As the spring semester wound down at UMBC, a group of dedicated students was gearing up for their latest adventure. The week before finals, 12 students from the Society of Automotive Engineering’s (SAE’s) Baja racing team traveled almost 3,000 miles to Washougal, Washington, just across the border from Oregon, to compete with their custom-built, single-seat, off-road vehicle in a grueling set of challenges over four days.
Baja SAE draws more than 100 college teams from around the world, who spend a whole year designing, building, and racing their cars. The competitions, which happen three times a year, present a series of tests, from static events such as safety inspections and budgeting and sales presentations, to dynamic events that test the vehicles’ acceleration, traction, maneuverability, and suspension. To cap it all off, cars then compete in a grueling, four-hour endurance race, taking as many laps as possible around a punishing track that often includes steep, dirt hills, mud pits, high-speed straights, hairpin turns, and rocky, rutted, obstacles-strewn sections. Vehicles regularly flip over. On-the-spot repairs are a must.
The UMBC car, driven by Daniel Hessler, competing at the 2026 Baja SAE Oregon endurance event (left) and hill climb event (right). (Photos by Hasan Aslam)
“I’ll remember endurance day the most, same as every competition,” says Matt Crum, a sophomore majoring in financial economics, who traveled with the team to Washington and played a key role in the design presentation. In endurance, the UMBC car completed 40 laps, earning an 11th-place spot out of 76 teams. Considering all events, UMBC finished 12th overall, and took first place in the cost event.
From June 11 – 14 the team took the car to the second competition of the year, held in Palmyra, New York, and finished 11th overall, again taking first place in the cost event. The final competition of the year will be held September 24—27 in Nashport, Ohio.
“We hold our own against much bigger, better-funded schools,” says Shawn Pourifarsi, a junior computer engineering major and co-vice president of the club. “I’m proud of that.”
Drivers hit the track on Faculty and Staff Drive Day 2025. (Video by Elijah Davis, M.F.A. ’21)
Getting their hands dirty
Students on the Baja racing team, which this year includes around 20 team members pursuing a variety of majors, gain valuable experience with a wide range of engineering and business tasks. They work on design refinements using specialized software, get their hands dirty in the shop, and hone skills such as teamwork, budgeting, sales pitching, and working with suppliers.
Team members Matt Crum (left, changing a tire), Daniel Hessler, and Oscar Coreas Otero (right) work on the car in the machine shop. (Brad Ziegler/UMBC)
The team connects with numerous local businesses, many of whom offer support by donating parts and providing expert advice. One local sponsor, Robnet, a Baltimore-based supplier of bolts and screws, has supported the team for more than 20 years.
“We love UMBC racing,” says Eric Edelstein, head of sales at Robnet, as he helped students get an important bolt before they headed across the country for the first race of the season.
Racing club members put in varying hours, depending on their responsibilities and their availability. Collectively, they spend more than 1,000 hours each year working on the car. For the students who become deeply involved in the team, the experience is deeply rewarding.
William Busch (left) and Shawn Pourifarsi (center) speak with Eric Edelstein, head of sales at Robnet. (Brad Ziegler/UMBC)
William Busch, a senior majoring in information technology, was one of the drivers of the car at the Washington/Oregon event. He says entering the competition site on the first morning of the event was especially memorable. “It was the second time I had been to the event site with our team, once in 2023 as a freshman and again now as a senior. So it felt like a real full circle moment,” he says.
“I joined the Baja team because I really liked cars,” says Crum. “I stayed because the culture is undeniably the best. I learn things every day that I wouldn’t be able to learn anywhere else.”
Club president Aiden Dement, a senior majoring in mechanical engineering, offers an even simpler reason for staying involved: ”It gets me out of my dorm room,” he says. Several thousand miles of road-tripping later, you could conclude the experience is certainly living up to that goal.
The team visited Badlands National Park in South Dakota on their road trip west, stopping to photograph the car against the backdrop of the park’s distinct geological formations. (Photo by Hasan Aslam)
Anyone passing by Room 208 of the Sondheim Building this spring might have thought the class was a Latin American music appreciation course. Projected on the screen was a video of the Mexican band Los Ángeles Azules (“The Blue Angels”), featuring Natalia Lafourcade singing “Nunca Es Suficiente” (“It’s Never Enough”).
In Silvia Escanilla Huerta’s history classroom, music is not background noise but a historical text carrying centuries of migration, colonialism, resistance, and cultural exchange. “Nunca Es Suficiente” is a modern Mexican interpretation of Colombian cumbia, a 200-year-old genre of music created with African, Indigenous, and European acoustic instruments. Escanilla Huerta uses material culture—songs, videos, poems, documentaries, art, and student-created work—to awaken students’ senses and engage their interest in the complex history of Latin America.
Escanilla Huerta has found that using material culture helps students connect abstract historical ideas with concrete experiences, inviting students to think critically about how these practices evolved and impact the world today. She guides students as they analyze and compare primary and secondary sources from the past and the present to critique what is missing from historical records. Critical research analysis skills she honed while she was conducting archival research in Spain, Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru on the role indigenous peoples played in the process of independence in what today are Peru and Bolivia.
“I try to entertain and make it fun, not just for them but for me too, because I’ve worked with this material for decades. I want it to come alive for them as it did for me,” says Escanilla Huerta, the first tenure-track faculty member and the first Latina in UMBC’s history department to teach Latin American history. “I dance, I speak in Spanish, and translate Spanish-language texts for the class. We watch videos, listen to music, and connect this media to specific points in history,” Escanilla explains while the students continue to listen to the song, “like today’s topic, the Guatemalan and Cuban revolutions in post-WWII Latin America.”
The art of revolution
As the song “Nunca Es Suficiente” came to an end, Escanilla Huerta lowered the volume and projected “Gloriosa Victoria,” a painting by Mexican muralist Diego Rivera depicting the coup of 1954 as a segue into the Guatemalan revolution of 1944 to 1954 against Jorge Ubico’s dictatorship. The students scan the mural in anticipation of their next point of analysis.
“What do you see?” asks Escanilla Huerta. Students describe the crowded painting filled with Guatemalan and U.S. politicians, military and business leaders, in a tense negotiation while a bishop blesses them. “On the top right-hand corner, I can’t tell whether it’s people at a window with bars or jail,” says one student. Escanilla Huerta confirms that it’s a jail and then draws their attention to specific elements like a man holding a bomb with the face of the U.S. President Eisenhower, surrounded by people who were murdered during the coup.
To further contextualize what Rivera was reacting to, she explains the political tensions of the time. “The revolution succeeded, bringing an elected democratic government for 10 years,” said Escanilla Huerta. “Until opposition from other political parties and U.S.-based corporate interests led the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to topple the government in 1954.” Back and forth, Escanilla Huerta and the students unpack the mural scene, connecting each scene to their readings and to today’s geopolitical wars.
She also urges students to think beyond identifying the iconic representations of abuses of power and to critique the artists themselves, their motives, and their lives. “The painting is a clear denunciation of corruption, but the artist himself has a complex history that, while he defends the people, he is also sexist and abusive. History is complex, and we need to consider all aspects.”
So you want a revolution
Shifting from fine art to pop art, Escanilla Huerta displays a poster of a man’s face wearing a black beret marked with a gold star and military fatigues, set against a vivid red backdrop. “Does anyone know who this is?” Some students nodded, but few knew the history behind the image.
Escanilla Huerta discusses the life of Ché Guevara.
