All posts by: Catalina Sofia Dansberger Duque

UMBC expands arts opportunities for K-8 students in Baltimore through Charlesmead partnership

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.

A picture of with two headshots side by side one of a man the other of a woman.
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.”

A young man plays a grand piano in a concert hall.
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.

A woman with short, curly, white hair wearing a denim long sleeve shirt leans over a long table covered with white and yellow paper paper and long metal rulers.
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. 

A young woman with black hair pulled back high on top of her head with a scrunchy and wearing a black blouse with dots in a diamond pattern smiles at the camera.
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 celebrates 25th Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day with an expanded global audience

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. 

Young woman with purple and black hair pulled back in a pony tail smiles at camera with a chalk drawing on a side walk behind her.
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.

Connecting Baltimore

When COVID struck, many Baltimore families without internet access were completely disconnected from much-needed services that had moved online, and were disconnected from their communities. In fall 2020, Foad Hamidi, assistant professor of information systems, received NSF funding to research this problem in collaboration with the Digital Harbor Foundation and Project Waves, providing affordable internet service in Baltimore. Hamidi and Nora McDonald, research assistant professor of information systems, led a study to understand the experiences of low-income Baltimore families without broadband access, and student researchers played a major role in the work.

Five young men wearing black t-shirts and face masks stand on the roof of a building with a city landscape behind them.
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.

A young black woman with short black and brown hair, wearing light brown glasses, and a purple blouse smiles at the camera in front of a brick building and some trees.
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.

Three young women smile at the camera. One is close to the camera, another sits on the floor behind her, and the third is in the background standing holding a laptop. There is a large monitor and two lap tops with images behind them.
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 digital drawing of virtual game with one character trying to jump on a platform and the other running the opposite way towards a door. A green timer at the top of the image counts down.
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. 

Endres finds 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.

UMBC’s Faith Davis is named a 2021 Newman Civic Fellow for work on healthcare, food, and housing insecurity

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.

A young woman with long light brown curly hair smiles at the camera.
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.” 

A group of ten, dressed up, young men and women stand together in two rows smiling at the camera.
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.

Civic action

Davis joined UMBC’s Center for Democracy and Civic Life’s (CDCL) Alternative Spring Break (ASB) program as a participant in her first year on campus and as a leader every year after. ASB is an immersive learning experience in which participants explore the systemic and human dimensions of complex social issues in Baltimore. Through UMBC’s Shriver Center, ASB students participate in a service-learning course to learn how to best foster sustainable, long-term connections with local communities. 

A group of eight young people with three adults wearing winter coats stand before a brick building with a green awning that says Paul's Place in white letters.
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.

A group of young men and women sit around a table. A man stands to the side of the table with a blackboard and screen behind him.
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. 

Three young women wearing lanyards around their neck stand close together and smile at the camera.
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.”

A woman stands in between two young men and two young women all wearing dress pants and dress shirts and jackets with lanyards hanging from their necks.
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.

Three young women smile at the camera. One is close to the camera, another sits on the floor behind her, and the third is in the background standing holding a laptop. There is a large monitor and two lap tops with images behind them.
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.

UMBC education faculty and partners work to humanize K-12 distance learning

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.”

A woman with short black hair wearing a bright yellow blouse and gold metallic medallion earing smiles at the camera.
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.”

Women with light brown hair wearing a navy blue shirt and gold hoop earrings smiles at camera. A green tree is behind her.
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.

A woman with black hair pulled back tight and wearing a coral blouse with a coral, lilac, and magenta scarf smiles at the camera.
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.

A woman with light brown curly cropped hair with dark rimmed glasses and wearing a navy blue and white blouse with a navy blue cardigan and a long string of pearls smiles at the camera in front of some trees.
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

UMBC’s Erle Ellis and international team show people have shaped Earth’s ecology for 12,000 years

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. 

A man with short cropped grey hair wearing dark rimmed glasses and a blue dress shirt and tie smiles at the camera while standing in front of a brick building.
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

An ancient tall rock formation with a base of eroded grey rocks jutting in and out and a rock tower with two large wide faces carved into two of its sides surrounded by tall green trees.
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.”

A man wearing a blue jacket sits on a cliff by the sea with shoveling small mounds of dirt into a white bucket.
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.

UMBC-Montgomery College collaboration expands with digital storytelling humanities internship for transfer students

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. 

