Now more than ever, STEM careers are demanding their workforce keep the social impact of their work at the forefront. Interdisciplinary teams at UMBC are researching methods to support these efforts.
In the past five years, more than 14,000 students in the College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT) took courses in the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (CAHSS), home to many courses that cultivate socially responsible thinking (SRT). At the same time, faculty in COEIT were also incorporating SRT concepts in their classes. This overlap was identified as an opportunity to collaborate, leveraging strengths of both colleges to imbue the STEM curriculum with an SRT approach.
“We want computing and engineering students to have a deeper understanding of the social impact of their work and how they are integrating SRT into their learning,” explains Helena Mentis, professor of information systems. Mentis is the lead investigator in the joint research project between COEIT and the Center for Social Science Scholarship (CS3) titled Identifying an Interdisciplinary Path to Social Responsibility Education Across the COEIT Curriculum.
Felipe Filomeno
Felipe Filomeno, associate professor of political science and global studies and CS3 associate director and co-PI, says that the first step of the project is listening to faculty. “We are not imposing a preconceived approach to how social responsibility should be integrated into a STEM education.”
Mentis also emphasizes the importance of alumni in this process—their practical experience can provide students with insights into how industry leaders are implementing SRT. Kara Seidel ’18, psychology, now a language, literacy, and culture doctoral student, is a research assistant on the project. “This project is a great way to get my feet wet in all the fields at once,” shares Seidel. “I’m here to learn and help bring all the pieces together so the team can craft and integrate the research in a way that will be most beneficial in the long run.”
UMBC faculty are also working on addressing the negative social impact of existing technologies, such as the ethics in machine learning and data science.
Jordan Troutman ’21, M29, computer science and mathematics—and a valedictorian for the class of 2021—researches how to eliminate bias in algorithms. Troutman won the 2018 Rutgers RISE 5MP for his research, Fairness in Machine Learning, about how the COMPAS algorithm, which is used in the U.S. court system for recidivism prediction, is twice as likely to falsely classify Black men as more likely to reoffend compared to white men.
James Foulds
Troutman notes that people inherently give power to computers when they start to depend on them to make very complex human decisions. He wants computer scientists “to understand the impact of how our program—discriminatory or not—can affect the world we live in.”
Vandana Janeja
Troutman works with James Foulds, assistant professor of information systems, on identifying biases in machine learning technologies. Foulds received the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award in 2021 to develop technical solutions to resolve practical limitations of fair AI techniques.
Foulds also approaches ethical thinking from the data science perspective with his colleague Vandana Janeja, information systems professor and chair. “Ethics cannot be tacked onto one part of the data life cycle,” says Janeja. “It has to be integrated across the data life cycle and infused into each step of the process of discovering patterns in the data and in context of the data being considered.”
The goal of all this work, Mentis explains, is “to develop the next generation of technologists who have the framework and vocabulary to address the relationships between STEM and society.”
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Header image: Jordan Troutman ’21 on campus in spring 2021. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11.
Louise Goodrich Izat ’70 and Donna Helm ’70 met their first week of classes in 1966. As French majors, they enjoyed many classes together with May Roswell, a professor of French and German and a founder of UMBC’s modern languages department. “May Roswell was a wonderful professor,” remembers Izat. They remember her as a dedicated and inspiring teacher. Now, more than half a century later, the two friends who share a love of words, have come together to create the Childhood Literacy Scholarship Endowment in honor of Roswell.
Izat has been a volunteer at a reading camp in her community for six years. Her experience has made her aware of how many children need additional reading support to move beyond decoding to comprehension and develop a lifelong love of reading. Helm has always been proud that she comes from a family of avid readers and has seen the positive impact strong reading skills can have on a career. After learning what work UMBC faculty and students are doing in the work of childhood literacy, Izat and Helm decided to combine their love of the written word to support early literacy work.
The scholarship is awarded through The Sherman Center for Early Learning in Urban Communities (the Sherman Center). “With this Childhood Literacy Scholarship, our goal is to provide financial aid to promising undergraduate students committed to early childhood literacy development,” says Izat. Izat and Helm’s $25,000 endowment will support a different UMBC student each year with a scholarship of $1,000 or more for educational and research expenses.
Supporting the next generation of educators
By focusing on childhood literacy, Helm and Izat’s endowment will help a burgeoning education professional continue to focus on their research and community-engaged work.
Ayodélé La Veau’21, psychology and theatre, the first recipient of the scholarship, has been an active volunteer in the Sherman Center’s Literacy Fellows Program at Bay-Brook Elementary/Middle School in Baltimore City. The program pairs college students with a Baltimore City elementary school. Fellows visit a classroom and work with a teacher throughout the semester, helping students develop reading and writing skills.
Headshot courtesy of La Veau.
La Veau was able to be a part of a transition period with Bay-Brook Elementary/Middle School when they opened their new building. She saw how the combination of entering into a new building and having a more equipped teacher in their new learning environment made students more willing to learn and excitement to improve their literacy skills. “I believe in the impact of showing children the possibility and importance of their growth and development,” shares La Veau. “Not only through verbal affirmation but through proper guidance and access to resources.”
In 2020, La Veau earned a UMBC Undergraduate Research Award to study the use of the creative process as a means to teach and explore social-emotional learning using data from public secondary schools and creative arts programs within Baltimore City. The pandemic did not permit her to begin the research. Instead, she shifted her attention to supporting local communities digitally.
In addition to the academic and mental health needs of young people, La Veau is equally adamant about food equity and its impact on both. She currently serves as the vice president of the board of directors for The Plantation Park Heights Urban Farm which grows healthy food to help feed people facing food insecurity in Baltimore.
“My work allows me to witness the effects of investing in children’s lives through healthy and safe learning environments,” shared La Veau. “The Childhood Literacy Scholarship is so wonderful and has been a major blessing for me.” La Veau’s zeal is not an exception but an example of the various committed students the Sherman Center supports.
Part of the solution
Izat and Helm are excited that the scholarship will help La Veau continue her work with young children and her research. “We want to support students who will become part of the solution to the childhood literacy problem in our country,” share the two donors. “We are delighted that Ayodélé La Veau is our first recipient. She has a lot of energy, is an amazing young woman, and her work will have a positive impact on the lives of children.”
Sherman Center Director Mavis Sanders, in yellow, at the 2018 Teacher Summer Institute, which provides early childhood educators with information, resources, and collaborative planning time. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11.
Izat and Helm’s endowment supports the mission of the Sherman Center “to build a strong foundation for lifelong learning among young children in Baltimore City and develop best early childhood education practices for urban schools.” Now in its third year, the Sherman Center has become the hub of early childhood education, research, and practices, not only for Baltimore City but also for Maryland.
“There is something special about UMBC students, past and present, and it is great when they meet around shared commitments,” says Mavis Sanders, professor of education and the inaugural director of the Sherman Center. “I am grateful to be a part of the Childhood Literacy Scholarship and assist alumni, like Louise Izat and Donna Helm, to support Retrievers who share their passion for helping children discover the joy and power of reading.”
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Header image provided by Donna Helm and Louise Izat.
Katie Poteet, Shekinah Davis, and Nicholas Duy-Hoan Nguyen all came to UMBC grounded in their families’ unique journeys and deeply-held values, and seeking to find their own individual paths. Each Class of 2021 graduate has formed connections with communities, both in Baltimore and internationally, that have shaped their plans for the future.
Door to the world
UMBC Valedictorian Katie Poteet ‘21, global studies and political science, will soon head to the University of Cambridge, in England, to pursue a master of philosophy focusing on educational equity for women and girls in the Arab world. Given her path, one might assume she grew up with an array of international experiences, but Poteet is actually from a fifth-generation farming family from Harford County, Maryland. She and her twin sister, Madeline, are first-generation college students graduating from two University System of Maryland institutions, both pursuing careers in international policy.
Poteet family. Photo courtesy of Katie Poteet.
Poteet was excited to attend UMBC as a member of the Honors College and a Sondheim Scholar. She had never experienced such cultural and linguistic diversity, and she jumped into learning Arabic and earned a certificate in Spanish. That led to internships focused on education policy, humanitarian work, and foreign policy in the Arab world at the Enabling Peace in Iraq Center (EPIC), Norwegian Refugee Council, and Brookings Institution’s Center for Universal Education.
In 2019, Poteet’s sister, who is graduating from Salisbury University, joined her on a trip to Ghana with UMBC’s Global Brigades chapter. While there they worked with local craftsmen to construct eco-friendly toilet facilities. Back in Baltimore, Poteet remained connected to the local community by teaching English to adults at the Esperanza Center, a resource center for immigrants.
Katie and Madie Poteet. Photo courtesy of Katie Poteet.
While it was UMBC that connected her with diverse communities and global opportunities, she shares that her family and community in Harford County laid the foundation. Through them, she learned to always help others and work hard.
“Our parents did not have the opportunity to graduate from college, so they supported us in everything we wanted to do,” shares Poteet. “But what is most important, and what my parents are most proud of, is that we took advantage of all the opportunities college afforded us and are using those skills to help others.”
