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

Baltimore Stories final event focuses on listening to communities, strengthening coalitions

On December 3^rd, more than 100 humanities scholars, cultural organizers, educators, and students convened at UMBC to discuss their efforts over the past year to amplify the voices of Baltimore communities and to use narrative as a tool to promote change.

“Reflecting on Baltimore Stories” was the culmination of a year-long series of public programs examining how stories of and about Baltimore influence the lives of its people. UMBC’s Dresher Center for the Humanities hosted the day-long event that considered what is changing in stories of identity in the city and what these changes mean for the future of Baltimore.

Baltimore Stories, made possible by a $225,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, connected UMBC with partners University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP); Maryland Humanities; Enoch Pratt Free Library; and the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance. Sheri Parks, associate dean of UMCP’s Center for Synergy, and Phoebe Stein, executive director of Maryland Humanities, led the effort.

“We so often want to think that personal stories and storytelling are about simple themes, direct connections, and easy understanding of truths,” said Jessica Berman, director of the Dresher Center for the Humanities. But frequently, she suggested, “it’s about complexity. Stories should be complex, and they often are.”

This complexity was a central theme of the Baltimore Stories concluding event, which included panels and roundtable discussions on how public universities engage with their communities, the power of media and collective memory in telling stories about Baltimore, and Baltimore Stories in the context of national discussions.

WYPR's Aaron Henkin speaks during Baltimore Stories panel.

Young people from UMBC’s CHOICE Program shared digital stories about their lives, and students from Midtown Academy in Baltimore spoke about the process of learning to write and publish their own creative work about Baltimore. Lee Boot, director of UMBC’s Imaging Research Center, presented Art of Transformation, a project that examines how Baltimoreans are telling their own stories to counteract misleading narratives about life in the city. Denise Meringolo, associate professor of history at UMBC, shared Preserve the Baltimore Uprising, which aims to ensure that the stories activists tell about their experiences are preserved for future historians.

President Hrabowski participates during Baltimore Stories panel.

Campus leaders from UMBC and UMCP approached the event as an opportunity for reflection. They discussed the genesis of Baltimore Stories and how such projects can help universities more effectively engage with their local communities. President Freeman Hrabowski‘s remarks offered a few examples from UMBC, including the BreakingGround initiative and the university’s leadership through last year’s Imagining America conference.

University collaborations with communities must start with understanding the needs and perspectives of people in those communities, President Hrabowski emphasized. “First, we must ask. Listen, and then act,” he said. “What we work to do here…is to struggle to understand what people are going through, and we often do it through stories.”

Bonnie Thornton Dill, dean of the University of Maryland College of Arts and Humanities, shared how the idea for Baltimore Stories emerged from critical conversations about more complex, nuanced, and interdisciplinary approaches to working with communities.

Bonnie Thornton Dill speaks during Baltimore Stories.

“We felt that the arts and humanities could bring a perspective and understanding of these issues that was often missing,” explained Dill. “Community engagement is not something that just happens…it’s the building of relationships over time.”

The Baltimore Stories project included 20 public events throughout the past year. During these events, local humanities scholars, cultural organizers, artists, educators and other Baltimore residents participated in dynamic discussions about building democracy, fostering social justice, and improving Baltimore’s future. Project participants are now developing a curriculum based on this work for K-12 educators nationwide.

UMBC's Bev Bickel, David Hoffman, Kathy O'Dell, and Ana Maria Schwartz Caballero participate in roundtable during Baltimore Stories.

WombWork Productions , Aaron Henkin’s Out of the Blocks, The Kids Safe Zone, New Lens, and Charm Literary Magazine are just a few of the many organizations that were involved in the Baltimore Stories project and participated at the culminating event, and partners intend to keep the collaboration and conversation going.

Artwork by Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) students Ben Hamburger and Justin Stafford on display at Baltimore Stories.

“Now more than ever, it is crucial to consider the role of coalitions, forged across boundaries, in practicing public humanities and supporting the work of active and engaged communities,” said Berman.

For additional coverage of the “Reflecting on Baltimore Stories” event, read “‘Baltimore Stories’ event aims to discuss race, narratives effect” in The Baltimore Sun.

Header image: Baltimore Stories concluding event, December 3, 2016. All photos by Abnet Shiferaw ’11 for UMBC.

Erle Ellis asserts value of social sciences in defining onset of human impact on Earth

Scientists agree the Anthropocene, a new geological epoch defined by humans’ effects on the Earth, is upon us, but when did it begin? The Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) of the International Commission on Stratigraphy is poised to make that call, but Erle Ellis and colleagues argue that voices from highly relevant social science disciplines have been thus far excluded from the conversation.

To date, the AWG has focused primarily on markers in the rock record from the 1950s onward that demonstrate human impact, such as plastics, but “this ignores millennia of previous human influences, from our use of fire to the emergence of agriculture,” writes Ellis, professor of geography and environmental systems at UMBC. Ellis is lead author on a comment published in Nature on December 8 that contends social sciences and humanities researchers should play a prominent role in the formalization of the Anthropocene.