“Like many revered historical figures, Ernesto Guevara de la Serna, better known as Ché, is loved by people all over the world, but he is also controversial,” explains Escanilla Huerta. Nearly 60 years after his CIA-assisted execution, Guevara’s likeness remains one of the most recognizable symbols of Latin American revolution, reproduced on T-shirts, hats, and posters worldwide.
Students look at their own t-shirts as Escanilla Huerta encourages the class to connect two points: How merchandising is used to make personal political statements and how popular culture can keep the memory of a movement or a person long after they’re gone through merchandising, literature, and music. “Ché was a Marxist revolutionary who believed armed revolution was the only path to liberation from oppressive local governments and U.S. interventionism,” she says, clicking through historic black-and-white photos of Ché in Cuba.
“He developed his political ideology while he was a medical student during a motorcycle trip across Latin America where he witnessed the oppression of Indigenous and rural communities,” says Escanilla Huerta, emphasizing how college students can create change in a variety of ways while passing out copies of poems, songs, political cartoons, and a 1959 television interview, for students to read, compare, and discuss in groups.
Expanding on the idea of revolution, Escanilla Huerta introduces “Revolution” by the Beatles, released in 1968, 10 months after Ché was executed. “If you haven’t heard of the Beatles before, I’m very glad I’m the one introducing them to you,” she says, smiling and nodding to the beat. “I want you to listen to the lyrics, and then we can contrast Ché’s idea of revolution with the Beatles’ idea of revolution.” The song opens with the lines: You say you want a revolution / Well, you know / We all want to change the world. Hands quickly shoot up as students begin connecting Ché’s call for armed resistance with the Beatles’ more skeptical view of revolution and whether radical change truly transforms who holds power.
What are you willing to fight for
She ends the discussion by asking students to place themselves as active agents in history. “Now, what do you think it takes to become a revolutionary? What do you care about that you would like to change?” asks Escanilla Huerta as she passes out sheets featuring Guevara’s iconic red-and-black image. Faces lower, pencils race across the page, and within minutes, students tape their responses to the back wall for the class to see. Together, they move to the opposite side of the classroom to take in the full wall of ideas.
Students review a poem about Ché Guevara and write their ideas for social change.
“Who wants to share what they want to change in the world? What is worth fighting for?” asks Escanilla Huerta. One student’s hand flies up: “I want independence for Wales,” they say, explaining how Wales is a country conquered by England that remains under British rule. Another wants an end to the war between Israel and Palestine and the corporations profiting from it. Others bring the discussion closer to home, raising concerns about transportation equity in Baltimore, where public transit remains inaccessible in many areas. Standing at the front of the classroom and looking at their collective wall of ideas, students begin to recognize that history is shaped by people who choose to follow ideals—for better or worse, depending on who is telling the story.
We’re still here
“I don’t want the class to become a long list of injustices that have happened on Latin American soil,” says Escanilla Huerta, who was born and raised in Argentina. Just like she uses material culture of decades past, she also brings the present into the classroom to show that Latin American history doesn’t end with massacres—it’s so much more. “Despite all that pain, we have always carried joy, pride, and a fighting spirit. That’s why we also analyze examples of joy like Bad Bunny.”
The Puerto Rican singer-songwriter’s 2026 Super Bowl LX halftime performance was the kind of stadium-scale material culture Escanilla Huerta would love to bring into the classroom. Across the stadium floor were vivid representations of Puerto Rican history: workers in sugar cane fields, people trading gold, and the Puerto Rican independence flag flying high, connecting a painful colonial past with a joyful present through a lively house party scene celebrating Puerto Rican dance traditions, vendors selling local treats, and the flags of every Latin American country flanking both sides of the field.
While it may not be the Super Bowl, this spring in room 208 Sondheim, Escanilla Huerta similarly brought modern Latin American history and contemporary culture into the classroom to remind students, as Bad Bunny said in the final line of his Super Bowl performance, “Seguimos aquí!/We’re still here!”
Alfred Boakye first began thinking deeply about the care and well-being of elders and their families while caring for his centenarian grandmother, Margaret Nyarko, in his home city of Tema, on the Atlantic coast of South East Ghana. She was in charge of her essential self-care routine—bathing, dressing, eating, toileting, transferring from sitting to standing, and continence—and more complex daily tasks necessary for independent living: medication management, meal preparation, transportation, and shopping. But even with her mobility, his grandmother lacked a social network.
Acting as both a devoted grandchild and a caretaker, Boakye experienced firsthand the complexities of aging. He learned to respect his grandmother’s independence while finding ways to support her where she needed help. Boakye, now a UMBC gerontology Ph.D. student in the social, cultural, and behavioral track, notes that his grandmother’s children didn’t live with her, and her grandchildren didn’t understand her aging process. As her friends and siblings passed away, her social circle shrank. “I asked her what motivated her to stay at church for hours, and she says the church supports her, brings her communion, visits her, and brings her Christmas gifts.”
After earning a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in human resources at the University of Ghana, Boakye wanted to broaden his understanding of aging and caregiving. In 2021, he moved to the United States to pursue a master’s degree in gerontology at Georgia State University (GSU), where he met his mentor and master’s thesis chair, Jennifer Craft Morgan, professor and director of the GSU Gerontology Institute.
Boakye at his GSU master’s graduation. (l-r): Antonius Skipper, assistant professor of gerontology at GSU and Boakye’s master’s thesis committee member; Reverend Kwaku Owusu-Boachie, Boakye’s uncle; Boakye; and Craft Morgan. (Image courtesy of Boakye)
In 2023, the year his grandmother passed away and the year he completed his master’s at GSU, Boakye published his first aging-related article, “Does the Church Care? Assessment of Social Support Strategies on the Health and Wellbeing of Older Adults within the Tema Metropolitan Assembly-Ghana” in the African Journal of Ageing Studies.
Craft Morgan fostered Boakye’s interest in gerontology and encouraged him to continue his work at the doctoral level, leading him to UMBC’s gerontology doctoral program, which is an interdisciplinary program in collaboration with the University of Baltimore. “Professor Craft Morgan has held my hand from the day I started my master’s program and continues to do so today,” says Boakye. “I always feel privileged that I have her in my corner.”
Stigma of male caregivers
Boakye’s studies are also informed by his experience being the primary caregiver to his father. Before moving to the U.S., Boakye did the grocery shopping, cooking, and laundry for Stephen, his 76‑year‑old father. He became aware of the multiple obligations children have when caretaking for themselves, their families, and their parents, as well as the isolation that can happen, especially if you are a male caregiver.
At the time, Boakye saw himself as being a “helpful child,” a term associated with a Ghanaian proverb that states, “If they take care of you to grow your teeth, you take care of them to lose theirs.” The proverb is more than words—it is a way of life in Ghana, which reinforced Boakye’s caregiving role and emphasized what it takes to be a helpful child—one built on responsibility and reciprocity. But it’s easier said than done. “I had to juggle my ‘identity’ as a male caregiver in a historically patriarchal society with my caring masculinity,” says Boakye. “Caregiving is predominantly perceived as ‘women’s work’ in Ghana, and men who take on these roles are often stigmatized and labeled ‘Kojo besia,’ which translates to ‘man woman’. To avoid such labeling, I was hesitant to ask for help, despite the toll caregiving took on my physical and psychological well‑being.”
Boakye presents his research on male caregiving to GSA leadership during their visit to UMBC in spring 2026. (Bradley Ziegler/UMBC)
Boakye presented his research and personal experience to the leadership of the Gerontological Society of America (GSA) during their visit to UMBC this spring. Thanks to the UMB Provost’s Global Scholar Program, Boakye will be traveling to Ghana this summer to engage with male caregivers—to listen to their caregiving experiences, explore what these experiences mean to them, and co‑create resources to support them. He will use this research to finish his master’s thesis in applied sociology—Boakye’s third master’s degree.