Global learning experiences
Shekinah Davis ‘21, M.A. intercultural communication, came to UMBC after her Peace Corps service in Ecuador to join UMBC’s Peaceworker Program. It was an opportunity to merge skills gained through her social justice, diversity, and equity work in the U.S., Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Ecuador.
Davis with the her peers in the intercultural communication masters program. Photo courtesy of Davis.
Davis’s parents moved from Portland, Oregon to the Dominican Republic when she was four five years old. Over the course of 15 years they built a public K-12 school. In her teenage years, Davis used photography to help document the process. It inspired her to earn a bachelor’s degree in photojournalism and document life in other Latin American countries.
Davis (center, wearing a pink dress) as a child in the Dominican Republic. Photo courtesy of Davis.
She traveled to Nicaragua as a visiting artist, using photography and painting to build community with women healing from traumatic experiences. In Haiti, she photographed the daily life of women and their communities. During her Peace Corps service in Ecuador, Davis developed multimedia stories to raise awareness of refugees, migrant entrepreneurship, and family and youth health initiatives.
Growing roots in Baltimore
As a Peaceworker Fellow at UMBC, Davis has supported arts education in Baltimore City. She worked at UMBC’s Shriver Center as a program coordinator for the Charlesmead Initiative for Arts Education, as a media teacher for both the Kultur Stories program and Wide Angle Youth Media.
Davis (third from the left) and Nguyen (striped shirt) with other Peaceworker fellows in 2019. Photo courtesy of Davis.
With Kulture Stories, Davis guided students from Baltimore, Sweden, and South Sudan in collaborative learning activities to expand on their leadership and multimedia skills. At Wide Angle Youth Media, she helped students in the Baltimore Speaks Out program to produce the video series Black Lives Matter: A Conversation With Our Youth. In that series, students discussed topics of race, identity, and racism.
Davis (center with yellow cardigan) with students from Wide Angle Youth Media in 2019. Photo courtesy of Davis.
Davis’s childhood taught her to embrace the unknown. Her international work gave her an opportunity to use multimedia as a tool to explore social justice issues. And her experiences in Latin America gave her an awareness of the vast differences in cultures and languages grouped under the term Latinx, instilling in her a sense of pride in her identity as an Afro-Latina and African American woman.
Charlotte Kenniston, an LLC doctoral student and associate director of UMBC’s Peaceworker Program, notes that at UMBC Davis has continued to develop her sense of who she is in the world and how she might make an impact. “Shekinah has merged all of her life experiences to charge ahead with a life committed to work in diversity, equity, and inclusion,” says Keniston.
“I have traveled so much that I now have a desire to establish roots somewhere. I want to create impactful programming and training around diversity, equity, and inclusion locally,” says Davis. “Baltimore is that place for me right now.”
Managing humanitarian emergencies
After graduating this week, Nicholas Nguyen, M.A. ‘21, sociology, will begin working as a program evaluator for the National Preparedness Assessment Division of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a cause close to his heart.
As a son of Vietnamese refugees, Nguyen grew up listening to stories of his parents’ journey from Vietnam to Texas. His mom fled Vietnam in 1975. “My father wasn’t able to leave with the family. He was caught trying to leave and was detained for five years,” says Nguyen. “When he was able to leave Vietnam it was on a small boat with others, often drifting for days without food.”
Nicholas Nguyen (left) with his parents in the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador. Photo courtesy of Nguyen.
Hearing about these experiences inspired Nguyen to explore how he could help improve the management of international humanitarian emergencies.
Seeking his first international experience, Nguyen joined the Peace Corps in 2015. Nguyen explains that his parents didn’t understand—for them, going to Ecuador to volunteer was leaving the safety and comfort they had worked so hard to give him in suburban Texas. But it was transformative for Nguyen. “I needed to have the experience of being an entirely different country, culture, with a different language to better understand their experience,” he says.
Nicholas Nguyen at a ceremony at the US embassy in Quito, Ecuador. Photo courtesy of Nguyen.
A new perspective
While learning Spanish and the Ecuadorian culture, Nguyen worked with local governments and community organizations to implement a recreation and substance abuse prevention program for youth. He collaborated on a project with local women artists and supported a shelter serving women and children survivors of domestic violence. Nguyen also helped establish financial and computer literacy programs for women.
Nicholas Nguyen at La Sierra (central highlands) in Ecuador. Photo courtesy of Nguyen.
His time in Ecuador gave him a greater understanding of what it is like to be new to a culture and language, and the challenges that presents. “Now, when I run into someone struggling with English it reminds me of when I was walking around Ecuador with my dictionary, trying to connect with other people.”
Once he was ready to return to the United States, Nguyen joined UMBC’s Peaceworker Program because of its focus on placing Peace Corps volunteers with local organizations and its emphasis on social justice.
“I had never been part of a university whose work was centered around social justice,” says Nguyen. “The Peace Corps showed me how political systems work at an international level. UMBC’s Peaceworker Program is giving me an understanding from a social justice and antiracist perspective.”
Nicholas Nguyen with students from the Patterson Park Audubon Center in 2019. Photo courtesy of Nguyen.
Nguyen was placed in the Patterson Park Audubon Center, teaching local middle school students, in a predominantly Spanish-speaking community, about climate change and how it is impacting birds and people. He didn’t yet know much about birding, but he knew what it was like to be new to something and could connect with the students through their heritage language. Nguyen narrated his experience by creating a digital story about his experience with nature throughout his life.
The program moved online temporarily due to COVID-19, but was later able to open in person with social distancing, making it more accessible to the greater community.
Nguyen (top center square) teaching the Patterson Park Audubon Center’s program online. Photo courtesy of Nguyen.Nguyen teaching the Patterson Park Audubon Center’s program. Photo courtesy of Nguyen.
The reflection elements of the Peaceworker experience have helped Nguyen better understand the links between what he’s learned in his work with communities and in the classroom about policy, history, and race. He sees his next steps, through a career in emergency management, as emerging from his parents’ dreams, his own dreams, and all he’s experienced in Texas, Ecuador, and now Baltimore. And, he says, he looks forward to helping the United States become “a more just and inclusive place, especially now, as a public servant.”
Banner image: The Poteet family. Photo courtesy of Katie Poteet.
Each year, hundreds of Retrievers work with K-12 students and families across Greater Baltimore, providing tutoring, mentoring, introductions to new skills and interests, and supportive one-on-one connections. Graduating seniors David Ralph Williams, Celena Dang, and Emily Rose Paul took advantage of opportunities to work with Baltimore youth and families early in their UMBC careers and sustained those connections as long-term commitments. For each, these experiences have shaped their goals and career paths.
Connecting students with computing
David Ralph Williams ‘21, M29, computer science, found the learning community he was looking for when he became a Meyerhoff Scholar. “Everyone was focused on working hard and having a deep understanding of their field,” says Williams. He loved both the academic rigor and the commitment his peers had to the community beyond campus.
Williams. Photo courtesy of Williams.
Williams joined Creative Coders in his freshman year as a way to connect local middle school students with opportunities in computing. He supported students at Arbutus Middle School in learning basic computer science skills by working through group projects. “I wanted to help expose middle school students to computer science, something I wished I had growing up,” says Williams.
By his sophomore year, Williams became the lead student coordinator for the Creative Coders program. He shifted the program to be more student-led, enabling participants to choose their own project topics and their approach to managing and completing projects.
Creative Coders also worked with students at General John Stricker Middle School in Southeast Baltimore, focusing on the interests of the Robotics Club. “We exposed them to the computer science aspects of robotics like using motion sensors and programming a robot’s personality,” says Williams.
The value of teaching
Williams found himself excited to see the students work through a problem. He also discovered he had the patience and desire to explain concepts and procedures to students.
When he became a teaching assistant (TA) for an upper-level computer science class, Williams had the same experience. “It’s been nice being a TA for the data structures class. It’s a really difficult class,” shares Williams. “I thrive on the feeling I get when I explain things and see whether students grasp the concept. I use that exchange to guide whether I need to pick a new method or whether I need to explain in more detail.”
While at UMBC, Williams also learned more about cybersecurity and realized it was something he wanted to pursue professionally, in addition to teaching. “I really love cybersecurity and teaching computer science,” he says, “so why not do both?” After earning his undergraduate degree, he plans to pursue a Ph.D. in computer science at UMBC.
Exploring possibilities
Celena Dang ‘21, psychology and biological sciences, comes from a family of Retrievers. Her aunt and several cousins have proudly earned their degrees at UMBC. That was an important factor in her decision to attend, along with the university’s great reputation for STEM education and diversity. At the same time, she wasn’t quite sure of the direction she wanted to take at UMBC once she was on campus.
Dang is grateful that UMBC offered the flexibility to explore various paths. “My advice to others who are uncertain about the major they chose is to not put pressure on yourself,” shares Dang. “It’s OK to question and to explore. Make the best of volunteer opportunities that can introduce you to different fields.”
Supporting teens’ mental health
Dang (second from the left on the first row) with the UMBC UNICEF board. Photo courtesy of Dang.