Currently, only three of 37 members of the AWG are social scientists focused on long-term social change. In particular, Ellis voices a need for archaeologists to be involved in the Anthropocene formalization process. “They have always studied the physical evidence of human societal relationships with environmental change,” he says.

Most fundamentally, Ellis argues, it is essential that AWG seek to understand “why humans, and no other species in Earth’s history, have put our planet on a new trajectory,” and including the perspectives of social scientists would “change the evidence base, the scientific methods, and the time-frame within which the Anthropocene would be formalized.”

Ellis is an AWG member and had raised concerns within the group about its biases. He decided to write the Nature comment because “it became clear that more external effort was needed to…bring the social and the natural sciences together as equal partners in understanding what humans are doing to Earth.”

Ellis isn’t surprised that the AWG focuses on 20^th-century evidence, which he describes as the “most clear and abundant evidence of human transformation of Earth,” but he also argues more distant and ambiguous information must be examined. “Evidence of anthropogenic global environmental changes deeper in the past are more complex, less abundant, and must be reconstructed with tools and using evidence that are unfamiliar to the Earth sciences,” he says.

Anthropocene science is an emerging, interdisciplinary field, which will be most successful when all voices are at the table, Ellis maintains. Answering the question of when and how humans began transforming Earth might guide us, he suggests, toward “more desirable outcomes both for human societies and for non-human nature.”

The comment in Nature: Involve social scientists in defining the Anthropocene

Image: Erle Ellis speaks at a research symposium at UMBC; photo Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Additional news coverage:
Why efforts to define the Anthropocene must be more inclusive and transparent (Future Earth)
Scientists still don’t understand the Anthropocene — and they’re going about it the wrong way (The Conversation)

New visibility for Herbert Run Greenway highlights importance of green space at UMBC

A small group of dedicated supporters gathered on October 21, despite steady rain, to celebrate the Herbert Run Greenway (HRG), a 1.4 mile pathway that begins at the Joseph Beuys Sculpture Park and follows the Herbert Run stream as it meanders across UMBC’s campus and through the university’s Conservation and Environmental Research Areas.

The event included a ribbon cutting and community hike to enjoy recent improvements designed to increase the HRG’s visibility and to make it a recreation destination on campus. These updates include new directional signs labeling the route and trail map brochures, as well as an expanded website.

Patricia LaNoue, director emerita of interdisciplinary studies, advised the group of students who designed the Herbert Run Greenway in 1995, and she has stewarded it ever since. The greenway opened in 1996, but has been a hidden gem for much of that time, unknown to many in the campus community. LaNoue and a core group of students are dedicated to changing that.

Sarah Burton ‘16, environmental studies, and Ethan Griffin ’18, interdisciplinary studies, have been working to increase visibility of the HRG under LaNoue’s steadfast guidance and motivated by her passion for the project. Burton shares, “There are green spaces on campus. I want to encourage students to take advantage of our green resources.”

Griffin hopes the entire campus community will utilize the HRG for a variety of purposes, including both recreation and research in areas from geography and environmental systems to urban design to life sciences. “We want faculty, staff, and students to use it, and we also want them to seek to understand it in the context of their disciplines,” he says.

Griffin and UMBC Eco Ambassadors now provide trail tours each spring at UMBC EcoFest and on a rolling basis throughout the year, and there is interest in expanding this public engagement. “Every year we hope to involve more students, staff and faculty in leading tours as part of orientation for incoming students and new faculty and staff,” says LaNoue.

The HRG runs alongside UMBC’s new events center, currently under construction, and the building’s footprint carefully avoids several historic trees that have been in place since before the American Revolution. That project has provided some funding for trail updates, to mitigate any impact of construction on the greenway. Looking ahead, the HRG team plans to create an advisory council to preserve the greenway as UMBC continues to grow, and to facilitate maintenance.

LaNoue sees the greenway as an essential complement to classroom experience at UMBC, connecting students to the campus, themselves, and each other in unique ways. “It provides a way to see elements of nature on campus and find a place for reflection and repose,” says LaNoue, who notes that students who traverse the greenway “discuss ethics and religion, policy and land use, ecology and athletics,” while also taking in the sound of the stream and the tracks of local wildlife.

Just as she enjoys helping UMBC students find their place in the world, LaNoue also treasures seeing them “find their place along the trail.”

Image: Sarah Burton ’16 (right) gives regular tours of the Herbert Run Greenway. All tours include a stop at Pig Pen Pond, shown here. Photo by Tanvi Gadhia, UMBC sustainability coordinator.

John Rennie Short examines causes of resistance to globalization in wake of U.S., U.K. votes

In the wake of recent events such as the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s electoral victory, John Rennie Short explores the underlying causes of resistance to economic, political, and cultural globalization in a new article in The Conversation, republished by U.S. News and PBS Newshour.

