Perspectives

UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, takes your questions. Q. UMBC has made significant investments in creating physical spaces where collaboration in pedagogy and research can flourish. And the movement toward a new Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Building promises to take that effort even further. Why is it important that there are physical spaces in which to do this sort of collaboration? And, stepping back and looking at the larger picture: What other research collaboration efforts at UMBC are you most excited about? – Richard Byrne ’86, English A.  What’s important as we build a new facility, such as the proposed… Continue Reading Up on the Roof – Winter 2014

Universities are filled with people who have great ideas. In fact, the view that universities act as a repository of great ideas has a firm hold on the public imagination. Students go to classes to obtain these ideas. Professors pore over tomes or fiddle with knobs and text tubes in traditional laboratories. And universities didn’t gain a reputation of “ivory towers” where ideas were chewed over in isolation out of thin air. Yet I hope this issue of UMBC Magazine may help you rethink the notion of our university as a place that contains ideas  Because if the feature stories… Continue Reading To You – Winter 2014

Catonsville resident Gus Russo ’72, political science is married to the mob. And to U.S. history. He is a writer and investigative reporter specializing in the shadowy netherworld of American crime and politics. Russo has worked on 15 television documentaries for major networks in the United States and elsewhere, and he is the author of seven books – including “Where Were You? America Remembers the JFK Assassination” (Lyons Press, 2013). The 1960s and 1970s (when I was a student at UMBC) were not just defined by musical revolutions, but also by the tumult of politics and conspiracy – and the… Continue Reading Forget the Smoking Gun… – Gus Russo ’72

Music is more than entertainment. It is woven inextricably into the fabric of our culture – and investigating that complex weave can tell us many things about ourselves. Theodore Gonzalves, an associate professor (and chair) of American studies and Michelle Scott,  an associate professor of history, have both received Smithsonian Institution fellowships to study music’s cultural impact. They talked recently about why that research is so important. UMBC Magazine:  How can scholarship shape our understanding of music? Theodore Gonzalves:  Understanding music actually helps us to understand the kinds of questions we face as families, as nations and as communities.  It’s… Continue Reading Back Story – Winter 2014