For Dang, being a member of UMBC’s UNICEF student club for four years has offered an opportunity to learn about different careers in child welfare. A defining experience for Dang was when the club worked with UMBC’s Shriver Center to develop a partnership with The Children’s Home in Baltimore City. The group provided academic support to youth living at The Children’s Home, an organization that provides housing to children in foster care who have experienced abuse, neglect, violence, and abandonment, or are in need of supervised care.
Dang explains that in the beginning the teenagers she worked with were skeptical and remained distant. But within a month of the club visiting weekly, they began to trust the UMBC students, becoming more social, engaged, and open to accepting support. In time the Children’s Home organization’s leaders reported students’ grades and self-esteem improved.
While working with youth at The Children’s Home, Dang was also taking psychology courses. She realized she had a great interest in adolescent mental health as a career path.
“UMBC’s UNICEF club has been the most rewarding part of being at UMBC,” says Dang. “Finding a community that has the same shared values as me and the same mission to give back to the community has shaped my career goals.”
Celena Dang (right) with UMBC Children’s Home volunteers. Photo courtesy of Dang.
Dang will begin a master’s program in clinical mental health counseling at Williams James College fall 2021.
Leadership through service
Emily Rose on her first day at UMBC. Photo courtesy of Rose.
WhenEmily Rose Paul‘21, global studies, came to UMBC, wanted to invest time working with Baltimore’s immigrant community. “I think everyone should have the same opportunity my grandparents had when they left Europe,” she says. “If they had not been welcome in the United States I might not be here today because they were Russian and Polish Jews.”
It was through the encouragement of her mentor, Zuriel Herran ‘20, geography and environmental studies, that she became a volunteer with youth at the Esperanza Center, an immigrant resource center in Baltimore City, teaching English as a second language. She loved the work so much she spent the next three years working at the center and became the lead student coordinator for the program.
Paul (back row, fourth from the left) with other Esperanza Center volunteers in 2019. Photo courtesy of Paul.
Paul transported UMBC volunteers to the center, guided them in self-reflection, and provided teaching strategies, in addition to helping with administrative tasks. She also took her leadership work to another level through a Shriver Center internship leading the Center’s student coordinator program. She provided fellow students who were leading service-learning partnerships with tools and resources.
Finding answers in the humanities
In addition to her work with The Shriver Center, Paul worked alongside seven other students as a fellow in the PLACE Colaboratory, which stands for Partnerships for Listening and Action by Communities and Educators. They worked under co-investigators Felipe Filomeno, political science and global studies, and Romy Hübler ‘09, modern languages and linguistics, M.A. ‘11, intercultural communication, and Ph.D. ‘15, language, literacy, and culture, who is assistant director of UMBC’s Center for Democracy and Civic Life.
As a fellow, Paul worked with students at Benjamin Franklin High School in Baltimore City on a visual storytelling project. She helped them further develop their humanities-based research methods for the project, focused on identifying and addressing community issues.
After graduation, Paul is planning to continue working with immigrant communities, focusing on the promotion of rights in the U.S. and abroad. She is thankful for all the people she met through community partnerships, and for opportunities to grow in her Spanish skills and knowledge of immigration rights.
Paul (center in jeans) studying abroad in Colombia at a dance festival. Photo courtesy of Paul.
“I was able to access excellent research opportunities in the humanities that I never thought would be available at the undergraduate level,” says Paul. “UMBC is known as a STEM school, but I have received the most amazing humanities education as a global studies student. You will be surprised at all that you can find here.”
Banner image: Emily Rose Paul. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.
Two UMBC projects have taken flight this spring, designed to support the academic, creative, and social success of Baltimore City students through arts opportunities. Both projects are funded through the UMBC-Charlesmead Initiative for Arts Education, which was established in 2018 with a $500,000, five-year gift from the Charlesmead Foundation.
The partnership is designed to introduce or strengthen arts opportunities for K-8 students in Baltimore City Public Schools , especially those in Title I schools. The Charlesmead Foundation, which was established in 1987 and is based in Baltimore, primarily supports the arts, cultural programs, and education.
Music in Sandtown-Winchester
Daniel Pesca and Janice Jackson in the department of music have joined forces with the Carter School of Music at New Shiloh Baptist Church and the William Knabe Piano Institute to offer after-school and summer music classes to youth in the Sandtown-Winchester community. The New Shiloh Baptist Church is recognized as a key community and spiritual hub in its neighborhood. The non-profit Knabe Institute raises awareness of the cultural significance of the piano, and produces a major young artist piano competition that is held annually at UMBC.
Pesca (left). Photo by Rosen-Jones Photography. Jackson (right). Photo courtesy of Jackson.
The Charlesmead grant to Pesca and Jackson fully funds the musical education of ten students between the ages of 8 and 14 who face obstacles to music study. The participating students receive instruction in piano and choral music for two academic years and two summers, taught by Chinny Ohia, a member of the Carter School faculty for over twenty years and chair of music at Howard University, and UMBC alumnus and pianist Riccardo Jefferson ’20, music. The summer instruction will be hosted in part by UMBC’s Summer Enrichment Academy.
The Carter School hired Jefferson specifically to teach students in this cohort. This strengthens the connection between the school and UMBC, while providing Jefferson with an exceptional opportunity to launch his career as a professional musician and music educator. “These young musicians were brave enough to start their musical journey during a pandemic,” says Jefferson. “Somehow, someway, they’re moving through it, and it inspires me to match their determination in the classroom and in my own life.”
Riccardo Jefferson. Photo by Willie Santiago, concert coordinator for UMBC.
Success despite challenges
The project faced and overcame significant challenges during the current academic year. A major initial expense was the purchase of ten high-quality keyboards for use at home by students. Members of the faculty and staff of the Carter School spent two days delivering the large keyboards and assembling them in the students’ homes.
Once instruction began, some students faced challenges accessing reliable internet connections, which required that they and their instructors be flexible and adjust their lesson schedules when necessary.
Plus, “each student started as an absolute beginner who had no previous experience with the piano or with reading music,” explains Pesca. “Learning to make music brings the students joy and uplift during these times of isolation, and some have shared that the one-on-one contact with their instructors is a high point in their week. Eight out of ten students stayed fully engaged in the program and achieved significant musical growth over the semester, an outstanding outcome under such trying circumstances.”
The pandemic continues to make it challenging for the organizers to fully implement the program as they initially envisioned. Pesca had hoped to bring the students to campus for UMBC’s 2021 Summer Enrichment Academy, but that program will be online due to health and safety guidelines. Similarly, the Knabe Institute’s activities are likely to take place remotely as well.
However, the organizers hope to incorporate in-person learning at both UMBC and the Knabe Institute for the program’s 2021-2022 academic year, providing students with an even more enriching experience.
Kultur Stories
Shriver Center Director Michele Wolff is working with Gail Prensky, founder of the Jüdische Kulturbund Project (Jewish Kulturbund), to bring its Kultur Stories Program to UMBC. Wolff and Prensky are collaborating with local and international theatre, visual arts, and digital storytelling educators, artists, and community leaders. Together, they are gathering girls from City Springs Elementary/Middle School in Baltimore City, Aktörerna school in Sweden, and Promised Land Secondary School in South Sudan to participate in a virtual digital storytelling experience.
Kultur Stories explores issues of oppression and response through music and art. The Project’s mission is to connect people through shared experiences, inspire a response to persecution through cultural expression, and encourage freedom of expression and culture. This mission spoke to the work Wolff carries out through the Shriver Center.
“Kulture Stories aligns seamlessly with our commitment to racial equity, inclusion, and social justice,” shares Wolff. “This collaboration gives us the opportunity to extend beyond our current network of partners to engage and give voice to more young people in schools in Baltimore City and in countries around the world.”
Grappling with oppression through art
Jewish Kulturbund works with artists and communities around the world to explore the themes of oppression, the arts, and human rights through a variety of media. These initiatives honor the story and legacy of Jüdische Kulturbund artists who performed across Germany between 1933 and 1941, before being forced into Nazi concentration camps. The organization recalls their performances as a reminder of the complex questions and danger artists must grapple with under oppressive situations.
Margot Neuhaus working on an art piece. Photo courtesy of Michele Wolff.
With this purpose in mind, the design team developed an 8-week collaborative Kultur Stories Program among young girls in the United States, Sweden, and South Sudan. Pods of around 10 girls from each country are connecting virtually to learn about each other. They are reflecting on the impact of the pandemic on themselves and their communities and the oppression it has caused. They are also creating art and joining in discussions about human rights, and participating in mentoring sessions.
The students began meeting this spring. In one session, Margot Neuhaus, a visual artist based in Washington D.C., was invited to give a virtual presentation. She discussed how her art process has provided a way for her to express her pain and healing in relation to her family surviving the Holocaust in Poland and their fleeing to Mexico, where Neuhaus was born.
The presentation initiated a profound conversation about oppression across borders and time. The students from South Sudan related to the persecution and displacement that Neuhaus described. And the Swedish students found it impactful as well. “That session was so powerful for my group of students,” shares Jok Abraham Thon, founder and director of the Aktörerna School. “They spoke about differences in language, skin color, and religion being issues that separate and cause issues of hatred.”
