All posts by: Sarah Hansen, M.S. '15

UMBC biologists explain a charming avian visitor to Maryland and why citizen science matters

The charismatic Red-breasted Nuthatch usually makes its home in Canadian forests, but this year it’s been spotted in large numbers as far south as Maryland. This phenomenon, known as an irruption, is well known in ornithology, but not well understood. In The Conversation, UMBC’s Sarah Luttrell and Archer Larned, Ph.D. candidates in biological sciences, describe the factors scientists believe may cause irruptions, and why citizen scientists are so important to learning more.

Irruptions often follow a boom-and-bust cycle of food sources, Luttrell and Larned explain. In a phenomenon known as masting, a tree species may produce a larger than normal number of seeds across thousands of miles of its range. That abundance increases the prosperity of birds that rely on the tree’s seeds for food. Come winter, “the bird population has doubled, or even tripled, but the available habitat hasn’t,” Luttrell and Larned say, so the “extra” birds travel farther than usual away from their normal winter range, bringing birds like red-breasted nuthatches to the mid-Atlantic.

The cause of masting isn’t well understood, but it appears to be triggered by warm, dry weather in spring. Climate change may affect the frequency of masting events, and tracking irruptions may help scientists understand how climate change is affecting forest health.

While masting events may occur every few years, some food explosions happen on a longer timescale. For example, the spruce budworm emerges approximately every 20 years. “While budworms decimate spruce trees, birds gorge themselves on budworms,” causing a population boom that can lead to irruption. In response to a lemming population boom, Snowy Owls irrupted as far south as the Bahamas in 2013 – 2014.

Masting and irruptions are hard to predict, so the scientific community relies on citizen scientists to collect data about bird numbers and locations. “Citizen scientists are a crucial asset for studying irruptions,” write Luttrell and Larned.

By contributing to online databases such as Project FeederWatch, Christmas Bird Count, eBird, and Great Backyard Bird Count, “Novice and expert bird-watchers across large areas can accurately capture the extent and timing of bird movements.” Larned and Luttrell note that about 150 scientific papers have been written since 1997 based on data available from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s repository of citizen science bird data.

The next Great Backyard Bird Count will be held February 17 – 20, 2017. Anyone who enjoys watching birds, wants to inform scientific research, or would like to help solve the mystery of irruptions is invited to participate.

Read When birds go roaming: The mystery of avian irruptions in The Conversation.

Header image: Red-breasted Nuthatch. Photo by Heather Elaine Ritchie, CC BY-NC-ND.

Smithsonian hosts UMBC president for discussion on promoting diversity

At the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History on February 3, President Freeman Hrabowski called on stories from his childhood and UMBC today to share a forward-looking message on improving diversity in STEM fields as part of the museum’s “An Evening With…” series.

Marching with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as a 12-year-old boy inspired Hrabowski to dream that “tomorrow could be different from today, and young people could be empowered to make that difference.” Pres. Hrabowski has spent his career in education turning that dream into action, focused in particular on creating a campus culture that supports students from all backgrounds.

Speaking candidly, Hrabowski shared his perspective that institutions need to “look in the mirror” and ask themselves tough questions to ensure they are continuously working to meet their ideals. In particular, he argued against “weed-out courses” and the mindset behind them, which results in high rates of students leaving STEM majors. Instead, he has found that “building community and getting away from a cutthroat approach” improve student success.

At UMBC, “community” means having a mutually supportive peer group and “nurturing environment.” That includes faculty and staff who are committed to “inclusive excellence” and are prepared to match students with new opportunities and the resources needed to achieve success, such as professors “who are willing to go beyond the classroom, to connect with students and to pull them into research,” Hrabowski said.

Emphasizing excellence, Hrabowski argued, does not suggest educators should expect students get everything right on the first try. “We have begun to rebel against even the word ‘smart,’” he argued. Instead, he prioritizes resilience and “grit,” while providing students with the resources and the learning environment they need to grow and achieve their goals.

As the event shifted to a discussion, attendees began sharing personal stories of supporting students on the path to success in STEM, and the challenges encountered along the way.

