All posts by: UMBC News Staff

Ellen Handler Spitz, Honors College, in India’s Telegraph

Ellen Handler Spitz, honors college professor of visual arts, recently visited India, where her activities included reading books to children at the SAI International School.  Her visit was covered in the Telegraph newspaper.

“Imagination is a conscious activity that requires a great amount of focus and concentration. Storytelling can create a number of scenarios and possibilities. It can make the impossible possible. For example, our storybooks have animals talking, people talking, things vanishing and so on. But my aim was not to teach children to live in a fantasyland. I told them about humanitarian values, something that can help them become better individuals,” Spitz told the newspaper.

The story, “Of Math and Games,” appeared in the newspaper on January 13.

Spitz’s visit was also described in a release by the school, which said that “her wonderful presentation and storytelling was very impressive.”  The full release can be read here.

Jessica Berman, English, Publishes New Book

English Chair Jessica Berman’s newest book, Modernist Commitments: Ethics, Politics, and Transnational Modernism, is now available from Columbia University Press.

In this book, Berman demonstrates how modernist narrative connects ethical attitudes and responsibilities to the active creation of political relationships and the way we imagine justice. She challenges divisions between “modernist” and “committed” writing, arguing that a continuum of political engagement undergirds modernisms worldwide and that it is strengthened rather than hindered by formal experimentation.

Greg Ealick, Philosophy, on Patch.com

“Are pet owners, activists and business owners increasingly at odds over how we acquire our pets?” asks a recent article on the website Patch.com

Philosophy instructor Greg Ealick wondered if “the increasing hostility we see in pet rearing is an echo of the increasing hostility in child rearing.”

The column, “Have ‘Mommy Wars’ Given Way to ‘Pet Wars?’” appeared on the website on February 3.  It is part of a series of posts examining the morality behind how we get our pets.

Liam Paddock ’13 Named 2011 America East Fall Scholar-Athlete

UMBC junior fullback Liam Paddock has been named the 2011 America East Fall Scholar-Athlete for the sport of men’s soccer.

Paddock was amongst six recipients in the league’s fall sports of men’s and women’s soccer, volleyball, field hockey and men’s and women’s cross country. He is the first Retriever soccer player to receive the honor. Continue reading “Liam Paddock ’13 Named 2011 America East Fall Scholar-Athlete” →

Student-Athletes Post Record-Setting Semester in the Classroom

UMBC’s student-athletes posted a record-setting semester in the classroom in the fall of 2011.

Sixty-two percent (209) of Retriever student-athletes recorded grade-point averages of 3.00 or better, which is the highest figure since these statistics have been reported. Moreover, the combined grade-point average of the department was 3.03, also setting a new mark.

“I am extremely pleased with the dedication my staff showed to the success of UMBC’s student-athletes,” Assistant Athletic Director for Academic Services Jessica Hammond said. “The student-athletes bought into our program and their hard work certainly paid off in the classroom. We are hoping to continue this success through the spring semester.” Continue reading “Student-Athletes Post Record-Setting Semester in the Classroom” →

Nicole King, American Studies, to Present at “Baltimore History Evening” (2/16)

On February 16, Nicole King, assistant professor of American studies, will present “Mapping Baybrook: Environmental Justice in Industrial South Baltimore” as part of a series of “Baltimore History Evenings” at the Village Learning Place, co-sponsored by the Baltimore Historical Society.

King will discuss the history of the communities that make up Far South Baltimore, several of which no longer exist as residential areas. She is currently working with UMBC’s Imaging Research Center on a digital component to this research project.

There is no charge, but contributions to the Village Learning Place are encouraged. The Village Learning Place is located at 2521 St. Paul St., Baltimore, 21218. A reception will be held at 7:00 pm, and the talk will begin at 7:30. More information about the lecture series can be found here.