Connecting through digital stories
Shekinah Davis, co-facilitator of the Charlesmead Initiative for Arts Education at UMBC, serves as a teacher’s assistant in the project. Davis, M.A. ‘21, intercultural communication, supports lead teachers in communication strategies and helps manage the flow of the virtual pods. As a Shriver Center Peaceworker Fellow, she brings experience working with international and local communities.
Shekinah Davis. Photo courtesy of Davis.
“I was drawn to participate in the project to gain a perspective of how to guide young people through a virtual creative process,” explains Davis. “I hope to gain a deeper understanding of virtual collaborative art-making, especially to help express experiences about the impact of the pandemic and oppression.”
The K-8 students are also connecting with interns from UMBC, Montgomery College, and Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, a high school in Baltimore City. These interns are guiding the girls in using storytelling and digital art production to express their personal reactions to oppression and how to embrace freedom.
The digital storytelling tools are bringing together students who would otherwise not be able to meet. They are also expanding the students’ opportunities to make digital art, beyond what is available in their everyday school experiences.
Design intern Joyce Koo ‘24, graphic design, is inspired by the Judische Kulturbund Project. She sees it as an important step in her education and career. In addition to assisting with a teaching pod, she is creating graphics and other visuals for the project’s social media outreach. “I hope to connect to and grow in a global community of both experienced and rising artists,” shares Koo.
Banner image: “In Memoriam” and “Light Motives” by Margot Neuhaus.Photo courtesy of Michele Wolff.
This article was co-authored with UMBC’s Thomas Moore, director of arts and culture.
UMBC’s 25th Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day (URCAD) reached more viewers than ever before, with visitors connecting online from as far away as Spain, Indonesia, Nigeria, Brazil, Bhutan, Germany, and the U.K.. Audiences logged more than 11,000 visits (compared with 8,000 in 2020) and posted more than 3,500 comments over the course of the week-long event.
Winner of URCADs “Best Selfie With The Number “25” Angelika Albertorio ’21, English and dance.
“While we are eager to get back to the live event, there are definitely aspects of the online event that have widened the scope of URCAD,” says April Householder, director of undergraduate research and prestigious scholarships. “Presenters were able to invite friends and family members from other countries to view their presentations, and invite international scholars as potential future collaborators.”
Over 350 students presented projects, from novel artistic work to lab research to analysis of historical archives. The questions they asked reflected engagement with significant challenges and opportunities of today.
Anti-Asian racism
Zoe Hwang, English, was inspired to study the history of Koreans in Baltimore after reading a chapter about Korean immigrant communities in the city written by Aletheia Hyun-Jin Shin in the book Baltimore Revisited. Then COVID-19 happened and with it came a rise in hate crimes toward members of Asian communities in the United States. “I’m scared to go outside,” shares Hwang, who is Korean and lives in Maryland. “I was surprised that so many people thought this was new and were unaware of the history of racism toward the Asian community.”
She decided to widen the scope of her research for URCAD. In “We Were Never Welcome Here: How American History Predicted the Rise of Racism and Xenophobia During COVID-19,” Hwang uses archival posters and newspapers to contextualize racism toward Chinese and Japanese communities in the U.S. from 1850 to the present, while demonstrating how negative sentiments about one Asian community have often translated into violence for other Asian communities. “I want to continue to educate others about the diversity of the Asian community and the dangers of lumping the people and cultures under a single term,” says Hwang.
The Project Waves team installing a sector antenna in downtown Baltimore City. Photo courtesy of Project Waves.
Hamidi says a lot has changed from when they started the project. “The preliminary findings have found that participants and partners value connectivity that is affordable, that can be used with social distancing, is offered by grassroots community organizations, and is private,” he shares.
Working on project Waves has been a humbling and a very rewarding experience for Karina Lopez-Brown ‘21, information systems. “Our research in Project Waves demonstrated to me that it doesn’t matter the level of knowledge or expertise that we have,” says Lopez-Brown, “we just need to be willing to share our knowledge to help our community.”
In addition to Lopez-Brown, the student team included seniors Rushaad Wright, business technology administration, and Daniel Laguna, information systems, as well as Lydia Stamato, a doctoral student in human-centered computing.
For Laguna, the project has been an opportunity to strengthen relationships with his peers and mentors and to collaborate with the Baltimore City community. “In these times where we have had to remain physically distant from one another it’s been easy to feel isolated from the world,” says Laguna. “But all of these connections have really helped me feel closer to the rest of the world.”
Conversation with squeegee kids
Growing up in Baltimore City, Sydney Fryer ’22, psychology, was accustomed to seeing young Black boys and men standing on downtown street corners ready with squeegees, trying to earn money by cleaning car windshields. Fryer saw the “Squeegee Kids” as a positive part of Baltimore City’s culture and economy but knew some residents and visitors didn’t share this sentiment.
Sydney Fryer. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.
In “Decriminalizing (and Re-Humanizing) the ‘Squeegee Kid,” Fryer used Baltimore Sun archives, social media data, and interviews with the youth to examine the criminalization of these young men over forty years of city history. “Sydney’s methodology was designed to recognize the crucial role that discourse and policy play in shaping young people’s daily experiences,” says Dena Aufseeser, assistant professor of geography and environmental systems.
Fryer found that White boys and men doing similar work were seen as entrepreneurial while “Squeegee Kids” were often described through unsubstantiated narratives about crime and violence. She says her interviews revealed that, “many of them are working to buy clothes, food, books, and to help their families,” so what they earn often goes right back into the city’s economy.
Understanding the structure of HIV
As COVID-19 vaccine research moved forward at light speed this past year, research on other pandemics continued to make steady progress. Three groups of students presented their research on HIV-1, the retrovirus that causes AIDS.
Michael Summers, Distinguished University Professor of chemistry and biochemistry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, mentored over a dozen students that contributed to two of the major collaborative projects presented at URCAD, focused on the structures of HIV-1 MAL junction conformers and the HIV-1 5′ leader. Faith Davis ‘22, sociology and biological sciences, is part of the second project and a 2021 Newman Civic Fellow.
Davis (left) with her co-researchers tied for URCAD’s 2021 “Best Overall Selfie” award. Photo courtesy of April Householder, director of undergraduate research and prestigious scholarships.
“The work is focused on determining an unsolved piece of the structure of the 5` leader of HIV-1’s genome, which is what makes HIV so infectious,” she explains. “If the structure of this area can be determined, it could possibly inform cures or better treatments for HIV.”
Collaborative process
For UMBC’s video game designers, going virtual was not new. Marc Olano, associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering, mentored four projects presented at URCAD, each led by a group of about four students. They include Sword Shibe; Recurring Moment – A Time Travel Puzzle Platformer; Jump Starters, and the two-player Android and PC strategy game Hamster Toaster Checker. Students in UMBC’s computer science game development track collaborated with students in animation and interactive media to envision and begin developing the new games.
“The beauty of the CMSC 493 class is that it brings artists and programmers together and the management of the project is completely led by us,” says Kristian Mischke ‘21, computer science, the game designer for the Recurring Moment project.
A scene from Recurring Moment. Image courtesy of Mischke.
In Sword Shibe, players take a dog with a sword through different paths. The student team that created it drew inspiration for its concept designs from Japanese culture, folklore, and legends. The dog in the game is also inspired by a Shiba Inu, which is a breed of hunting dog from Japan.
Olano worked to model the students’ project experience on the structure of the game design and development industry. “Students began working through ideas in small teams and worked their way through prototypes and onto a bigger team,” he explains. “In the game industry, you have to work collaboratively or you fail.”
Mischke explains how he would bounce ideas off the artists for visual appeal or about the game’s narrative arc. With the other programmers, he talked through implementation feasibility. “We all would give feedback and discuss adaptations together,” says Mischke. “Everyone on the team was able to be part of the process and apply their unique skill set.”
Thought-provoking animation
UMBC artists also shared short animated films through URCAD. These include projects like “Finding the Sun” and “Familiarity in Change,” which resonated with audiences.
Young’s avatar. Courtesy of Young.
“Finding the Sun” was created by Michelle Young ‘21, visual arts, who directed, animated, and composed the music for the film. She took an interdisciplinary approach by combining her illustration, design, 2D animation, and sound design skills to explore the themes of self-worth and self-acceptance.
The girl in the movie wakes up to a dark world and goes in search of the sun, says Young, only to find out she is the light in the world—that she is enough. “I was hoping that the simplicity of the character would allow the viewer to put themselves in their shoes,” she explains. “I wanted to create something that was meaningful and encouraging to people wherever they are in this difficult time in our lives.”
“Familiarity in Change” shows viewers imagery of various locations, such as an empty beach and snowy park, that express a desolate feeling. However, by pairing those images with peaceful music, creator Angela Endres ‘22, visual arts, transforms the mood to serenity and comfort.
