All posts by: UMBC News Staff

Capturing Distant Sounds: Fulbright Winner Tim Nohe

Tim Nohe,style> associate professor of visual arts, has received a Fulbright Scholars award, one of the nation’s most notable and highly competitive grants. Nohe will use the award in hopes of drawing awareness to the often ignored sounds of Australia’s Botany Bay.

Nohe’s research, entitled, “Sounding Botany Bay,” explores the sonic environment of one of Australia’s richest cultural and natural attractions. Nohe will record sounds from the city of Botany Bay, Sydney Airport and the Botany Bay National Park. He will edit and compose these sounds to create an “immersive surround-sound audio experience.”

“Sonic works challenge us to hear anew what we have chosen to filter out as we move through a noisy world,” said Nohe. “I hope to shape the rich voices and sounds of Botany Bay into an aural tapestry that will heighten and contrast what is and has been there.”

Nohe conducted similar research in 1998 when he participated in the Wendover, USA exhibit, which featured photographs, video and sound installations of the Wendover region. This area includes Wendover, Utah, home to the Bonneville Salt Flats and Wendover Army Air Field, a base that played a key role in the development of atomic weapons during World War II, and West Wendover, Nevada, host to a cluster of gambling casinos. Nohe made numerous samples of the region’s artifacts, including a sound exhibit.

Nohe will present “Sounding Botany Bay” and teach two sound-art courses at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales through June 30, 2007. He hopes to install a sound exhibition at various venues in the city of Botany Bay and create DVDs of the presentation.

Nohe won three Maryland State Arts Council awards and serves as a board member and composer for the performance art group Fluid Movement. His other works have appeared in local venues and international locations such as The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney and the Inter-Society of Electronic Arts, Paris.

(UMBC’s other Fulbright Scholar, John Stolle-McAllister,style> associate professor of modern languages and linguistics, is currently investigating indigenous political movements in Ecuador. A homepage feature story on his research is forthcoming.)

9/11/2006

UMBC is an Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Institution

A New Map for American Politics

As an associate professor of political science specializing in the U.S. electoral system, Tom Schaller is usually excited come Election Day. But Nov. 7 will bring added anticipation as Schaller celebrates the publication of his latest book, “Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South” and waits to see how his strategic map for Democrats’ electoral success holds up to the will of the people.

The book argues that religion and race have already swung the South irrevocably to the GOP and “values voters.” Schaller advises the Democrats to focus on the Midwest and Interior West states, made more receptive to Democratic messages thanks to pocketbook issues and changing demographics.

“Dixie” was published by Simon & Schuster and edited by the legendary Alice Mayhew, who also works with best-selling authors Jimmy Carter, Bob Woodward and Stephen Ambrose. The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, Kirkus Reviews, The Economist, and The Chicago Tribune have given “Dixie” good reviews. The Times seems to like Schaller’s writing, as he recently began an election-year columnist stint for Times Select, the paper’s premium online content.

According to Schaller, “Dixie” began as a conventional wisdom-challenging conversation with a former graduate school colleague. “He said, so matter-of-factly, that the Democrats could win without the South,” said Schaller. “I thought about it a lot, started looking at the historical numbers and the more recent data, and realized the case could be made — and made easily.” Schaller traveled to five states – part of what he calls the “Democratic Diamond”: Ohio, Wisconsin, Montana, Colorado and Arizona – plus South Carolina, to research the book.

Unlike many Washington pundits, Schaller is up front about his longtime loyalty to Democratic causes and candidates. “I think it’s important to be transparent about my partisanship and personal preferences as a way to mitigate media bias,” said Schaller.

One of Schaller’s former students, Sean Latanishen (Political Science, ’02) worked as a research assistant and one-man ideological check-and-balance system during the writing of “Dixie.” “Sean is brilliant, and has an encyclopedic grasp of modern American politics,” Schaller said. “That he is a conservative only helped, because he’s a natural skeptic of many of my arguments. He is that rare student who keeps me on my heels with his tough questions and challenges.”

