“My ‘weakness’ of coming from poverty, having a single mother, having a disability, and being a member of the LGBTQIA community have and always will be my strengths. UMBC helped me realize that,” says Klotz. Continue Reading William Klotz, double alumnus of UMBC, earns Fulbright to teach in Mexico “Attending UMBC alongside such a diverse group of students….exposed me to very different ways of thinking about the world,” says Elliott. Continue Reading Dylan Rogers Elliott, leader of award-winning UMBC Mock Trial team, heads to law school There’s a conventional wisdom that nonprofits should be run like businesses. Be accountable. Watch the bottom line. But Greg Cantori ’84, geography, argues that this thinking’s just as useful the other way around. “Businesses need to be run more like nonprofits,” says Cantori, 52, who was appointed in October as president and CEO of Maryland Nonprofits – an advocacy group for the state’s more than 1,400 nonprofit organizations. Corporations can learn from nonprofits, for instance, that social responsibility shouldn’t be an add-on. “It needs to be embedded into the corporate structure,” Cantori explains. “The best companies to work for watch… Continue Reading Giving Back – Greg Cantori ’84, Geography CENTER STAGE On a hazy day in Baltimore, Ray Hoff can tell you if the smog that you see is from the Midwest, from Quebec, or from Baltimore itself.Hoff, a UMBC professor of physics and senior science advisor to the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET), began his career at Environment Canada with two projects: studying the deposition of toxic chemicals in the Great Lakes and looking at particle concentration in the atmosphere using a laser technology called LIDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) to take those measurements.When Hoff moved to UMBC in 1999 to become the director of JCET… Continue Reading Discovery – Summer 2013 The Hrabowski Fund for Innovation – established in honor of UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, to help UMBC faculty pursue new approaches to teaching – made its inaugural awards in January. Among the recipients were Marie desJardins, a professor of computer science and electrical engineering, Nagaraj Neerchal, chair of the department of mathematics and statistics, and Leslie Morgan, a professor of sociology and anthropology. Each project pushed UMBC’s already burgeoning culture of curricular innovation and pushed it into new directions and disciplines. DesJardins created the ACTIVE (Active Computing Teaching and InnoVation Environment) center to create a more collaborative environment… Continue Reading Back Story – Summer 2013 Teaching students how to write more clearly and powerfully in introductory writing classes is at the heart of the university’s mission. But technology is transforming the task, says James Polchin ’89, political science and English, who teaches writing and founded a website – WritingInPublic.com – that celebrates the contemporary essay. Polchin has taught in the Princeton Writing Program, the New School for Social Research, and is currently on the faculty of the Global Liberal Studies Program at New York University. by James Polchin ’89 It has been nearly 30 years since I walked into a small, green-walled classroom in what… Continue Reading Composition as Conversation – James Polchin ’89, PoliSci and English BLADE RUNNERS On a Thursday night at the Retriever Activities Center, amidst a hard-fought pickup game of basketball and wrestling practice on large mats, a group clad in loose-fitting, traditional Japanese-style garments clashes with wooden training swords called shinai. These warriors are members of the UMBC Kendo Club, students of the samurai tradition of kendo, or “The Way of the Sword.” Over a 90-minute training session, they engage with head-and-body-armored instructors from a group called Baltimore-Annapolis Kendo in controlled exercises and watch demonstrations of the sort of action group members might expect in kendo competitions. The club was founded in… Continue Reading At Play – Summer 2013 The books may sit quietly on their shelves, but the rest of The Ivy Bookshop buzzes with the activity of book selling. In the back of the Baltimore shop on this particular early evening, employees race to load Bill Clinton biographies onto a cart in time to sell at a symposium downtown later that night. And near the reading nook, UMBC professor Robert Provine prepares for a reading and Q&A in the bookshop about his new book on the psychology of hiccups. At the center of the commotion in his favorite leather reading chair sits Eduard Berlin ’70, political science… Continue Reading A Volume Business – Eduard Berlin ’70, Political Science Getting healthy is an American obsession. And Matthew Sherman ’08, interdisciplinary studies, is at the forefront of a growing movement that may help make that arduous task easier and more efficient. It’s all in the juice. But not just any juice. Cold-pressed juices with exotic names like Vamos Green, Goji Lemonade and Coco Verde. At JugoFresh, Sherman’s burgeoning Miamiarea business, these juices are created with fresh fruits and vegetables in an extraction process that emphasizes quality and care over speed and pasteurization. The process is time-intensive, but the result is a dizzying array of healthy and flavorful drinks that fly… Continue Reading Young Fresh Fellow – Matthew Sherman ’08, INDS UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, takes your questions. Q. With the many tools needed for success as president of a university, what’s that one thing you wish you’d known before you became UMBC’s leader? — Israel Cross ’04, biological sciences, and Ph.D. ’10, gerontology A. In the early years, I didn’t know as much about how to work effectively with public officials and the Board of Regents of the University System of Maryland to get support for the university. In the early 1990s, we were still at a disadvantage when we were talking to the state legislature, partly because… Continue Reading Up On the Roof – Winter 2013 UMBC boasts an amazing faculty, and one of the great pleasures of editing this magazine is getting to know many of them and bring the work they do to a much wider audience of alumni and other university stakeholders. In the Winter 2013 issue of UMBC Magazine, the rich diversity of our faculty’s activities in the arts, social sciences, humanities, mathematics and sciences is on full display. In our “Discovery” section, you can read how UMBC faculty members are working to attract students to the field of psychology, make our lawns cleaner and greener, create new opportunities for composers to… Continue Reading To You – Winter 2013 Studying a language not only expands your mind, but it expands your circle of friends to far-flung lands and even closer to home, as alumna Randianne Leyshon ’09, modern languages and linguistics, and two other friends discovered as they studied Russian at UMBC. Fate plays a fundamental role in Russian literature. Unexpected tragedies, reversals of fortune, missed connections. Somewhere Annushka’s always buying and spilling the sunflower oil – an unremarkable event which leads to a horrible death and sets off the fantastical plot of Mikhail Bulgakov’s magical realist masterpiece The Master and Margarita. It was fate – in the form… Continue Reading The Power of Tri – Randianne Leyshon ’09, MLL
William Klotz, double alumnus of UMBC, earns Fulbright to teach in Mexico
Dylan Rogers Elliott, leader of award-winning UMBC Mock Trial team, heads to law school
Giving Back – Greg Cantori ’84, Geography
Discovery – Summer 2013
Back Story – Summer 2013
Composition as Conversation – James Polchin ’89, PoliSci and English
At Play – Summer 2013
A Volume Business – Eduard Berlin ’70, Political Science
Young Fresh Fellow – Matthew Sherman ’08, INDS
Up On the Roof – Winter 2013
To You – Winter 2013
The Power of Tri – Randianne Leyshon ’09, MLL