Meeting Japan’s centenarians
In 2024, Boakye joined the Global Healthy Aging in Japan study abroad program, organized by Taka Yamashita, professor of sociology, anthropology, and public health and co-director of the gerontology doctoral program. The two-week program leads students through research, community centers, and historic sites in Kanagawa Prefecture, near Tokyo. Japan is known for its cutting-edge research and policy that supports the active lives of the world’s largest aging population and the highest number of centenarians. The students visited multigenerational living communities and centers that merge theoretical research with real-world practice and outcomes.
Boakye (second row, fifth from the left) at a senior center in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan. (Image courtesy of TakaYamishita, professor of gerontology and sociology, second row, first on the right)
Boakye was not expecting that at a time when he was missing his grandmother the most, Kanagawa would make him feel like he was home in Tema. It wasn’t only that both Japan and Ghana operate on a similar collective familial care system focused on intergenerational living and inclusion, notes Boakye. It’s also the physical environment. “The buildings are close together, and people put chairs in front of their homes to talk,” says Boakye. “Older adults greet passersby, and people stop to have a conversation with them. They will tell you they are out for a little sun.”
A highlight of the trip for all the students was meeting a supercentenarian. The 110-year-old woman welcomed them and kissed each of them on the cheek. “All the students say that they were blessed to have this welcome and that she could still talk to us,” says Boakye. “It was really emotional for me. I just kept thinking of my grandmother.”
Boakye was also impressed by the Kanagawa ME-BYO approach to aging, which encourages monitoring vital signs using biomedical technologies. ME-BYO focuses on preventing and minimizing illness progression through programs that promote healthy behaviors such as a balanced diet, exercise, and social activities. “My experience in Japan has been one of the best things that has happened in my personal and academic life and in my career,” says Boakye, who wants to find a way to incorporate ME-BYO into his current and future caregiving research and practice. “This trip has equipped me with the cultural competence, literacy, sensitivity, communication, problem-solving, and critical thinking skills needed to have a real-world impact in the field of gerontology.”
Looking Ahead
With five years of longevity research, Boakye now understands that his grandmother’s experience is common for many older adults in Ghana. He discovered in the 2021 Population and Housing Census of Ghana that adults 65 years of age and older make up 4.3 percent of Ghana’s population. However, he explains, the need for person-centred and geriatric care services has not kept up with the demand.
“I feel like I am now clearly connecting the dots between my experiences in Ghana, what I saw in Japan, and what I have learned in class. I am passionate about encouraging more men to engage and support the people they love, but also seek help when they need it,” says Boakye. He plans to finish his doctoral program in fall 2027.
“It has been a pleasure to watch Alfred’s research grow during his time at UMBC,” says Nancy Kusmaul, professor at UMBC’s School of Social Work, his dissertation chair, who Boakye works with as a research assistant. “He is committed to raising the voices of paid and unpaid caregivers who provide vital services to older adults and people with disabilities in the US and abroad. I am confident that he will continue to make significant contributions to the field.”
He knows there is a long road ahead, but he is confident that he is on the right path. “I want to build culturally relevant and gender‑sensitive resources that support male caregivers, not only to improve their health and well‑being but also to amplify their voices when it matters most.” His grandmother, Margaret, continues to inspire Boakye’s work on how caregiving shapes the experiences of both the carer and the care recipient.
Each plant, whether a small wild buttercup or a massive oak tree, starts out as seed—packed with potential to grow well beyond its original size. By this logic, The Garden’s new Little Seed Library—co-sponsored by Retriever Essentials and the Office of Sustainability and installed by Facilities Management—is seeded with infinite potential.
Based on the now-familiar concept of Little Free Libraries that spread access to the love of reading, the Little Seed Library, down the sidewalk from UMBC Police, is set up for people to donate seeds (perhaps harvested from the adjacent garden) and those who want to put their green thumb to the test can take what they need to get started.
Laila Kaira takes a look at what’s available in the Little Seed Library.
The idea stemmed from conversations Michael Berardi, assistant director of Retriever Essentials, was having with folks on campus about tangible ways to grow interest in the community garden while wanting to grow awareness of where our food actually comes from. “We want to help campus engage with our food in a more deep and meaningful way,” says Berardi ’19, M.P.S. ’25, who was also a co-founder of the campus-adjacent coffee shop, OCA Mocha.
Andrew Eisenhardt ’21 was one of the people talking to Berardi. He remembers: “We were hiking in the woods of Patapsco State Park brainstorming some ideas for Retriever Essentials. I had recently seen a YouTube video where a community put up seed libraries and people could go to get new seeds and donate their excess. I figured it could be cool to have something like that at UMBC.” Eisenhardt, who already graduated with a double major in geography and environmental systems and media and communication studies and is currently pursuing another bachelor’s in computer engineering, started working in The Garden during his first time at UMBC when he needed a break from doing homework and wanted to see what opportunities were on-campus to get outside and work with nature. “The Little Seed Library serves as a great starting point for community members to participate in and learn about this work,” he says. “Just get a seed, throw it in some soil and see what happens! Worst case scenario, your seed never germinates. Either way you’ll learn something about plants and you might even make some friends along the way who are trying to grow a better future.”
Jessica Graziano, who has been tending a plot in The Garden for several years, only foresees fruitful outcomes for the Little Seed Library. Eventually, in addition to seeds and instructions for planting, Graziano would like to see folks donate gardening tools and horticultural resources. Graziano, the current president of The Garden club, says her favorite thing to grow is perennials. “My current favorite is False Indigo, which I’ve had growing in my plot at The Garden for about two and a half years,” she shares. Recently recognized with a UMBC Community Impact award at SGA’s 2025 – 2026 CelebratingOrgs event, The Garden is lush with promise.
Nicole Wolf, UMBC’s sustainability coordinator, says that the Office of Sustainability has some nutrient rich ideas coming up in connection with the other organizations that help support The Garden. But in the meantime, “access to free seeds and gardening space removes the barrier of not knowing where to start, or even having to leave campus if they choose to use the community plots,” says Wolf. “We will continue to foster this culture by hosting regular ‘seed save collection’ events on our campus to keep the library stocked while teaching attendees about native plants and how to harvest ethically as we go.”
Beryl Fuamazeh ’26, biology, and a minor in health, wellness, and aging, is on her way to Howard University College of Medicine. After connecting with Nancy Kusmaul, professor of social work, Beryl found her research interests piqued by learning more about healthcare and aging care. While at UMBC, Beryl worked as a nursing assistant at a retirement community and volunteered for an organization that supports people with disabilities and older adults. After presenting her research at UMBC’s Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day, she received the Erickson School of Aging Studies Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Research.
Beryl transferred to UMBC from the Community College of Baltimore County through the Degrees to Succeed program, and says that the support and funding she’s received from UMBC has made her education affordable and given her time to focus on her passion: healthcare and aging. Outside of school and work, she loves watching Korean dramas.
Q: Tell us about someone in the UMBC community who has inspired you.
A: Dr. Nancy Kusmaul is my research mentor, and she has been instrumental in my undergraduate research journey. The work she does to support the aging community has deeply inspired me. I have also been greatly influenced by Professor Mary Carter, an English professor here, who taught me how to better express myself through writing—a skill that was invaluable during my medical school application process. The support and guidance both faculty members have given me have truly shaped my experience at UMBC.
Q: Tell us about what you love about your academic program.
