All posts by: UMBC News Staff

“A Master Teacher”
 
Professor of American Studies Edward Orser’s dedication to teaching always leaves an impression on his students. “He is the kind of teacher you want to do your best for. He is not only a role model for those who one day wish to teach, he also is an exemplar of what a teacher could and should be,” says alumna Donna Neutze.
A member of the faculty since 1969 and a 1998 UMBC Presidential Teaching Professor, Orser was recently recognized with a Regent’s Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching. He credits his teaching with contributing in important ways to his own research. “I’m thrilled with the Regents Award because it affirms the emphasis we place at UMBC upon the importance of undergraduate teaching in the context of a research university,” he explains.
Orser’s Community Studies Projects provide American studies students with important research and fieldwork experiences. “The Community Studies Projects bring together the teaching, research and service missions of UMBC,” Orser says. “Students working with me have investigated social and cultural aspects of nearby communities, including those in the Patapsco Valley, Catonsville, Cowdensville (adjacent to the UMBC campus), Gywnns Falls and Leakin Parks, and Irvington, and we’ve presented  our findings in a variety of ways—public programs, exhibits and books and other publications. To me, this represents ‘applied American Studies,’ which goes beyond the classroom to engage in research and interpretation in socially meaningful ways—and with tremendous educational benefit!”
“There is no doubt Ed Orser is a master teacher,” says Patrice McDermott, chair of the Department of American Studies. “His courses are very well designed to balance lectures, discussions and a variety of writing, fieldwork and research opportunities. His core American studies courses have recruited and engaged many majors, while his community courses are always filled and are the envy of urban scholars across the country. Over the years, our department has received many notes and letters testifying to his lasting impact on our graduates’ lives—perhaps the best test of a teacher’s effectiveness.”
 
 
 
 
 
 

“A Passion for Service”
 
What do Idaho, Mozambique and UMBC all have in common? They all have played a vital role in the life of Victoria Vargas, a member of the Shriver Peaceworker Program, established by UMBC’s Shriver Center.
Born and raised in Twin Falls, Idaho, Vargas is the daughter of a migrant farm worker who believed that success for his eight children would come through hard work and a commitment to education. She has always had a passion for service and in 1998 she was accepted in the Peace Corps and traveled to Mozambique, where she taught English to eighth graders. “I like to travel, meet new people and experience new cultures. Seeing the world first hand is a great way to learn and grow,” Vargas says.
As Shriver Peaceworkers, Returned Peace Corp volunteers pursue graduate degrees while simultaneously working in a community service placement. Vargas is a research assistant with the Choice Program, a Baltimore community based intervention program that works with adjudicated youth from the ages of 9-18.  She has assisted Choice in designing an evaluation and is currently assisting the program in conducting a pilot study that focuses on resiliency. 
In May 2002, Vargas received her Master’s in Policy Sciences from UMBC. She was one of two UMBC graduates to be accepted into the Presidential Management Intern Program and has since accepted a position as with the Department of Housing and Urban Development where she will be working in the Southwest Border, Colonias and Migrant/Farmer Communities Section.
Of her Peaceworker experience, Vargas says, “When you oil the key of life with a quality education, every door of opportunity can be unlocked and a whole new world can be opened up for you to experience.”
On June 18, Vargas and returned Peace Corps Fellows from across the U.S. will be on campus to attend the annual Peace Corps Fellows Conference, designed to bring the Fellows together to facilitate idea generation and collaboration between community service programs.
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
Pictured left to right: Sarah Cassel (Cobweb), Sarah Painter (Moth) and Jillian Byrnes (Peablossom) from the Maryland Stage Company production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

“Bringing New Insights to the Stage”

The Maryland Stage Company (MSC) has gained renown—not just in the United States, but also in Europe—for its unique and elegant blend of theatrical stagecraft and research. Founded in 1987 by its artistic director and professor of theatre, Xerxes Mehta, the Maryland Stage Company is the professional resident theatre company at UMBC. It has been called “the UMBC miracle” by TheaterWeek magazine, and in 2000, during one of its two European tours, a German critic wrote in the Berliner Tagesspiege, “Anyone who missed these performances and who loves theatre should consider jetting to Baltimore, Maryland to see these astounding theatre artists on their home turf.” The Baltimore Sun has called the Maryland Stage Company’s physical production “stunning.” 