A woman with long black breaded hair wearing a black sleeveless blouse smiles at the camera. There are some trees and green bushes in the background.
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. 

One woman and two men hold binoculars and stand in front of a field of trees.
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. 

A young man with short brown hair wearing dark rimmed glasses and a brown dress shirt and jacket stands in front of a beige wall and looks into the distance.
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.

Leading By Giving—Alum Boosts Doctoral Students in Public Service

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.  

A group of men and women in paramedic uniforms take a picture together with the late Congressman Cummings
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 Blaher earned 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.

a headshot of a man with glasses and a suit jacket on
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.”

*****

Header imager: Students walk down the staircase inside the Public Policy building in 2017. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11.

UMBC receives 2020 Engaged Campus Award

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. 

Two young women wearing blue face masks stand facing away from each other while smiling at the camera in a room lined with shelves filled with cans of food. On the floor around them are large blue tubs with black and white bags filled with a variety of objects.
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. 

Young adult woman with long light brown curly hair smiles at camera in front of a gold colored background.
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.

Academy for Gerontology in Higher Education honors UMBC’s innovative leadership in the field of aging

Dana Bradley, dean of UMBC’s Erickson School of Aging Studies, recently recognized President Freeman Hrabowski with a prominent honor from the nation’s preeminent organization devoted to research, education, and practice in the field of aging. 

Bradley is incoming chair of the Academy for Gerontology in Higher Education (AGHE), the educational unit of the Gerontological Society of America (GSA). The AGHE’s Administrative Leadership Honor recognizes twenty international leaders in the field of gerontology. This year there were representatives from countries like the United States, Canada, and Japan. 

“The award is about helping an international audience understand the impact that our scientific researchers and educators have in the field of aging,” shares Bradley. Honorees’ outstanding work represents milestones in the history and development of gerontology. 

Bradley nominated Hrabowski for the award in collaboration with John Schumacher, associate professor of sociology, anthropology, and public health (SAPH), and Leslie Morgan, professor emerita of SAPH. Schumacher is the graduate program director of the gerontology Ph.D. program. This doctoral program is jointly offered by UMBC and the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB). These are complementary to the Erickson School’s bachelor’s and master’s degrees and certificate programs.

Three women and one man stand together and smile at the camera while in a room with beige walls
L-to-R: Bradley; Amy Berman, RN, LHD, FAAN; Schumacher; and Nicole Brandt (UMB).

National leadership in aging studies

Bradley’s work in aging research has created avenues and networks for scientists, educators, and students to investigate, advocate, research, and innovate in the fields of aging and longevity. This, in turn, has had a positive impact on housing, health services, community wellbeing, and lifelong learning for older adults.

Bradley is a GSA and AGHE fellow. She has long served as an elected leader within the GSA and Southern Gerontological Society. She was drawn to become dean of UMBC’s Erickson School in 2018 because of its focus “on leading and being on the edge through engaged scholarship with endless possibilities.” Hrabowski, she says, has cultivated and supported the Erickson School’s leadership in the field.

Over the last three years, Bradley has collaborated with Hrabowski, faculty, campus, other universities within the University System of Maryland, and community partners on interdisciplinary initiatives to broaden and diversify UMBC’s research in the field of aging services. Last year she and Hrabowski served on a steering committee to support UMBC joining the Age-Friendly University Global Network.

The “age-friendly” designation is a commitment to innovate advances in gerontology, health research, and community initiatives to support older adults in higher education. The group, led by Dublin City University in Ireland, includes fifty-eight institutions worldwide.

A model for teaching, learning, and research

“Dr. Hrabowski has been at the forefront of creating and promoting a vision of how we think and talk about aging and longevity,” shares Bradley. And the inclusive, forward-looking vision that he and the Erickson School emphasize has had notable impacts, including on the student experience.

At the same time, Hrabowski shares that he sees his AGHE honor as “a reflection of the Erickson School’s innovative approach to teaching, learning, and research.” He shares, “I’m so proud of the work being done at the school. It has had great success preparing alumni who are now leaders in the field of aging.”

Erickson School alumni like Lauren Mortimer ‘19, and Malgorzata Bondyra ‘20, management of aging services, exemplify the type of innovation that UMBC fosters, in their work to reach older adults in creative ways. Mortimer designed a comfort book that provides tools for people with dementia to soothe themselves during periods of confusion and irritability. Bondyra’s internship in senior housing inspired her to create a virtual cooking class for the older members of her Polish community senior center.

