Discovery

Build a Major League Sports Museum Mike Gibbons ’75, English was making a film about baseball in 1981 when a research expedition led him to Baltimore’s Babe Ruth Birthplace Museum. He liked the place so much that he stuck around – first as a volunteer, then rising to become the institution’s executive director.Thirty-two years later, Gibbons’ vision now spreads over two downtown sites. Visitors to the Babe Ruth Birthplace can still stand in the very room where the Bambino was born. But since the creation of The Sports Legends Museum and Maryland Sports Hall at nearby Camden Yards in 2005,… Continue Reading How To – Spring 2015

Develop and Displace It’s rare that an author’s first book is hailed as a “trailblazing piece of scholarship.” Yet Rumor, Repression, and Racial Politics: How the Harassment of Black Elected Officials Shaped Post-Civil Rights America (University of Georgia Press, 2012) by George Derek Musgrove ’97, history, an associate professor of history at UMBC, received raves for its exploration of a paradox that has cast a long shadow over American political culture. “Just as the Civil Rights Act of 1965 allowed for the desegregation of American politics and the election of a black President in 2008,” Musgrove observes, “so too did… Continue Reading Discovery – Spring 2015

By Andrew Myers From the Apple Watch to Fitbit, the rage in technology these days is all about wearable, touchable devices. Tech gurus and cutting-edge engineers talk of a day when all the many electronic devices that surround us will be networked together in a magical electrical collaboration that will change how we live our daily lives. Many of these devices, if not all, will be controlled by touch. Some have taken to calling this vision the “Internet of Things,” but others have begun to believe even that grandiose thinking may be too narrow. The “Internet of Everything” is more… Continue Reading The Sum of the Parts

Tyson King-Meadows has forged a career examining the implementation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act – and helping a new generation of political scientists emerge from UMBC. By David Glenn Fifty years after the passage of the Voting Rights Act and seven years after the election of the first black president, what are the dynamics of African-American political participation? Can Southern states be trusted now to run fair elections without federal oversight? Can the Democratic Party sustain the coalitions that won the White House twice for Barack Obama? Loose punditry on those topics is cheap and easy to find. But… Continue Reading Rights and Wrongs

Joan Kang Shin’s approach to teaching English as a foreign language embraces children and community on a global scale. By David Glenn Imagine that you’re an experienced high school teacher in a country like Pakistan, Serbia, or Colombia. Your specialty is English as a foreign language. Your school doesn’t have many resources, but you have a good rapport with your students, and you’re proud of what you do. Then one day your government announces that English as a foreign language (EFL) classes will now be required for all students beginning in elementary school. You are yanked from your familiar high… Continue Reading Expanding the Map