The midterm elections will offer no respite for Schaller, whose analysis will be in high demand by regional and national media. In the past three years, he’s written 20 columns for the Washington Examiner, over 30 pieces for a variety of newspapers and magazines, and has blogged for The Gadflyer and the American Prospect. Despite this prolific resume, Schaller doesn’t plan to become a full-time author anytime soon.

“The sum total is that I’ve really written two books in the past three years, while editing and publishing a co-authored third book,” said Schaller. “So all I really want to do after the election is to go into hiding for a while and spend some time with my wife and dog.”

Schaller will discuss “Dixie” on Tuesday, Nov. 14, at 4 p.m. in the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery as part of UMBC’s Social Sciences Forum.

(10/23/06)

© 2006-07 University of Maryland, Baltimore County • 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 • 410-455-1000 •

Monitoring the Health of Vulnerable Populations

Working in the nation’s capital changed Todd Eberly ’06 (Ph.D. public policy) from a political scientist to a specialist in poverty and public health. The shift seems to be a good fit, as Eberly recently won the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration’s dissertation award for his work on how managed care affects services received by enrollees in Medicaid, the nation’s health insurance program for low income individuals.

After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Pennsylvania’s Clarion University, Eberly went to work in Washington, DC analyzing federal health policy. “I saw good policy options ignored and bad policy options embraced,” Eberly said. “I realized that I wanted a better understanding of the policy process.”

The experience drew Eberly to UMBC’s Department of Public Policy in a quest for a way to make a real-world difference. “The UMBC program goes beyond theory and really deals with practical application.,” he said. “Political Science is still my passion – but I feel that the interdisciplinary approach of the UMBC program made me a better political scientist.”

Maryland started the HealthChoice managed care program eight years ago as a way to control costs for over half a million state residents receiving Medicaid, including 30 percent of Maryland’s children. However, researchers were unsure whether managed care met the needs of socially vulnerable populations, particularly racial and ethnic minorities.

Eberly’s study of before-and-after data on Maryland Medicaid recipients found that the program increased preventive care receipt by black, white and Hispanic children and adolescents, along with black and Hispanic adults. “The improvements for minority youth were particularly noteworthy, because children are especially vulnerable,” said Eberly. “Access to preventive care is key to the promotion of good heath and quality of life.”

Eberly now continues his work as a senior research analyst at UMBC’s Center for Health Program Development and Management (CHPDM) and as an affiliate assistant professor in public policy and an adjunct professor in political science and sociology.

“I’m still very interested in the politics of poverty and social policy design,” Eberly said. “It has the potential to impact so many lives, so I want to know whether policies are working to make lives better or just perpetuating inequalities.”

(11/15/06)

© 2006-07 University of Maryland, Baltimore County • 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 • 410-455-1000 •

Closing the IT Gender Gap

Every college diploma represents the culmination of years of hard work and sacrifice by students and their families. But for the seven young women who were the first graduating class of UMBC’s Center for Women and Information Technology (CWIT) Scholars program, graduation was also a giant step forward for shrinking the high-technology workforce “gender gap.”

CWIT, the award-winning program that ABC News.com called “one of best resources for women on the web,” is dedicated to achieving women’s full participation in all aspects of information technology (IT).

The CWIT Scholars Program recruits talented male and female high school students who support women’s full involvement in IT and provides them with four years of financial, academic and personal support as they pursue IT-related bachelor’s degrees at UMBC.

Other benefits for CWIT Scholars include career mentoring from experienced technology professionals. Through initiatives like ESTEEM and Computer Mania Day, the Scholars inspire middle-school girls, an age studies have shown is when girls start to turn away from science and technology coursework and careers due to societal or peer pressure.