A woman wearing a white chef jacket stands in a kitchen in front of a counter sealing pockets of dough stuffed with Polish food with her fingertips.
Bondyra cooking pierogi for Seven Oaks Senior Center’s online cooking class.
Photo courtesy of Bondyra.

The Erickson School has become a place where students equip themselves with the skills and knowledge to address issues in longevity care. Students are then able to enter the workforce with skills that are inclusive and holistic.

The school is now developing a certificate in inclusion and diversity in aging services. Says Bradley, “Dr. Hrabowski inspires me to continue to envision possibilities for what the future of aging services can look like.”

Banner image: UMBC students gather at the sculpture “Forum” by Thomas Sayre in 2016. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

NIA grants UMBC’s Laura Girling $750K for research on living with dementia, including the impacts of COVID-19

Laura Girling, director of UMBC’s Center for Aging Studies, breaks down stereotypes of people living with dementia through innovative research. Since 2019, the NIH’s National Institute of Aging (NIA) has awarded her more than $750,000. The funding helped her examine how people with dementia live alone in community settings. This includes research focused on how COVID-19 social distancing guidelines impact this vulnerable population and how to ethically include people living with dementia as research participants.

“Persons with dementia are often portrayed as bedridden,” shares Girling, Ph.D. ’15, gerontology. “When I show clips of people living with dementia leading active lives, there is a realization that people with dementia can do many of the same activities others can.”

In-home assessment

Girling began studying people living alone with dementia two years ago. The project launched under the title Aging at Home Alone with Alzheimer’s and Related Dementias. She began to assess how people experiencing dementia manage their day to day living. Girling noted their interactions with their caregivers and community, and how they navigate and negotiate their physical and social environments.

To gather such detailed information Girling completes in-home neuropsychometric assessments and in-depth in-person interviews. These in-person interviews have helped her observe the cognition and behavior of people with dementia who live alone in community settings in Maryland.

As COVID-19 spread and in-home visits became impossible, the project had to pause. Virtual visits didn’t allow for the same kind of assessment, Girling explains. But the situation did draw her attention to important new research questions. 

Living with dementia during a crisis

As social distancing guidelines were implemented, Girling wanted to know how community-dwelling persons with dementia and their informal and formal supports were managing during a pandemic. 

She began a new research project, Exploring COVID-19’s Impact on the Care and Well-being of Community Dwelling Persons with Dementia, with supplemental funding from her main NIA grant. This research evaluates the impact of social distancing guidelines on the health and wellbeing of community-dwelling persons with dementia. 

A woman with neck- length blond hair wearing a black blouse smiles at camera.
Mary Nemec. Photo courtesy of Nemec.

Girling’s local COVID-19 research team includes research assistant Amber Zurn ‘21, sociology; Michael Allison, assistant director of the Adult Intensive Care Unit at Saint Agnes Hospital; and Mary Nemec, geriatric social worker and senior ethnographer. Nemec worked at UMBC’s Center for Aging Studies for more than 20 years and came out of retirement to lend her expertise to this project.

“Working with Dr. Girling I have learned how to code and systematically sort through research narratives,” shares Zurn. She is enrolled in UMBC’s health and public policy program and holds a certificate in social dimensions of health. “This has been an insightful process. It shows the nuances of qualitative data collection, a skillset I will be able to use in future career fields.”

Preliminary findings, from virtual and phone interviews, indicate that community-dwelling persons with dementia are experiencing more periods of isolation. This is due to the disruption in the supports and structures that allow them to successfully engage in daily living activities. And it puts their health and ongoing independence at risk.

Creating inclusive research

Girling notes that there is still so much that is unknown about improving the health and wellbeing of people with dementia in times of crisis and daily living. Expanding who is included in dementia research will help improve our understanding of the early stages of dementia. It will also give us insight on how to support people experiencing it.

One obstacle in pursuing dementia research, she explains, is the frequent exclusion of people with dementia in human subject research broadly. She is working with Nancy Berlinger, a bioethics research scholar at the Hastings Center, as well as Kate de Medeiros from Miami University, to address this issue. 

Berlinger researches health care ethics and social ethics in aging societies. Girling has received supplemental NIA funding to research the bioethical implications of including people with dementia as participants in dementia research. Together, they will develop best practices relating to logistical and other challenges of working with this vulnerable population.

