All posts by: UMBC News Staff

“U.S. Presidential Award for UMBC”
  
The usually casually dressed Michael Summers put on a suit and tie for the occasion–he was, after all, going to the White House to receive an award from the president of the United States.

Summers, UMBC professor of chemistry/biochemistry and Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, accepted the 2000 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring from President Clinton. He was one of 10 national recipients of the award. Administered and funded by the National Science Foundation, the award honors leadership in encouraging minorities, women, and people with disabilities to pursue careers in scientific, engineering, and technical fields.

Summers brings UMBC undergraduates into his research lab to work on unraveling the protein structure of the HIV virus, affording them real scientific research, and even publication experience. His guidance and encouragement of UMBC’s minority students interested in pursuing the sciences have proven pivotal in launching their careers: Summer’s recent UMBC grads have gone on to medical school and M.D./Ph.D. programs at Harvard, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania.

This marks the second time in four years that the award has been brought home to UMBC–the university was honored for its institutional mentoring efforts in 1997. Summers brought back from the White House a commemorative presidential certificate, and a $10,000 grant. Well worth wearing a tie.  

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“Probing Our Impact on the Environment”
  

A member of the physics faculty since 1984 and a 1974 UMBC graduate, Larrabee Strow is one of the chief scientists behind NASA’s $30 billion international Earth Observing System project. He developed a new satellite instrument, the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), and complex algorithms that will be used to measure climate change. The data collected by AIRS will be used by scientists around the world to better understand weather and climate change and by the National Weather Service and others to improve the accuracy of weather and climate models.

Strow’s work on the NASA project over the past 10 years is one of the most significant examples of UMBC’s emergence as a major research center for environmental studies.

In 2000, the University entered into a $75 million cooperative agreement with NASA/Goddard — the largest research partnership in UMBC’s history — establishing UMBC as the headquarters for the Goddard Earth Science and Technology Center, which studies the Earth’s surface, atmosphere, and oceans. The University also received $2 million in funding from the Environmental Protection Agency to create the Center for Urban Environmental Research, Education, and Training.

“A Mentor of Many”

An accomplished teacher and mentor for countless students at UMBC, J. Lynn Zimmerman credits her parents for her love of teaching and its importance to her. “My mother was a teacher in a one-room school house in rural Canada,” says Zimmerman, a professor of biological sciences who was recently named Presidential Teaching Professor, 2001-2004. “The value of education was always foremost in our home.”

But, it was her father and his love of plants that would inspire her most. He was a nurseryman for the city of Detroit. And, “Although he wasn’t educated beyond high school, he taught himself the Latin names of every plant he ever found,” recalls Zimmerman.

The little girl, who “always had the best leaf collection in school,” grew up to discover a “love of plant biology,” earning her master’s degree at Wayne State University and her Ph.D. from the University of California, Irvine. Zimmerman came to UMBC in 1983 and her current research involves the development and thermotolerance of plants.

Besides being named a Presidential Teaching Professor, Zimmerman is the recipient of the UMBC Student Activities Outstanding Advisor Award and a Regents’ Faculty Award for Excellence in Mentoring.

“Being a science professor in a research university is oftentimes a delicate balancing act to maintain an active and productive research program while at the same time devoting yourself to your students as a first priority,” says Zimmerman, who worked diligently to establish UMBC’s five-year-old Golden Key International Honor Society, which has been an international award-winning chapter three years in a row. “But it can, and must be done.”

“The Art of Educational Outreach”
 
UMBC’s Fine Arts Gallery has drawn upon the experience and energy of one of its graduate assistants in the design and organization of its educational outreach initiative for the current exhibition, “Fred Wilson: Objects and Installations, 1979 – 2000.” Imaging and digital arts student Bea Bufrahi ’01, who also worked as an undergraduate intern in the gallery and recently completed another internship with Baltimore’s Contemporary Museum, brought together a rich and diverse offering of educational experiences focusing on museums and their recent collaborations with living artists.

Students from Middle River High School, City College, Catonsville High School and McDonogh School engaged in a dialogue with museum educators from the Walters Art Museum, the Contemporary Museum and the Maryland Historical Society, and explored how museums are rethinking their collections and how the public interprets them. Special attention was paid to the Fred Wilson’s historic 1993 collaboration with the Contemporary Museum and the Maryland Historical Society in creating the exhibition “Mining the Museum” presented at the Maryland Historical Society. Students had access to the current collaboration project between the Walters Art Museum and the Contemporary Museum which features the artist Dennis Adams, who is re-interpreting the Walters Art Museum’s permanent collection through the re-fabrication and re-installation of sculptural artifacts and site specific performance.

Multi-site visits to all three institutions, guided tours of the Fred Wilson exhibition at UMBC, as well as intensive workshops held at all four schools allowed students to engage in group critiques of their museum and gallery experiences and ultimately create their own artworks which actively address the issues of presentation and interpretation. The gallery will host a student exhibition of works created from this initiative in the Department of Visual Art’s Hallway Gallery during the month of December.
 

“Gifted Young Students Find a Home at UMBC”
Compared to their classmates, they’re a little short, and their voices a bit high-pitched, but otherwise, they’re very comfortable as UMBC students pursuing their undergraduate degrees. They are UMBC’s Young Scholars–some, like David Dalrymple, are only 10 years old, others in their early teens–but all are academically gifted and ready for college-level classes. And they are drawn to UMBC as a place that makes them feel welcome.