Endresfinds meaning in showing the emptiness of these places, which prior to COVID would have been enjoyed by family and friends coming together. “Isolation has made me see the beauty in everyday life,” she shared in her URCAD talk. “The world has changed and that’s OK.”
Banner image: A scene from Michelle Young’s short film “Finding the Sun.” Image courtesy of Young.
Faith Davis ‘22, M30, sociology and biological sciences, grew up in Mechanicsville, a small town in Maryland. Her family regularly welcomed people in need of temporary housing into their home. This shaped her sense of how housing and income insecurity affect people, but did not prepare her for the shock she felt at seeing the scale of people living without housing in Washington D.C. while visiting the capital as a teenager.
That was a deciding moment for Davis. She wanted to understand the underlying factors of why homelessness persists widely and at such high rates, and she was determined to find sustainable interventions. She has invested the last three years researching food and housing insecurity both on campus and in Baltimore City, as well as working with community organizations to implement interventions. In recognition of her engaged leadership and long-term commitment to this work, Campus Compact Mid-Atlantic (CCMA) has named Faith Davis a 2021 Newman Civic Fellow.
Faith Davis. Photo courtesy of Davis.
“While I have spent a great deal of my time at UMBC conducting scientific research and taking advanced chemistry and biology coursework, I have also tried to engage with the campus community and the surrounding community,” shares Davis, who is a Meyerhoff Scholar. “Being selected as this year’s Newman Civic Fellow means UMBC recognizes my efforts to change the world in a positive way.”
Davis (first row on the right) volunteering at the Meyerhoff Scholars Program 30th Anniversary Celebration. Photo courtesy of Davis.
Davis is the most recent in a long line of UMBC students who have earned Newman Civic Fellowships in recognition of their dedication to public service. They include Nihira Mugamba ‘21, political science and Africana studies; Maheen Haq ‘20, global studies and economics; Stephanie Milani ‘19, computer science and psychology; Sophia Lopresti ‘17, global studies; Maxwell Poole ‘18, computer science; economics; and Kelly Cyr ‘12, biological sciences, and M.S. ’13, applied molecular biology.
Faith Davis (back row, first on the left) at a community organization in Baltimore City during ASB 2019. Photo courtesy of Davis.
Her first ASB project focused on housing insecurity in Baltimore. “I learned that the most common causes of death for people experiencing homelessness are conditions that could have been easily treatable,” explains Davis.
As an ASB leader her sophomore and junior years, she helped design projects focused on how structural barriers to the availability of nutritious food impact residents’ overall health, education, and well-being in Baltimore, as well as approaches to achieving nutritional equity. Davis has also facilitated several of CDCL’s programs such as the Change Makers Dinners, where she leads discussions addressing nutrition and food access and on women’s political empowerment.
ASB 2019 symposium (Davis is first on the right). Photo courtesy of David Hoffman.
Research to address healthcare access
Davis’s work in ASB increased her awareness of the challenges that people experiencing homelessness face in accessing preventative healthcare and basic information about chronic health issues. “I had the opportunity to survey the health resources available in Baltimore City,” shares Davis. “There was a noticeable gap when it came to providing basic health information.”
Davis designed a research project to develop a model that could both assess individuals’ current state of health and connect them with groups who could follow up with free medical services. She received an Undergraduate Research Award in 2019 to gather and analyze health information from shelter residents at two homeless shelters in Baltimore City who volunteered to participate.
The data revealed that the population she surveyed frequently lacked access to consistent primary medical care and regular health screenings, where preventative medicine could reduce the risk of life-threatening emergencies. She was able to present the initial phase of the project at UMBC’s 2019 Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day. Unfortunately, the project could not continue to its next phase due to COVID-19.
Examining food insecurity
In the fall of 2020, Davis was invited to join the Retriever Essentials on a research project analyzing food and housing insecurity at UMBC. Retriever Essentials is an organization led by faculty, staff, and students that tackles food insecurity in the UMBC community. Davis worked alongside Fariha Khalidshe, a CCMA AmeriCorps VISTA member serving with UMBC Retriever Essentials.
Together they compiled and analyzed data from surveys of faculty, staff, and students to determine the prevalence of food and housing insecurity at UMBC, the effectiveness of UMBC’s efforts to address these issues, and the impact of the pandemic on people’s housing and food access.
Davis (left) with her mentor from the Meyerhoff Scholars Summer Bridge program, Rebekah Rashford ’18, M26, biological sciences, (center), and Davis’s former roommate, Ridhi Chaudhary ’21, M30, biological sciences (right). Photo courtesy of Davis.
“Faith is an outstanding member of our research team,” says Khalidshe. “She is an avid advocate for understanding food and housing justice by looking at the statistics and hearing people’s stories about their lived experiences.”
The research team found that a decrease in access to public transportation due to COVID-19 restrictions has been a significant barrier to people’s ability to access food. Additionally, Davis notes that limited income due to unemployment has also affected food and housing security, especially “because government support is decreasing while many people are still unemployed.”
Many organizations that support local communities’ food and housing needs rely heavily on volunteers to function, and have been impacted significantly by COVID-related shutdowns. “As these organizations suffered, more mutual aid networks have taken hold or grown,” explains Davis. “The pandemic has also led to people growing in community and supporting their neighbors, both through formal mutual aid networks and informally.”
HIV research
In addition to her research in housing and health insecurity, Davis also has interests in biomedical research. She is both a U-RISE Scholar and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Scholar. She has worked with Distinguished University Professor and HHMI Investigator Michael Summers, chemistry and biochemistry, for three years, helping to examine the structure of the HIV-1 5` leader.
“The lab work is focused on determining an unsolved piece of the structure of the 5` leader of HIV-1’s genome, which is important because this area is what makes HIV so infectious,” explains Davis. “If we can determine the structure of this area, it could possibly inform cures or better treatments for HIV.”
Davis (second from the right) at a ABRCMS workshop she helped to facilitate. Photo courtesy of Davis.
She presented her research on the structure of the HIV-1 5` leader at the American Society of Microbiology Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students. She also won a poster presentation award at UMBC’s Undergraduate Research Symposium in the Chemical and Biological Sciences and came in 2nd place in the poster presentation at UMBC’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fest. Davis presented her latest research at this year’s 25th UMBC Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day.
Davis (left) with her co-researchers tied for URCAD’s 2021 “Best Overall Selfie” award. Photo courtesy of April Householder, director of undergraduate research and prestigious scholarships .
Above and beyond
Davis’s passion for being an agent of change in her community extends well beyond her campus work. Through UMBC’s Shriver Center service learning community partnerships, she was placed as a volunteer at the St. Agnes Hospital Stroke Center in Baltimore County, collecting and recording patients’ vital signs and helping with administrative tasks. She is active as a tutor for Arbutus Achievers, a mentoring and college readiness program for middle school students at Arbutus Middle School in Baltimore County.
Among her leadership roles, Davis is the president of UMBC’s Phi Delta Epsilon Medical Fraternity, the secretary of the Ethics Bowl and the Catholic Retrievers, and is a member of the Physical Chemistry Club. While at UMBC, Davis also served on the Volunteer Rescue Squad In her hometown of Mechanicsville.
“Faith is someone who truly walks her talk. She is committed to making a difference through collaboration and engagement over the long haul,” say CDCL’s director, David Hoffman, Ph.D. ‘13, language, literacy and culture (LLC), and assistant director, Romy Hübler ‘09, modern languages and linguistics, M.A. ‘11, intercultural communication, and Ph.D. ‘15, LLC. “We are proud to work with her.”
Social change network
This type of long-term commitment to social change is precisely what the Newman Civic Fellowship honors. The year-long fellowship supports each recipient in further developing their social change and leadership skills through regional and state gatherings. Fellows are paired with mentors and become part of a national network of peers. They support each other in finding solutions for challenges facing communities locally, nationally, and internationally.
Davis has already met other Newman Fellows through online events. She has begun to volunteer in some of the new social justice organizations they introduced her to. She is grateful to be able to learn from previous Newman Fellows and join peers who, like her, are ready to lend their energy and expertise to move social justice work forward. Davis plans to pursue an M.D.-Ph.D. after graduating next year. She hopes these experiences will help inform her future work developing community programs to improve health outcomes for people experiencing poverty.
“My greatest hope for this fellowship is to connect with a large network of change-makers who I can learn from and be inspired by throughout my life,” says Davis. “I hope to eventually work together to create a better world.”
Banner image: Faith Davis (second from the right) with fellow 2019 ASB participants. Photo courtesy of Davis.
When schools had to shift to distance learning due to COVID-19, UMBC’s Keisha McIntosh Allen, assistant professor of language and literacy education, and Kindel Turner Nash, associate professor of education, witnessed their own children face an incredibly challenging new reality. Like many of their peers in Baltimore City Public Schools, they experienced an overwhelming sense of isolation and a disconnect with the learning process in this new virtual environment.
Everything had changed, the researchers note, yet schools were attempting to move forward without the time and space to address the technological, social-emotional, economic, and health challenges teachers and students were experiencing.