A: I’ve really enjoyed being part of the Erickson School of Aging Studies through my minor in health, wellness, and aging. Many of the classes I’ve taken have been meaningful because I can directly apply what I learn to my work as a nursing assistant in a retirement community. My biology major has also given me a strong foundation as I prepare to matriculate into medical school.
Q: What’s one thing you’d want someone to know about the support you find here?
A: Because it’s a smaller university, I’ve been able to build meaningful one-on-one relationships with professors, which has been incredibly valuable. I’ve also loved being surrounded by students who are passionate, driven, and genuinely supportive of one another, especially within the sciences. UMBC is a very supportive community.
Q: What brought you to UMBC in the first place?
A: I wanted to further my education while building meaningful relationships along the way. As someone pursuing the pre-med path, I knew it was important to be surrounded by supportive, like-minded people, and UMBC provided that for me, especially as a transfer student from the Community College of Baltimore County.
I was also drawn to the smaller campus environment, which made it easier to adapt and connect with professors and peers. Through my community college’s Degrees to Succeed partnership program, I was introduced to UMBC and the opportunities it offered, including research experiences, mentorship, and a strong academic community.
Right: Fuamazeh next to her poster at URCAD 2025.
Q: Tell us about the people who are helping you grow at UMBC.
A: Dr. Nancy Kusmaul has been incredibly instrumental in helping me grow at UMBC. She helped me kickstart my undergraduate research journey, which initially felt very daunting. All it took was reaching out to her by email, and she was immediately supportive and responsive. She took time out of her busy schedule to help me develop an individualized research study focused on aging, a topic that has become deeply meaningful to me and the communities it impacts.
Q: How have you connected with the community?
A: I have been involved in community programs, like volunteering with the Trusted Ride Program at Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital, which supports older adults and individuals with disabilities by helping them get to medical appointments safely. Experiences like this have allowed me to stay connected to the community while pursuing my interests in healthcare and aging.
Q: What would you tell others who are in your shoes about UMBC?
A: I transferred to UMBC from the Community College of Baltimore County, and through scholarships and financial support, including merit-based awards, UMBC helped ease the financial burden of pursuing higher education, which allowed me to focus more on my academics and future goals. I also felt well supported as a transfer student through the Degrees to Succeed program, even before officially transferring to UMBC. The transition felt smooth, and I always felt like there were people willing to help guide me along the way.
UMBC’s greatest strength is its people. When people meet Retrievers and hear about the passion they bring, the relationships they create, the ways they support each other, and the commitment they have to inclusive excellence, they truly get a sense of our community. That’s what “Meet a Retriever” is all about.
Originally approached with a quilting mystery that began in 1846, a summer CoLab pulled a group of Retrievers together to examine the evidence. The detective pack expanded their search into robust research and, along the way, discovered how the communal process of sewing storytelling quilts lets these works of art transcend time.
Those in the quilting community know that the charm pack is a pre-cut bundle of fabric squares that can be used to create the patchwork for the top layer of a quilt. This story begins with a team that can be considered a sort of Charm Pack: expert quilters Mimi Dietrich, Monique Crabb, and Christa Gilliam, and researchers Sarah Fouts, Kat Gill, Ben Kayes, and Alyssa Thomas.
Gilliam (center) discusses the measurements of different quilts. Left to right: Dietrich, Gill, Fouts, and Crabb.
The pack first came together to solve a mystery for art collector Henry Stansbury, who bought a quilt at an auction 35 years ago with the words “Elizabeth Stansbury 1846” stitched into it. Last year, Stansbury showed this quilt to Dietrich, along with a second one he bought, stitched with the names Elizabeth and Mary Stansbury. Dietrich ’70, American studies, a member of UMBC’s Founding Four, has written 17 quilting books and has been an active part of the Baltimore quilting community since the 1980s. One look at the quilts and Dietrich could identify the type of fabric, the stitches used, and the style of quilt—a Baltimore Album Quilt. But these details didn’t give any clues about the Stansburys.
Looking closely at the Stansbury Baltimore Album Quilt.
The pair turned to Sarah Fouts, associate professor of American studies and co-director of UMBC’s Orser Center for Public Humanities, for help. Fouts saw this as a great opportunity for a summer CoLab—where students and faculty conduct humanities research with a community partner and create public-facing projects. Enter the Storytelling through Baltimore Album Quilts 2025 CoLab.
Are the Stansbury quilts lost family heirlooms? Who are Elizabeth and Mary Stansbury? Are these two quilts telling the story of unrelated families with only the buyer to tie them together? The quick answer is no. “We never doubted they were related,” says Fouts. “There were just too many Elizabeths and Mary Stansburys that we couldn’t link it to a direct family line.” The longer, more complex answer is that all the threads led to a basement full of treasures and $10,000.
The sandwich
A quilt has three layers: the quilt top, the batting or insulating layer, and the backing or the bottom layer of fabric, formally known as the quilt sandwich. These pieces create the whole, and Fouts needed to find all the pieces of the sandwich, so she sent out a call for student interns to join the quilt-mystery-turned-humanities-research CoLab. Then she gathered a team of quilting experts: Dietrich, Crabb, M.F.A. ’22, and Gilliam, an associate professor of social work at Morgan State University who uses African-print fabrics to create quilts about her lived experience.
The original brochure for quilt makers in 1981. (Image courtesy of Dietrich)
The first to join was Crabb, a Mexican American artist, who began quilting in 2014 and uses plant dyes, photography, thrift fabrics, and various quilting techniques to create quilts that reflect personal histories and feminism. As an adjunct professor at MICA, Crabb teaches 16 fiber-related processes in her Intro to Fiber class. But before the project even began, it took a turn. Crabb liked the idea, but encouraged Fouts and Deitrich to go to the basement of City Hall. Crabb knew that if they thought the Stansbury quilt was a find, the bowels of City Hall would dazzle them. She was right. Hanging in front of them was not one, but several different types of quilts from the Great Baltimore’s Best Quilting Contest of 1981, and they realized one of the participants was standing among them.
The inaugural citywide quilt competition, which Dietrich entered, celebrated Baltimore’s transportation, architecture, industry, people, and plants and animals. “I was surprised to see that the quilts were in the basement,” says Dietrich. Hers is stored at the Maryland Center for Culture and History (MCHC). “I entered the contest because I’ve always lived in Baltimore County.”
Dietrich’s entry for the Great Baltimore’s Best Quilting Contest of 1981. (Image courtesy of the Maryland Center for History and Culture)
This treasure added multiple layers to the Charm Pack’s work. Now, it wasn’t about one quilt story, but many. Quilts made by residents from across Baltimore who, in 1981, chose to bring forth their vision of Baltimore through needle and thread. Who were these craftspeople? What was the history of the contest? And why did the Great Baltimore’s Best Quilting Contest have to live in the past?
“It’s good to learn something else from what you’re trying to find out,” said Dietrich, and with that, students across the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences took up the mantle of citizen investigators. Gill, an American studies and English senior; Kayes, a theatre design and production junior; and Thomas ’25, Asian studies, made the cut. They analyzed historical records, photographs, and documents from the Library of Congress, Maryland State Archives, Maryland Historical Society, and the Maryland Quilt Heritage Project, and quickly solved the first mystery. No records tied Henry Stansbury directly to the quilts. However, the trail did connect the deep red that bordered the quilt and was used throughout the blocks, as well as the indigo used to color bluebirds in mid-flight to Maryland and beyond.
“Wonderful natural dyes have dyed the fabric on this quilt. The red throughout is made from turkey red… matter root that is grown here in America,” said Gill, in a video the lab co-produced with the Baltimore Heritage organization. “We also have this wonderful indigo blue that is very vibrant on the bird, which is from the indigo plant and is also made here in America, but is also imported from Latin and South America as well.”