In 1997, Mehta arranged for the Maryland Stage Company to perform during the summer months at Center Stage in downtown Baltimore. There, to great acclaim, the company staged Tartuffe, The Seagull and Six Degrees of Separation. This month, the Maryland Stage Company returns to Center Stage with a production of Shakespeare’s comedy A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The production opens on June 20 and runs through July 7.

Mehta cites two driving forces for the founding and growth of the Maryland Stage Company. “Firstly, there was the need on the part of the professional faculty in our department—actors, directors, designers—to work with fellow professionals to create theatre, and to do it in a non-commercial way that would honor our training and pay respect not only to our own ideals but to the ideals of our profession at its best. Secondly, we were impatient with much of the professional work we saw around us. Many of us were trained in other parts of the world and most of what we saw in area theatres struck us as bland, risk-averse stagings of second-rate material that either avoided the great works in the literature altogether or staged them perfunctorily with little intellectual understanding and even less emotional courage. We wanted to do the research in our discipline that we were trained to do, which in our view meant taking a major work (old or new), tearing it apart in search of its core, and then presenting that in a way that would reinvent the work for a contemporary audience. In this way, we felt that we could stay fresh as artists, enrich the place where we live, serve as examples to our students, and most centrally, help to keep our art form alive.”

As always, many of UMBC’s alumni, faculty, staff and students lend their talents to this year’s production. Alumni on stage include John Wellmann, Sarah Painter, and Ben Thomas; alumni participating in the crew include Kate Revelle, Greggory S. Schraven, Jordan Best, Amanda Grandel, Kristina Huie, Stacy Teague, Rhoda Disbrow and Karen Foltz. While Wendy Salkind, chair of the Department of Theatre, is the sole member of the faculty on stage, many other faculty and staff are working behind the scenes, including Elena Zlotescu, William-John Tudor, Lynn Watson, Catherine Kafer and Shelley Steffens Joyce. UMBC students also have a hand in this production, with Matthew McGloin, Beverly Shannon, Olugbemiga Idowu, Sarah Cassel and Jillian Byrnes on stage, with Benjamin Pohlmeier, Paul Kelm, Jina Kim, Damon Meledones, Rob Kauzlarich, Greg Lemich, Angela Klecker, Eric Whitt Hilker, Zarah Roberts, Alycia Lillie, Erica Smith and Kathryn Pregenzer working on staff and backstage.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is one of the great classics of Western theatre. “We are trying to bring out all the clashing colors in this dazzling work,” Mehta says, “a charming and gossamer creation that finally celebrates love and marriage in the most deeply uplifting way and that yet, en route, plunges into those regions of nightmare and chaos that uncontrolled passion can lead to. To find the right balances between laughter and terror, reality and magic, is extremely difficult—and yet a thrilling challenge.”

“Learning Success”

As the Internet, distance education and eLearning change today’s workplace, professionals who decide to incorporate new skills or change careers find UMBC’s M.A. in Instructional Systems Development helps them meet their goals. Todd Brace, a current student in the program and a training manager for Provident Bank, has added new techniques to his many years of experience in training and human performance development.

Brace actively got into the field of workforce development and training by creating, delivering and ultimately managing a variety of federally funded job training programs throughout Maryland through the community college system. From hot dog factories to companies that manufacture Olympic medals, Brace has acquired a great deal of experience in his field.

“The ISD Program has given me a model for re-thinking what I do. Even though I have experience in training and development, I have learned a tremendous amount about the foundational knowledge which has enabled me to do things such as lead my organization through the selection and deployment of an online learning management system (LMS).”

“For the first time in my career, I found a program that has given me the professional knowledge I need to succeed,” says Brace. “It takes a comprehensive approach to training and development, and is the only program in the Baltimore/Washington area to offer all of the elements I was looking for. In reviewing over other schools, only UMBC’s program contained the entire instructional design model, including theoretical education and learning issues, the technical aspects of ISD, the emergence of human performance technology and appropriate program evaluation concepts.”