“These guidelines will help the research community support inclusion of people with dementia in future social research,” says Girling.

Banner image: Laura Girling. Photo courtesy of Girling.

NSF grants UMBC’s Chris Rakes and Michele Stites $3M to transform undergraduate secondary mathematics teacher preparation programs

UMBC’s Chris Rakes and Michele Stites and colleagues have received a $3 million grant from the National Science Foundation to strengthen undergraduate secondary mathematics teacher preparation programs.

Rakes is an assistant professor of secondary mathematics education and Stites is an assistant professor of early childhood education. The grant will fund their study of the PrimeD framework in collaboration with Berea College, the University of Central Florida, and the University of Kentucky. They will examine the use of PrimeD to structure the training of over 150 undergraduate students per year for four years.

PrimeD framework

A man with short brown hair and wearing a light grey dress jacket, blue dress shirt, and gold and blue striped tie smiles at the camera.
Chris Rakes. Photo courtesy Rakes.

PrimeD stands for Professional Development: Research, Implementation, and Evaluation, an innovative approach to undergraduate secondary mathematics teacher preparation programs. Where traditional approaches to teacher preparation focus on learning how to teach specific mathematical skills, PrimeD structures teacher preparation as professional development. It creates an overarching system of learning, data collection, implementation, and evaluation based on a math teacher’s needs.

This structure supports teacher candidates with a mechanism to re-envision mathematics education as a scientific inquiry process—one that provides a unique and robust lens to examine diverse ideas and perspectives in math. PrimeD also addresses the systemic and individual challenges found in teacher preparation by incorporating culturally aware and equitable teaching practices. The PrimeD teacher preparation framework engages students as professional teacher leaders.

“I want educators to understand how mathematical ideas have meaning, and those meanings lead to procedures and skills,” says Rakes, the principal investigator. He wants everyone to learn to see mathematics as more than a set of skills and algorithms. 

Three young women and one young man work around two wodden rectangular tables with white and blue strips of paper. There is a row of shelves behind them.
Secondary education students working with math strips. Photo courtesy of Rakes.

Transforming classroom practice

Rakes is the coordinator of UMBC’s undergraduate secondary mathematics education program. Six years ago he collaborated with at team of secondary math education researchers. They evaluated a statewide math and science professional development program for secondary math teachers in Florida.

Their evaluation revealed that teachers were not implementing the strategies, tools, and activities learned through the professional development in their classroom. There was no unifying structure to connect professional development with classroom implementation and evaluation. 

“We realized that what was missing was a coherent framework that was guiding the work, “ explains Rakes. “There was no common vision and nothing explicit that would help the teachers take it to the classroom. There was nothing that said, ‘This has been fun. Now, how are you going to do this?” 

PrimeD, they hypothesized, could meet this need.

A young man and a young woman holding black tablets stand in front of a room and flank a large screen displaying three photos of groups of students.
Secondary mathematics students presenting their student-teacher experiences.
Photo courtesy of Rakes.

Teachers as researchers

PrimeD creates this link by equipping student-teachers, including aspiring math teachers, with the skills to conduct research on their teaching practices. They can then adjust their teaching based on their findings.

To assist teacher candidates with implementing what they’ve learned, PrimeD includes network “improvement communities.” Professors, mentor-teachers, and alumni guide aspiring teachers through the process. Research has shown this kind of peer and mentor support to be essential for teacher success and persistence in the first three years of teaching.

Three young men stand in a hallway holding up white pieces of paper with numbers written in black. There are colorful bulletin boards behind them.
Secondary math education students complete an exercise. Photo courtesy of Rakes.

Math as a change agent

Rakes will implement PrimeD at UMBC with student-teachers from the Sherman STEM Teacher Scholars Program. Stites, the co-principal investigator, will evaluate the implementation of the program at UMBC. 

At the same time, researchers from partner universities will also study the implementation of PrimeD in their undergraduate secondary math teacher preparation programs. The participating researchers will gather, share, and evaluate fundamental data providing insights into PrimeD implementation in different contexts. 

A blond woman wearing strings of pearls and a green blouse with yellow flowers smiles at the camera.
Michele Stites. Photo courtesy of Stites.

If the research proves successful, Stites, who specializes in early childhood math and special education, plans to implement PrimeD in UMBC’s early childhood and elementary mathematics program in the future. She wants early childhood mathematics education candidates to learn how to teach about finding mathematics everywhere.

