts and humanities on UMBC’s campus and in society at large.

University System of Maryland Chancellor William Kirwan observed that “we have an obligation to make sure our graduates have both the skill they need to compete in the workplace and the cultural and intellectual underpinning necessary for an enlightened and progressive society. This is an obligation UMBC has clearly embraced.”

The building will be constructed in two phases. The first phase – which will open in Fall 2012 – will include the departments of English and theatre, new offices for the James T. and Virginia M. Dresher Center for the Humanities, the Humanities Scholars Program and the Linehan Artist Scholars Program and two theaters: a 275-seat main theater and a 100-seat black box theater.

The second phase, which will break ground in the future, will include new dance and concert halls, and a new home for the departments of music, dance, philosophy and ancient studies. The building will be the second LEED Silver-certified building on campus, joining a new addition to the Patapsco Residence Hall.

“We’re celebrating the beginning of a new chapter for the University of Maryland, Baltimore County,” said Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley. “The new Performing Arts and Humanities Building is a true investment in the talents, skills, creativity, ingenuity and education of our people. Its ‘green’ design will help develop a more sustainable environment, and in these tough economic times, its construction will provide much-needed jobs for our hardworking families. Together, we can continue to nurture our students’ talents and gifts while providing them with the tools they need to build a better future.”

In concluding the ceremony, UMBC’s president Freeman A. Hrabowski, III observed that “the arts and humanities really are the soul of our society and the soul of this campus. We teach people how to live… and the values they need in a society – when it’s going well and when it’s not going well. The reason [our elected officials] can say let’s support this is that they understand that in the worst of times, we need to remember what it means to be human.”

— Richard Byrne ’86

INVESTIGATING ICE

Doing science in the polar regions is not for the timid – even at 39,000 feet. But Michael Studinger, an associate research scientist in UMBC’s Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology Center (GEST) and in NASA’S Operation IceBridge, have been flying over Antarctica’s polar ice and glaciers on missions to measure the thickness of the sea ice surrounding the continent.

Operation IceBridge is in the second year of a six-year mission, working out of Punta Arenas, Chile, at the southernmost tip of South America. Among the project’s goals is to get closer measurements of changes in the ice sheets and glaciers that cover almost the entire continent than can be obtained by satellite imagery.

Looking more closely at ice – and making more exact measurements – will allow scientists to better assess the continuing impact of climate change.

“We had many projects going but we were trying to understand the processes and ways ice sheets and environment respond to things like warming ocean temperatures and wind patterns,” says Studinger.

While NASA has satellites overhead collecting data, the agency also wanted measurements from the plane it could compare with what the satellites reported. So NASA converted a DC-8 airliner into a research aircraft for 20-30 crew members and scientists, including those from NASA, the University of Kansas, and Columbia University. Studinger says the plane was “amazingly well-suited for what we do.” And the demands made on Operation IceBridge’s scientists and aircraft were not insignificant. The expeditions to the Antarctic sometimes took 12 hours from Punta Arenas to the southern ice and back, and the flights are often stymied by mechanical problems and atrocious weather.

Despite these challenges, Studinger says that the scientists flew 85 percent of their allotted flight time (115 hours in the air) and travelled 40,098 nautical miles to obtain most of the measurements they sought.

Studinger joined UMBC in March 2010. He earned a masters degree in geophysics from the University of Munich and a Ph.D. from the University of Bremen while working at the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research at Bremerhaven. He worked at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University before coming to Baltimore.

Studinger also blogged for NASA’s website about Operation IceBridge, where he posted photos and maps of the mission’s progress.

“When the pilots ask you if it would be a problem if the belly of the aircraft is facing the sun, you know you are in the world of research flying,” Studinger blogged in one entry.

Much of the mapping that Studinger and his colleagues accomplished was done with NASA’s Land, Vegetation and Ice Sensor (LVIS), which aims a laser pulse at the surface which reflects back to the plane. The instrument makes a simple calculation: the time it takes for the pulse to return to the plane is divided by two (half the round trip) and then by the speed of light. GPS receivers mark exactly where the plane (and the instrument) was when the pulse was fired and a gyro tells how it was aimed. That information allows scientists to determine the surface elevation of the ice.

Getting precise measurements, sometimes within centimeters, was complicated – and cold. But Studinger hopes to have his analysis of the new data completed in the next six months.