The program offers a master’s degree and three graduate certificates: computer/Web-based instruction, instructional systems development and distance education. Brace completed his computer/Web-based certificate first. “What I’ve learned in the computer/Web-based courses is a strong technical foundation—a foundation that includes assessing content and determining appropriate authoring software needed to partner with our Tech Management Department which I am already applying as my company takes its first steps into the world of eLearning. I use something [on the job] from virtually every class I have taken at UMBC thus far,” says Brace.

Brace is currently just past the half-way point in the program, and is pleased with the success of his studies. “The immediate results and impact of the ISD Training and Development Program on my job have made every class a great investment.”

“From UMBC to Oxford University”
Nieshia Williams, a Meyerhoff scholar graduating with a B.A. in chemistry, is headed to Oxford University (UK) for graduate studies as a National Institutes of Health Oxford-Cambridge scholar.
 
A native of Ft. Washington, MD, Williams is one of only a handful of U.S. undergraduates chosen to participate in this prestigious Ph.D. program. She will have an opportunity to work at both the NIH and Oxford and will be co-mentored by a research investigator at NIH and a faculty member at University of Oxford who work together on a collaborative project in which Williams will carry out her research.
 
The University of Oxford is one of the world’s most prestigious universities and the training institution of Rhodes Scholars. While at the University of Oxford Williams will stay in one of the Oxford Colleges and be immersed in Oxford student community life. While at NIH, she will be working alongside more than 1,200 investigators and 3,600 postdoctoral fellows who do basic, clinical, and translational research in some of the top research facilities in the world.
 
Williams says that her time at UMBC has made her ready for the challenge. “UMBC professors demand a high quality of work and ethics from all their students. I am confident I am well prepared for any of my future endeavors.”
More Class of 2002 student profiles
 

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“UMBC Valedictorian Ian Stucky”

Ian Stucky, a 19-year-old UMBC Humanities Scholar, began his studies at UMBC at age 16 and is graduating this year with a B.A. in Modern Languages and Linguistics (German and Spanish) and an M.A. in Intercultural Communication.

The 19-year-old is one of the first recipients of the Jack Kent Cooke Scholarship. Worth approximately $50,000 per year, the scholarship is considered the most generous award of its kind in the U.S. One of only fifty recipients chosen from an applicant pool of nearly 700 students, Stucky will attend the William and Mary School of Law next year on the full scholarship.

Stucky plans to pursue a Juris Doctorate with a concentration on the relationship between law and ethics. “I plan to then use my training in languages, linguistics, cultures, and societies in combination with my forthcoming legal education to work as a jurist either in the United States or in the international courts,” said Stucky.

He is a member of the Ford Motor Company/Golden Key International Honor Society, a USAA All-American Scholar and a Rhodes Scholar Semi-Finalist for Maryland/D.C. He is also co-founder of the Modern Languages and Linguistics Theatre Club and a champion diver on UMBC’s NCAA Division I Swimming & Diving Team.

Read a Baltimore Sun story about Stucky.

More Class of 2002 student profiles

“AIRS Takes to the Sky”
At 2:55 a.m. Pacific time on May 4, the world’s understanding of the mystery of global climate change and the art of improved weather prediction took a great leap forward, thanks in part to the ingenuity of a team of researchers led by UMBC Professor of Physics Larrabee Strow.
As AQUA, NASA’s latest Earth observing satellite, successfully launched from California’s Vandenberg Air Force Base, it carried the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), a “Cadillac” of satellite instrumentation developed in part by Strow’s seven-person research group, the Atmospheric Spectroscopy Laboratory.
AIRS’ job is to take the most accurate measurements to date of our planet’s air and surface temperature, humidity and clouds. In about two months, AIRS data will begin helping the National Weather Service, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration  and weather services in the United Kingdom, France and other European Union countries to make better prediction models.
“The big hope is to increase the quality of long-range, four to five day forecasts,” says Strow. “It should also help with hurricane prediction and lowering the number of forecast busts.”
UMBC Assistant Professor of Physics Wallace McMillan is working with the AIRS team to validate the instrument data, and scientists from UMBC’s Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET) are also involved. The AQUA team is a global one, with members from Brazil, France, Italy and Australia. AQUA is part of NASA’s Earth Science Enterprise, a long-term research project to determine how manmade and natural changes are affecting our global environment.
 
