« November 2006 | Main | January 2007 » December 30, 2006 UMBC Qualifies for Final Four of College Chess at Pan-Am UMBC-Hosted Tournament Draws Positive Media Coverage CONTACT: Mike Lurie Office: 410-455-6380 Cellphone: 443-695-0262 mlurie@umbc.edu WASHINGTON, D.C. – The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) chess team qualified for the "Final Four of College Chess" by placing third in the Pan American Intercollegiate Chess Championships, “The World Series of College Chess," held this weekend in Washington, D.C. The top four U.S. teams at the Pan Am will advance to the Collegiate Final Four round-robin tournament to be held in Dallas on March 24 and 25, 2007. Other qualifying teams were UT-Dallas, the winner of the 2006 Pan-Am, along with Miami-Dade College and Duke University. UMBC was the host for a successful 2006 Pan-Am tournament that drew media interest from around the nation and region, including the New York Times, an Op-Ed and feature in the Baltimore Sun and a Washington Post story. Adithya Balasubramanian, a 10th grade player from Tabb High School in York County, Virginia, was the winner of the scholastic tournament at the Pan-Am. He is the top-rated junior player in Virginia and qualified for a four-year scholarship from UMBC with his victory. More information online: www.umbc.edu/chess/Pan-Am2006 Posted by crose at 02:52 PM December 19, 2006 Kevin Eckert, Dean of The Erickson School, to Appear on WYPR's "Maryland Morning" Eckert to Discuss Innovative School's New Undergraduate Major in Management of Aging Services CONTACT: Mike Lurie Office: 410-455-6380 Cellphone: 443-695-0262 mlurie@umbc.edu BALTIMORE – Kevin Eckert, Dean of The Erickson School at UMBC, will be a featured guest on WYPR-88.1 FM's “Maryland Morning With Sheilah Kast” on Wednesday, Dec. 20. In a segment scheduled for broadcast at 9:20 a.m., Eckert will discuss The Erickson School's new undergraduate major in the management of aging services, the first of its kind in the country. Posted by crose at 03:15 PM December 15, 2006 ‘Cuban Cyclone,’ ‘Polish Magician’ and ‘Kiev Killer’ Descend on the Nation’s Capital Reigning Champion UMBC is Host for Pan-Am Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship, Dec. 27-30 at Renaissance Hotel, Washington, D.C. CONTACT: Mike Lurie Office: 410-455-6380 Cellphone: 443-695-0262 mlurie@umbc.edu WASHINGTON, D.C. – The “Cuban Cyclone,” the “Polish Magician” and the “Kiev Killer” bring their take-no-prisoners game plan to Washington on December 27. They are determined to keep the title they reclaimed last year in Miami, when the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) won its record seventh title at the Pan American Intercollegiate Chess Championships, “The World Series of College Chess.” Intercollegiate chess won’t land players on the “jacked-up” segment of a football television network near you. It won’t inspire a contract holdout, develop a left fielder with home-run pop or prevent an NFL wide receiver from “talking trash.” Nonetheless, intercollegiate chess is intense. Its competitors are fierce. Mental acumen and physical stamina are essential. UMBC, a place where pep rallies for the chess team are routine, is serious about continuing its reign as national collegiate champions. UMBC features such recruits as American freshman Ryan Goldenberg of West Haven, Conn., and colorfully nicknamed grandmasters such as Katrina “the Kiev Killer” Rohonyan of Ukraine, Pawel “The Polish Magician” Blehm and “The Cuban Cyclone” Bruci Lopez. The competition runs December 27-30 at the Renaissance Hotel, 999 9th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., near the intersection of K Street and Massachusetts Avenue. Admission is free and spectators are welcome. The Pan-Am is one of the world’s most celebrated intercollegiate chess tournaments. Since its 1946 inception, five years before Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard Round the World,” dozens of universities throughout the Americas have participated. The 2006 Pan-Am includes teams from Yale, Duke and Dartmouth. Its international flavor is embodied by such schools as the University of Toronto, the Catholic University of Peru and Miami Dade College, a rising chess power thanks to an influx of top Cuban players. The tournament is open to any college or university team from North, South, or Central America. The tournament also includes the Pan-Am scholastic team individual and team championships for students in grades 1-12. The top individual scholastic winner will be offered a four-year scholarship to UMBC, a $69,416 value. On Dec. 27 from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m., the weekend kicks off with a fast-paced exhibition match with a top cash prize of $1,000. The match will feature live, play-by-play commentary from chess authorities master Craig Jones and former UMBC player senior master William “The Exterminator” Morrison. Among the highlights