The UMBC community honored faculty and staff who were instrumental in the lives of UMBC’s African-American and Latino students at a Legends of Excellence Brunch and Awards ceremony held on Saturday, March 31, 2012. Congratulations to the award recipients: Ramona Arthur, Former Director of Off-Campus Student Services Norma Green, Former Coordinator of Student Activities Bonny Tighe, Senior Lecturer of Mathematics and Statistics LaMont Toliver, Director of the Meyerhoff Scholars Program and Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Education (awarded posthumously) “It was wonderful to see so many alumni, faculty, staff and friends come out to celebrate and honor members of the UMBC… Continue Reading Honoring UMBC's Legends of Excellence
Fred L. Pincus, Professor of Sociology, will retire at the end of the semester after spending 44 years at UMBC. He came to Baltimore from UCLA as a 26-year-old instructor in 1968, the third year of UMBC’s existence. In addition to all the committee work needed to build the department and the university, Pincus taught courses in race relations, social psychology and introductory sociology. He also became very involved in the movement against the war in Vietnam and promoted campus policies to increase the number of African American students on campus. He was an early supporter of Black Studies and… Continue Reading Fred L. Pincus, Sociology, to Retire after 44 Years at UMBC
TIME named President Freeman Hrabowski to the 2012 TIME 100, the magazine’s annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. The full list and related tributes appear in the April 30 issue of TIME, available on newsstands on Thursday, April 19, and now at time.com/time100. The list, now in its ninth year, recognizes the activism, innovation and achievement of the world’s most influential individuals. As TIME Managing Editor Richard Stengel has said of the list in the past, “The TIME 100 is not a list of the most powerful people in the world, it’s not a list of… Continue Reading President Hrabowski named one of TIME Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in the World
Sara Patenaude ’11 M.A., historical studies, has won the Arnold Prize for Outstanding Writing on Baltimore’s History. The Arnold Prize is named for Joseph L. Arnold, a professor of history at UMBC who died in 2004. He was a vital and important member of the faculty for three and a half decades, as well as a leading historian of urban and planning history. He also played an active and often leading role with a variety of private and public historical institutions in the Baltimore area, and at his death was hailed as the “dean of Baltimore historians.” The Arnold Prize… Continue Reading Sara Patenaude '11 M.A., Historical Studies, Wins History Writing Prize
UMBC alumni are stars whose light extends well beyond their graduation. Past award winners include Duff Goldman, founder of Charm City Cakes, Maryland Delegate Jon Cardin, Johns Hopkins Medical Institutes medical researcher Crystal Watkins and Baltimore Sun reporter Jamie Smith Hopkins. The UMBC Alumni Association welcomes nominations for the 2012 Outstanding Alumni of the Year Awards. The UMBC Alumni Association will present five awards to honor alumni for their professional and personal achievements, as well as their service to the community and to UMBC. In addition, the Association will present a “Rising Star” award to a graduate of the past… Continue Reading Nominate a Great Graduate for an Outstanding Alumni of the Year Award
Seth Sawyers ’99, history, and adjunct faculty in English, has a new essay in the online literary magazine The Millions. This essay, which is a chapter is from his recently completed memoir about growing up in the hills of western Maryland, is entitled “Baseball, Finally.” It appeared on the journal’s website on April 4. “….I can still feel the rhythm of the infield drill. I did thousands of them, the movements deep inside me like the steps of a dance, like the bass lines to certain Beatles’ songs.I loved turning double plays, taking the throw from third or from short,… Continue Reading Seth Sawyers '99, History, on Growing Up Baseball
Bill Shewbridge ’80, history, director of UMBC’s New Media Studio, spoke to Urbanite about the role technology plays on campus and in the lives of students. “There is a tendency to think that students are digital natives,” says Bill Shewbridge, the director of the new media studio at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). “But uploading a picture to Facebook doesn’t make you a producer, much less an informed consumer.” A television producer-turned-professor, Shewbridge discovered this after embarking on UMBC’s digital storytelling project eight years ago. To tell digital stories—short videos, usually for a particular class, that combine scriptwriting,… Continue Reading Bill Shewbridge '80, New Media Studio, in Urbanite
Two information systems alumni are using their entrepreneurial spirit to make happy hour just a little bit happier. As reported in the Arbutus Patch, alums Ryan Bricklemyer ’04, M.S. ’06, and Sean Kennedy ’06, have launched a website called BeerGivr that allows users to buy a beer — or an entire round — for friends at Baltimore bars without being present to pay the tab. “There’s tons of different applications. I’m going to miss a party; I lost a bet. There’s tons of ways… beer is kind of like its own little currency,” said Bricklemyer, who noted that 16 Baltimore-area… Continue Reading Alums Make It Easier To Share A Cold One
Many students broadcast their UMBC pride in traditional fashion – on a black and gold t-shirt, hoodie or ball cap. But UMBC seniors Chris Snyder ’12 and Chris Bowie ’12 have taken their case of Retriever Fever one very permanent step further. “It was my last season of cross country, so I wanted to do something special,” says Snyder, a mechanical engineering major who along with Bowie had the new UMBC retriever logo tattooed on his left calf last spring. Since its debut in summer 2010, the Retriever logo has spread quickly across the university’s walls and furniture, but never… Continue Reading Dog Tag: Taking the UMBC Logo to a New Level
Lindsey Loeper ’04, American studies, acknowledges the futility of trying to keep pace with the hands of the watch and the rapidly turning pages of the calendar. No matter how quickly she and other members of the Special Collections team archive the stacks of UMBC documents they receive every day, there are always more coming. History never stops happening at a university that’s still building its story. “We’re often asked when we’ll have everything digitized and we never will,” smiles Loeper, who earned her master’s of library sciences at College Park. “Instead, we try to create an online record that… Continue Reading The Surveyor of the Stacks: Lindsey Loeper '04, AmSt
George Stover ’73, interdisciplinary studies, answers the door at his production studio, Adventure Productions, looking like he’s on location in the wild. A tall man with a full head of silver hair and a boyish frame, Stover is clad in blue jeans, rugged boots, and a black canvas shirt emblazoned with his company’s emblem, a hammerhead shark. Stover’s North Baltimore basement studio is far from the exotic underwater locations where he shoots his kid-friendly weekly television show, Aqua Kids. But the décor of his cavernous subterranean studio illustrates just how seamlessly Stover blends his dual passions for film and aquatics:… Continue Reading Aqua Man: George Stover '73, INDS
Picture this: It’s a cool, crisp night and you’re cruising north up Interstate 95, with the city of Baltimore rising up before you. The image of a metropolis can rise and fall with its skyline and its immense iconic representation of the city’s civic aspirations. Much of Baltimore’s story is written in its skyline. There’s the urban renewal that spawned the National Aquarium and the twin stadiums of South Baltimore, for instance. The city’s history is also etched there in places such as the famous and distinctive Emerson Bromo-Seltzer Tower, which was built in 1911 at the corner of Eutaw… Continue Reading Tower Transformer: Kelley Bell '06, MFA