— Joel N. Shurkin

Image: Sea ice is seen out the window of NASA’s DC-8 research aircraft as it flies 2,000 feet above the Bellingshausen Sea in West Antarctica on Wednesday, Oct., 21, 2009. This was the fourth science flight of NASA’s Operation IceBridge airborne Earth science mission to study Antarctic ice sheets, sea ice, and ice shelves. Photo: NASA/Jane Peterson

BRINGING THE PEACE CORPS HOME

When Americans wonder what good the Peace Corps and its far-flung volunteers do for them, they can often look and see benefits in their own communities, thanks to UMBC and the Shriver Center.

The UMBC Shriver Peaceworker Program is a gateway that helps the young volunteer-scholars returning home from service abroad hone the cross-cultural communication skills they’ve acquired and apply them to local challenges. A November panel held on campus – “Practical Idealists: Bringing the World to Baltimore” – offered program participants and other local leaders an opportunity to assess the difficulties underserved Baltimoreans face and highlight strategies to mobilize and deploy local resources to help address them.

“Baltimore is a hard city to love,” reflected Ed Orser, professor emeritus in American Studies at UMBC and a former Peace Corps member. “But at the same time, it’s a city that’s in so much need of love and so much need of understanding.”

The two year service-learning program is open to Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RPCVs) and integrates graduate study, community service, and ethical reflection into a cohesive program that benefits both volunteer and community. Over 125 RPCVs have received graduate degrees through the program as they continue to develop their already demonstrated skills and commitment to public service closer to home.

“It’s very hard just on your own to go show up on some city street and say, ‘Hey, I’m here to help,’” noted Sally Scott, Senior Program Officer for the Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers.

The panelists urged local leaders to focus on community assets rather than deficits, and stressed the ability of volunteers to have a genuine impact.

“You could throw a rock in West Baltimore and hit two artists,” observed Ashley Milburn, director of The Culture Works Project. “Artists who were selling drugs, who were beating up people, who were sitting on a curb, who were trying to raise a kid. But they were art-makers. So, what do you do with them?” Milburn’s group uses arts and culture as organizing tools to help build more resilient West Baltimore communities.

Scott reiterated the power motivated individuals such as Milburn can have, particularly when they work though locally based non-profits: “I’ve really found that over time it’s these groups that come together through a sense of passion, a sense of mission, that – as individuals come and go, and funders come and go – can sustain a sense of forward motion for these parts of Baltimore, which in many cases would otherwise be forgotten and left behind.”

The Shriver Center also presented its third annual Practical Idealist Award to alumnus Richard Kimball ’10, Ph.D., health policy. Kimball served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Moldova and assisted Baltimore Homeless Services in redesigning the Baltimore Homeless Census in his time as a Peaceworker.

“Everyone has struggles and issues,” Kimball said. “We fall on despair and wonder…what the next steps are. But I hope that people will remember that service in whatever shape or form can make a difference.”

— Dinah Winnick

RAISING A RUCKUS

What does composer Linda Dusman, a professor and the former chair of UMBC’s Department of Music look for when she goes to a contemporary music concert?

“People who enjoy going to contemporary music concerts go for the surprises,” says Dusman. “And to be surprised at a concert can be a really rejuvenating experience.” Contemporary classical music — or “new music”— often struggles with a perception that it’s a challenge for audiences. But in a concert setting, its enthusiasts can thrill to the surprises that it offers them: complex and shifting rhythms, harmonies and timbres from traditional instruments mingling with live or recorded electronic sounds.

Music faculty at UMBC embrace new music’s surprises as well. Not only has the campus become known nationally as a center for composers and performers, but UMBC faculty have even formed their own chamber ensemble to play new music, which they’ve dubbed Ruckus.

“The word ‘ruckus,’” says UMBC Department of Music chair E. Michael Richards, the group’s clarinetist, “signifies a burst of diverse, and sometimes conflicting, activity. It seems to conveniently represent the pluralism and diversity of music today.”

Adds Ruckus’s flutist, Lisa Cella, an assistant professor in the department: “We felt the name of our group should really represent the kinds of personalities we have, and the way we interact.”

Ruckus has played at Stanford University, the University of Virginia, the Smithsonian Institution, the Baltimore Museum of Art and other venues. In October 2010, the ensemble performed on campus at a keystone event in the Department of Music’s Livewire Festival.

Livewire was a four day extravaganza of new music performances, events and lectures that brought together new music aficionados from around the country. Richards and Cella were joined in the Ruckus performances by department colleagues including violinist Airi Yoshioka (associate professor), violist Maria Lambros (adjunct associate professor), cellist Gita Ladd (affiliate artist), percussionist Tom Goldstein (associate professor), Stephen Caracciolo (assistant professor), and guest pianist Audrey Andrus.