for UMBC at the 2005 Pan Am were a sweep of Harvard and victories over archrival the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), winner of the previous two Pan-Am titles. The Retrievers won their first title in 1996 and then embarked on a five-year championship streak from 1998 to 2002. UMBC and UTD are the undisputed top two teams in the nation, and among only a handful of schools nationwide that attract the world's best chess players with full scholarships. The top four teams from the Pan-Am will go on to face each other in the Final Four of College Chess to be held March 24 and 25, 2007 in Dallas. More information online: www.umbc.edu/chess/Pan-Am2006 Posted by crose at 03:47 PM December 14, 2006 The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation Awards $2 Million to Fund Entrepreneurship at UMBC Initiative Seeks to Develop Entrepreneurs Outside of Business, Engineering Schools CONTACT: Mike Lurie Office: 410-455-6380 Cellphone: 443-695-0262 mlurie@umbc.edu The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) has been awarded a $2 million grant to build UMBC entrepreneurship programs across the campus, joining a select group of colleges and universities receiving funding for entrepreneurship endeavors through the Kauffman Campuses Initiative. The Kauffman Foundation initiated the three-year-old Kauffman Campuses Initiative to catalyze entrepreneurship programs outside of business and engineering schools. The Kauffman Foundation grant complements two substantial commitments already received by UMBC to support its Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship. The first commitment is $1 million from Constellation Energy Group. The second is $1 million from the Herbert Bearman Foundation to establish The Bearman Family Chair in Entrepreneurship at UMBC. The Kauffman Foundation grant acknowledges the success and potential of the Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship, created six years ago through a gift of $1 million from the Alex. Brown Foundation to develop a leading university entrepreneurship center for the Baltimore region. UMBC has developed three broad strategies to make entrepreneurship education a common and accessible experience for students in all majors: exposure of students and faculty to entrepreneurs and their expertise, creation of formal education opportunities and development of programs to give students and faculty experience in entrepreneurial settings. UMBC, recognized for its culture of entrepreneurship education despite the absence of a business school, joins a prestigious group of institutions selected by the Kauffman Foundation for funding. The others are Arizona State University, Brown University, Carnegie Mellon University, Georgetown University, New York University, Purdue University, Syracuse University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. UMBC learned of its selection after a campus delegation, led by President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, presented its proposal before an independent panel of judges at Kauffman Foundation headquarters in Kansas City, Mo., on December 12. “This partnership gives UMBC the opportunity to take entrepreneurship programming to the next level,” says Vivian Armor, director of the Alex. Brown Center. “It will allow UMBC to expand course offerings for current undergraduates, graduate students and working professionals. It will improve programming that exposes students and faculty to important entrepreneurial concepts. Finally, the partnership will help develop systems to support individuals as they work to launch successful business ventures or address urgent challenges facing our communities through social entrepreneurship.” The Alex. Brown Center supports the kind of entrepreneurial creativity and action exemplified by the creation of OpenPosting.com, the first online classified community for college students. Students Wan Hsi Yuan and Jason Servary, members of the Center’s student-run CEO Club, created the site. It has 1,500 registered users and receives roughly 4,000 page views per day. Entrepreneurship at UMBC also thrives via the Alex. Brown Center’s summer entrepreneurship institute. In summer, 2006, UMBC’s first Faculty Summer Institute was held for eight faculty members representing the departments of music, dance, theater and visual arts. The institute was created to broaden faculty exposure to concepts of entrepreneurship and integrate into their curricula career development skills, internships and mentoring relationships with established entrepreneurs. Participation by faculty was determined based upon proposals that demonstrated interest in learning more about entrepreneurship. Winning proposals from faculty included the exploration of marketing and audience development initiatives, the development of courses to help students understand professional careers in the arts and arts and non-profit organization