The quilts the students researched were examples of how one person’s quilt tells more than one story. From the thread and needle chosen to the types of dyes on a cloth, each piece can stand as its own narrative, but once stitched together, a more complex one can emerge. “Quilts became powerful analytical tools, allowing students to interrogate intersections of class, race, gender, and globalization and demonstrating how even the most familiar objects are embedded in complex and often unequal systems,” says Fouts.
The blocks
Blocks are individual units of fabric sewn together with other identical or different blocks to form the main pattern of a quilt top. With the Stansbury mystery partially solved, everyone turned their efforts to studying the technical, communal, and historic aspects of Baltimore Album Quilts, which were named after a book where each page commemorated a friendship, like the adjacent blocks of a quilt.
To learn from the masters behind the craft, Dietrich introduced the students to 20 Baltimore quilt-makers. Kayes interviewed Crabb about the natural dyes and contemporary quilting practices. Thomas interviewed Gilliam about embellishments and Black quilting traditions in Baltimore. Gilliam is a fiber artist and member of the African American Quilters of Baltimore, and a former Maryland Folklife Apprentice of Vera Hall, a prominent Maryland African American master quilter.
Gilliam with the “Golden Time of Day” quilt she quilted, left, and “She Who Wears the Crown,” applique, machine quilted, by Gilliam, right.
With nearly a decade of experience in quilt making, Gilliam once created a quilt titled “She Who Wears A Crown,” to help her students understand the 2019 Crown Act that protects against discrimination based on race-based hairstyles by extending statutory protection to hair texture and protective styles such as braids, locs, twists, and knots in the workplace and public schools.
“What excites me most about my work is the ability to work in community and meet so many young people who are interested in learning about the history of quilting,” says Gilliam. “Quilting allows us to learn and teach the stories that connect us to the past.”
The binding
When all the measuring, cutting, dying, and stitching have told the story, the quilter binds it together by sewing a strip of fabric around the edges to cover the raw edges of the quilt sandwich. It acts as a protective border to prevent fraying and provides a polished look.
After four weeks and 130 hours of research, the CoLab, in partnership with Baltimore Heritage, co-produced five oral histories on Dietrich, Crabb, Gilliam, Stansbury, and Catherine Rogers Arthur, vice president of collections and chief curator of MCHC.
But there was still one more loose thread. Crabb didn’t think the Baltimore Album Quilt story should have ended in 1981. The 1981 competition was hosted by Baltimore City Hall, with a grand prize of $1,500. In 2025, Fouts reached out to City Hall for support to resurrect the competition. The positive response was not only immediate but backed with a $10,000 prize for the contest. Maryland State Art Council had already committed $7,000 to operations.
With the support of Baltimore City’s Mayor’s Office of Arts, Culture, and Entertainment and Maryland State Art Council’s Maryland Folklife Network, the CoLab has renewed the competition, titled “Homage to Baltimore Quilting Competition.” By April 1, 2026, 52 people submitted quilts. After Gilliam, Crabb, and Dietrich judged the final round of quilts, a $5,000 grand prize was presented at the opening exhibition on June 6, 2026, at Current Space.
“Homage to Baltimore Quilting Competition” exhibit at Current Space on June 6, 2026. (Image by Vivian Marie Doering)
The winning quilt does it all: each of the 18 blocks of the hand- and machine-stitched quilt tells the story of Baltimore’s history using a lens from the present. Created by Piecing with Purpose Quilt Collective, “Baltimore Citizens, from Past to Present, on a Zoom Call” unites the city’s legendary movers and shakers in conversation with each other.
First place: “Baltimore Citizens, from Past to Present, on a Zoom Call,” by Piecing with Purpose Quilt Collective. (Image by Vivian Marie Doering) Left to right: Second place, “The Doorway of a Rowhome at Dawn’s Early Light,” by Sharon Coffman. Third place, “All My Dreams Started in East Baltimore,” by Kianga Jinaki. (Images courtesy of Fouts)
Two of the 1981 quilts were also on display at the Current Space exhibition, along with a zine by Abby Wheatley, a junior graphic design major, illustrating the history of the 1981 competition. “It’ll be exciting to see the continuity of themes over the 45 years of the competition,” Fouts says, “and, through the historical side, we can bring to life some of the co-lab’s archival work.” The top three winning quilts in the competition will be displayed in public schools. The Mayor’s Office has committed to continuing the competition in the future.
What began as a 19th-century quilting mystery evolved into a colorful and accessible competition—celebrating a wide range of voices and inviting people to wrap themselves up in Baltimore.
“I was fascinated with the CoLab experience and how the students shared their progress,” says Dietrich. “I love seeing how UMBC has grown. It’s amazing to see it through the eyes of someone who was here when it opened. There are so many different choices for engaged learning.”
Magnets often attract curious minds. Einstein told of his profound sense of hidden order after witnessing the invisible forces of the Earth’s magnetic field guide the needle of a compass. For Ethan Bowers, it was the wonder of learning Maxwell’s laws—equations developed by 19th-century Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell that unite magnetism, electricity, and light—that really pulled him in.
Now a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering, Bowers is building a massive, one-of-a-kind research magnet. It weighs more than 2,300 pounds and will be capable of generating a magnetic field of 7 tesla (roughly 140,000 times stronger than the Earth’s magnetic field and more than twice as strong as the field in most MRI machines).
Making the magnet has been the labor of multiple researchers over more than a decade, led by mechanical engineering associate professor Carlos Romero Talamás, who plans to use the magnet to conduct experiments on plasma, the superheated soup of particles found in stars, lighting, and the Aurora Borealis, and which makes up more than 99 percent of the visible universe.
An initial magnet design and analysis was completed by Evan Bates, M.S. ’15, Ph.D. ’18, mechanical engineering. In 2023, Bowers, who had returned as a student to UMBC following a stint in industry, joined the project. He redesigned key aspects of the magnet and began the meticulous work of assembling and testing it. In the coming months, Bowers plans to run the magnet up to full strength. Then the real fun begins: Unleashing the new tool to help answer the questions curious minds dream up.
Tools of the trade
Mechanical and electrical know-how
Perseverance
Heavy-lifting equipment (custom designed)
A serious power source and some chilled water (things are going to get hot)
Step 1: Brush up on your magnet basics
Bowers illuminates a Bitter disk with a backlight. (Brad Ziegler/UMBC)
Say “magnet,” and many people think first of the objects affixing their kids’ artwork to the fridge. Refrigerator magnets are an example of permanent magnets: materials in which the electrons permanently align in a way that generates a magnetic field. Permanent magnets can get quite strong—such as the rare earth neodymium magnets used in some maglev trains—but they top out at about 2 tesla.
To get an even stronger magnet, engineers can turn to a phenomenon that’s captured in the Maxwell equations that captivated Bowers: Electricity and magnetism are intrinsically linked.
Electrons flowing through a wire generate a magnetic field. Coil the wire and you can create a field similar in shape to a permanent bar magnet, with distinct north and south poles. This is the electromagnet. Higher current and more coils make a stronger magnet. However, high current also risks melting your magnet into a puddle and mangling it with the enormous pressure from the magnetic field pushing on the moving electrons (called Lorentz forces).
Superconducting electromagnets, which use material with the almost magical property of showing virtually zero electrical resistance when cooled with liquid helium, can eliminate the melting risk, but are expensive and finicky to operate, and have other limitations.