Short, a professor of public policy at UMBC, traces the origins of globalization back to the end of World War II when the Allied countries set up a new order focused on free markets and trade, coupled with the establishment of international organizations, with an intent to decrease economic nationalism. He also explains how this approach led to money moving more freely around the world, with eventual global shifts in manufacturing and a loosening of trade restrictions.

“As a result, there was a global redistribution of wealth. In the West as factories shuttered, mechanized or moved overseas, the living standards of the working class declined. Meanwhile, in China prosperity grew, with the poverty rate falling from 84 percent in 1981 to only 12 percent by 2010,” Short writes. He adds, “the backlash against economic globalization is most marked in those countries such as the U.S. where economic dislocation unfolds with weak safety nets and limited government investment in job retraining or continuing and lifetime education.”

Short analyzes how expanding free markets, including the creation of the European Union and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), have contributed in recent decades to the widespread resistance to globalization as more countries with a range of economic success are included in the process: “The EU is now at a point of inflexion where the previous decades of continual growth are coming up against popular resistance to EU enlargement into poorer and more peripheral countries. Newer entrants often have weaker economies and lower social welfare payments, prompting immigration to the richer members such as France and the U.K.”

However, Short argues that globalization now more than ever before should be a more connected, sustainable, and inclusive process that benefits everyone.

“The globalization project contains much that was desirable: improvements in living conditions through global trade, reducing conflict and threat of war through political globalization and encouraging cultural diversity in a widening cultural globalization,” explains Short. “The question now, in my view, is not whether we should accept or reject globalization but how we shape and guide it to these more progressive goals.”

Read the full article in The Conversation. For additional news coverage, see below.

Why there’s a globalization backlash (U.S. News and World Report)
Column: Why there’s a backlash against globalization and what needs to change (PBS Newshour)
The new globalization: Brexit and Donald Trump represent a different backlash to free trade (Salon)
What could the rise of ‘economic nationalism’ portend for the US? (Christian Science Monitor)
Globalization and its discontents (The Millennium Post)
Globalization and its discontents: Why there’s a backlash and how it needs to change (SF Gate)

Image: John Rennie Short in his office. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Nancy Rankie Shelton receives national book award for her memoir

A thought-provoking memoir about love, loss, and survival published earlier this year by Nancy Rankie Shelton has received a 2016 Best Book Award. Shelton, a professor of education, is the author of 5-13: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Survival (Garn Press, 2016), a book that has made significant contributions to the growing body of literature on living and dying well.

The i310 Media Group announced the 2016 Best Book Awards earlier this month, which included more than 2,000 entries from mainstream and independent publishers. Shelton’s book received the Best Book Award in the Health: Death and Dying category.

The book encourages readers to overcome fears of cancer, remain loving and strong, survive the death of a loved one, and continue living. The story traces Shelton’s husband Jack’s fight with lung cancer and the stress and confusion of managing his treatment. The book reflects on the 35 years the couple was together and the family’s relationships with others over the years.

In a review posted earlier this year on the Garn Press website, the reviewer notes, “Nancy Rankie Shelton’s 5-13, A Memoir of Love, Loss and Survival is a breathtaking read. It is work of great courage but also a literary triumph. Like an uncut diamond it is rough reading in places and then the light fractures and you feel the surge of an enduring human spirit who is not frightened to love, face death, and then reimagine her life.”

In a press release announcing the 2016 Best Book Award winners, Jeffrey Keen, President and CEO of i310 Media Group, stated that “the 2016 results represent a phenomenal mix of books from a wide array of publishers throughout the United States,” adding, “our success begins with the enthusiastic participation of authors and publishers and continues with our distinguished panel of industry judges who bring to the table their extensive editorial, PR, marketing, and design expertise.”

Professor Shelton is the author of 23 publications appearing in prominent academic journals and leading publishing companies specializing in literacy research and/or education policy. Her teaching areas focus on reading and language arts, literacy/culture and composition theory/practice. Her research interests include children’s writing development, effects of mandated instruction on elementary literacy development, literacy/art connections, and children’s literature. Read more about her work on the education department website.

Image: Nancy Rankie Shelton. Garn Press photo.

Students discover and name new viruses in unique introduction to lab research at UMBC

It’s the middle of August, and a group of rising UMBC sophomores enters the classroom with anticipation. “Once everyone walks into the lab, you start hearing ‘Yes!’ across the room from people checking on their experiments,” says Fatma Abker ‘19, chemical engineering.

The students, all participants in the BUILD Training Program (BTP) at UMBC, are checking to see if their petri dishes successfully grew lawns of bacteria, which they hope are infected with bacteriophages—viruses that only infect bacterial cells. The goal is to discover never-before-seen viruses, sequence their genes, and add them to an international repository of genetic data. As the first scientists to identify these viruses, the students also get to name them.