At Livewire, Ruckus performed compositions by Sofia Kamayianni, Anneliese Weibel and Leondardo Polato, and also played work by two local composers, Douglas Boyce, an assistant professor at George Washington University, and William Kleinsasser, a professor at Towson University.

“Bill Kleinsasser wrote the piece knowing us as players,” says Richards. “In his piece, ‘Adagio Amore,’ a computer interacts in real time with the performers. Music is really a collaborative process, and we all prepare individually, so it’s very gratifying when the rehearsals take place as we begin to hear the piece.”

For many composers, the chance to know and work with the performers – as Ruckus often does – is a luxury. “Communicating through notation is always a challenge for composers,” Dusman says. “And then for performers to interpret what’s written is a challenge as well.”

It’s easy to forget that every classic work was once a new composition, and for Ruckus, the music they play can be very new indeed. “We attempt to be on the cutting edge of realizing music that’s been written recently,” says Richards, “even as recently as a month ago.”

— Tom Moore

SLIPPING THE NET

On December 21, 2011, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) waded into the most controversial telecom battle of our time: net neutrality. Net neutrality seeks to ensure that Internet service providers (or, “ISPs”) – be they dial-up, broadband, or wireless – maintain the web as the free and flowing river of communication that revolutionized contemporary society.

Just how to do that is the subject of vituperative debate. Strict net neutrality advocates demand that all web traffic be treated equally. They say ISPs should be prevented from blocking or slowing certain data, or offering improved tiers of service based on ability to pay.

On the other hand, ISPs worry about managing their systems and making a profit in a strictly net-neutral world. Should customers who simply check email and surf the net pay the same rates as those who soak up bandwidth by downloading large files and streaming video? Why shouldn’t companies who offer web services – such as Netflix – pay a toll to provide services, just as consumers do to obtain them?

In a 3-2 vote in December, the FCC adopted new rules for net neutrality that tried to bridge these deep divisions – and pleased almost no one. The net neutrality outlook seems murkier than ever, especially since the FCC’s authority to make such rules has also been called into question.

Tim Brennan, a professor of public policy and economics, watched the debate with growing dismay before formulating his own ideas on net neutrality. “Both sides of the debate just seemed to be talking past each other,” he observes.

His proposal to keep the Internet free and flowing turns the net neutrality question on its head. Instead of issuing rules on what ISPs can’t do, Brennan suggests compelling ISPs to do something positive: a guarantee of a minimum quality standard for every Internet user.

Brennan’s idea reaches back to the notions of “universal service” that also drove the government to subsidize the broad expansion of telephone service in the previous century.

He observes that the federal policy intervention in that case was “justified, in part, on the idea that my phone is more valuable to me the more other people have phones…. In the Internet context, what struck me is that if you have a website, and you put a link on your website to my website, the value to you in being able to put that link on there, and thus, by extension, the value of having a website in the first place, depends on your confidence that if someone clicks on your link to my website, that they will get there.”

Instilling such confidence through a minimum quality standard, he says, will allow individuals and innovators to arrive – and potentially thrive – on the web (a key goal of net neutrality), while allowing the market for Internet service to grow and innovate without regulations.

“It’s not a compromise solution,” says Brennan. “But there are elements of compromise to it.”

Brennan’s paper on the topic has already netted him an invitation to a conference in Germany to talk about his ideas. He hopes to spread his minimum quality solution more broadly in the coming year.

— Richard Byrne ’86
Image courtesy of BASETREE

GETTING THEIR KICKS

In 2009, UMBC men’s soccer players Levi Houapeu ’11 and Andrew Bulls ’12 led the nation in scoring.

In 2010, the duo led the Retrievers to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in 11 years – and notched UMBC’s first tourney win on November 18 with a thrilling comeback win against Princeton University.

Early on in the season, the 2010 Retrievers squad fought hard but achieved middling results, with only four wins in their first seven games.

But bolstered by goalkeeper Dan Louisignau ’12 and freshman forward Pete Caringi, Jr. (son of men’s soccer coach Pete Caringi), the team gelled at midseason, reeling off six straight wins – including a thrilling victory against the University of New Hampshire on penalty kicks – to finish the season as America East champions.