“It was hard to see our children who normally are excited and engaged become withdrawn and disengaged,” shares Allen. “It was frustrating to everyone on the research team to hear about how Kindel’s kids lost a sense of direction they had before because there was no plan for equitably translating face-to-face instruction to the virtual space during a global crisis.”
Keisha McIntosh Allen. Photo courtesy of Allen.
Allen and Nash took action. They developed a 15-month research project, ”Teaching through Coronavirus: Toward Cultivating Urgent Humanizing Distance Learning (HDL) Pedagogies,” with collaborators Sakeena Everett, assistant professor of education at the University of Georgia; and Kyla Thomas, independent educational consultant. The project received over $150,000 from the U.S. Department of Education Governors Emergency Education Relief Fund.
Knowledge sharing
“We knew that there were other parents and educators having the same challenges,” explains Nash. “But we also knew that there were many teachers who were naturally doing this humanizing work. It was about gathering that knowledge, sharing it, and putting it to action.”
Kindel Turner Nash. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.
The research project is designed as a professional development training for 100 Baltimore City Public School teachers. It seeks to help them create or extend humanizing practices in their current classrooms. The diverse group of teachers participating is interested in reclaiming their classrooms as centers of connectedness, emotional wellbeing, and learning based on a commitment to critical social justice-oriented teaching.
“Humanizing pedagogy is a daily practice of transformation,” explains Everett. “It creates the conditions for all students to achieve at their highest potential by learning about and using their myriad linguistic, cultural, and familiar resources.”
Rethinking a disconnected system
Similar to how Allen and Nash witnessed their own children’s isolation, the research team also found that the 100 teachers who signed up to participate were feeling disconnected and overwhelmingly alone. This was especially the case for teachers of color working in a system shaped by structural inequalities and racism. On top of this, the teachers’ own communities and their students’ communities were highly affected by COVID-19.
The pandemic exacerbated the existing health, economic, and educational inequalities caused by structural racism, the teachers found. Some students had to manage work, home responsibilities, or caring for family members. This was all in addition to participating in online class and completing schoolwork in a limited space. Often those responsibilities conflicted with strict school schedules, creating more learning and social opportunity gaps, especially for students of color.
Kyla Thomas. Photo courtesy of Thomas.
Thomas shares that teachers may have been aware of these hardships but may not have known of how to best support their students and themselves. She believes this is the perfect time to create a different approach to distance learning, and to teaching more broadly.
At the center of humanizing pedagogy is freedom from oppression and agency, Thomas explains. “We need to ask ourselves, what are we learning from this, what can we build, what are we doing to help students connect more authentically in a learning environment?” she says. “The shift to distance learning may not be ideal, but it does offer an opportunity for change in how we teach and learn regardless of setting.”
Humanizing research
As teacher-educator-researchers, Allen, Nash, Everett, and Thomas were intentional in embodying humanizing pedagogies as they designed and implemented each phase of their virtual research project. The first phase of the project was anchored in creating collaborative spaces for teachers with the most experience in HDL pedagogies to share their knowledge so that other educators could learn from them.
“The team believes that by learning from teachers as they teach through COVID-19, they will move closer to ultimately disrupting educational inequities and reimagine a healthy, liberating, student-centered vision of teaching youth of color,” says Everett.
Sakeena Everett. Photo courtesy of Everett.
The other project phases delved deep into a continuous cycle of learning, implementation, reflection, sharing, and listening.
The team wanted the professional training itself to mirror what a classroom would look like if HDL pedagogies were practiced. To do this they created small virtual pods of ten teachers. Each group included teachers from all grade levels and teaching experiences. Within each pod some teachers were new to humanizing pedagogy. Others had some familiarity or significant experience with HDL pedagogies. The advanced teachers, all but one of whom are teachers of color, co-facilitated the pods along with one of the researchers.
“We value the humanizing practices that are often embedded in the teaching practices of Black teachers,” explains Allen. “This is an opportunity for them to lead and share their knowledge, which is often overlooked by teacher evaluations that do not acknowledge these approaches to teaching.”
Opening space for agency
The researchers also wanted to value the teachers’ commitment to the project. The professional development met all requirements for Baltimore City Public School teachers to earn six Achievement Units. These units accrue over a teacher’s career and create opportunities for them to advance along career pathways.
From beginning to end, the researchers share, they’ve designed their project to value teachers’ knowledge. Their goal is to demonstrate how teachers working together can create research-based solutions informed by teaching experience to better serve their students. Every step was a joint effort.
“It starts with how we as educators and researchers interact with each other and open space for agency,” says Nash. Seeing how teachers then express their agency to make changes in their classrooms is powerful to watch, she shares. “One of the teachers I worked with asked her principal to change her schedule because the current schedule didn’t meet the needs of her students. The principal changed it.”
Maximizing learning
Another benefit of the HDL professional development program is creating a vast peer support network for teachers in Baltimore City. They exchange ideas, expertise, and listen to each other’s challenges. They know that they are not alone even if they could not be together physically.
Radia Michael ‘20,global studies and mathematics, and M.A.T. ’21, mathematics education, is a project participant whose perspective on distance learning and online teaching tools changed through engaging with other teachers. Michael is one of seven UMBC students in the Sherman STEM Teacher Scholars Program to receive the training. Before this training, Michael felt the virtual environment would limit their ability to have engaging lessons and connect with students. HDL has helped them to think creatively about how they can teach online in a culturally relevant way.
“At the end of the day, technology serves as a tool. We can use it to recognize students’ full humanity,” says Michael.
Ultimately, HDL “is not a scripted curriculum. It is a lifestyle where we assume the best of our students,” shares Everett. “We are trying to find opportunities to maximize their potential and learning. It is a daily practice of freedom.”
Banner image: Person working on a laptop. Stock image. Mobile technology Photo by WOCinTechChat, CC BY 2.0
New research published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) shows that land use by human societies has reshaped ecology across most of Earth’s land for at least 12,000 years. The research team, from more than a dozen institutions around the world, compared the history of global land use with current patterns of biodiversity and conservation. Their work revealed that the main cause of the current biodiversity crisis is not human destruction of uninhabited wildlands, but rather the appropriation, colonization, and intensified use of lands previously managed sustainably.
The new data overturn earlier reconstructions of global land use history, some of which indicated that most of Earth’s land was uninhabited even as recently as 1500 CE. Further, this new PNAS study supports the argument that an essential way to end Earth’s current biodiversity crisis is to empower the environmental stewardship of Indigenous peoples and local communities across the planet.
Erle Ellis. Photo by Marlayna Demond for UMBC.
“Our work shows that most areas depicted as ‘untouched,’ ‘wild,’ and ‘natural’ are actually areas with long histories of human inhabitation and use,” says UMBC’s Erle Ellis, professor of geography and environmental systems and lead author. He notes that they might be interpreted like this because in these areas, “societies used their landscapes in ways that sustained most of their native biodiversity and even increased their biodiversity, productivity, and resilience.”
Mapping 12,000 years of land use
The interdisciplinary research team includes geographers, archaeologists, anthropologists, ecologists, and conservation scientists. They represent the U.S., the Netherlands, China, Germany, Australia, and Argentina, pooling their knowledge and expertise into a large-scale study that required a highly collaborative approach. They tested the degree to which global patterns of land use and population over 12,000 years were associated statistically with contemporary global patterns of high biodiversity value within areas prioritized for conservation.
“Our global maps show that even 12,000 years ago, nearly three-quarters of terrestrial nature was inhabited, used, and shaped by people,” says Ellis. “Areas untouched by people were almost as rare 12,000 years ago as they are today.”
Global changes in anthromes and populations 10,000 BCE to 2017 CE. Map courtesy of Erle Ellis.
The cultural practices of early land users did have some impact on extinctions. However, by and large, land use by Indigenous and traditional communities sustained the vast majority of Earth’s biodiversity for millennia. This finding comes at a critical time of heightened need to develop long-term, sustainable answers to our biggest environmental problems.
“The problem is not human use per se,” explains professor and co-author Nicole Boivin, of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany. “The problem is the kind of land use we see in industrialized societies—characterized by unsustainable agricultural practices and unmitigated extraction and appropriation.”
To truly understand terrestrial nature today, it is necessary to understand the deep human history of that nature. Outside of a few remote areas, “nature as we know it was shaped by human societies over thousands of years,” says Ellis. He believes that efforts to conserve and restore “won’t be successful without empowering the Indigenous, traditional, and local people who know their natures in ways that scientists are only beginning to understand.”
Supporting Indigenous land use practices
Ancient gateway in Angkor, Cambodia. Photo by Erle Ellis.
The authors argue that their findings confirm that biodiversity conservation and restoration will benefit by shifting focus from preserving land in a form imagined as “untouched” to supporting traditional and Indigenous peoples whose land use practices have helped sustain biodiversity over the long term.
“This study confirms on a scale not previously understood that Indigenous peoples have managed and impacted ecosystems for thousands of years, primarily in positive ways,” says Darren J. Ranco, associate professor of anthropology and coordinator of Native American research at the University of Maine. “These findings have particular salience for contemporary indigenous rights and self-determination.”