This three-week intensive research project is known as “Phage Hunters.” It’s also taught as a full-semester course in the fall, followed by a bioinformatics-focused data analysis course in the spring. The accelerated summer course, though, plays an important role in the BTP, which is supported by the STEM Building Infrastructure Leading to Diversity (BUILD) at UMBC Initiative.

“Ultimately, we want the students to have an authentic research experience, which we know is critical for student success in STEM,” says Laura Ott, STEM BUILD Active Learning Coordinator. “Hopefully they are inspired to then go and pursue their own independent research experience.”

UMBC was awarded over $18 million from the National Institutes of Health in 2014 to create a national model of comprehensive supports to expand and increase the success of undergraduate students pursuing STEM degrees. Each year, a subset of the incoming freshmen who have declared interest in the biomedical and behavioral sciences are encouraged to apply. Qualified candidates are randomly placed in either the BUILD Training Program (BTP) or one of two comparison groups. In this way, the BTP functions as both a support initiative for students and a research study to improve future supports.

The BTP research study, Ott explains, “investigates how we can best support students in the STEM fields so that they go on to persist in the STEM field and be competitive for jobs, graduate and professional schools.” Program administrators track the progress of students in the BTP and comparison groups to determine how effectively and efficiently various factors can boost student success.

BTP students hear guest lectures from STEM professionals to learn about career possibilities, participate in various courses and enrichment activities, and receive intensive mentoring, particularly through group experiences. They are also required to live on campus with other first year students in the STEM Living and Learning Community, which was established with the first BTP cohort and is expanding in size each academic year as a sustainable legacy of the STEM BUILD initiative.

In a summer bridge before their freshman year, the students focused on developing time management skills, making use of resources available on campus, and building community. “It helped us transition from high school to college,” says Aleem Mohamed ‘19, biological sciences. He adds, “It also gave us a friend group. We all support each other like a big family.” Fefe Azinge ’19, biological sciences, agrees: “Having a support network and the advising system in place is really helpful.”

The next summer, the cohort tackled Phage Hunters. This was the first time that many of the participating students had an opportunity to pursue their own research in a lab. “It was an insight into the world of research,” says Azinge. “We were very determined to be successful.”

Of 18 participants working on 16 experiments during the summer, 12 produced phage DNA that were of high enough quality to be sequenced, and five were selected for sequencing. Steven Caruso, senior lecturer in biological sciences and Phage Hunters instructor, says that’s “a remarkably high success rate.” Since the Phage Hunters program began at UMBC in 2008, almost 500 students have participated, discovering more than 250 unique phages.

The Phage Hunters program is part of the BTP’s research enrichment core, led by Philip Farabaugh, professor and chair of biological sciences, which focuses on coordinating research opportunities for students. The program also includes other intensive STEM success programs, like a six-week summer research internship for students at collaborating community colleges in Anne Arundel, Howard, Montgomery, Baltimore, and Prince George’s counties, and at Gallaudet University.

As this collaboration across institutions suggests, UMBC has its eye on scalability. Historically, students in prestigious scholars programs have often had the most access to supports at universities nationwide, but the STEM BUILD at UMBC team is committed to using its findings to benefit STEM students across the board. College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences Dean William LaCourse and Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs Patrice McDermott share that the project, which currently includes 40 students and will add another 20 students in Fall 2017, operates with the motto, “Think 500, not 50.”

Reexamining how UMBC provides research opportunities, creates support networks, and allocates university resources are all important pieces of the puzzle, and for students in the first two cohorts, it’s already working. After his Phage Hunters experience, Mohamed is now pursuing research with a scientist at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Inspired by attending an academic conference with BUILD, Abker is focusing on growing her network and practicing her research presentation skills. Azinge is now training in a biological sciences lab at UMBC. At just over a year into the four-year program, she says, “BUILD opens doors.”

Image: Students at work in a UMBC organic chemistry lab taught by Mark Perks; photo by Marlayna Demond ’11.

UMBC’s Huemmrich uses NASA satellite to measure effects of climate change on evergreen forests

The role of forests in climate change is currently an open question, and it’s one that Fred Huemmrich, research scientist at UMBC’s Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET) and adjunct faculty in geography and environmental systems, is working to answer. Huemmrich is part of a team that provided proof-of-concept for a new technique to measure photosynthesis in evergreens, using data collected by NASA’s MODIS instruments flying on the Aqua and Terra Earth-observing satellites. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences recently published the results of that work.

At the core of Huemmrich’s research are two conflicting points. Plants remove carbon from the atmosphere during photosynthesis. As the climate warms, longer growing seasons will allow more time for trees to photosynthesize, increasing total carbon uptake and slowing climate change. However, a warmer climate could bring more drought, which stresses trees, reducing photosynthesis and exacerbating climate change.