When a Prince George’s County middle school principal asked how to create a community focused on inclusive excellence at his school, Hrabowski emphasized, “Things don’t change completely overnight.” He advised, “It always helps to start with a small group of people who want to address the issue and then build from there.”

One parent of a UMBC student thanked Pres. Hrabowski for the approach UMBC has taken to student success, sharing, “My son is so excited about what he’s doing…Our home is like a science lab.”

A black researcher asked for advice on how to help new colleagues resist impostor syndrome and maintain their confidence outside of supportive communities like UMBC. Hrabowski responded that support from peers and more senior colleagues is essential, explaining, “There’s always a need for people who have experience to be there as a sounding board.” He suggested that researchers who have benefited from the support of colleagues and mentors in the past, and who have achieved success through resilience, “can elevate others by helping them continue to aspire to the next level.”

As the event came to a close, a 10-year-old girl asked Hrabowski why he thinks so few people are interested in science in the United States, and how she could become more engaged with science. “We have not understood the need to help our children and families understand first how exciting science can be and that anybody can do science and math,” he responded, “and we need more TV programs and activities where people see girls, boys, and people of all races doing science.”

He then shared with her opportunities at UMBC for kids to begin engaging with science, including a summer coding program for girls. Sharing his lifelong love of math, he asked her a word problem and requested an answer by email. “I don’t just want the answer,” he said. “I want you to tell me how you would explain it to somebody else.”

Their exchange recalled a powerful moment earlier in the program, when President Hrabowski summed up his core goal as an educator. “What we’re trying to do at UMBC,” he said, “is to teach young people of all races that they can change the world.”

Image: President Hrabowski with UMBC students and alumni at the National Museum of Natural History. Photo Sarah Hansen ’15.

Daniel Lobo’s research reveals power of computer models in disease treatment

Daniel Lobo has a knack for using artificial intelligence to solve biological puzzles, and his latest scientific paper is proof of concept that computer simulations can predict never-before-seen biological outcomes. The new article in Scientific Reports focuses on a model Lobo, assistant professor of biological sciences at UMBC, developed in collaboration with Michael Levin’s lab at the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University.

Lobo’s model examines the development of pigment cells in frog embryos. He codified dozens of experiments on tadpole development and input the data into his program, which then “learned” how different drugs and proteins affect the growth of pigment cells in the frog. The model the computer discovered explained how certain combinations of treatments could induce cancer-like cell behaviors in tadpoles. Lobo envisions using the same process of teaching a computer to understand complex drug effects to predict, for example, the most effective drug treatment plans for individual cancer patients.

In the experiments, tadpoles either developed normally or were completely covered with invading pigment cells that had converted to a cancer-like state; there were no tadpoles with a mix of cancer-like and normal pigment cells. To test the predictive power of his model, Lobo wanted to determine if he could use it to find a combination of drugs that could generate a different outcome: an “in-between” tadpole, with some normal and some cancer-like pigment cells. Among 576 simulated experiments, the program identified only one specific combination of treatments that it predicted would produce that result.

Levin and Maria Lobikin, a past member of Levin’s lab, collaborated on the new paper to test the model’s prediction with real tadpoles, and it proved to be correct. Frog embryos given the specific cocktail that Lobo’s program identified (two drugs and a specific small strand of genetic material called an mRNA) developed into tadpoles that contained both normal areas without pigment cells and areas covered with invading cancer-like pigment cells.

Using traditional methods to identify the drug cocktail would have been much more costly and laborious, if it were possible at all. And it would have required a huge number of frog embryos and experiments. Alternatively, explains Lobo, “You can do a lot of cheap experiments inside a computer.” Plus, he says, “It only uses virtual frogs.”

Lobo hopes the method he used to create his new model can be put to work to find more effective treatments for human diseases, and his first target is cancer. The first—and by far most challenging—step is to generate a program with artificial intelligence that can learn from the data in published studies to create a model for the disease. Lobo’s lab is in the early stages of that process with cancer.