The first class of CWIT Scholars – Payal Aggarwal, Heidi Brueckner, Sumita Das, Lindsay Mannchen, Samantha Moffatt, Natalie Podrazik and Candice Scarborough – are off to a great start, with future plans ranging from jobs with top corporations like Constellation Energy, General Electric, Erickson Retirement Communities and Northrop Grumman to attending U.S. Naval Postgraduate School after completing a summer internship with Microsoft.

For the Scholars, building a strong personal and professional support network was the key to improving their confidence and sense of community.

“I really appreciate the networking opportunities that CWIT provided,” said Brueckner. “I was able to find a wonderful mentor, two internships and a job. I’m extremely grateful that I had such a supportive family behind me every step of the way.”

“There were many times throughout college where I found my classes very challenging and it was helpful to have other CWIT scholars to turn to,” said Das. “We’ve all been there for each other for the past four years.”

“The biggest thing I took away from CWIT is how important networking is to move up in business and achieve your goals,” said Mannchen. “Personally, the CWIT staff has encouraged me to go for what I want and to never to give up when faced with adversity.”

“The first cohort of CWIT scholars demonstrated first hand women’s ability to excel in IT and served as ambassadors of excellence in their internships and research experiences,” said Claudia Morrell, director of CWIT. “They are the students and future employees everyone wants in their labs and workplaces because they will set the bar high and achieve it every time.”

“The CWIT Scholar program taught me that if you work hard and believe in what you are doing you can achieve anything,” said Aggarwal. “They taught me that I can be anything, and even how to instill that in others.” 

(7/10/06)

 

 

Mentoring the Next Generation of Journalists

“There are some very bright students at UMBC – our best could compete anywhere.”

Christopher Corbett, who recently became acting chair of the English department, knows of whom he speaks.

For 16 years, he’s offered his quarter century experience as a professional reporter and editor to a growing list of former Retriever Weekly student newspaper staffers who have gone on to begin promising journalism careers.

“I tell them you are only of value to someone if you’ve had a job,” Corbett said. “It’s like baseball, there’s a farm system. You go work for a smaller paper for a few years, and once you have that experience, you have a much better shot at making your way back to a major metro area daily.”

The list of former Retriever staffers who now represent UMBC in the media world includes:

Vikki Valentine ‘96 is a staff writer at National Public Radio in Washington who writes about science and medicine and just returned from a year off getting her masters in the history of medicine at University College, London.

Jamie Smith-Hopkins ’98 was a President’s Scholar and valedictorian. She now works as a reporter for the Baltimore Sun.  She was recently awarded best overall individual entry and best serial in any medium along with best journalist under 30 prize by the National Association of Real Estate Editors.

Anna Kaplan ’03 works as a staff writer at the Stockton Record in California (a Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal affiliate).

Scott Daugherty ’02 and Pat Furgurson ’99 are general assignment reporters at the Annapolis Capital.

Amanda Krotki ’95 works at the Baltimore Sun’s Web site as senior producer of BaltimoreMetromix.com.

Grant Huang ‘06, a winner of the 2005 Cleghorn Fellowship offered by the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association, just joined the staff of the Maryland Gazette as a reporter.

Richard McNey ’03 works for Chesapeake Publishing Corporation as the editor of the Chesapeake Business Ledger, a monthly business publication that covers business much of Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

A former news editor and reporter with the Associated Press, Corbett wrote for many of the nation’s largest newspapers including the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is also the award-winning writer of Style magazine in Baltimore’s Back Page column and two books: Vacationland (Viking/Penguin), a novel about his home state of Maine, and Orphans Preferred (Random House/Broadway Books), which chronicles the legendary Pony Express.

Corbett’s next book will return to the American Wild West for a look at the role Chinese immigrants played in the making of that mythical era.

“Although I am a native of Maine, I like the open space out there,” he said. “I like the idea that you can drive all day and still be in Nevada. I like seeing signs that say ‘No Gas, No Water – 100 miles.’ The Pony Express is the story of a wonderful American tall tale, like Paul Revere’s ride. It’s anchored in fact but layered with 150 years of embellishment.”