The biosphere quickly absorbs about 50 percent of the “extra” carbon humans add to the atmosphere. Plants are responsible for the vast majority of that uptake, so it’s important to understand the roles different ecosystems play by measuring their photosynthetic activity. But until now, it’s been impossible to measure how evergreens contribute to carbon uptake on a large scale.

Scientists have been measuring overall leaf cover to estimate photosynthesis in deciduous forests for more than 30 years, but that doesn’t work for evergreens. In terms of scale, existing measurement techniques can detect photosynthesis in small geographic areas, but they are geographically limited and expensive, relying on towers placed within forests.

The MODIS instrument can measure the reflectance of evergreen needles, which changes depending on which pigments are present. In the summer, chlorophyll dominates, making the needles green and creating a particular reflectance profile. But in the fall, pigments like carotenoids (oranges), xanthophylls (yellows), and anthocyanins (reds) outnumber chlorophyll as plants photosynthesize less, revealing trees’ fall colors and creating a different reflectance profile. Huemmrich and colleagues coined the Chlorophyll/Carotenoid Index (CCI), a calculation that measures the ratio of pigments in leaves.

“Plants are constantly making adjustments to a changing environment,” explains Huemmrich. “If we can detect how a plant’s reflectance is shifting, we can determine how it’s responding to those environmental changes.”

While Huemmrich analyzes the MODIS data to calculate CCI, his collaborator John Gamon, professor at the University of Nebraska, measures seasonal changes in leaf pigments by directly testing leaves as a basis for comparison. The team also compares results from their satellite-based analyses to data from existing research towers in forests. “The idea is that we can use these towers to train and test our models,” explains Huemmrich.

The results were clear: The new technique accurately reflected the photosynthetic activity of three forests of primarily evergreens in North Carolina, Maine, and Washington state, while the traditional measurement of green leaf canopy was much less accurate. This is great news for climate researchers worldwide, who will now be able to more easily measure evergreen photosynthesis on a global scale using MODIS data that is consistently pouring in.

With the proof-of-concept in hand, Huemmrich and Gamon have been awarded a new NASA Arctic – Boreal Vulnerability Experiment (ABoVE) grant to extend this satellite approach. The new project will measure the carbon dioxide taken up through photosynthesis in Alaska and western Canada using MODIS data. A second ABoVE grant will fund them to use airplanes flying above the same areas with more advanced remote sensing instruments.

“I’m excited about the airplane study, because it fills the gap between ground measurements and MODIS,” says Huemmrich.

As the climate continues to change, Huemmrich notes that it will be critical to understand mitigating factors, like photosynthesis, and use that knowledge to focus protections on those ecosystems that help slow warming. Coniferous forests cover about 17 percent of Earth’s land surface, and Huemmrich’s work to develop affordable, large-scale photosynthesis measuring techniques could have a major global impact.

Image: Cloud cover over the Eastern U.S. as recorded by MODIS on the TERRA satellite.

UMBC social sciences recognized for research and leadership in health policy

Two prominent national organizations have recognized UMBC faculty in recent weeks for their significant contributions to the fields of public health and gerontology. The awards are a reflection of the distinguished teaching, research, service, and leadership of two UMBC social sciences faculty in their areas of study and across disciplines.

Nancy Miller, professor of public policy, received the Philip G. Weiler Award for Leadership in Aging and Public Health from the American Public Health Association (APHA).

The award is presented to an outstanding person or organization who has made significant contributions to the field through policy, research, education, or service and has contributed to the Aging and Public Health Section through leadership activities or funding and policy initiatives.

“The Aging and Public Health Section of the American Public Health Association has provided exceptional opportunities for me, as well as my students, to develop as professionals in the field of aging,” says Miller. “I am extremely appreciative of the recognition provided by the section members in their selection of me to receive the Philip G. Weiler Award for Leadership in Aging and Public Health.”

Professor Miller has research interests in chronic disease, disability, and long-term care, with a particular focus on access to care. She has conducted extensive interdisciplinary health policy research through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and as a faculty member in the health policy track in the School of Public Policy at UMBC. She is a recipient of the University System of Maryland Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Mentoring.

Kevin Eckert, professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Health Administration and Policy, was recently selected to receive a 2017 Administrative Leadership Honor from the Association for Gerontology in Higher Education (AGHE).

The honor recognizes high-level college and university administrators who have made exceptional efforts and decisions in support of gerontology or geriatrics education. Eckert’s areas of study include cultural anthropology, anthropology of aging, long-term care, research design/qualitative methodologies, and senior’s housing and aging services. He is co-author of Inside Assisted Living: The Search for Home (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009) and is co-PI on a National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant to study “The Subjective Experience of Diabetes among Urban Older Adults.”

“I’m honored to receive this award and thank UMBC for the support it has provided to advance gerontology in higher education over the years,” says Eckert.