Once his program has used the data to generate a model, predicting a desired outcome should be straightforward, says Lobo. “You can simulate any drug, any intervention,” and in any combination, he explains, as long as the effects of any single intervention are understood. The ultimate goal, Lobo says, “is to find the best intervention or combination of interventions to get the person back to a normal state.”

His work may have started with frogs, but Lobo believes the predictive power of computer simulations has the potential to revolutionize human disease research and treatment. Focusing more intensive research on the specific interventions that computer simulations predict will be most effective would dramatically speed up the timeline for getting patients treatments that work.

Using artificial intelligence this way might also enable “very targeted, personalized medicine,” says Lobo. With human patients, doctors don’t have the luxury of hundreds of trials. “You may only have one chance, and it may be life or death,” he says. “You want to be sure the first treatment has the best chance of curing the disease.”

Read “Discovering novel phenotypes with automatically inferred dynamic models: a partial melanocyte conversion in Xenopus” in Scientific Reports.

Image: Daniel Lobo at UMBC. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Roy Meyers argues that Affordable Care Act reform should be a bipartisan effort

In a new article in The Conversation, Political Science Professor Roy Meyers argues that any repeal, replacement, or revision of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) should have established, specific goals for reform and build on existing processes for tracking attainment of those goals.

In his article, Meyers, who is an expert in American politics and public administration and policy, traced the origins of the ACA and the accountability measures established in 2010 to track progress of the law.

“Some of the goals the Obama administration set for the health sector included how many people it aimed to enroll in the new health insurance marketplaces, the share of the non-elderly population still uninsured and hospital readmission rates,” Meyers wrote. “As one example, the Health and Human Services Department wanted to get 10 million people enrolled in ACA health insurance marketplaces in 2016, up from its target of 9 million the year before. In March 2016, the department reported that it had surpassed its goal by 2.7 million.”

Meyers added that any repeal or reform process could face several potential roadblocks due to the Byrd rule, which ensures reconciliation bills affect spending or revenue. “One of its elements also says that provisions with a different purpose from the bill in question – such as, in the ACA repeal’s case, killing a health care regulation – have to be excluded. And since the health sector is very complex, any effort to repeal and replace the ACA would have many provisions that would be prohibited by the Byrd rule,” wrote Meyers.

While Meyers notes that he thinks some parts of the ACA should be revised, he argues that it should be done through a bipartisan process.

“If Democrats and Republicans jointly agree on establishing specific goals for the reform, building on the existing process for monitoring attainment of those targets, it could lead to measurable improvements in the health system. In doing so, the ‘repeal and replace’ campaign slogan could be transformed into ‘repair with results.’”

Read the full article in The Conversation.

This article was also republished in Newsweek. Read “How Democrats can hold Republicans accountable for healthcare fix.”

Image: Former President Barack Obama speaks to a joint session of Congress regarding health care reform, September 9, 2009. Public domain image, whitehouse.gov photo by Lawrence Jackson.

Denise Meringolo examines the relationship between public history and civic engagement in new article

As a form of public service, public historians can help create historical understanding with a variety of partners by sharing authority and inquiry in the communities that they serve. But what does studying the origins of public history reveal about the discipline?

Denise Meringolo, an associate professor of history and director of public history, recently published an article that studies roots of this question on the National Council on Public History website (NCPH). She contributed the article as part of the “Radical Roots: Civic Engagement, Public History, and a Tradition of Social Justice Activism,” a collaborative research project that “identifies new historical precedents for the values and practices that have come to define the field, particularly those now associated with civic engagement,” according to the NCPH website.

In her article, Meringolo argues how public history largely centers around collaborative scholarship, community-based education, and university-community partnership.

“By identifying experiments in community-based education less strictly tied to university and college departments of history, we can open up more nuanced critical perspectives on the intersections among teaching, learning, and community development,” she wrote.

Meringolo references The American Civilization Institute (ACIM) of Morristown, New Jersey as an early example of community-based education and teaching due to its engagement with local students and faculty in its community.

“Founders of the ACIM recognized that growing interest in historic preservation provided them with an opportunity to connect research and interpretation to political activism and advocacy,” she wrote.

