UMBC News

UMBC's Center for Art and Visual Culture presents the Visual Arts Faculty Biennial from November 15 through December 21. In this Sixth Biennial, members of UMBC's Department of Visual Arts exhibit their current research in interactive media, photography, installations, graphic design, new genre, painting, video and film. Exhibitors include Diyan Achjadi, Guenet Abraham, Dan Bailey, Melanie Berry, Lee Boot, Steve Bradley, Lynn Cazabon, Irene Chan, Mark Alice Durant, Symmes Gardner, Vin Grabill, Hollie Lavenstein, Lisa Moren, Tim Nohe, Franc Nunoo-Quarcoo, Chris Peregoy, Alan Price, Peggy Re, Ann Rosenthal, Teri Rueb, Amie Siegel, Jaromir Stephany, Mark Street, John Sturgeon, Calla Thompson, William-John Tudor, Renée van der Stelt, and David Yager.

To help get ready for PeopleSoft training this winter, the Office of Information Technology recently conducted "desk interviews" with 15 UMBC staff whose duties include payroll preparation for their department. We wanted to understand how they do their jobs now and how they learn new technology. We also administered a "self assessment" to all 90 payroll preparers-results and the 15 interview transcripts are available on the Delta Project's Blackboard "community" site. What we found surprised us and changed our assumptions about technology training at UMBC generally.

Leslie Wilson, '74 and '76, and her husband Courtney Wilson have established The Paul Levin Memorial Scholarship Fund, which will provide an annual scholarship for an undergraduate UMBC music student who is pursuing a certificate in music education.

Several of UMBC's Humanities Scholars have invited influential high school teachers to campus to present them with an award and simply say “thanks” for their dedication to and enthusiasm for teaching.

The Department of Theatre presents An Evening of Adultery, two one-act plays by George Bernard Shaw: Overruled and Passion, Poison & Petrifaction, on the ironies of infidelity, directed by Colette Searls.

In honor of Children's Book Week, the UMBC Bookstore features a reading of Inside Picture Books by the author, Ellen Handler Spitz, professor in the Honors College and the Department of Visual Arts, on Saturday, November 23rd, at 11 a.m. in the UMBC Bookstore. A discussion and question-and-answer session will follow the presentation.

From a crab-loving city comes research on a shifty-eyed species of crab that only a scientist could love. The Nov. 7 issue of Nature features the work of UMBC marine biologist and vision scientist Tom Cronin, who was part of a team studying the amazing eyes of a rare species of crab that thrives in the extreme heat and darkness of thermal vents deep beneath the Galapagos Islands.

Meet some of UMBC's newest faculty members.

Meet some of the newest members of UMBC's faculty

On Tuesday, November 12, college students will know what it is like to gohungry -- at least for a little while. At UMBC's Oxfam Hunger Awareness Banquet, students will be randomly assigned a “new life,” complete with a new name, nationality and economic status. Depending on their class-level, the students will either be served a four-course meal at a dining room table or sit on the floor and eat a small serving of rice – if they are lucky (food is scarce, so not all will eat). The banquet will be held in UMBC's Skylight Room (The Commons) on November 12, from 6 to 7:30 p.m.

The Department of Theatre's latest production, "An Evening of Adultery," features two one-act comedies written by Bernard Shaw and is under the direction of Colette Searls.

Insights continues its profiles of new UMBC faculty.

The Department of Theatre's latest production, "An Evening of Adultery," features two one-act comedies written by George Bernard Shaw and is under the direction of Colette Searls.

The UMBC Computer Certification Training Center (CCTC) is expanding further into the distance education arena with the launch of a new, non-credit, online training program: the Wireless Technologies Certificate.

Contemporary elections are more often about what citizens do not hear than partisanship. When asked by a correspondent to reflect on why Kathleen Kennedy Townsend lost to Robert Ehrlich, Congressman Elijah Cummings (CD-7) perhaps summed it up best: the Democrats failed to effectively get their message out to voters.