 
 
 

“Making Meaning Move”
In UMBC’s dance department, students engage in research by developing their own choreographic work—with the studio as their laboratory—both on campus and at dance festivals across the country.
Dance major Jenafer Herling is one of approximately 50 undergraduates who will present research at the Sixth Annual Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day on April 17 (Graduate Research Day is April 19). She will discuss the creation of Picking Up the Pieces, which she choreographed after participating in the Bates Dance Festival last summer. At the festival, she had the opportunity to work with noted choreographers Liz Lerman and Nancy Stark Smith.                          
Doug Hamby, associate professor of dance, says, “I strongly suggest that dance majors study at internationally recognized summer workshops such as the Bates and American Dance Festivals. In this way, students can see what a full-time dance life is like, compare their abilities with other college students and network.”
Herling says the festival experience was very important to the development of her dance. “My research objectives were accomplished through the intensive study of both contact improvisation technique—a form of partnering—and a full investigation into the different ways to generate movement. For example, Liz Lerman taught an exercise where one person interviews another, and takes note of the gestures used by the interviewee. Naturally the interview is about the subject matter that the dance is exploring. This allows the chorographer to reveal meaning about a particular issue without being overly literal or theatrical. Exercises like this allow one to use dance to speak about concepts and social issues.
“My extensive studies of partnering at Bates Dance Festival, as well as my previous training at UMBC, gave me the skills to safely use risky partnering in Picking Up the Pieces,” she adds.
Respected dance professionals at The American College Dance Festival (ACDF) recently adjudicated Picking Up the Pieces. Herling says ACDF was a great opportunity to disseminate her research findings to a large audience, and to gain insight into the success of her research. Picking Up the Pieces was said to be “intriguing, effective and enigmatic.”
 
 

“Answers in the Sky and the Classroom”
Michele McCourt, atmospheric physics Ph.D. student, looks to the sky to understand the physics of carbon monoxide produced on earth. McCourt is a GEST (Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology) fellow in atmospheric physics at UMBC.
For her dissertation, McCourt studies the effects of biomass burning in southern Africa on the earth’s troposphere. “Fires burning to clear fields for cropland in the southern hemisphere produce roughly as much troposphere carbon monoxide as cars and industrial parks do in the northern hemisphere,” she says. McCourt analyzes data collected from the international Southern Africa Regional Science Initiative (SAFARI 2000) to examine the correlation between carbon monoxide and biomass burning to better understand how these small scale but widespread fires affect the overall global climate.
McCourt first became interested in physics during a basic physics class she took as an undergraduate at Lenoir-Rhyne College in Hickory, N.C. “At the time, I wanted to be a high school math teacher,” says McCourt. “I enrolled in the required physics class for non-majors, and my professor encouraged me to take the calculus-based physics class instead. I just kept taking more classes.” In the end, she graduated with a double major in mathematics and physics.
Today, McCourt asks, “How can you not be interested in physics? It’s something everyone uses every day of their lives.” Her goal is to continue her research on the environment and in the process make her findings and subject matter more accessible.
“After I graduate I would like to obtain a faculty position at a university. I want to teach the basic physics classes for non-physics majors. There are a lot of students who are frustrated by physics. There is so much that can be done to encourage more students, especially women, to study physics,” McCourt says. At UMBC, the physics department makes a conscious effort to recruit women into the program. The national average for women students in graduate physics programs is 10 percent; at UMBC it is roughly 25 percent.
Her first year at UMBC, she was a teaching assistant for her advisor W. Wallace McMillan, assistant professor of physics and an affiliate JCET professor. “He taught the basic physics lecture for non-majors with over 70 students in the class. Not only did he know their names, but also how each of them was doing in the course. He made physics fun. That’s the kind of teacher I want to be,” says McCourt.
 