Professor Meringolo is leading a project to archive materials from the Baltimore Uprising through a website that was launched in 2015. The aim is to gather and preserve a diverse range of perspectives and experiences from the events surrounding the Uprising, and there have been thousands of submissions from community members. Read more about her work on the history department website.

Image: Denise Meringolo. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Baltimore Sun highlights how UMBC is enhancing the student experience in and out of the classroom

Student success has long been a pillar of UMBC’s mission as a public research university, and the Baltimore Sun‘s latest special section on education highlights multiple UMBC programs focused on enhancing student achievement and experiences in and out of the classroom.

APA refresher course helps graduate students advance in their careers

UMBC’s master’s program in industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology offers its students an opportunity to take a refresher course in the American Psychological Association (APA) technical-style writing. Elliot Lasson, professor of the practice and I/O program director, worked with the Center for Academic Success to establish a summer workshop in APA writing after he learned from faculty that a number of students would benefit from extra training in that important skillset.

“The APA-style technical writing is less prose, more succinct, more formulaic, and typically written in third person. There’s a very specific way to report the result of a study,” said Lasson. “We hope they know it, but the reality is that students do not all have a strong background in research coming into our program.”

Lasson explained that its essential for psychology students to develop this skill to have continued success as they advance in their careers.

Providing students with technology skills to address workforce needs

The U.S. government and industry have spoken out about a growing, critical demand for skilled cybersecurity professionals. “Between 200,000 to 300,000 cybersecurity jobs need to be filled,” Gib Mason, chief operating officer of UMBC Training Centers told the Baltimore Sun. “The jobs are there waiting.”

The RX5 program, developed by the UMBC Training Centers and Bowie State University, simultaneously addresses the shortage of talented professionals in the cybersecurity industry and the need to improve career opportunities for military veterans and diverse populations. Participants in the RX5 program complete 18 weeks of cybersecurity training, plus a 12-week fellowship, to prepare for a new cybersecurity career.

The program provides students with “a pathway to getting hired,” Mason explained.

UMBC students work with refugee youth in Baltimore to boost college access

UMBC’s College JUMP program provides near-peer college access mentoring for refugee youth in Baltimore City and Baltimore County. Current UMBC students are paired with refugee high school students through The Shriver Center to provide resources, support, and guidance throughout the college application process.

Christina Smith ’15, global studies, serves as the coordinator for the program as UMBC’s Maryland-DC Campus Compact (MDCCC) AmeriCorps VISTA. She said mentors meet with students on a weekly basis to navigate the college application process.

“They discuss goal setting, career planning, how to adjust to college life, professional email writing skills, how to talk to a professor, interpersonal skills, time management and self advocacy,” said Smith. “The mentor is there to listen and respond, not tell the high school students what to do. The high schooler is the driver of the process.”

Nuam Lun, a high school senior in Baltimore who grew up in Myanmar, is participating in the College JUMP program after learning about it from a friend. At first, she found the college application process to be daunting, but she said the program has helped by providing her with useful resources.

“It was tough at first as a refugee. My English skills have improved. I know how to write better, speak better and how to listen better. I’ve applied to six colleges and for scholarships,” she said.

Read the full education section in The Baltimore Sun.

Header image: UMBC I/O Psychology Professor Elliot Lasson reviews the basics of APA writing style with students Wilson Merida, Faith Kamei, and Wendy Lopez. From L-R: Wilson Merida, Elliot D. Lasson, Ph.D., Faith Kamei, and Wendy Lopez. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

SmallSat revolution: Physicist Vanderlei Martins explains the rise of tiny spacecraft

Right now, almost 500 SmallSats—spacecraft from the size of a refrigerator to a golf ball—are orbiting 200 miles above Earth’s surface, and 78 percent of them launched after 2013. In The Conversation, Vanderlei Martins explains the skyrocketing numbers of SmallSats and the important contributions they are making to scientific research focused on Earth and beyond.

“These SmallSats are poised to change the way we do science from space,” says Martins, professor of physics at UMBC. They are more affordable than larger satellites, and the most basic are almost within reach for serious hobbyists. The lower price tag has allowed countries such as Poland, Pakistan, Colombia, and others to launch their space programs for the first time and contribute to the global quest for knowledge.