Header image: Kevin Eckert speaks at a College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences event. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

New Science cover story on massive Moon crater features innovative UMBC research techniques

New research published in Science provides unprecedented detail about the structure of the Orientale basin, a huge crater on the Moon. The latest findings offer “an important clue in trying to unravel the formation history of the solar system,” says Sander Goossens, associate research scientist at UMBC’s Center for Space Science and Technology (CSST) and a lead analyst of satellite data for the project.

Two Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) spacecraft measured the gravitational pull above the crater on a mission in 2012, flying within two kilometers of the surface in some locations. “We were able to use data from GRAIL to make an extremely high resolution map of the gravity field of a feature on the Moon,” says Goossens. “That hasn’t been done before, anywhere in the solar system.”

Goossens explains, “The surface topography of the moon has already been measured very precisely by the ongoing Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission, so we have those data in hand.” Those data combined with the new gravitational map allow researchers to better understand what’s going on below the surface. For example, gravitational data reveal high mass concentrations beneath some topographical depressions, which indicates geological processes deep within the Moon. The new data also suggest that the original crater diameter was between 320 and 460 kilometers, and that during impact about 3.4 million cubic kilometers of material was displaced.

Analysis of the data suggests that the moon has been “battered by impacts,” and it’s likely that Earth and other planets experienced the same thing as the solar system took shape, says Goossens. What scientists learn about processes on the Moon that resulted from these frequent impacts may apply to similar moons and planets such as Mars, Mercury, and Earth. “A lot of the planets have a similar make-up, so you can extrapolate,” he says.

Even today, Goossens points out, “Impact cratering is perhaps the most significant geologic process going on throughout the solar system.” Exploring it on Earth is challenging, as surface material is constantly being recycled by plate tectonics, but Goossens would like to see a GRAIL-type mission to Mars, to better understand the relationship between gravity and topography that exists there.

The research team expected GRAIL to map the gravitational field of the Orientale basin to a resolution of about 30 square kilometers. But when GRAIL delivered, “The data were so good,” Goossens says, “that it was easy to double and then double again the resolution.” With such a high volume of data pouring in from GRAIL, “We had to move our processing from our own local computer cluster to a super computer at Goddard [Space Flight Center].”

With their traditional processing program, the team would map the entire Moon at once, but the unprecedented volume of data delivered by the GRAIL instruments meant computations on a moon-sized scale would take an extremely long time to complete, even on a super computer. Goossens responded by developing a new local modeling method that uses data specifically from the Orientale basin area. It allows the team to take advantage of the high resolution data GRAIL provides and complete the processing in a reasonable amount of time.

The hard work the team put in to quickly devise the new modeling method was worth it. Science featured their research, including a stunning full-color visualization of the Moon, on its cover. As it turns out, Goossens says, the challenge of finding the most effective way to process a massive amount of data “is a good problem to have.”

Read “UMBC research analyzes close-up of massive moon crater, a remnant of early solar system” in The Baltimore Sun.

Image: Visualization of the Orientale basin on the Moon from the cover of Science; Ernest Wright, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio.

UMBC faculty guide reflection on the 2016 election through campus events and media

In the days following last week’s election, the UMBC community has come together in a series of events to reflect on the election results through discussions grounded in social science and humanities research. Many UMBC faculty have also shared their reflections and analysis through the news media, adding context and perspective to state and national election results.

Post-election lectures on campus

On November 9, the day after the election, the UMBC School of Public Policy hosted the “2016 Post Election Forum: What Happened and Why?” John Fritze, Washington correspondent for The Baltimore Sun, joined Donald Norris, professor and director of public policy, and Thomas Schaller, professor and chair of political science. The three speakers shared observations on the results and fielded questions from a standing-room-only audience.

“This was an election of a war between two sides that in a way we had seen coming, but in a way that I don’t think we fully understood until this cycle,” explained Schaller.

He described how the growing polarization in the country can be traced back to the late 1980s and early 1990s during the Bill Clinton administration, with investigations and “attack politics.” He suggested the division carried over into the subsequent Bush and Obama administrations as they experienced transformative events, 9/11 and the economy’s collapse respectively, and that both presidents encountered difficulty in uniting the country.

With voter turnout down only slightly from 2012, Schaller cautioned that he thinks shifting voting patterns and voter realignment won’t happen on a permanent basis. He did, however, argue that parallel narratives coming out of the election of economic dissatisfaction and race, gender, and culture are closely related. “What I would suggest to you is that these aren’t mutually exclusive narratives,” said Schaller.

Norris discussed current uncertainties about how President-elect Trump will govern, given that analysts aren’t able to look back on prior political experience or a voting record for the first-time politician, and that the future of the Republican Party is not clear.

“What we were hearing in the past couple of weeks is that the Republican Party may split and that it may have to re-invent itself,” Norris said. “Now that the Republicans have both houses of Congress and the Presidency…will this be a governing party or will it continue to be the ‘party of no’? We don’t know the answer to that, because we don’t have any evidence based on historical performance of what Donald Trump is likely to do.”