Jessica Berman, English, Publishes Book

Jessica Berman, Associate Professor and Chair of English, has just published a book, Modernist Commitments: Ethics, Politics and Transnational Modernism. In the book Berman explores how modernist narrative connects ethical attitudes and responsibilities to the active creation of political relationships and the way we imagine justice. She challenges divisions between “modernist” and “committed” writing, arguing that a continuum of political engagement undergirds modernisms worldwide and that it is strengthened rather than hindered by formal experimentation. The book also makes the case for an expanded, transnational model of literary modernism.

Modernist Commitments is part of the Modernist Latitudes book series from Columbia University Press, which Berman coedits with Paul Saint-Amour. For more information, visit http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14950-1/modernist-commitments.

Giant Asteroid Vespa as Cold as Ice

Is there water on Vespa? Timothy Stubbs and his colleague, Yongli Wang think so.  In a NASA special Web feature Stubbs talks about their findings.

“”Near the north and south poles, the conditions appear to be favorable for water ice to exist beneath the surface,” says Timothy Stubbs of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Stubbs and Yongli Wang of the Goddard Planetary Heliophysics Institute at the University of Maryland published the models in the January 2012 issue of the journal Icarus. The models are based on information from telescopes including NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.”

Robert Provine, Psychology, and Student Researchers in Modern Psykologi

At the November meeting of the Society for Neuroscience, Robert Provine, professor of psychology, and his student co-authors presented a poster entitled “When the whites of the eyes are red, yellow, and super-white: A uniquely human communication medium.”

Provine’s co-authors included Marcello Cabrera ’12, psychology; Skylar Spangler ’12, psychology; Jessica Nave-Blodgett ’12, psychology; Schnaude Dorizan ’13, psychology; and Iman Kennedy ’12, psychology.

An article on their work ran in the February issue of the Swedish magazine Modern Psykologi.

Paradise is Not Lost, It’s Just Different

All is not lost, at least when it comes to plant species richness, the number of different plants, in an ecosystem.  Erle Ellis and his colleagues suggest in their recent paper, All is Not Loss: Plant Biodiversity in the Anthropocene, published in PLoSone, that rather than human interventions decreasing species richness they’ve increased it.

“The evidence is quite strong,” says Ellis, “that we are increasing plant species richness overall in most regional landscapes.” Ellis says increased species richness is due largely to human-facilitated introduction of exotic species.

But what does that mean for biodiversity?  Ellis says that, “if you want to live on a planet full of undisturbed native ecosystems, that planet is long gone.” But he adds, “if you want to engage in conserving biodiversity and building a better, more sustainable human nature, the prospects are good, and getting better as we learn more about how to better manage biodiversity in novel ecosystems.”

For more information see:

Lee Boot, IRC, on Baltimore Brew

On Saturday, January 21, more than 200 people attended Create Baltimore, an “unconference” organized around the idea of building a creative community in Baltimore. Among them was Lee Boot, associate director of the Imaging Research Center, who presented a session with photographer John Dean on bringing street commerce to Baltimore.

“I spent time in Istanbul and John spent time in Florence this fall and we were both blown away by how different the concept of street commerce is in other parts of the world from the way we do it here in Baltimore (and most of the states),” Boot wrote on the website, explaining their topic. “We think it could be the missing link for jobs, making the city a destination, and bringing life to struggling neighborhoods.”

The “unconference,” and Boot’s session, were covered in a January 24 Baltimore Brew blog post entitled “Arts and tech community gather for Create Baltimore.”

Dawn Bieher, GES, on Canadian Broadcasting’s DNTO

Deer are cute, but pigeons are “rats with wings.” And rats are just gross. Why do we love seeing some wild animals in the city, and loathe others? Dawn Biehler, assistant professor of geography and environmental systems, discussed this issue on the Canadian Broadcasting Company program “DNTO (Definitely Not the Opera).”

“Humans have a little bit of an anti-urban bias,” she explained. “So when one of these representatives of the wild comes to the city, we feel really flattered that they would want to come and be in this place where we have this concentration of human life.”

The episode, “City, meet wildlife… wildlife, meet city” aired on the program on January 21. It can be heard here; Biehler’s segment begins at 43:45.

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