The first SmallSat launch in 1999, by a team at Stanford University, was a proof of concept to demonstrate that something so small could survive in space. “Like all space explorers, [SmallSats] have to contend with vacuum conditions, cosmic radiation, wide temperature swings, high speed, atomic oxygen, and more,” explains Martins.

Since the first launch, and particularly in the last few years, SmallSats have become much more sophisticated. Now they not only survive in space, but also carry complex scientific instruments to collect all kinds of data and send it back to Earth. SmallSats currently in orbit “aim to answer specific science questions, covering a broad range of sciences including weather and climate on Earth, space weather and cosmic rays, planetary exploration and much more,” says Martins. They also “serve as pathfinders for bigger and more expensive satellite missions.”

Martins leads the team responsible for the Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (HARP) SmallSat, scheduled to launch in June 2017. HARP “observes interactions between clouds and aerosols—small particles such as pollution, dust, sea salt, or pollen, suspended in Earth’s atmosphere,” explains Martins. These interactions affect cloud formation and precipitation, which affect Earth’s global water cycle, energy balance, and climate.

HARP’s capabilities reflect rapid improvements in SmallSat technology. “It’s an example of the kind of advanced scientific instrument it wouldn’t have been possible to cram onto a tiny CubeSat in their early days,” says Martins.

Still, SmallSats do have limitations. Although HARP could conceivably collect data continuously, a compact power supply limits how much data it can send back to Earth. Researchers at a new interdisciplinary center at UMBC will analyze and interpret the data it does send back, which, though limited, is still expected to be robust and insightful.

As SmallSat technology continues to improve, “seeing what works and what doesn’t will help inform larger space missions and future operations,” says Martins. In their pathfinding role, “the next generation of nanosatellites will advance the frontiers of science.”

As of this posting, SmallSat revolution: Tiny satellites poised to make big contributions to essential science has been read more than 25,000 times across 16 publications.

Image: Vanderlei Martins in his lab at UMBC with the HARP CubeSat. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

New app Valuable Voices builds awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity in the classroom

A new iPhone app developed at UMBC is poised to change how students and teachers think about language in the classroom. Valuable Voices provides 12 ready-to-implement exercises for students and teachers to build linguistic awareness and English language skills.

Christine Mallinson, an associate professor of language, literacy, and culture (LLC), created the app with her longtime collaborator Anne Charity Hudley, an associate professor of linguistics at William & Mary. Aureanna Hakenson ’15, modern languages, linguistics, and intercultural communication, provided development assistance.

The app provides monthly exercises that can be adapted for elementary, middle, and high school classrooms, as well as higher ed, in a range of content areas and disciplines. Examples of exercises include analyzing the language of poetry, Shakespearean innovations, and linguistic heritage. Teachers can follow instructions for how to incorporate each exercise into their lesson plans.

Valuable Voices also highlights the importance of linguistic diversity, showing teachers and students alike the rich variation within even a single language, such as English. From word choice to sentence structure, different populations may use the same language in different ways, reflecting different social networks, regions, age groups, life experiences, and the ongoing evolution of language.

“Students don’t leave their language patterns at the door when they get to their classroom—any classroom, from English to biology,” says Mallinson. “This project really exemplifies applied research. With this app, teachers have tools at their disposal and can incorporate their own language background and those of their students. As a result, students are more engaged, and this is really applicable across all fields.”

Hakenson, who minored in computer science and now works as a cyber threat and intelligence analyst, built the app to share the positive impact linguistic awareness can have on students and educators.

“The goal was to make something that would be both interesting and easy to use,” explains Hakenson. “I also know that linguistics isn’t a very widely understood discipline, so being able to share that with students and teachers and possibly help to inspire a student to take in interest in linguistics is really exciting.”

Mallinson has showcased Valuable Voices on the national stage and its visibility continues to grow. She presented the app at the “Language and Educational Justice” symposium sponsored by the Linguistic Society for America and the Society for Linguistic Anthropology, held in January in Austin, Texas. On February 19, Valuable Voices will be featured at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in Boston as part of the symposium “Leveraging Linguistics to Broaden Participation in STEM,” invited by the Linguistics and Language Science Section. Mallinson also presented Valuable Voices through a panel focused on linguistic diversity in education at the Maryland Language Science Center.