Focusing on how the election outcomes will have a local political impact, Fritze discussed how Maryland is still very much a “blue” state politically. He noted that he will be looking, over the next two years, at how perceptions of the new president and U.S. Congress could affect down-ballot races in Maryland in the future.

Later that evening, Cathy Cohen, professor and chair of political science at the University of Chicago, presented the annual W.E.B. Du Bois Lecture, organized by Africana studies on the topic “From Black Lives Matter to the 2016 Elections: The Future of Black Politics.” The Humanities Forum talk discussed the future of black politics in light of tensions surrounding the campaign, generational differences, and increasing class divisions in black communities.

Cohen is a sought-after speaker and leading scholar on topics related to women and politics, lesbian and gay politics, and social movements. She is the author of numerous academic journal articles and the books Democracy Remixed: Black Youth and the Future of American Politics (Oxford University Press 2010) and The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics (University of Chicago Press 1999). She is co-editor with Kathleen Jones and Joan Toronto of Women Transforming Politics: An Alternative Reader (NYU 1997).

Before a large crowd in the University Center Ballroom, Cohen’s lecture provided a thought-provoking and deep analysis of social and political issues facing many communities. “Many of our students who attended the event informed me that they enjoyed the lecture because it uplifted their spirits and gave them hope,” explained Gloria Chuku, professor and chair of Africana studies.

“For me, the lecture was fascinating and timely. Dr. Cathy Cohen meticulously wove together the intricate intersections of race, gender and class (elitism and poverty) in what she referred to as the black electoral politics and black protest politics in the face of neoliberal policies of restrictions, otherization and disinvestment in certain neighborhoods and communities,” said Chuku. “Dr. Cohen’s call for mass mobilization for multiple sites and positions of struggle aimed at achieving structural transformation of our society resonated with many who heard her lecture.”

UMBC faculty comment on the election in the media

Also on November 9, Kimberly Moffitt, associate professor of American studies, joined The Baltimore Sun podcast “Roughly Speaking with Dan Rodricks” to talk about the election and how the results can be interpreted as a backlash against President Obama. She also examined how the 2008 primary election results may have impacted Hillary Clinton’s chances at winning the 2016 election.

Donald Norris was an in-studio guest for WJZ-TV and provided real-time analysis as the results came in on election night. Rick Forno, assistant director of the UMBC Center for Cybersecurity, commented on trust in electoral technologies in a time of cybersecurity concerns. Marie desJardins, associate dean in the College of Engineering and Information Technology and professor of computer science, discussed what should be made of an AI tool that successfully predicted the outcome of the election.

To read and view complete media coverage of UMBC faculty voices on the election, also including John Rennie Short, professor of public policy; Brian Grodsky, associate professor of political science; George Derek Musgrove ’97, history, associate professor of history; and Elliot Lasson, professor of the practice in psychology, see below.

What’s driving voters to the polls this election? (WJZ-TV)
Interview with Don Norris (WJZ-TV)
Kimberly Moffitt talks about the Obama backlash as respresented in the vote for Donald Trump (Roughly Speaking podcast)
Post-election fight for social justice (UMB News)
The politics of de-legitimacy (U.S. Election Analysis 2016)
Dissecting the election (WNHN Radio)
Welcome? Trump’s new D.C. neighbors voted against him at historic levels (WAMU Radio)
How will the 2016 election shape the future of democracy in the U.S. and throughout the globe? (Spare Min Podcast)
Have a divided post-election workplace? Here’s how to handle it. (Washington Business Journal)
Integrity of Election Systems Was Attacked–It’s Time to Restore Trust (Newsweek)
AI tool successfully predicted Trump win; still, experts are skeptical (Tech Republic)

Next Monday, November 21 at 4 p.m., Rebecca Traister, author of The New York Times bestseller All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation, will present the Social Sciences Forum talk “How Did We Get Here? Women and the 2016 Election.” The event is free and open to the public.

Also on November 21, The Department of Africana Studies is organizing “Post-Election Conversations and Reflections,” which takes place 12-1 p.m. in the Fine Arts Building Room 427.

Header image: Donald Norris speaks during the 2016 Post-Election Forum at UMBC. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

UMBC expands partnership with Portugal’s University of Porto

A delegation of UMBC faculty and staff traveled to Portugal’s University of Porto (U. Porto) October 3 – 7, 2016, to sign a cooperation agreement expanding and formalizing an ongoing partnership between the two universities. The group, led by Antonio Moreira, vice provost for academic affairs, also included Marc Zupan, associate professor of mechanical engineering; Lee Blaney, assistant professor of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering; and Brian Souders, interim director of international education services.