The Retrievers faced a stern test in their first NCAA Tournament game in more than a decade: a trip to Princeton to play a Tigers squad riding a twelve-game winning streak. After falling behind by a goal in the first half, the Retrievers rallied for an enthralling 2-1 victory with goals by Houapeu and Bulls.

UMBC had three days to savor the win before facing the College of William and Mary. The Retrievers extended that game – and their magical run – to two overtimes and yet another penalty shootout before succumbing to the Tribe and exiting the tournament as the most successful men’s soccer squad in school history.

— Richard Byrne ’86
(See “Over Coffee” for a conversation between Levi Houapeu and 1999 UMBC men’s soccer standout Giuliano Celenza.)

IN THE SWIM

UMBC swimming coach Chad Cradock ’97, psychology, likes to share the credit for UMBC’s aquatic success – even when he was the one receiving a 2010 Outstanding Alumni of the Year award in October.

Cradock accepted the Distinguished Alumnus in the Social Sciences award that evening with a speech that thanked a number of people and organizations inside and outside the athletic department that he credits with helping the university’s aquatics program succeed.

“It is why I am where I am – because of the people around me,” Cradock said. “I have a great staff. It’s just a combination of everybody involved that has allowed us to be successful. It’s allowed me to get that recognition.”

A native of Ontario, Canada, Cradock swam on UMBC’s team for all four years as an undergraduate. He moved quickly from assistant coach to head the entire aquatics program – including coaching both men’s and women’s teams – in 2001. He’s won nine straight men’s America East conference titles, while adding four women’s titles as well.

Family is part of the winning equation. His seven-year old daughter has started her swimming career on the school’s club team for children ages 7-18, which Cradock manages along with his other duties.

Cradock sees his award as a tribute to swimming’s growing stature at UMBC.

“It meant a lot for our sport to be recognized within our institution,” Cradock said. “Swimming doesn’t generally get recognized a lot at other institutions, but we get support here.”

— Jeff Seidel ’85

MOVING PICTURES

Daphne Gardner ’09, interdisciplinary studies, got the idea for Oh Adelaide! – a new film written, directed and produced by a group of young UMBC alumni – in bleak midwinter New York City.

“I was really cold and tired of winter,” she recalls, “so I started writing stories about young women living in Brooklyn during the winter with really bad luck…. The one story I liked working on the most was about a young woman faced with an unplanned pregnancy and lost dog.”

Gardner’s story was the nexus for a group of young alumni – including Patrick Letterii ’09, theatre and interdisciplinary studies, Jaron Lopez ’10, film and Renata Melillo ’08, theatre – to come together and make it into a movie. The group raised money for the film on the IndieGoGo website and shot it in December in the wintry New York that provides the story’s setting.

“This has been an exciting project because it’s the first time I’ve been able to work with my talented friends on a film that is altogether ours, from start to finish,” says Letterii, whose theatre company (Tenement Street Workshop) produced the film. “Oh Adelaide! represents a crucial point in our lives where we begin to take full ownership of professional work.”

The group plans to screen the film in the spring, with a stop at UMBC’s campus along the way.

“While cold weather and ex-boyfriends can be very unforgiving,” Gardner observes, “it was exciting to write characters that didn’t let these things break them.”

— Richard Byrne ’86
Image: Nick Ray McCann

NOTE WORTHY

Luke Roberts ’12 will make it to the Grammy Awards this year on the strength of his music. In the future, he may be walking across the stage to pick up a statue.

A junior mechanical engineering student and a Meyerhoff Scholar, Roberts won the second season of the international YOBISing online music competition with his song “Turn Me Around.” The prizes included $18,000, a trip to Los Angeles, VIP tickets to the 2011 Grammy Awards and an after-party.

Roberts started out playing drums, eventually learning piano and writing songs. His father was in a local band, and his brother Daniel Roberts ’10, music, plays guitar, piano and sings. Both siblings play together in a group called Band of Brothers.

“Music connected to a part of me and allowed me to let things out that I couldn’t any other way,” says Roberts.

“Turn Me Around” was selected as one of 30 semifinalists out of an entrant pool of over 3,000 contestants. Roberts used social media and other methods of promotion to spur his song to victory.

His passions also extend to engineering and research. Roberts currently has an internship at The Johns Hopkins University, where he works on prosthetic hand research, including a glove that can detect if an object is slipping through its grasp.

Roberts’ YOBISing experience didn’t end with his winning entry and the Grammy Awards. Entrants in 2011 will be greeted by videos of Roberts, who is the host of this year’s competition.

— Connor Aylsworth ’08