Since it launched, the free app has been well-received by educators, and downloaded nearly 200 times.

“Teachers and students thrive when they all have a deeper understanding of linguistic and cultural diversity, and this app is a natural extension of our efforts to bring that message into the classroom,” shares Mallinson.

“The value of using an app for this kind of project is that you’re presenting the new concepts to educators in a format that is not only familiar and convenient, but also fun,” adds Hakenson. “This means that the app format could be used across areas of study and with students of all ages, in addition to educators.”

Later this spring, Mallinson’s team will conduct a study with K-12 teachers who have used exercises from the app in their classrooms. Teachers who are interested in participating can contact Mallinson at mallinson@umbc.edu.

Update (2/10): Mallinson was featured in a Baltimore Sun article and video about language variations in Baltimore. “Language changes and develops for a lot of different reasons, and some of those are your social networks, your family networks, your mobility, residential patterns and migration,” Mallinson told the Sun. She is working to publish her research on Baltimore speech in the Journal of English Linguistics later this year.

Header image: Christine Mallinson uses the Valuable Voices app in her office. Photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

UMBC faculty comment in media on President Trump’s first week in office

Following President Trump’s inauguration on January 20, several UMBC faculty weighed in on his first week in office and provided commentary and reaction to a range of domestic and foreign policy issues.

Kate Drabinski, lecturer of gender and women’s studies, attended the Women’s March on January 21 and joined WEAA’s The Marc Steiner Show to discuss how she thought the event could be a starting point for inspiring people who haven’t been involved in the political process before to have their voices heard.

“Solidarity is a practice, not a moment,” she said. “I think what it is for me is an opening, an opening for people who haven’t been involved in politics …I’m really excited about welcoming them in.”

Drabinski also talked about how the Women’s March highlighted the power of local organizing, reflected in different regions across the country.

“We all don’t want the same things. We will never all be on the same page…that is a truth about politics. It is really messy. I hope that we can stay flexible for people to organize…and I’m hoping that the organizing on the local level continues.”

Kimberly Moffitt, associate professor of American studies, was a guest on The Baltimore Sun’s “Roughly Speaking” podcast with Dan Rodricks to discuss President Trump’s inauguration speech.

Moffitt was joined on the podcast by Richard Cross, Maryland Republican analyst and speech writer, and they also discussed a range of other topics including President Trump’s cabinet selections and potential future policies.

John Rennie Short, a professor of public policy, was a guest on Radio Sputnik to share his thoughts on how the new administration has vowed to prevent China from taking over territories in international waters in the South China Sea. He argued that it is difficult to predict how President Trump will react because there is no political record to look back on.

“I think for a new president with no government experience, there is a strong sense of making a statement, drawing a line touting their position very early on. And since China is a major power in the world, it is obviously important for the Trump administration to respond to China in the South China Sea,” Short said.

Complete radio segments can be found below:

National news roundtable: Trump’s Inauguration and Saturday’s Women’s March (The Marc Steiner Show)
Roughly Speaking podcast: Trump refries a stump for his inaugural address (The Baltimore Sun)
‘South China Sea dispute can figure into broader bilateral talks and access to markets’ (Radio Sputnik)

Image: The White House. Photo by Angela N., CC by 2.0.

Honors College professor promotes cross-cultural understanding in India

As part of a UMBC Dean’s Travel Grant, Honors College Professor Ellen Handler Spitz recently traveled to India where she presented a plenary address at an international conference and taught two lengthy seminars to 25 masters-level English literature students on “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” The experience promoted cross-cultural understanding and the significance of language and history in understanding many contemporary issues.

During the trip, Spitz presented a plenary address at a conference focused on the implications of studying English literature in non-English speaking environments in an era of globalization. The event was covered by The New Indian Express.