Ranco, a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation, notes that indigenous people currently exercise some level of management of about 5% of the world’s lands, upon which 80% of the world’s biodiversity exists. Even so, indigenous people have been excluded from management, access, and habitation of protected lands in places such as the U.S. National Parks.
Darren J. Ranco. Photo courtesy of Ranco.
“We must also assure that new attempts to protect lands and biodiversity are not just a green-grab of indigenous lands,” says Ranco. “We cannot re-create the worst of colonial policies meant to exclude indigenous people, which would undoubtedly make the situation much worse for the environment and humanity.”
A sustainable future
“Our research demonstrates the connections between people and nature that span thousands of years,” says Torben Rick, study co-author and curator of North American Archaeology at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. “These connections are essential for understanding how we arrived at the present and how to achieve a more sustainable future.”
Rick excavating a roughly 11,000 year old archaeological site on Santa Rosa Island, California. Photo courtesy of Rick.
This research represents a new form of collaboration across archaeology, global change science, conservation, and scholars of Indigenous knowledge. The co-authors hope this work will open the door to increasing the use of global land use history data by natural scientists, policymakers, activists, and others. Leaders in a range of fields can use these data, they note, to better understand and collaborate with Indigenous, traditional, and local peoples to conserve biodiversity and ecosystems over the long term.
“It is clear that the perspectives of Indigenous and local peoples should be at the forefront of global negotiations to reduce biodiversity loss,” says Rebecca Shaw, chief scientist at World Wildlife Fund and another study co-author. “There is a global crisis in the way traditionally-used land has been transformed by the scale and magnitude of intensive human development. We have to change course if we are to sustain humanity over the next 12,000 years.”
Banner image: Hilltop settlement in drylands, Morocco. Photo by Erle Ellis.
In September of 2020, UMBC’s Camee Maddox-Wingfield, assistant professor of anthropology, wanted to introduce her Anthropology 211 students to the process of digital storytelling and the tools of the Smithsonian Learning Lab. She reached out to Sarah Jewett who had just launched a new digital storytelling collaboration with the Montgomery College (MC) Digital Storytelling Internship program at the Paul Peck Humanities Institute. The internship places MC students with UMBC faculty who need help with their digital story projects.
Jewett, director of innovations in transfer research and practice at UMBC, knew about MC’s long-standing partnership with the Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access, of which the lab is part. She collaborated with MC’s Digital Storytelling Internship to place Mark Siegrist, who was an intern in the lab, with Maddox-Wingfield.
Camee Maddox-Wingfield.
Siegrist was the perfect fit. He produced the digital story Maddox-Wingfield needed and had the opportunity to learn about the resources UMBC offers for transfer students.
“I’ve had a really good experience working with Mark Siegrist,” shares Maddox-Wingfield. “He was so helpful. I am so grateful that this sort of collaboration was made possible between the two institutions by Sarah Jewett.”
Building relationships
This growing, humanities-centered digital stories internship is a collaboration nourished by Jewett and MC’s Jamie Gillan and Mathew Decker. The two English faculty serve as co-coordinators of MC’s Digital Stories Internship, and Gillan is also a Ph.D. student in UMBC’s language, literacy, and culture (LLC) program. Jewett and Gillan initially connected through Gillan’s doctoral research at UMBC, on story work as a way to build empathy. This storytelling project was a natural extension of that work.
Together they built the structures necessary for MC students to work alongside UMBC faculty on digital storytelling projects. MC considers these UMBC collaborations to be Level 2 internships, completed after MC students gain initial experience with digital storytelling.
Participants enroll as non-degree students at UMBC during their internships to complete a service-learning course through UMBC’s Shriver Center. This provides them with additional support and guidance in completing their collaborative projects and reflecting on their internship experiences.
“Level 2 interns are expected to bring their own ideas to the table, to be leaders as well as collaborators,” explains Gillan. These learning and teaching partnerships between students and faculty are at the core of how UMBC fosters a culture of intellectual curiosity and relationship-building.
The faculty team for the digital stories partnership in fall 2020 included: Bill Shewbridge, professor of the practice in media and communications studies; Tania Lizarazo, assistant professor in modern languages, linguistics, and intercultural communication (MLLI) and the global studies program; and Beverly Bickel, M.A. ’94, instructional development systems, Ph.D. ’05, LLC, clinical assistant professor of LLC.
Great chemistry
UMBC and MC’s strong working relationship has deep roots. Ten years ago UMBC partnered with three other community colleges in Maryland to develop and implement the STEM Transfer Student Success Initiative (t-STEM). Jewett, the executive director of this initiative, worked with community college counterparts to develop the systems necessary to better support transfer students in STEM as they transitioned to UMBC.
The seven-year initiative was a great success and inspired Jewett to extend this same model to other fields. She began with a summer environmental science research experience organized in collaboration with Howard Community College and UMBC’s departments of geography and environmental science and biological sciences.
UMBCs Kevin Omland (center), professor of biological sciences, birdwatching with students in 2019.
Rather than focus on expanding a single program, or even an array of STEM-focused programs, “We are working to scale horizontally to different disciplines,” Jewett explains. This includes the social sciences and humanities.
Finding a path
Like Mark Siegrist, MC student Ahmad Al-Olabi was also a Level 2 digital stories intern. The experience had a significant impact on his college experience.
In his Level 1 internship, Al-Olabi produced “The Journey: Swim or Die,” about his journey as a Syrian refugee fleeing to Greece. His powerful work was one of eight digital stories MC featured during UMBC’s first Digital Decameron.
“I was hesitant to share my experience,” explains Al-Olabi. But the feedback he received encouraged him to continue forward. “In the second internship,” he says, “I realized everyone empathized with my journey and valued my skills.”
As a Level 2 intern, Al-Olabi worked with Shewbridge’s digital stories class in collaboration with 20 students at Hong Kong University. He provided his fellow students with script feedback and technical support for the “Global Voices in a Time of Pandemic” project. The project fosters intercultural dialog about COVID-19.
Ahmad Al-Olabi in the atrium of UMBC’s Performing Arts and Humanities Building. Photo by Azigza Hussen, 2019
Al-Olabi appreciated working with Shewbridge, whose filmmaking career and expertise have opened a new career option for him to explore. This experience has made him feel more prepared for the next step of his academic career. “Before this program, I wasn’t sure I was ready for an American university,” explains Al-Olabi. “Now that I know Professor Shewbridge and Ms. Jewett, and having been on campus, I feel I can be successful.”
Reflection through storytelling
A third Montgomery College student, Stephanie Palencia, produced the personal story “Stand Up.” She addresses the importance of self-care while grappling with the pressures of cultural expectations and responsibilities.
Palencia worked with Lizarazo and Charlotte Keniston, an LLC doctoral student and associate director of UMBC’s Peaceworker Program, on Lizarazo’s Migration Stories project. They organized audio, text, and images to create a story map that reflects the migration stories of some of the members of Maryland’s Latinx community. Palencia also assisted Lizarazo in a digital stories workshop she facilitated at The Universities at Shady Grove.
“I’ve been grateful to have been invited to work on digital stories with Montgomery College students since 2019,” shares Lizarazo. She continued to work with these students on digital story projects through the pandemic. Of the partnership, she says, “This is truly an initiative in community-building beyond institutions.”
Building bridges to the future
Jewett notes that the internship engages students in critical thinking to refine their technical, communication, and storytelling skills. However, she explains, “The heart is about building meaningful relationships between MC students and UMBC faculty and staff as a bridge to university life.” It’s a mentoring process that reveals all that is possible at UMBC and beyond.
Mark Siegrist. Photo courtesy of Siegrist.
“These relationships are invaluable,” shares Siegrist. He notes that the UMBC internship gave him access to a network of professors. Should he transfer, he will understand and know the community, where to access resources, and whom to ask for help.
“This internship will have a big impact on my academic journey,” Siegrist says. “It showed me how I could leverage my skills to design new opportunities.”
Jewett hopes to bring more support and new opportunities to even more students. The spring internship is already underway with three new MC students.
She and Amy Froide, a professor of history, also just received matching funding from Bringing Theory to Practice. It’s an organization that works to link the engaged learning, well-being, and civic development of students. This grant will help fund a new summer experience in public history with Howard Community College.
“The impact increases for all involved,” Jewett says, “when students have learning opportunities to explore the different disciplines, networks, and resources UMBC offers, and to connect with mentors.”
Banner image: Al-Olabi visiting UMBCs Imaging Resource Center photogrammetry 3D and motion capture scanning rig in December 2019. Photo by Azigza Hussen, a Montgomery College digital student intern visiting UMBC with Al-Olabi. All photos by Marlayna Demond unless otherwise noted.
At 43-years-old Renny DiPentima had two decades of experience at the Social Security Administration (SSA) when he enrolled in UMBC’s new public policy doctoral program in the late 1970s. He had just earned a master’s degree in public policy from George Washington University, 16 years after graduating from NYU. DiPentima commuted to UMBC two nights a week for five years, and in 1984, DiPentima became the first graduate of UMBC’s public policy doctoral program.