 
 

“Learning from Post-World War II Germany”
UMBC faculty are recognized for creating new perspectives in history and often help shape the present and future by serving as advisors to governmental and organizational programs.
Rebecca Boehling, associate professor and graduate director in the Department of History, is researching denazification in post-World War II Germany under Allied occupation. Denazification was an important part of the Allies’ program to transform Germany from an authoritarian state into a democratic nation that would again cooperate in international life. Boehling proposes that because there was not a structural change-oriented, consistent approach to denazification during the U.S. occupation period, there were lasting repercussions for postwar German society as well as for the victims of Nazism and the international community.
She is currently serving on an historians’ advisory panel to the U.S. government that helps oversee the declassification of U.S. government documents related to Nazi and Imperial Japanese war crimes committed during World War II. This declassification project is based on the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act that former President Clinton signed into law in January 1999.
In the fall of 2000, Boehling received a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, part of the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. She says, “The invited lecture that I gave on denazification prior to my fellowship drew a considerable audience. In fact, it was this experience and the many follow-up inquiries from the audience, journalists and Justice Department officials that convinced me this was a topic that Americans wanted and needed to understand better. That was why I decided to apply for the fellowship.”
Boehling was able to help museum staff answer inquiries from Holocaust survivors and their families about the denazification process itself as well as about where records of individual denazification proceedings could be found. After starting the research there, she went on last summer to begin the primary research in archives in Germany, where she hopes to return this summer.
Boehling’s work on denazification is intended to result in a book that compares the practice in the three Western zones (British, French, U.S.) of occupied Germany from 1945 until 1952.
 
 

“A Fresh Start for High-Risk Children”
Christine Reiner Hess, a Ph.D. student in UMBC’s applied developmental psychology graduate program, helps high-risk children get a fresh start at life.
Hess has always had a strong interest in child psychology. When she read about the child intervention work that Douglas Teti, professor of psychology at UMBC, was conducting, she knew she wanted to work in applied developmental psychology.
At the time, Teti was studying how mothers adjusted after giving birth to infants hospitalized in a neonatal intensive care unit due to prematurity and low birth weight. “I was fortunate to be able to join the project and complete my master’s thesis from the findings,” says Hess. For her thesis, Hess examined the role of personal and professional support in mothers’ adjustment to their medically at-risk infants, and the moderating effect of child characteristics in predicting maternal adjustment.
“The applied developmental psychology program at UMBC has helped me gain valuable clinical and research experience through my practicum and research opportunities. The program is flexible; I’m able to choose specialty classes and experiences that allow me to learn about and work with high-risk populations of children,” says Hess.
The program’s focus on in-depth practicum experiences gives students such as Hess opportunities to define their areas of interests through hands-on, applied research experiences. Currently, Hess works with infants and toddlers in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Follow-up Clinic at the University of Maryland Medical System (UMMS). She conducts developmental assessments with high-risk, preterm and low-birth-weight infants and toddlers.
For her dissertation, Hess is examining whether a biological versus environmental risk index is a better predictor of child development in the first few months of life for medically at-risk infants. In addition, she is examining how maternal confidence and maternal knowledge of infant development predict the quality of mother-infant play interactions. After receiving her Ph.D. in May, Hess plans to continue her work with at-risk children at UMBC through a post-doctoral research position.
 
 

“UMBC’s First Division I Champion”
UMBC Retrievers know how to win both on and off the field.
Senior Cleopatra Borel won the women’s shot put in the NCAA Division I Track and Field Championships, held at the University of Arkansas’ Randal Tyson Track Center on March 9. Borel’s next-to-last throw, a personal best of 17.50 meters (57’5″), outdistanced Kansas State’s Austra Skujyte (55’9″) and Iowa State’s Lisa Griebel (54’10.25″) to capture UMBC’s first Division I national title.
“Last year was my first time competing in the national championships, and I was nervous. But the competition is a lot of fun, something I always look forward to,” said Borel, who is an academic star as well, maintaining a 3.4 GPA.
A native of Trinidad and Tobago, Borel earned a pair of All America citations last season, with top eight finishes in the shot put at both the indoor and outdoor championships. She credits preparation as the key to her success.
Borel is an interdisciplinary studies major focusing on “Studies in Health Psychology.” She plans on attending graduate school after leaving UMBC, but may have to delay while she trains for the 2004 Olympics in Athens, Greece.
ESPN2 aired Borel’s winning throw on Sunday, March 10. Hear an interview with Borel at http://www.sportscastproductionsinc.com/Media/WSP.htm.