UMBC News

As the increased number of bumper stickers, yard signs and TV debate ratings attest, passions are running high this election season. Students at UMBC, many of them first-time voters, are no exception and will be making their voices heard by bringing their elected officials to campus for a bipartisan Election Night Extravaganza.

UMBC achieved an important milestone in its 2006 reaccreditation process when the Middle States Commission on Higher Education approved the University's self-study design.

Azar Nafisi's New York Times best-seller Reading Lolita in Tehran has raised a lot of interesting questions about women's roles in the expanding global community and the often underestimated power of literature to move ideological mountains. What's more, her memoirs depicting her experience as a resigned university professor hosting a clandestine reading group in her home reminds us how freedom can find a voice in the most repressive circumstances. Nafasi will discuss her book at UMBC on November 9 (7 p.m., U.C. Ballroom).

UMBC announced today that three new tenants have agreed to move into the second building in bwtech@UMBC, the university's on-campus research and technology park. The new arrivals include the award-winning information technology firm BDMetrics, Inc.; the $148 million NASA Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology Center; and all UMBC departments related to technology transfer and entrepreneurship education.

Meet the newest members of the UMBC community.

American Studies Professor Warren Belasco discusses the origins of the Thanksgiving feast.

The UMBC Department of Theatre presents Fanshen by David Hare, directed by Xerxes Mehta, from December 2 through 12 at the UMBC Theatre. A fascinating play from one of England’s greatest playwrights, David Hare’s Fanshen throws a brilliant light on the critical years in the late 1940s that gave birth to modern China by focusing on one village’s struggle to survive war, want, oppression and corruption.