“I have a great deal of gratitude for UMBC,” shares DiPentima. “I felt a real connection to the school before and after graduating.”
DiPentima rose to deputy commissioner of systems and chief information officer during his 32-year career at SSA before transitioning to the private sector where he currently dedicates his time. In 2019, he pledged $100,000 to create the Renny DiPentima Fund for Advancement in Public Policy.
In addition to making annual payments on his pledge, DiPentima is providing current use gifts so that students can benefit from the award now—including much needed assistance for projects that have required to adapt to COVID-19 restrictions. The Renny DiPentima Fund supports doctoral student success at UMBC through grants of up to $1,500 for educational and research expenses related to their dissertation.
Rudy de Leon Dinglas ’23, Stephanie Blaher ’22, Nate Pritchard ’21, and Jeevan Raj Lohani ’25 are the first recipients of the fund. As current Ph.D. students in the public policy program, these awardees—like DiPentima—are using their public policy careers to develop the framework necessary to inform transformative, inclusive, just, and sustainable policies that will engage communities and policy makers.
There is a story behind every number
“In my first job as an analyst for Domino Sugar,” remembers Rudy de Leon Dinglas, “I learned the power of data to understand a greater story.” These skills prepared him to manage and analyze data for Baltimore City. His work advised the implementation of the Baltimore City Bike Share; the Safe Route to Schools; and the Mobile Integrated Health—Community Paramedicine programs.
As an immigrant from the Philippines, de Leon Dinglas is proud to give back to the city where he grew up and is now excited to be part of the next generation of public policy leaders. UMBC’s new diverse faculty excites him. “It’s refreshing to have more representation and be able to finally experience diversity, in an academic setting, for myself,” he explains.
Rudy de Leon Dinglas, center, at a February 2019 event with the late Congressman Cummings and the Baltimore City Fire Department and UMMS partnership on Community Paramedicine Program. Photo courtesy of de Leon Dinglas.
The DiPentima Scholarship helped with tuition costs allowing de Leon Dinglas to focus on his research and his work at the Johns Hopkins Center for Government Excellence where he supports mayors and local and state administrators utilize data. “Becoming a subject matter expert in public management will extend the reach and quality of my work,” he shares.
Why women leave STEM majors
Headshot courtesy of Blaher.
Stephanie Blaherearned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history but she began her education as a STEM major. Now, as a third year doctoral student, Blaher is researching the factors that contribute to women leaving STEM fields.
“Sometimes women realize a career in STEM is not for them or it doesn’t meet their expectations,” Blaher says. Structural, organizational, and social hurdles can also influence their decision. Sexism and lack of mentoring matter, she notes.
Blaher was expecting to begin in-person interviews for her research in fall 2020. Due to COVID, her interviews became virtual and she had to submit an IRB amendment. “My timeline shifted, access to students changed, and my questions altered,” explains Blaher.
The DiPentima Scholarship helped to fund additional participants. “Broadening my participant pool will increase the depth and quality of my research and improve the outcomes,” explains Blaher, who is a collegiate associate professor at the University of Maryland Global Campus. After graduation, she wants to continue teaching first-year courses to ensure all students succeed in a major of their choice.
Understanding affordable housing today
When Nate Pritchard visited UMBC for a doctoral program interview in urban policy, he felt welcomed as an older and non-traditional disabled student. “It’s that intangible feeling that makes you feel at home,” shares Pritchard. That feeling continues.
Headshot courtesy of Pritchard.
One notable class discussion would become the driving force behind Pritchard’s research. Pritchard was struck that affordable housing “is not just a function of money but more building materials, labor, and building units available.” He decided to research the long term self-sufficiency of rental assistance recipients. However, the present data was 12 to 15 years old. Pritchard needed to evaluate current data to identify the barriers limiting the program from helping more people faster.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) granted Pritchard access to highly restricted data on the condition that he have a secure location to view it from. His dissertation chair, Pamela Bennett, associate professor of public policy, helped him find a private room on campus. “I felt honored for the opportunity and to have Dr. Bennett’s support,” shares Pritchard.
Unfortunately, COVID restrictions denied him access to campus. With Bennett’s guidance, Pritchard used publicly available HUD data. The new data lacked specificity so he had to focus on general questions.These unforeseeable changes extended his research and graduation date for another year, so the additional funding was invaluable, he says.
“Dr. DiPentima’s generous assistance helped me in my present circumstances, more than he can ever know,” shares Pritchard. He plans to teach in academia and return to his original research when restrictions are lifted.
A purpose-driven life
Jeevan Raj Lohani had spent a decade as a freelance global development consultant in East Africa and South Asia before joining UMBC’s public policy doctoral program. UMBC presented Lohani with the opportunity to combine program evaluation with his background in economics.
“Coming to UMBC was a calculative decision for my career,” says Lohani. He hopes his research will contribute to improving economic policies that address human needs, like labor migration, worldwide. Nepal is one of the poorest developing countries in the world, Lohani, who is Nepali, explains. Jobs are scarce, forcing Nepali workers to migrate to neighboring countries for work. “I want to investigate if migrant laborers, upon their return to Nepal, contribute to the economy by engaging in entrepreneurship,” says Lohani.
But for Lohani, informing policy makers with the resources to implement long term economic policy is one part of a greater whole. His end goal isn’t the expertise per se, but to use what he learns as one part of a much larger life mission to impact people with needs all over the world.
The DiPentima Scholarship provided the financial support Lohani needed between the end of his assistantship and the beginning of a job with the Maryland Department of Health.
The privilege of giving
DiPentima remembers that after graduating from NYU, he planned to gain some experience before moving on to the private sector. What he found in the public sector was a rewarding career with great responsibility to develop policy that would improve the lives of Americans on a daily basis. DiPentima saw the need to help broaden the research and the researchers in the field to meet the rapidly evolving needs of the United States and the world at large.
DiPentima and his wife Pat DiPentima with JD Kathuria, founder and CEO of WashingtonExec.com. Photo courtesy of DiPentima.
However, he knew that there were barriers to graduation. Sacrifices had to be made in time away from family; balancing a job and research; as well as the financial investments that have to be made to earn a Ph.D.
As the first alum of UMBC’s public policy doctoral program, DiPentima feels privileged to give a boost to students so they can complete their research and graduate. He encourages his fellow alums to do the same through scholarship and mentorship.
“Public service is a way to contribute to your country,” shares DiPentima. “It’s about being part of something bigger than yourself.”
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Header imager: Students walk down the staircase inside the Public Policy building in 2017. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11.
Campus Compact Mid-Atlantic (CCMA) has recognized UMBC with its 2020 Engaged Campus Award. This award acknowledges UMBC faculty, staff, students, and community partners’ commitment to service-learning and community engagement within the greater Mid-Atlantic region.
UMBC has been selected out of 38 CCMA institutions across the Mid-Atlantic. This includes other institutions that, like UMBC, have been recognized with the Carnegie Community Engagement Classification.
Students fill packages of healthy foods and other essential supplies for UMBC’s Retriever Essentials program. Photo courtesy of Retriever Essentials.
CCMA honors UMBC’s deep dedication in five categories:
Philosophy and mission of community engagement
Student support for and involvement in community engagement
Faculty support for involvement in community engagement
Community participation and partnerships
Institutional support for community engagement
The Engaged Campus Award reflects the UMBC community’s dedication to working in partnership with others to increase racial equity, inclusion, and social justice.
Supporting tomorrow’s college students
Kaitlynn Lilly ‘22, physics and mathematics, exemplifies this dedication to community. Lilly shares that until she came to UMBC, she did not have the mentorship and guidance to fully understand or access all the resources college could offer. At UMBC, she found support for her academic and professional goals and numerous opportunities for community engagement. This experience instilled in her a passion for working with students of all backgrounds to achieve their highest goals.
Kaitlynn Lilly. Photo courtesy of Lilly.
Lilly has served as a tutor at UMBC’s Physics Tutorial Center and a technical aide at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. She has carried what she’s learned through those roles to her work as an advisor to two teams of high school girls participating in the Society of Women Engineers Next Design Challenge.
“I want to give that mentorship and academic assistance I didn’t have growing up to those that are coming after me,” shares Lilly. “My goal is to show every student that their dreams of higher education and careers are possible.”
Community engagement hub
The Shriver Center has led UMBC’s community-engaged work for over 30 years. It has prepared and connected faculty, staff, and students from all academic programs with community partners. Its applied learning experiences have helped thousands of students to develop as community-minded agents of change. At the same time, the center has helped hundreds of partner organizations to meet their goals.
“UMBC’s community-engaged activity and the people who make this activity possible give me great hope,” shares Michele Wolff, director of the Shriver Center. “Now more than ever, our community and civic engagement can help change the current narrative and move us towards a more inclusive, equitable, and just society.”
Banner image: Mavis Sanders (center), professor of education, is director of the Sherman Center for Early Learning in Urban Communities. She talks with a parent participating in the Families, Libraries, and Early Literacy Project. A center staff member (right) shows a book to a child participating in the project. Image by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.