Professor Spitz also traveled to Utkal University in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India, where she was invited to teach English language graduate students about Mark Twain’s 1885 book, “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” and to grapple with how she feels the work continues to reflect much of the division that is seen in contemporary society.

Ellen Handler Spitz is introduced to the class at Utkal University by the department chair, Professor Himansu Mohapatra.

“The struggle in Huck’s heart and mind reflects the deep, tragically ongoing American rift between our country’s dedication to ‘liberty and justice for all’ on the one hand and a recidivist, seemingly ineradicable racial prejudice on the other,” Spitz said.

The seminars centered around discussions of language, history, and the symbolism of the Mississippi River in Twain’s book. The Utkal graduate students engaged with Spitz in a discussion about the themes in the novel and through converting the classroom into an imaginary raft to help the students experience the power of the novel, Spitz explained that it “proved truly effective, and we managed to erase all boundaries between us of color, age, gender, and nationality.”

Spitz is the author of six books on the arts and psychology. She teaches interdisciplinary seminars in aesthetics, literature, psychology, and the visual arts. Read more on the Honors College website.

Header image: Ellen Handler Spitz presents a paper at an international conference on the implications of studying English literature in an era of globalization. Photos courtesy of Pulastya Jani, Lecturer in English, Department of English, Utkal University.

AAMC highlights UMBC’s national model to support minority student success in med school

The American Association of Medical Colleges (AAMC) has published a new article by UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski and Peter Henderson, senior advisor to the president, emphasizing the need for more scientists from underrepresented minority groups in research and health careers. The piece also details how UMBC’s Meyerhoff Scholars Program serves as a gold-standard model in addressing this national need.

Recent AAMC data reveal that UMBC is the #1 producer of African American undergraduates who go on to enroll in M.D./Ph.D. programs, and the Meyerhoff Scholars Program is a major factor in that achievement. Meyerhoff alumni are more than five times as likely to graduate from or be enrolled in a STEM Ph.D. or M.D./Ph.D. program as students who were accepted to the program but chose not to attend, say Pres. Hrabowski and Henderson.

“Our program is successful in part because of its core principle,” they suggest. “The university is responsible for supporting student success, not weeding students out.”

The Meyerhoff Scholars Program emphasizes mentorship, student research, and a sense of community, while also providing financial support. “These components help students develop a vision of themselves based on high expectations,” the authors explain.

The program invites applicants from all underrepresented groups in STEM, including low-income and first-generation college students. Among over 1,000 Meyerhoff alumni are more than 230 who have already completed Ph.D.s.

Program alumni include people like Kafui Dzirasa ’01, chemical engineering, now an assistant professor at Duke University and recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from President Obama. Dzirasa will return to UMBC February 20 to kick off Engineers Week, along with his brother Delali Dzirasa ’04, computer engineering, a Meyerhoff alumnus whose cybersecurity company, housed in the bwtech@UMBC Research and Technology Park, was named 2016 Design/Development Firm of the Year at Baltimore Innovation Week.

The Meyerhoff Scholars Program has also increasingly had an impact beyond the students it touches directly. A 2011 report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine found that two-thirds of all students left a STEM major within the first two years, even if they were high achievers previously. With this knowledge in mind, UMBC has created a range of new student programs that offer supports found to be successful in the Meyerhoff Scholars Program to students across populations and disciplines, from the Center for Women in Technology Scholars to UMBC’s intensive, research-driven version of the national MARC U*STAR Scholars program.

Recently, STEM BUILD launched at UMBC with an $18 million grant from the NIH. The initiative’s motto? “Think 500, not 50.” Beyond being a program that offers student support, BUILD is a research study working to create a model for universities to provide comprehensive support on a large scale without requiring a high level of additional resources.

The Meyerhoff Scholars Program has also served as a model to other institutions. Penn State and the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill have been working since 2014 to adapt the program to their universities, through support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.

Michael Summers, Robert E. Meyerhoff Chair for Excellence in Research and Mentoring and University Distinguished Professor of chemistry and biochemistry at UMBC, has played a major role in this expansion of the vision for the scholars program, and he’s driven by the massive societal impacts he believes it can achieve.