“Mathematics isn’t a skill. It’s a way of thinking about a problem,” says Stites. “It has to do with how we function in society.”

Both Rakes and Stites know there is much work to do, but they have a mission and a team of collaborators excited for the evolution of undergraduate mathematics teacher preparation programs. “I want the mathematics classroom to be a vibrant place,” says Rakes, “where students have the opportunity to put all the things they’ve learned together into a coherent web of knowledge, connected through mathematical thinking and understanding.” 

Banner: Stock image by Monkey Business Images.

Enshrined But Not Guaranteed

Michelle Scott reminisces about her grandmother’s tradition to call her grandchildren when they turned 18. “She’d call, wish us a happy birthday, and then ask if we had registered to vote.” If they hadn’t, they were asked to call back after registering.

“My grandmother knew the power of the vote,” remembers Scott, associate professor of history, and affiliate in the departments of Africana Studies and Gender, Women’s, and Sexuality Studies. “She understood voting was not just about having the privilege to vote for the president but also about voting on local issues.”

“Not the beginning or the end”

The Alpha Suffrage Club sent Wells-Barnett to the national suffrage parade in DC in 1913. Image from the Chicago Daily Tribune.

The year 2020 marks the centennial of the 19th Amendment which enfranchised women. “It’s important to remember that suffrage was a push for that more perfect equality for women; it wasn’t the beginning or the end,” explains Amy Froide, professor and chair of UMBC’s history department.

Voting was almost not included in the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, the nation’s first women’s rights conference, explains Froide. Most salient to women were the right to access higher education, hold property, manage their own wages, and be able to get a divorce, and retain custody of their children. “It wasn’t until the late 1800s that women realized the vote would help them attain these rights,” says Froide.

Another thing not included at the convention were the voices of Black women. With the exception of Frederick Douglass, only white people were invited. Scott, an expert in Black women’s history; Froide, an expert in British history and European women’s history; and Susan Sterett, professor of public policy, acknowledge how systemic racism plagued the women’s rights movement from its inauguration.

Sharing lived experiences

“Even today, celebrations about the 19th Amendment disregard the Black women who contributed to enfranchisement,” explains Scott. “Ida B. Wells-Barnett,” says Scott, who researches her anti-lynching work, “founded the Alpha Suffrage Club for African-American women in 1913.” Some of the other Black women are Frances Ellen Watkins Harper whose speech “We Are All Bound Up Together” was delivered at the Eleventh National Women’s Rights Convention of 1866. And Mary Church Terrell delivered her address “The Progress of Colored Women” at the 1898 National American Woman Suffrage Association.

To help students gain a greater perspective of what these women were up against Scott uses storytelling as a strategy. “My grandmother was an excellent storyteller,” shares Scott. “I learned a lot about her life through her stories.” Her grandmother, Marion Vincent, was born in Baton Rouge in 1919. When she was of legal age to vote Vincent was prevented from voting due to voter suppression tactics. She moved to California where she was eventually able to vote, almost 70 years after the 19th amendment was ratified.

“There was massive disenfranchisement of African Americans before the 1965 Voting Rights Act,” explains Sterett. Sharing lived experiences like Scott’s grandmother’s helps students understand the complexity of implementing constitutional law.

 All three see a great need for scholarship on the contributions of Black, brown, and indigenous women leaders in the suffrage movement. The centennial can be an opportunity for this work.

Shaping the future

Maureen Evans Arthurs ’13, gender and women’s studies, agrees. Recounting her matriarchal lineage, Evans Arthurs names her family members that laid the foundation for her unique position today. Her great-grandmother, Pearl Johnson, was born to sharecroppers in 1887. Her grandmother, Irene Shepard, was born in 1918. Evans Arthurs’ mom, Renee Smith Guelce, was born in 1956. “I was born in 1986. My sister was born in 1982. We are the first people in my family to grow up with the birth right to vote.” 

Evans Arthurs poses with her mom Renee Smith Guelce on the day of her UMBC graduation. Photo courtesy of Evans Arthurs.

Evans Arthurs voted for the first time in 2004, 84 years after the 19th Amendment was ratified. Today, she is the director of government affairs for Howard County Government, helping shape the future for the next generation.    

*****

Header image: Five women officers of the Women’s League in Newport, Rhode Island, c. 1899. Source: National Women’s History Museum.

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