Another (more old-school) solution is called the Bitter electromagnet, invented in the 1930s by American physicist Francis Bitter. In place of coiled wires, circular metal disks separated with insulating spacers create a helical path that concentrates the current. The disks are shot through with holes for circulating water to whisk away heat and the structural design counteracts the mechanical stresses. “We chose a Bitter magnet because it offered the right combination of features for the tasks we wanted to perform,” Bowers says.
Step 2: Design, test, refine, repeat
The turn density for the magnet is higher at the ends than at the middle. (Photo courtesy of Bowers)
The UMBC team’s initial vision was to create a 10-tesla Bitter magnet, with space in the center for a relatively large vacuum chamber to hold plasma. The magnet could generate either a steady or pulsed magnetic field, depending on the needs of the experiment. Bates analyzed the disk shape, stacking methods, cooling hole geometry, heat transfer, mechanical stress, and electrical properties of the magnet to optimize the design. He validated it by constructing and testing a 1-tesla prototype.
In 2023, the team decided to change the desired magnetic field profile, making it slightly higher on the ends of the magnet than in the middle, so that charged particles would be pushed toward the center. They didn’t want to redesign the Bitter disks, so they had to lower the maximum field strength to 7 tesla. They also had to vary the coil density, making tighter turns at the ends to get the stronger field.
Bowers analyzed the new field profile and worked out a clever trick of adding a tapered insulating disk to seamlessly transition between the areas of tighter and looser turns. He also performed a structural analysis of the whole assembly.
Step 3: Pallets, cranes, and painstaking planning
The final design called for 439 copper Bitter disks, four insulating transition disks, and 434 regular insulating disks housed inside a pressure vessel. Outside companies manufactured the disks, but Bowers personally inspected every single one, removing any with defects, and cleaning the copper ones with isopropyl alcohol. He built a custom pallet to hold the cylindrical assembly in place in the lab, and started stacking.
The process took about a month, and near the end “I was so sick of the monotony,” Bowers says. To push it across the finish line, he worked straight through the weekend, stacking the last disk on a Sunday afternoon in February. “It happened to be my friend’s birthday so I celebrated that completion and their birthday together,” he says.
Next up was moving the approximately 2-foot-high stack of disks to a movable swing set, created by a UMBC mechanical engineering capstone team to serve as a mobile and rotatable platform for the magnet. Bowers built a custom crane fixture to lift the assembly onto the platform and spent weeks planning every step of the move. “It was the last major place the structure could fail before we power the magnet,” he says. After one stressful day, Bowers says he was elated when it all went according to plan. “I felt genuinely grateful for all I had been given the chance to work on, and grateful that God had given me the ability to succeed.”
Bowers shows how the magnet core can be rotated. (Brad Ziegler/UMBC)
Step 4: Test some more
With the core of the magnet assembled, Bowers has also begun the detailed process of testing its electrical properties, using a host of measurement equipment.
At first, he is powering the magnet with lower currents, but eventually he will send 15,000 amps through the disks, about half the current that flows in an average lightning bolt. The voltage will be about five times the voltage in a wall socket.
Safety is of paramount concern to the team when working with such high power. When the magnet is operating at full strength, the energy in two cubic feet of the magnetic field alone will be more than the energy of a small SUV zooming by at 60 miles per hour.
Bowers is working on a set of detailed instructions to address all conceivable operating, maintenance, and failure scenarios. “We’re safe. We do all our due diligence,” he says.
Step 5: Serve up some science
Once the magnet is fully up and running, the science experiments can start. Bowers and Romero Talamás have a few ideas for initial experiments, including investigating how a high magnetic field affects when a gas will suddenly switch from being an insulator to a conductor, allowing current to arc through it. They are also interested in how the magnet might be used to separate different forms of hydrogen—particularly two forms that may form the fuel for future fusion reactors to supply clean and near limitless energy.
Stars—nature’s original fusion reactors—show how plasma and magnetic fields can interact in spectacular fashion. In this image of our sun, taken in July 2012, million-degree plasma in the sun’s atmosphere began to cool and fall to the surface. Because the plasma is charged, it condensed along twisted magnetic field lines close to the surface and formed giant streaming arcs, some as tall as five Earths stacked high. (NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory)
Bowers grew up in rural Hagerstown, Maryland, a kid who enjoyed exploring everything from the rocks on the side of a path to the electrical motors his grandfather would wind. Research has offered him the chance to constantly challenge himself. After graduation, he’ll move on to new questions at the scientific frontiers, perhaps working at a fusion energy start-up or a national lab. But the 7T Bitter magnet will remain at UMBC, a gift to curious students who come after him.
At UMBC, entrepreneurship transcends a traditional business education: It empowers scientists, artists, and technologists to transform their expertise into real-world impact. Through business accelerators, ambassador programs, interdisciplinary courses, and other innovation pathways, the university offers many avenues for ideas to flourish.
Kushani Mendis and her labmates have developed novel nanomaterials that could transform biomedical technology. She wants to translate their discoveries into a business opportunity, but initially, wasn’t sure what steps to take. So, early in her chemistry Ph.D. with Zeev Rosenzweig, professor of chemistry and biochemistry, Mendis told him that she wanted to become an entrepreneur—and he jumped at the chance to creatively support her with internal and external resources.
UMBC has no formal business school. Yet it may be one of the best places in the country to learn entrepreneurial thinking—precisely because the best ideas so often come from those with technical expertise rather than MBAs. Also, many UMBC entrepreneurs are motivated by a desire to drive positive social change rather than profit, which is supported by courses on “socialpreneurship.” Overall, the university’s model rests on a simple but powerful dual thesis: 1) Disciplinary excellence paired with an entrepreneurial mindset produces graduates who create real-world impact, and 2) entrepreneurship is for everyone.
Employers repeatedly say they need graduates who excel in communication, creative problem-solving, collaboration, and constructive conflict navigation. Traits like resilience and empathy are in high demand—after all, finding effective solutions often requires understanding problems from another’s perspective. UMBC’s courses and programs deliberately train these skills, which can enhance the success of entrepreneurs—and every UMBC graduate.
From left to right, Kevin Fulmer, director of the The Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at UMBC, and students Charles Nerad, Abhinav Patel, Aidan Fleischer, and Velma Funebe at the 2026 Maryland Student Venture Showcase in Baltimore. (Photo courtesy of Kevin Fulmer)
The results speak for themselves. Students are winning state and national funding, launching ventures, gaining versatile life skills, and contributing to Maryland’s innovation economy. This spring, two UMBC student teams—iBraid and StrikeSense—each received $50,000 Pava LePere Innovation Awards. Others have advanced through the university’s Summer Launchpad accelerator and secured funding totaling more than $300,000 in the past three years.
An entrepreneurial environment
The roots of UMBC’s entrepreneurship emphasis trace back to 2000, with the founding of the Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Initially led by Vivian Armour and supported by Constellation Energy Group and the Bearman Foundation, the center took off in 2006 the Kauffman Foundation awarded funds to a small cohort of universities including UMBC, as well as Brown, Carnegie Mellon, Arizona State, and Purdue, to further their entrepreneurship efforts. Armour invited Gib Mason ’95, economics, a serial entrepreneur who had been guest lecturing at UMBC, to help steward UMBC’s $2 million Kauffman award.
“Kauffman’s research had shown that it wasn’t the business school students bringing entrepreneurial ideas to the marketplace,” Mason recalls. “It was the engineers and the tech guys and gals.” The foundation’s premise was that exposing disciplinary experts to entrepreneurial environments could help them develop and commercialize new ideas, he explains.