Corbett’s wry style fits his affection for classic American satirists like Mark Twain and H.L. Mencken. He loves a good yarn, preferably about a true local eccentric, that is well told in person or in print. Thus, he is concerned about the steady decline of quality, hometown newspapers in the modern media business.

“A lot of things said to be journalism today aren’t,” said Corbett. “It’s mostly infotainment, insults and mentally disturbed people yowling on the radio. I don’t know what it is, but it’s not journalism.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” he said. “Journalism isn’t as pure as the driven snow. It’s gone through good and bad cycles in history. What’s really disturbing to me is the homogenization of the news product and the rise of newspaper chains. It’s two all-beef patties and special sauce that are the same in Spokane as Sarasota.”

Beyond advice to be wary of these trends, Corbett instructs his students to hone their news writing fundamentals by becoming involved with The Retriever Weekly.

“My teaching methods are simple,” he said. “I encourage them to read a newspaper – I’m often amazed by how few young people read newspapers today. You learn by doing, it’s like cake baking. The first few are inedible, but eventually, you get better. Employers usually prefer that you’ve made your rookie mistakes at a student paper before you go out and look for a job.”

Corbett is highly optimistic about the future of the English department and UMBC as the University gets ready to celebrate its 40th anniversary this fall.

“When I came to Baltimore, UMBC was only 14 years old,” Corbett said. “It was regarded as little more than a community college and not a very big one. I am amazed at how fast UMBC has taken off and how our faculty and students continue to prove naysayers wrong.”

(7/24/06)

 

 

 

Pedaling for a Cause

The summer’s rainstorms and blazing heat will not deter junior Mauria Uhlik and senior Peter Cailloux from climbing on their bikes for 4,000-mile cross-country journeys to raise money and bring awareness to two worthy causes.

Uhlik, a psychology major with a concentration in biopsychology, is riding in Habitat for Humanity’s Habitat Bike Challenge (HBC), which seeks to help end housing poverty by raising proceeds to finance the construction of five homes for the Greater New Haven affiliate of Habitat for Humanity. More than 90 college students from schools across the country will raise $4,000 each for Habitat before beginning the nine-week Challenge, which begins May 27.

Of the three bicycle routes the riders may take, Uhlik will travel HBC South, which starts in New Haven and finishes in San Francisco. For four of the six days they spend on the road, the will also work at local Habitat for Humanity construction sites or host an information session at a town meeting or community gathering.

Cailloux, a mechanical engineering major, is participating in Push America’s Journey of Hope, a bicycle challenge that raises funds for and awareness on behalf of people with disabilities. Journey of Hope, sponsored by Pi Kappa Phi, of which Cailloux is a member, is comprised of 80 Pi Kappa Phi brothers with their own fundraising goals.

With three routes (North, South and Trans America), the trek begins on June 11 at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, and the teams arrive in Washington, D.C. on August 12. After each day’s ride, the teams will participate in outreach events either performing Kids on the Block puppet shows or making friendship visits.

Previous participation in community service projects and awareness of social issues inspired Uhlik and Cailloux to sign up for the bicycle journeys. Uhlik, who has done volunteer work for people with disabilities and is an active member of UMBC’s Habitat for Humanity club, said the lack of affordable housing prompted her to enter Habitat’s bike challenge.

“Affordable housing should not be out of reach for anyone,” said Uhlik. “No one should have to worry about housing. They should be able to come home and know it’s their home.”

Cailloux has volunteered for many of his fraternity’s service projects such as Give a Push or GAP. Usually as a weekend project, the fraternity brothers travel to local campgrounds, building handicap accessible playgrounds, painting facilities and spending time with the campers.

For more information, visit the Habitat Bike Challenge and Journey of Hope’s Web sites.

