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Intensive Advocacy White House commission summit at UMBC promotes academic success for at-risk youth, highlighting The Choice Program. For college senior Imhotep Simba, helping youth find their own path to success comes down to three things: encouragement, exposure, and mentorship. Growing up in Baltimore’s Upton neighborhood, Simba says, he didn’t have a sense of possibility or opportunity, but The Choice Program at UMBC changed that. Simba, who will graduate from Coppin State University in May, spoke from his perspective as an alumnus of The Choice Program to a standing-room-only crowd that filled UMBC’s Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery on February… Continue Reading UMBC: Intensive Advocacy

Path to Power Professor Thomas Schaller makes sense of institutional shifts in modern American politics in The Stronghold. The Republican Party has lost four of the last six U.S. presidential elections and lost the popular vote in five of the last six, while at the same time establishing powerful majorities in both houses of Congress. How can we make sense of these seemingly contradictory trends in the party’s popularity? In his new book The Stronghold: How Republicans Captured Congress but Surrendered the White House (Yale University Press, 2015), Thomas Schaller examines the institutional transformation of the national Republican Party since… Continue Reading UMBC: Path to Power

Honoring Excellence UMBC community celebrates ten distinguished faculty and staff members at annual awards ceremony. The campus community celebrated the exceptional performance, leadership, and service of ten faculty and staff members at the Presidential Faculty and Staff Awards Ceremony held on April 1, 2015. “The Presidential Faculty and Staff Awards Ceremony is an important annual tradition for the UMBC community,” says President Freeman Hrabowski. “Our faculty and staff are dedicated to fulfilling the University’s mission and vision, and this event gives us the opportunity to honor their professional achievements and commitment to our campus.” The 2015-18 Presidential Teaching Professor is… Continue Reading UMBC: PFASA 2015

The Science of Attraction Biologist Tamra Mendelson explains how sexual selection plays a major role in the evolution of vibrant features, from stripes to tail feathers. Male cardinals are red. Male peacocks have bright tail plumage. Conventional biological wisdom says that species look different because they are adapting to different environments — food, predators, or climate. That assumption is missing a major piece of the puzzle, say researchers at UMBC and the University of Colorado, Boulder. In a recent study published in the journal Ecology Letters and featured in The Baltimore Sun, Tamra Mendelson and her co-authors suggest that sexual… Continue Reading UMBC: The Science of Attraction

Thinking Out Loud URCAD 2015 celebrates undergraduate student experiences in research and creative achievement. As a transfer student from Montgomery College, Trevor Blank ’05, American studies, was fascinated by the history and folklore of a structure that once stood on UMBC’s campus: the Hillcrest Building, constructed in 1921 as the Spring Grove State Hospital. A different person might read a book about their new interest and move on, but Blank chose to write the book on it instead. His research on the site as an undergraduate carried through to his graduate studies at Indiana University’s Folklore Institute and Pennsylvania State… Continue Reading UMBC: Thinking Out Loud

Tiny Tools, Big Results Chemist Ryan White works to transform research on how brain cells communicate with each other. In his chemistry lab at UMBC, assistant professor Ryan White peers through the microscope at a 25 um sensor, the size of a single strand of hair. Attached to the sensor, beyond the realm of microscopic resolution, are DNA aptamers—single strands of DNA that can change shape when molecules bind to them. The material White works with is incredibly tiny, but it has the potential to lead to remarkable insights. “The brain is a complicated place,” says White. In the last… Continue Reading UMBC: Tiny Tools, Big Results

A Continuum of Care UMBC Center for Aging Studies researchers receive $1.4 million grant for work to enhance the well-being of older adults. There are nearly 5,000 adult day care centers in the United States, but estimates from several health organizations make the case there should be at least double that number. Why is there such demand for these facilities and how are they different from other assisted living centers for older adults? Robert Rubinstein and a team of researchers from UMBC’s Center for Aging Studies (CAS) recently received a $1.4 million grant from the National Institute on Aging for… Continue Reading UMBC: Hope as a Commitment, Not a Sentiment

Only Human UMBC professors spar onstage about math, poetry and what it means to be human. In anticipation of a new semester, English professor Naomi Kessler introduces herself to mathematics professor Mike Pearson. They wouldn’t typically cross paths, but a new interdisciplinary requirement has the university asking all tenured faculty to teach a course with a colleague in a different department, and Naomi and Mike have been matched. The problem: when it comes to collaborating they are a painfully dysfunctional pair. From the time they first meet, the two professors wrestle for control of the curriculum for their joint seminar… Continue Reading UMBC: Only Human

The Right Combination Men’s Soccer Team Winners on the Field and in the Classroom The UMBC men’s soccer team’s splendid run to the Final Four of college soccer may have ended in the national semifinals with a hard-fought 1-0 loss to the University of Virginia, but it created memories that will live on in the annals of Retrievers athletics. Senior forward Kay Banjo’s amazing back heel goal against Vermont in the America East conference semifinal – a goal that went viral on the Internet. Redshirt freshman midfielder Gregg Hauck’s wonder goal that sealed the championship victory. A gritty penalty kick… Continue Reading UMBC: Men’s Soccer Team Winners on the Field and in the Classroom