That initiative led to the creation of UMBC’s minor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation. The 18-credit program combines two core entrepreneurship courses with 12 credits from designated courses across UMBC’s three colleges, where faculty have infused entrepreneurial principles into existing major curricula. Today, more than 70 courses in biology, public health, information systems, art, and engineering count toward the minor, making it broadly accessible.
Gib Mason (standing) leads entrepreneurship programming at the UMBC Training Centers. (Marlayna Demond ’11/UMBC)
The center turned 25 this academic year. Kevin Fulmer, its first full-time director and a lifelong entrepreneur, has spent the past five years expanding its reach and visibility. “Before there were any full-time staff, awareness of the center was fairly minimal,” he says. Under his leadership, Introduction to Entrepreneurship—which fills up quickly every semester—was approved as a General Education Program course. The center also launched a student ambassador program, and now six students promote events, support programming, and serve as peer mentors. Faculty can apply for funding to embed entrepreneurial thinking in their courses, and designated faculty fellows from each college are designing discipline-specific tracks within the minor. “We’re trying to make it as accessible for as many students as possible,” Fulmer explains.
A separate master’s in Entrepreneurship, Innovation, and Leadership—developed by Mason and offered through UMBC’s Division of Professional Studies—has served working professionals since 2019 and draws on the same philosophy of practical application. Meanwhile, the center’s summer Launchpad accelerator has supported more than 20 student ventures since 2022; participants receive an $8,000 stipend to dedicate 10-weeks to full-time customer discovery and problem validation. iBraid and StrikeSense, the Maryland award winners, emerged from the accelerator’s pipeline. Additional opportunities include the fall Idea and Innovation Challenge (with a popular social-impact category) and the spring Cangialosi Business Innovation Competition for more developed concepts.
All of this exists without a traditional business school. Instead, UMBC has built an ecosystem that meets students where they are—inside their technical and creative majors—and provides the tools to translate discovery into impact. “Entrepreneurship is for everyone,” the Alex. Brown Center’s website proclaims, regardless of major or career aspirations.
Not-so-risky business
Entrepreneurship at UMBC emphasizes mindset over venture creation alone. “It’s really just about solving problems and using an entrepreneurial mindset to do that,” Fulmer stresses.
Studies suggest that only 30 to 50 percent of graduates nationally are employed in roles directly related to their specific field of study, Fulmer notes. “You may have all the technical skills in the world, but not get these life skills from your major,” he adds. UMBC’s approach prepares students for diverse careers—launching startups, innovating inside a corporation, teaching, or pursuing research—by developing empathy and resilience and building creative problem-solving and communication skills.
Mason challenges the stereotype that entrepreneurs are reckless risk takers. “Most entrepreneurs are constantly making informed decisions to mitigate risks,” he says. He draws from childhood summers working on his grandfather’s Kansas farm, where he earned money from “his” acres of wheat—until one year a tornado destroyed the crop. The experience taught him that “there’s a lot that you can control and a lot that you can’t.” True entrepreneurs, he says, take calculated risks and then work diligently to reduce them.
Many UMBC students are drawn to “socialpreneurship”—ventures that solve societal problems rather than chase profit. “Students today seem especially geared toward trying to do things for social impact,” Mason says. The center’s social-impact track in competitions reflects this, and courses like Creative Problem Solving and The Socialpreneur have led to tangible outcomes, such as OCA Mocha, a coffee shop connecting UMBC with the Baltimore community.
Braiding the future
Velma Funebe, a public health major, embodies this orientation. Her venture, iBraid, uses augmented reality to help users part and braid their own hair—transforming protective styling that can become a multi-day ordeal into a more manageable process. Inspired by braiding her own hair since age 11 and running a professional braiding business since ninth grade, Funebe validated demand via TikTok and conversations. “I realized it was a major problem because so many people struggled with it,” she says. “I couldn’t find any solutions out there.”
As an Entrepreneurship Ambassador, she now supports programming and events like 1 Million Cups, another Kauffman Foundation initiative where entrepreneurs pitch ideas and get feedback. The Baltimore edition meets at OCA Mocha twice monthly. “The scariest part is when the idea is not just in your brain, but other people hear it,” Funebe says. “But I think it’s a great space to get feedback and say, ‘Okay, I can live through an application rejection.’”
Funebe’s faith helps anchor her while she balances classes, leadership in the Public Health Council of Majors, weekend braiding appointments, and venture development. iBraid has gained strong traction: a second-place finish in UMBC’s Idea and Innovation Challenge, the Pava LaPere Innovation Award, a waitlist approaching 4,000, and more than 10,000 TikTok followers. Beta testing is underway, supported in part by two UMBC data science graduate fellows through the Maryland New Venture program at bwtech@UMBC, a business incubator adjacent to campus. iBraid’s momentum continued to build at Maryland New Venture Pitch Night ’26, where Funebe took third place and received the Audience Choice Visionary Award.
“The Alex. Brown Center has played an essential role in helping me to grow my confidence,” she says. To others considering giving entrepreneurship a try, she says, “Don’t be afraid to fail—at least you get a result out of failing, and can learn a lot from it.”
Striking while it’s hot
Abhinav Patel, Charles Nerad, and Aidan Fleischer, co-founders of StrikeSense, channeled frustration with their Taekwondo training into innovation. In competition, expensive electronic wearables detect hits and record scores, but most athletes lack access to that equipment in practice. “I had the idea for a sparring vest with a health bar like something from a video game,” Nerad says.
The team developed an affordable sensor attachment that turns any existing sparring vest into a smart vest capable of detecting and scoring hits, with a gamified “health bar” interface. After placing second in the 2025 Cangialosi Business Innovation Competition, they joined the summer Launchpad program.
“All of the support we have gotten from UMBC has been instrumental, and we wouldn’t be where we are today without it.” Patel notes. Mentors like Donald Miner ’06, Ph.D. 2010, computer science; and Chris Ewing, an “entrepreneur in residence” at bwtech@UMBC, and especially Fulmer provided guidance: “Without him, we would not have had the encouragement to continue, the accountability to work hard, and the guidance to grow,” Nerad adds.
They are now refining software and preparing a pilot program with local dojos. “There is no better time to take a chance on an idea than right now,” Nerad advises. “You are surrounded by thousands of brilliant minds at UMBC, and have access to dedicated mentors who genuinely want you to succeed.”
And Kushani Mendis is now thriving at the intersection of research and entrepreneurship. She’s participated in the Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology, represented UMBC in the regional 3-Minute Thesis competition, and completed training at Brookhaven National Lab through UMBC’s Chemistry and Biology Interface program. To younger scientists, she says: “Being a scientist does not have to mean being confined in a lab. You are a human who has a lot of potential that you can give out to the community.”
Kushani Mendis presented her research at the 2026 Society for Biomaterials Annual Meeting. (Courtesy of Mendis)
As Fulmer puts it, “We’ve always been really great at UMBC at training students’ analytical, left-brain development—but our entrepreneurship programs are promoting right-brain skills as well, which are just as important.”
Extending the ecosystem
Faculty, alumni, and the broader community benefit, too. bwtech@UMBC offers state-of-the-art labs and work spaces, educational programming, mentorship, and industry connections. Many alumni and community members have built businesses there that contribute jobs and innovative products and services to the regional economy.
In addition, the Entrepreneurial Skills Training program for faculty in the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences helps principal investigators apply strategic, startup-style thinking to manage their multi-million-dollar research labs. “They’re running a business, whether they like it or not,” says Mason, who originally designed the program that’s now run by Fulmer. “They’re hiring people, buying resources, creating stuff.”
