From the moment we rise each day, we are surrounded by messages from the media: news, advertising, images, sounds, video, texts. How do we make sense of it all intellectually? Students in UMBC’s Media & Communication Studies (MCS) major are trying to do just that. UMBC Magazine sat down with Jason Loviglio, director of the program, and Donald Snyder, a lecturer and director of the MCS internship program, to find out more about one of UMBC’s fastest growing majors. * * * * * UMBC Magazine: People might be surprised that many of the major’s introductory classes are grounded in… Continue Reading Over Coffee – Fall 2012
Essays by Maurice Berger, Research Professor and Chief Curator at UMBC’s Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture. Click on any photo to enlarge. Return to Staging the Struggle. Ernest C. Withers Sanitation Workers Assembling for a Solidarity March, Memphis, March 28, 1968 Gelatin silver print National Museum of African American History and Culture, Smithsonian Institution This image from the African American photographer Ernest Withers—one of the most famous pictures of the civil rights era— stands as a tribute to the slain leader Martin Luther King, Jr. and a poignant reminder of the continued urgency of the struggle he died… Continue Reading Staging the Struggle – Photo Essay
Whether he is enlightening readers on the nuances of photographs with his posts on “The Lens” blog at The New York Times, curating an exhibit such as For All the World to See, or testing the boundaries of memoir and cultural criticism (as he did with his book White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness), you can count on Maurice Berger to be at the forefront of American culture’s engagement with its history and visual culture. Berger is research professor and the chief curator at UMBC’s Center for Arts, Design and Visual Culture (CADVC). He is also a consulting… Continue Reading Interrogating Images: Q&A with Maurice Berger
With Josh Wilhide ’10 M.S., Mass Spectrometry Facility Manager On a hot summer day, there’s nothing quite like the perky fizz of a just-opened soda to keep you cool and caffeinated. As consumers, many of us are incredibly loyal to a particular brand – even to the point of being sommelier-level tasters of sodas. Many people can tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi blindfolded. But how does the hardworking human taste bud stand up to the massive data-collecting power of one of UMBC’s mass spectrometers? Josh Wilhide ’10 M.S., chemistry, can quench our thirst for this particular knowledge quite… Continue Reading How to Win a Blind Taste Test (With Science!)
EXPLORING THE BORDER When human beings have to be at a certain place at a certain time, they have lots of handy aids to do so: alarm clocks and watches, maps and GPS systems. Michelle Starz-Gaiano, an assistant professor of biology at UMBC, is fascinated by the question of how cells do the same thing. “Cells leave on time and get to a destination on time during development,” she says. “They get to the right places almost all the time and they don’t get lost.” What guides cells? One aspect of this question that researchers in Starz-Gaiano’s lab want to… Continue Reading Discovery – Fall 2012
As a child, Lekelia “Kiki” Jenkins ’97, biological sciences, could often be found on a fishing pier on the Chesapeake Bay, dangling a line for fish or chicken-necking for blue crabs with her family. Today, you’re more apt to find her on a commercial fishing boat in Ecuador as she researches how fishermen can keep from catching protected species such as sea turtles. It’s a race against time as Jenkins works with fishermen and government regulators to adopt new technologies out on the water. It can take 15 years or longer to come up with a new device to keep… Continue Reading Conserve and Protect – Lekelia “Kiki” Jenkins ’97, BioSci
As a child, Lekelia “Kiki” Jenkins ’97, biological sciences, could often be found on a fishing pier on the Chesapeake Bay, dangling a line for fish or chicken-necking for blue crabs with her family. Today, you’re more apt to find her on a commercial fishing boat in Ecuador as she researches how fishermen can keep from catching protected species such as sea turtles. It’s a race against time as Jenkins works with fishermen and government regulators to adopt new technologies out on the water. It can take 15 years or longer to come up with a new device to keep… Continue Reading Conserve and Protect – Lekelia “Kiki” Jenkins '97, BioSci
PUZZLE POWER Marie desJardins, a professor of computer science at UMBC, specializes in research on artificial intelligence. But at the 2012 American Crossword Puzzle Tournament in March, her research became downright competitive when desJardins crossed pencils with a crossword-solving computer program. The progam, dubbed “Dr. Fill,” was going up against one of the best crossword puzzle solvers in the country. DesJardins is the top-ranked female solver in the Mid-Atlantic region and she is the 44th best solver in the country. (Dr. Fill finished the same tournament in 141st place.) “I didn’t realize I could be this good at crossword puzzles,”… Continue Reading At Play – Fall 2012
Proposition: The natural sciences will forever be at odds with the humanities and social sciences. Steven Gimbel ’90, philosophy and physics, argues in the negative. As chair of the philosophy department at Gettysburg College and the author of works such as Einstein’s Jewish Science: Physics at the Intersection of Politics and Religion, Gimbel has made his career finding useful and provocative intersections between the sciences and the humanities and social sciences. * * * * * There are days in college that leave an indelible trace on your mind. I will never forget sitting in professor (and now professor emeritus… Continue Reading Alumni Essay – Battles Can Build Bridges
Students in the Erickson School’s Project 2061 class have high expectations for technology and its power to meet human needs. Working across disciplines, they’ve created new possibilities for the future of senior care. By Dinah Winnick Photos: Marlayna Demond ’11. CAD images: Michael Mower ’12 Ashley Johnson ’12, MAgS (left), helped her team imagine the needs of “Ashley,” a 111-year-old former psychologist who loves to garden but struggles with dementia, diabetes and hearing loss. Abdulla Aljneibi ’12, mechanical engineering (right), inspired his classmates to design for “Abdulla,” an imagined 90-year-old man determined to live independently despite impairments from a stroke.… Continue Reading Gray New World
UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, takes your questions. Q. What books have you been reading of late? And how do you prefer to read: ebooks or paper? — James Polchin ’89, political science Founding Editor, Writing in Public A. One thing that I’ve been reading lately is Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 by David Kennedy, who is a professor at Stanford University (Oxford University Press). This period in American history fascinates me, and both Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt fascinate me. She was very helpful in pushing the involvement of women, of… Continue Reading Up on the Roof – Summer 2012
TAKE A SEAT The first phase of UMBC’s Performing Arts and Humanities Building is on schedule for its Fall 2012 opening. Soon, the departments of English and theatre will move into the building – along with the James T. and Virginia M. Dresher Center for the Humanities, the Linehan Artist Scholars Program and the Humanities Scholars Program. It’s a big event in UMBC’s history, but did you know that you can already put your personal stamp on the university’s newest building? UMBC is offering chances to name a seat in the building’s state-of-the-art proscenium theatre. The new theatre is the… Continue Reading The News – Summer 2012