management. The Center also serves as one of the University’s partners in the ACTiVATE program, funded by the National Science Foundation to address the unique needs of accomplished women interested in starting technology companies. Eight women in the ACTiVATE program, established two years ago, now lead their own tech companies. The Alex. Brown Center’s activities are complemented by such other initiatives as techcenter@UMBC and bwtech@UMBC, which offer specialized support geared specifically toward research and technology businesses. Through UMBC’s Shriver Center, a national leader in promoting community-based service and internship programs, businesses are introduced to undergraduate and graduate students interested in internship experience in career-related fields. “The Alex. Brown Center augments the excellent education UMBC offers by giving students the proper toolset to interface with business leaders in their field of choice,” said Greg Barnhill,” chair of the Alex. Brown Center Board of Visitors and partner and member of the board of Brown Advisory Securities. “We offer students guidance on how to deal with people on a daily basis, compose quality written communication and verbalize opinions effectively.” The grant is awarded with the expectation that UMBC will raise an additional $8 million toward entrepreneurship programs during the next five years. The Kauffman Campuses Initiative began in 2003 with $25 million in funding to eight schools that provided entrepreneurship education within liberal arts, engineering and other non-business programs. Selection of this latest round of Kauffman Campuses schools was based on a series of criteria, including the ability to generate a partnership with other foundations and funders and the potential to create new representative models. “Our initiative is creating a cultural change and making the entire university system more entrepreneurial,” said Kauffman CEO Carl Schramm. “We want all students, not just those in business schools, to see the value of thinking like entrepreneurs. We want them to be able to recognize and seize opportunity when it presents itself, no matter what field they find themselves in.” About the Alex. Brown Center Established in 2000 through a gift of $1 million from the Alex. Brown Foundation, the Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship is the hub of entrepreneurial-based activity at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). It provides an active link between the academic community and the corporate environment. Since its inception, the Center has worked closely with the Baltimore business community to create one of the leading university centers for entrepreneurship in the country housed at a mid-sized university. Information about the Alex. Brown Center is available at http://www.umbc.edu/entrepreneurship. About the Kauffman Foundation The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City is a private, nonpartisan foundation that works with partners to advance entrepreneurship in America and improve the education of children and youth. The Kauffman Foundation was established in the mid-1960s by the late entrepreneur and philanthropist Ewing Marion Kauffman. Information about the Kauffman Foundation is available at www.kauffman.org. Posted by crose at 03:27 PM December 04, 2006 UMBC Department of Music Presents a New Work by Carlo Alessandro Landini December 12, 2006 UMBC Fine Arts Recital Hall Contact: Thomas Moore Director of Arts & Culture 410-455-3370 tmoore@umbc.edu The UMBC Department of Music presents an Honors Recital, including the premiere of a new work by Carlo Alessandro Landini (pictured), performed by Ruckus, the professional contemporary music ensemble in residence at UMBC, on Tuesday, December 12th, at 8:00 p.m. in the Fine Arts Recital Hall. Carlo Alessandro Landini, born in Milan, 1954, was unanimously awarded the Premier Prix of the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique in 1981. In the same year he received a Fulbright Award, which enabled him to teach at the University of California, San Diego from 1981 to 1983. Since then, he has lived in Italy and now holds the teaching chair in composition at the G. Nicolini Conservatory in Piacenza. He has won numerous competitions (Ennio Porrino, Valentino Bucchi, Città di Mestre, Franco Margola), and is the only composer ever awarded twice (2002 and 2004) the prestigious K. Serocki Prize in Warsaw, Poland. He is also a regular guest composer at the Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt. His new work, Coming to Life. Generation, Transition, Interlocking of Phases, was commissioned by Ruckus to commemmorate UMBC's 40th Anniversary. The composer has described the work in the following terms: In thermodynamics, phase transition (also called phase change) is the transformation of a thermodynamic system from one phase to another. The distinguishing characteristic of a phase