Finally, the new Entrepreneurial Learning Lab (ELL) pairs faculty with trained students to evaluate research for commercialization potential—without requiring faculty to become full-time CEOs. The inaugural cohort drew strong interest: 23 faculty applied for 10 spots alongside 54 student applications. “We’re not trying to change what faculty do in terms of research and teaching,” Fulmer explains, “but while they’re doing that, think about potential impact.”
This diverse array of entry points—from minors and master’s programs to accelerators, competitions, and faculty-student collaborations—deliberately creates an inclusive entrepreneurial ecosystem. Ideas from any discipline or career stage have room to grow.
The bigger picture
UMBC’s entrepreneurial ecosystem does more than launch student ventures; it strengthens Maryland’s innovation economy, particularly in biotech, health tech, and advanced materials. The university’s strengths in these areas—coupled with proximity to federal labs and funding—creates what Fulmer calls a “target-rich environment.” Many Launchpad teams naturally transition into bwtech@UMBC’s incubation programs, forming a clear pathway from classroom concept to scalable company.
bwtech@UMBC, located adjacent to main campus, supports Maryland entrepreneurs at every stage of business growth. (Marlayna Demond ’11/UMBC)
Today, Mendis’s schedule is packed with interviews of biomedical technology researchers in government, academia, and industry. Her probing questions are helping determine whether her lab’s novel nanomaterials have commercial potential. Rosenzweig’s encouragement and programs like the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (I-Corps), which trains scientists to translate research into societal impact, have been key. She is thriving, balancing independent laboratory research, teaching and mentoring undergraduates, and her entrepreneurial work; she even occasionally finds time to engage her artistic side.
Whether or not students like Mendis ultimately launch businesses, at UMBC, they gain versatile skills—problem-solving, communication, empathy, and resilience—that will serve them across diverse careers. Here, entrepreneurial thinking is not an elective add-on but foundational preparation for an unpredictable world.
“UMBC’s model—technical excellence plus mindset training—prepares graduates to innovate anywhere,” Fulmer says, “making the university a powerful driver of Maryland’s future.”
It was around five o’clock on a Wednesday in May, and Michelle Jabès Corpora ’03, English and theatre, was on her sofa watching her favorite British murder mystery on TV. It had been a long shot to think her newest book, His Face Is the Sun, would hit the New York Times (NYT) bestsellers list, and since she hadn’t heard anything and it was getting late, she figured it wasn’t meant to be.
Buzz! Buzz! Buzz! Suddenly, she looked down at her phone to see a FaceTime call from five different numbers—most of which she didn’t recognize. She quickly answered and saw her agent, editor, assistant editor, and publicists in the group of smiling faces before hearing the four words every author dreams of hearing: “You’re on the list!”
“I just started crying,” recalls Corpora. “I couldn’t believe it.”
His Face Is the Sun stayed on the NYT Bestsellers Young Adult Hardcover list for five weeks, which the author says was “absolutely unbelievable.”
Where it all began
Corpora’s journey to becoming a NYTbestselling author was not a straight line—far from it. Corpora initially came to UMBC as a Linehan Artist Scholar to study theatre. Because she’d always been passionate about writing and literature, however, she added English as a second major to supplement her studies.
“Learning about drama helped significantly with my approach to character, plot, and pacing,” says Corpora. After UMBC, Corpora earned a master’s degree in Children’s Literature from Hollins University. Then, a few more twists and turns. Among other jobs, Corpora worked as a wedding singer, as a technician in a veterinarian’s office, and volunteered at a wildlife rehabilitation center before taking a big career leap and moving to New York City to try and get a job in children’s publishing.
Pictured left: Corpora as ‘Cleo’ AKA Fraulein Kost in a 2001 UMBC Theatre production of Cabaret.
New York state of mind
One catch: Corpora didn’t have a full-time job lined up. All she had were two unpaid summer internships at children’s publishing houses.
“It was a real gamble,” says Corpora, “but I feel like my entire career has been a series of gambles, and they always seem to work out well.”
Corpora landed an editorial assistant position at Greenwillow Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Children’s Books, where she had the opportunity to work on books by legendary authors like Kevin Henkes and Sid Fleischman, among many others. Then came her own children and another career pivot. With the birth of her daughter, Corpora moved into book packaging services.
“Book packaging is an interesting, mostly unknown side of the publishing industry where groups of writers work as a team to create concepts for series fiction,” says Corpora. “The transition was challenging because you really have to let go of ownership over your ideas, and you have to be creative in a collaborative way, which doesn’t come naturally to most people at first.”
Despite the learning curve, Corpora admits that her work as a concept creator really helped her grow as a writer, as she was coming up with ideas, developing them, and also editing manuscripts. “It made me into a jack of all trades,” she says.
From ghostwriting to ghosts
In 2015, Corpora got her first publishing opportunity after winning an audition to be a ghostwriter for a long-running middle-grade mystery series, eventually writing five books in the series. It wasn’t until 2021, however, that Corpora would see her name on one of her creations. Her next four books, all bearing the name Michelle Jabes Corpora on the cover, were what are known as work-for-hire projects.
“These are usually projects that you audition for,” explains Corpora. “It’s not ghostwriting because your name goes on the books, but usually the publisher has a concept for a book or series they want on their list, and they hire a writer to develop and write that project for them.”
This was the process for her two middle-grade historical fiction novels, The Fog of Warand The Dust Bowl, as well as her young adult horror duology, Holly Horror, which was created in partnership with the owners of the classic character, Holly Hobbie.
“
“Because of my job, I’d become a kind of chameleon,” says Corpora. “I was happy to write whatever book the client wanted. But it also taught me to identify the essence of every story. What makes it good? What makes it human? What’s the heart of this story?”
Michelle Jabès Corpora '03
English
Each step in Corpora’s journey built her foundation as a writer. But at that point, her agent knew she was ready for more.
“She’d seen me grow through all of this, was basically like, ‘It’s time for you to stop auditioning and ghostwriting and start writing your story—something that’s meaningful to you and that’s yours,’” recalls Corpora.
Finding her story
In 2023, Corpora took her next big gamble: creating not only her own original series, but writing something she’d never tried her hand at before. Epic fantasy.
“It felt like a big leap of faith at the time. I still had two young daughters, a part-time job, and a very busy life,” says Corpora, “and I was planning to put a lot of hours into a project that might never sell. But once the idea was born, I knew there was no going back.”
TheThrone of Khetara series, born from that fateful conversation with her editor, is an Ancient Egyptian-inspired trilogy about a kingdom in turmoil, a forgotten oracle, and four unlikely heroes: a princess, a priestess, a rebel, and a thief.
“My parents and three of my grandparents were immigrants born in Egypt,” says Corpora. “So I grew up hearing stories about Egypt, and became fascinated by Ancient Egyptian history from a very young age.”
Corpora describes the series as “Ancient Egyptian Game of Thrones for young adults,” and is told from the perspectives of the four main characters.
“That seemed to really resonate strongly with people,” says Corpora, who wanted to showcase the different perspectives in ancient Egypt, including the non-royal population who were most affected by war and conquest.
The trilogy was picked up by Sourcebooks Fire and is currently being published in nine territories so far, including the UK, Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Brazil, Hungary, and Greece. It has also won numerous distinctions, including being on the list of YALSA Top Ten Best Fiction for Young Adults in 2026.
“It’s been a long and winding road to get here,” says Corpora. “But I’ll always remember UMBC as a place that allows people to find their way in the world, even if your journey might take you off the beaten path.”
Pictured right: Corpora, a New York Times bestseller, at a book signing event at The Strand Book Store in New York City.