“UMBC is developing a reputation–quietly, and by our actions–as a good place for these academically talented kids to come,” explains John Martello, vice provost for community partnerships and executive director of the Shriver Center. These exceptional children have often been home-schooled and are referred to UMBC by guidance counselors or organizations like Johns Hopkins’ Center for Talented Youth. “They’re referred to us as an institution that has a high-quality, low-cost program, and is supportive and welcoming,” says Martello, who notes that UMBC has a solid track record thanks to years of experience by Associate Director of Scholarships Bobbie Shahpazian, who has helped UMBC’s “precocious youth” find their footing.

Young Scholars takes a purposefully informal approach–there are no dorms for the youngsters, as most still want to live at home–and no specially structured curriculum. “They don’t really need or want special academic support, but we help them navigate through the University,” says Martello.

One problem that often arises, but corrects itself: Professors who might be initially skeptical about the ability of a nine-year-old Young Scholar to keep up in a college math or physics class “become converts after the results of the first exam,” says Martello.
 

“A Political Insider”
History and political science major Tracy Tucker ’00 understands the value of the internships and connections that an honors university can provide. A Humanities Scholar, Tucker participated in UMBC’s Legislative Affairs Internship Program, interning with Maryland State Senator Thomas Middleton. “It was exciting to have such an insider’s view of how our state government works,” she says.
Tucker was also one of only 20 students throughout Maryland chosen to participate in the Governor’s Summer Internship Program, coordinated by UMBC’s Shriver Center. She interned with Lieutenant Governor Kathleen Kennedy Townsend’s office, an experience which led to her current position as a special assistant to the lieutenant governor.
 

“Green Writing”
 
It seems only natural that Jim McKusick would find a way to bring together his passion for nature with his love of literature. His achievement can be found in two new books exploring the emerging field of “ecological literary criticism.”

“I’ve been fascinated by the outdoors and the environment since I was a kid,” explains McKusick, chair of UMBC’s English department. “It’s deep in my blood.” As a teenager, he hiked 1,000 miles of the northeast section of the Appalachian Trail, and in subsequent summers, he trekked hundreds of miles of the Sierra Nevada and Pacific Crest trails, as well as led wilderness canoe trips. (“I have a special fondness for swamps,” he admits.) While a student at Dartmouth College, he began mountain climbing, conquering peaks in the Himalayas and Peru.

At the same time, he found his professional voice in literature, most specifically English poetry of the Romantic period, in which he discovered echoes of his own fascination with the natural world and sources that deeply influenced American writers such as Emerson, Thoreau, and John Muir, laying the foundation for the modern environmental movement.

In his newly published anthology Literature and Nature: Four Centuries of Nature Writing, co-edited with Bridget Keegan, McKusick presents a banquet of literary selections–in all genres (poetry, plays, novels, and essays), written by men and women of all races, social classes, and nationalities. His second publication, Green Writing: Romanticism and Ecology, a deeper, more focused treatise on the influence of the English Romantics, took McKusick out into the field, to his great delight. “If you’re going to understand a writer, I think you have to be deeply attuned to their geographical place,” he says.  

“Growing a Company on Campus”
 
Like many UMBC students, Andy Lufburrow has a job that earns him money and keeps him busy between classes. But Lufburrow’s work is not your usual off-campus employment. He’s the founder and CEO of his own company, Digimo, a web-development firm with a client base of major corporations and headquarters in the UMBC Technology Center. At least it’s an easy commute from work to class.

As a freshman, Lufburrow presented his business plan to the UMBC Technology Center and became the first student entrepreneur to set up shop in the center’s high-tech incubator program. It wasn’t just the economical office space that Lufburrow found attractive about the incubator environment–it was the advice, mentoring, and exposure that the Tech Center could provide. His advisory board includes respected members of the information technology industry as well as the University, and they have opened doors–to clients and to venture capital–for the fledgling firm. And Digimo’s employee base expanded from immediate family and friends to the enormous talent pool of UMBC students. In fact, tapping the creative and technical potential of student employees has become one of Digimo’s prime selling points–it offers clients fresh, eager, young talent to tackle their Internet needs, as well as providing a source for highly trained future employees.

For UMBC students, Digimo offers a tremendous opportunity to learn cutting-edge skills in a real-world business setting. It takes juggling to balance work and academics, but Lufburrow is a good role model.  

“UMBC’s ‘Aquamen’ Return From Undersea Adventure”

UMBC’s own aquamen, biological sciences professor Tom Cronin and graduate student Alex Cheroske, have returned from an undersea adventure as part of the crew of Aquarius, the nation’s equivalent of an underwater space shuttle. The two represented UMBC as part of an eleven-member team studying the unique vision and behavior of marine life off the Florida Keys.

For Cronin, the director of UMBC’s Marine-Estuarine and Environmental Sciences (MEES) graduate program, it was another mission in a long career of underwater exploration around the globe and the continuation of ongoing research.

Cronin led a 1999 Aquarius mission, but this time he stuck to the surface team, giving up his underwater spot to the younger Cheroske, effectively passing the torch of UMBC’s small but talented MEES department to a new generation.

Cheroske and Cronin studied how the fast and powerful mantis shrimp communicate and see. Cronin’s research findings on the animal’s unique, tunable color vision system were recently published in the distinguished journal Nature.

At a depth of 63 feet in a sand patch off the Florida Keys, Aquarius is roughly the size of a large Winnebago and features all the comforts of home: six bunks, a shower and toilet, instant hot water, a microwave, trash compactor, a refrigerator, air conditioning and computers linked to shore by wireless telemetry.

There are more adventures ahead for UMBC’s aquamen: Cronin will soon head off for 10 days of underwater research in the Red Sea off the coast of Israel, and then head to Australia. There, Cheroske will join him for further study of marine animal vision and polarization signaling in a shallow reef ecosystem.

Read more about the Aquarius project in Insights.