transition is an abrupt sudden change in one or more physical properties, in particular the heat capacity, with a small change in a thermodynamic variable such as the temperature. Under the Ehrenfest classification, phase transitions are labeled by the lowest derivative of the free energy that is discontinuous at the transition. First-order phase transitions – such as in Landini’s piece – exhibit a discontinuity in the first derivative of the free energy with a thermodynamic variable. The various transitions to be found in Coming to Life are classified as first-order transitions because they involve a discontinuous change in density (which is the first derivative of the free energy with respect to a chemical or physical potential). The first-order phase transitions are those that involve a latent heat (the repression of drives, not unlike that imagined by Freud, involves the idea of a typical “latency of emotions” as the self-containment and transformation of whatever aesthetic form into very few number of basic, even trivial elements and gestures). During such a transition, a system either absorbs or releases a fixed (and typically large) amount of energy. Because energy cannot be instantaneously transferred between the system and its environment, first-order transitions are associated with “mixed-phase regimes” in which some parts of the system have completed the transition and others have not. This phenomenon is familiar to anyone who has boiled a pot of water: the water does not instantly turn into gas, but forms a turbulent mixture of water and water vapor bubbles. In Wagner’s operas and Mahler’s symphonies the transition may require a considerable, never experienced before, amount of time. Mixed-phase systems are difficult to study, because their dynamics are violent and hard to control. However, they can be emulated by the artist. The presence of symmetry-breaking (or non-breaking) is important to the behavior of phase transitions as it is to the behavior of an artwork. It was pointed out by Landau that, given any state of a system, one may unequivocally say whether or not it possesses a given symmetry. Therefore, it cannot be possible to analytically deform a state in one phase into a phase possessing a different symmetry. Landau’s law receives its poignant application in Landini’s Coming to Life, whereas it is impossible for the solid-liquid phase boundary to end in a critical point like the liquid-gas boundary. Typically, like in the realm of physical world, also in Landini’s piece the more symmetrical phase is on the high-temperature side (the “passionate” side of growing layers of sound and increasing dynamics) of a phase transition, and the less symmetrical phase on the low-temperature side (where the form dramatically falls into the realm of entropy and of disintegration). Admission Admission is free. Telephone Public information: (24 hour recorded message): 410-455-ARTS Media inquiries only: 410-455-3370 Web UMBC Arts website: http://www.umbc.edu/arts Online News Releases: http://www.umbc.edu/news Directions • From Baltimore and points north, proceed south on I-95 to exit 47B. Take Route 166 toward Catonsville and then follow signs to the Administration Drive Garage. • From I-695, take Exit 12C (Wilkens Avenue) and continue one-half mile to the entrance of UMBC at the roundabout intersection of Wilkens Avenue and Hilltop Road. Turn left and follow signs to the Administration Drive Garage. • From Washington and points south, proceed north on I-95 to Exit 47B. Take Route 166 toward Catonsville and then follow signs to the Administration Drive Garage. • Visitor parking is available in the Administration Drive Garage. Visitor parking regulations are enforced on all University calendar days. Hilltop Circle and all campus roadways require a parking permit unless otherwise marked. Online campus map: http://www.umbc.edu/aboutumbc/campusmap/ Images for Media High resolution images for media are available online: http://www.umbc.edu/newsevents/arts/hi-res/ or by email or postal mail. ### Posted by tmoore at 10:38 PM President Hrabowski to Appear as Live Guest on MPT's "Direct Connection" UMBC’s Strong National Reputation, 40th Anniversary Among Topics CONTACT: Mike Lurie Office: 410-455-6380 Cellphone: 443-695-0262 mlurie@umbc.edu BALTIMORE – UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski III will be interviewed live on Maryland Public Television’s “Direct Connection with Jeff Salkin” at 7:30 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 4. The program will discuss UMBC’s 40th anniversary celebration and the national reputation for excellence it has achieved under President Hrabowski’s leadership. Viewers can participate in the show by sending questions to directconnection@mpt.org or calling 1-800-926-0629 during the live broadcast. A repeat version of the show will be aired at 11:30 p.m. and again at 6 a.m., Tuesday, Dec. 5. Posted by mlurie at 11:54 AM