UMBC’s collaboration with the University of Porto stems from a longstanding informal relationship between Moreira and Sebastião Feyo de Azevedo, rector of the University of Porto and former dean of the U. Porto College of Engineering. U. Porto’s Faculty of Engineering and UMBC’s College of Engineering and Information Technology signed an initial agreement in 2009. Since then, more than 50 U. Porto students have come to UMBC to conduct research for their integrated master’s theses. Around 20 percent of these visiting U. Porto students have gone on to enroll in UMBC doctoral programs.

The new agreement opens up even more opportunities for student and faculty exchanges between the two institutions. In particular, U. Porto and UMBC students and faculty will now be eligible to study at each other’s institution with support from the European Union’s ERASMUS+ initiative, a program that enables exchanges between European and North American universities. UMBC is one of very few North American universities partnered with U. Porto through this program, and ERASMUS+ may prove especially beneficial as the UMBC-U. Porto partnership expands beyond its engineering-focused core.

“I am proud to be part of this strong partnership between the University of Porto and UMBC,” shares Zupan. He spent 2012 – 2013 at U. Porto as a Fulbright Scholar to develop a course focused on global engineering. That course has been incorporated into the UMBC undergraduate curriculum, and it provides students from UMBC and U. Porto an opportunity to tackle engineering challenges across geographic and linguistic barriers through online collaboration tools.

“We look forward to growing the cooperation between our two universities over the coming years with this new agreement,” said Moreira after the signing ceremony. Feyo de Azevedo added, “This university-wide agreement will broaden the cooperation between our institutions to include more opportunities for exchange of students, faculty, and staff, and for stronger research collaborations.”

Image: Antonio Moreira (left) shakes hands with Sebastião Feyo de Azevedo after signing the agreement.

UMBC support for STEM grad students from underrepresented groups featured as a national model

The Christian Science Monitor recently examined challenges that many graduate students from underrepresented groups experience, such as isolation, mentors who may not understand their perspectives and backgrounds, and a feeling of being unwelcome. Writer Schuyler Velasco focused on programs that address these challenges at leading U.S. research universities, including Vanderbilt and UMBC.

These programs “tackle the issue of treating those experiences of ‘otherness’ as a challenge as important as getting enough study time,” writes Velasco. They do so by providing emotional support resources, creating opportunities to connect with mentors of similar backgrounds, and monitoring racial and gender dynamics to ensure research and learning environments live up to their inclusive ideals, to ensure that these students succeed.

Renetta Tull, associate vice provost for graduate student development and postdoctoral affairs, addressed UMBC’s efforts to promote retention of minority students. “Having a community that says, ‘You are us,’ and having affinity groups that remind people how they are part of that broader community can be helpful, and lead to more opportunities to connect,” she said.

Only 2.5 percent of professors in engineering nationwide are black, and 40 percent of women who earn engineering degrees leave the field early or never enter it at all. These sobering statistics are the backdrop for Tull’s work.

The Summer Success Institute, hosted annually since 2003 at UMBC and other USM institutions, is “a retreat that invites faculty from other universities in the U.S. and overseas to serve as ‘mentors-in-residence’ for graduate students across the Maryland university system,” writes Velasco. And it’s working.

“In many cases, students have never had a faculty member who looked like them and engaged them outside the classroom,” shares Tull. “It’s a way for the students to discuss issues they may be having and not feel alone.” In addition, participating in the institute can lead to job offers. In previous years, visiting mentors have hired UMBC graduates, and students from other universities, often accompanying visiting faculty, have ended up working for UMBC.

The CSM article also features UMBC’s PROF-it, an initiative that partners with community colleges to, as Velasco describes, “give doctoral and postdoc candidates hands-on teaching experience, and [offer] workshops on how to be an effective professor.” Both the Summer Success Institute and PROF-it are part of PROMISE – Maryland’s Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate.

A new article by Tull in Computing Research News addresses findings from a crowdsourcing exercise at the Summer Success Institute. Participants articulated several specific challenges graduate students face, such as time management, isolation, and expectations from family.

The group also generated several recommendations for first year graduate students to address these challenges: inviting internal and external mentors to assist outside the classroom; allowing a free flow of ideas that includes personal sharing and aspirations; reinforcing the importance of engagemet, development, and long-term goals; and giving students a chance to consider the challenges and solutions together.

Programs like the Summer Success Institute bring these recommendations to bear. Graduate programs need to treat students objectively, based on their merits as teachers and researchers, “while making sure that [they] have the emotional and community support they need to thrive,” writes Velasco.

Tull understands the positive effects that support can bring about. She reflects, “There’s a reward in that shared social connection, acknowledging that you are…valued.”

Image: Students at the Summer Success Institute converse with mentor-in-residence Gregory Triplett, professor of electrical engineering at Virginia Commonwealth University; photo by Cheriss May.

Read the full Christian Science Monitor article “How can universities keep minorities in STEM graduate programs?”

Read the Computing Research New article “Expanding the pipeline: PROMISE brings a new phase of #ThinkBigDiversity to Maryland graduate students.”

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

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