(5/16/06)

 

 

Serious Students, Ancient Drama

While UMBC celebrates its 40th anniversary this year, a diverse group of talented students is doing its best to turn the clock back 2,500 years this weekend.

On May 11, 12 and 13, the grassy hillside between the Fine Arts and Chemistry buildings will be transformed to an ancient Greek natural theatre as student members of UMBC’s Ancient Studies Club and Theatre Council of Majors present a free performance of Frogs, the classical comedy by Aristophanes. (Information about the rain location is at the end of this story.)

The play, which starts at 4:30 p.m. each day, is open to the public and the entire UMBC community and comes complete with authentic costumes and free Greek food made by members of UMBC’s Hellenic Association.

Frogs began thanks to the vision of director/producer Steve Killen, a senior ancient studies major and president of the Ancient Studies Club. “I often walked by the hillside and thought how it would make a perfect natural theatre for an authentic Greek drama,” Killen said. “We’ve worked very hard to make the production as close as possible to how it was performed 2,500 years ago.”

Frogs tells the story of how the demigod Dionysus, having grown despondent at the state of the arts on Earth after the recent death of master poet Euripedes, takes a sometimes perilous and often hilarious journey to the underworld to find a good poet. There he encounters the two great Athenian poets, Euripides (senior biological sciences/psychology major Mark Hendricks) and Aeschylus (visiting lecturer of philosophy Greg Ealick) as the two get ready to square off in a poetic contest for the ages.

The producers of Frogs made one concession to modern technology by amplifying the actors’ voices. While the production includes some theatre majors like freshman Alexander Scally (Dionysus) and received advice from UMBC theatre faculty members, the idea behind Frogs was for it to be an independent, all-volunteer labor of love created entirely by students from a cross-section of majors.

The real labor came over winter break as many of the crew and cast spent their winter break making the play their own by working two hours a day, three days a week on a unique translation of the play from Greek to English with the help of Associate Professor of Ancient Studies Jay Freyman.

This type of dedication to academics is typical for the six Ancient Studies majors who worked on the translation, most of whom are seniors headed to prestigious graduate studies programs after completing undergraduate degrees at UMBC.

• Kristin Hulburt, stage manager/producer for Frogs, will attend the University of Chicago’s one-year intensive, interdisciplinary MA program in the humanities with future plans to pursue a Ph.D.
• Clare Ryan, who has several roles in the play, will attend Kings College London to read for M.A. in Classical Art and Archaeology.
• Rebecca Stephen, the play’s resident authentic Greek costume expert, earned a full scholarship for the combined M.A./Ph.D. program in Classical Archaeology at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
• Joe Howley, co-salutatorian of the Class of 2006, was a finalist and alternate for the British Marshall Scholarship and UMBC’s nominee for the Rhodes Scholarship. He is editor-in-chief of The Retriever Weekly student newspaper. Howley will pursue a master’s of philosophy in classics at St. Andrews University in Scotland.
• Skylar Neil will spend her summer as an archeological intern with Anne Arundel County, Maryland’s Lost Towns Project, and will then pursue an M.A. in Classical Archaeology at Tufts University in the fall.
• Killen, who is not scheduled to graduate until fall 2006, will spend his summer narrowing down his graduate school application field and digging with an ongoing archaeological field research program excavation at Tel Beth Shemesh in Israel.

“In an age when so many of their generation are concerned with the immediate satisfaction of material wants, it is refreshing to find a group of students who pursue an intellectual exercise for its own sake, just because it is fun and intriguing to do and is healthy for the mind,” said Freyman. “The seriousness and depth of their analysis and discussion during these sessions would rival that of any graduate seminar.”

Important Note: The rain location for Frogs will be Lecture Hall 7, located in the UMBC Information Technology & Engineering (ITE) Building (building #21 on UMBC Campus Map).

For more information on the performance of Frogs, contact Kristin Hulburt at 240-460-7432 or Steve Killen at 443-851-3364.

(5/11/06)