“Significant racial/ethnic health disparities persist,” Summers says, “and African American research scientists are the ones most likely to tackle diseases that disproportionately affect the black community.”

“The ultimate goal,” write Pres. Hrabowski and Henderson, in their AAMC article, “is to help these students eventually improve the health of African American and other minority communities, as well as the nation as a whole.”

Read “How undergraduate programs can boost minority success in medical school.”

Image: President Hrabowski talks with a UMBC student in the Retriever Learning Center; photo Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

UMBC celebrates launch of Hill-Lopes Scholars Program focused on supporting women in STEM

Barbara Hill and Ancelmo Lopes were drawn to UMBC by the university’s commitment to providing holistic support for students from all backgrounds. On January 13, 2017, UMBC celebrated the launch of the new Hill-Lopes Scholars Program to support high-potential women in specific STEM majors where women remain underrepresented, with a reception for the first cohort of students, their families, and their faculty mentors.

The new scholars program, made possible through a generous gift from Hill and Lopes, draws inspiration from the Meyerhoff Scholars Program, nationally-lauded as the “gold-standard” for supporting underrepresented minority students in STEM. To support students’ persistence and success, the Hill-Lopes Scholars Program provides financial assistance and connects participating scholars with faculty mentors and campus services that can propel them toward their degrees.

The six UMBC students selected as the first class of Hill-Lopes Scholars have a broad range of intellectual interests, but all have their eye on advanced degrees and careers in highly competitive STEM fields.

Heather Frank ’17, biochemistry and molecular biology, conducts research in the lab of University Distinguished Professor Michael Summers and just published a first-author paper in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Karla Negrete ’19, mechanical engineering, began her work in research as a high school student and has focused on finding and creating opportunities to progress toward a career in bioengineering. Her next step will be an internship with BGE this summer.

Jada Damond ’19, environmental engineering, will soon travel to Nicaragua to work on a water quality project. She is also particularly interested in alternative energy sources.

Johanna Tsang ‘18, mechanical engineering, will intern at Northrop Grumman this summer in the Calibration and Quality Engineering division.

Blair Landon ’19, chemical engineering, plans to pursue graduate school in biochemical or biomedical engineering and, at UMBC, she is already a learning assistant for general chemistry.

Stormy Hill ’17, statistics, plans to pursue a career as an actuary with a focus on large-scale risk analysis. “This program is exceptional because it goes above and beyond to help its scholars,” Hill says, “beyond college, into our internships and careers.”

Faculty mentors Jennie Leach, chemical engineering; Anne Spence, mechanical engineering; Elsa Garcin, chemistry and biochemistry; and Anindya Roy, mathematics and statistics, will play a key role in the program.

“Being smart is not enough” to achieve success, UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski reflected. “There needs to be someone to say, ‘Give this person a chance.’” He described how faculty in the program will not only mentor the students, but also advocate for them.

Stormy Hill '17 meets Barbara Hill and Ancelmo Lopes. Photo Marlayna Demond '11.

In describing the power of mentorship, Pres. Hrabowski cited the success of UMBC’s ADVANCE program, which works to increase the number of women faculty at UMBC, particularly in STEM areas. Since that program’s inception in 2003, the number of female tenure-track faculty at UMBC has increased 73.3% – a boost in representation beneficial for UMBC’s new Hill-Lopes Scholars.

Speaking directly to the scholars at the inaugural reception, Pres. Hrabowski encouraged them to learn from their mentors by listening to their personal stories, “and then, imagine how, in time, you can help other people.”

His focus on support, mentorship, advocacy, and role models echoed how Hill and Lopes described their own sense of the UMBC community. Lopes commented, “This place has a reputation for helping students be the best they can be.”

“We’re very proud to be part of the UMBC community,” shared Hill. “We couldn’t think of a better home for this program.”

Banner image: The inaugural Hill-Lopes Scholars with Barbara Hill (far right) and Ancelmo Lopes (far left). Students from left to right: Stormy Hill ’17, Heather Frank ’17, Karla Negrete ’19, Jada Damond ’19, Blair Landon ’19. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

All posts by: Sarah Hansen, M.S. '15

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