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Building a Tradition Last fall, UMBC and the Maryland Traditions program announced an exploratory partnership for the 2010-2011 academic year.  Now, as that year is coming to a close, Maryland Traditions and UMBC are looking back on a year of working together—and are excited about what has been accomplished. Maryland Traditions is a statewide program run through the Maryland State Arts Council that supports efforts to discover, share, preserve and sustain traditional arts and culture.  Folklorists in the program work directly with individuals and cultural institutions to encourage the vitality of living traditions and folk arts. Through the partnership, Elaine… Continue Reading Building a Tradition

Building a Culture of Innovation UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, often says that part of his formula for the success of his campus is engaging his colleagues in questions about education and innovation. “We are constantly asking questions about important issues. How do we ensure that students from all backgrounds excel? How do we use technology to strengthen teaching and learning?” It’s this practice that has helped UMBC create an institutional model of inclusive excellence and increase the representation of minority students in science and engineering. Now, Hrabowski has been recognized for this work with the 2011 TIAA-CREF Theodore… Continue Reading Building a Culture of Innovation

Value Judgments On March 3, four philosophy students will become UMBC’s first Ethics Bowl team to compete in the national Ethics Bowl tournament. The National Ethics Bowl will be held in Cincinnati, Ohio as part of the Association for Practical and Professional Ethics’ 20th anniversary meeting. Although UMBC has previously participated in mock ethics bowls, this is the first year that the university has supported a registered team. The team placed third out of 16 in the Mid-Atlantic regional tournament, which was held on November 20. An ethics bowl is structured similarly to a debate tournament. However, rather than being… Continue Reading Value Judgments

GRRL PARTS In 2006, Susan McCully, a dramaturg and lecturer in UMBC’s Department of Theatre, decided to take action against a problem that seemed to crop every with every production: “In faculty meeting after faculty meeting, we would say ‘We have ten women in our scene class, and there just isn’t a decent play with substantial roles for even four women.’ And every theatre department has the same problem–I had this experience when I was in college.” Her solution was to inaugurate the annual “IN 10” festival, which commissioned short plays (most about ten minutes in length) with roles for… Continue Reading GRRL PARTS

Practical Idealism On March 1, 1961, President Kennedy established the Peace Corps by executive order, initiating a program that has sent over 200,000 volunteers to promote global peace through service in 139 countries. The Shriver Peaceworker Program has been a natural extension of the Peace Corps since 1985, when the Shriver family created it to forge a pathway for Returned Peace Corps Volunteers (RCPVs) to become public service leaders. The Shrivers later expanded and refined the Peaceworker Program, making it an integral part of the UMBC Shriver Center, where RCPVs now pursue graduate study while continuing their service work locally.… Continue Reading Practical Idealism

NCAA Bound For the second time in school history, the UMBC men’s soccer program will compete in the NCAA Division I Championships as the Retrievers advanced, 5-4, in penalty kicks in the America East Conference title game after playing visiting New Hampshire (UNH) to a 0-0 scoreless draw. “I am extremely proud of our Men’s Soccer program,” said UMBC Athletics Director Charles Brown. “Coach Pete Caringi, his staff and our student-athletes have had an amazing season.  It is great to see that a team with such hard work and dedication has won the America East Conference Championship.  The atmosphere at our… Continue Reading NCAA Bound

Victory!       Watch game highlights > UMBC junior midfielder Andrew Bulls scored with 11:58 remaining, as the Retrievers rallied from a 1-0 deficit to defeat tenth-ranked Princeton, 2-1, and advance to the second round of the NCAA Men’s Soccer Championships. “We are ecstatic to come away with a victory against a really, really good team,” said head coach Pete Caringi. “Princeton is one of the best teams in the country and this is a very tough place to come up and get a win. I am really proud of our players.” The Retrievers improve to 12-4-3 and extending their unbeaten streak… Continue Reading Victory!

Eco-Education A first-year seminar class offered this semester is giving students the chance to explore environmental issues from a humanities perspective. The class, Sustainability in American Culture, focuses on eco-literacy; that is, an awareness of how cultural influences can affect our relationship with the environment. “In a humanities course, it’s possible to think about thing like culture, discourse and language and how those things shape our thinking and how our thinking shapes our interaction with the environment and the natural world,” said Rita Turner, ’11 Ph.D., language, literacy and culture, who is teaching the class. Turner’s dissertation is based on… Continue Reading Eco-Education

Champions in the Water From the very beginning, emphasis was on the team. In the first month of practice, Chad Cradock ‘97, head coach of the swimming and diving teams, called out the names of student athletes and had them  describe what the team meant to them. Students cited their determination, their sacrifice, their love of the sport and their support for each other. The men were hungry for another championship and the women were not about to let the men hog the spotlight. “It created such a positive environment,” Cradock said. It looks as if that positive environment paid… Continue Reading Champions in the Water

Committed Modernist It’s been a big year for Jessica Berman, chair of English: she was recently elected to the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) board, is putting the finishing touches on a book that she has been researching and writing for the past six years and is co-editing a new book series. “The scholarship that I do bridges that distinction between a national literature department, like UMBC’s English department, and what we think of more properly as comparative literature,” she said. Berman’s work across these two fields allows her to bring a unique perspective to the classes she teaches. It… Continue Reading Committed Modernist

Getting Intuit It’s a feeling that both artists and researchers are familiar with: a problem seems unsolvable when suddenly, in a flash, a creative solution becomes clear. This moment of insight might get credited to instinct or your gut, but what if it’s more than a hunch?  What if it’s part of how the brain solves problems, as trustworthy as conscious thought? That’s what Lee Boot, associate director of UMBC’s Imaging Research Center (IRC), asked himself when he was invited by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) to prepare an exhibit for October’s USA Science and Engineering Festival on the… Continue Reading Getting Intuit