UMBC Artists Participate in Artscape
UMBC's Center for Art and Visual Culture (CAVC) will be well-represented at Artscape this weekend. Symmes Gardner, director of the CAVC, and Renee van der Stelt, projects coordinator for the CAVC, both have artwork in exhibitions showing in conjunction with Artscape.

Gardner's work is on display with the "Baltimore/Chicago Show," running now through July 31 at the Decker Gallery in the Station Building at the Maryland Institute College of Art and in "Our Perfect World", running through July 24 at Maryland Art Place.

Van der Stelt's work will be on display in "Surplus: Buy the Square Foot," an exhibition showing at Area 405 through July 24 and in "achromatic/maximum-minimum," showing now through August 7 at the Villa Julie College Gallery.

Members of the campus community who are participating in Artscape can send information about their work to insights@umbc.edu.

Alyson Spurgas, Sociology and Anthropology, Given Award
Alyson Spurgas, a master's degree student studying applied sociology, has been selected as the First Prize Winner of the 2004 Alpha Kappa Delta Graduate Student Paper Competition for her paper entitled "Body Image and Cultural Background." First prize includes $600 and a travel allowance of up to $600 to travel to this year's American Sociological Association meetings where she will be presented with a certificate. If she chooses, Spurgas can also submit her paper for publication in Alpha Kappa Delta's official journal, Sociological Inquiry.

Judith Schneider, MLL, Participates in Panel
Judith Schneider, professor and chair of the Department of Modern Languages & Linguistics, participated in a panel discussion about the documentary Terrorists in Retirement after its Baltimore premiere on July 14. This controversial documentary tells the story of French Resistance fighters in WWII--many of them illegal Jewish refugees-who assassinated Nazis and carried out incredibly dangerous assignments. The surviving fighters, now elderly men, recount their experiences as "terrorists". Others joining Schneider in the panel discussion following the movie were Edith Cord, French occupation survivor and Nicole Dombrowski, associate professor of history, Towson University. The event was presented by the Creative Alliance and The Jewish Museum of Maryland.

CUERE Research Assistants Awarded EPA Grant
CUERE research assistants and public policy Ph.D. candidates Steve Sharkey,Bernadette Hanlon, and Tom Vicino have been awarded a grant under U.S. EPA's P3 national student design competition. Their winning submission is entitled "Using An 'Impervious Permit' Allowance System to Reduce Impervious Surface Coverage for Environmental Sustainability".

The EPA P3 Award program provides grants to teams of students to research, develop and design solutions to sustainability challenges. P3 highlights people, prosperity, and the planet--the three pillars of sustainability--as the next step beyond P2 or pollution prevention.

The proposed design is an application of a permit allowance system to reduce impervious surface coverage of the landscape. The design would establish a "cap" on impervious surfaces on a per lot basis in watersheds of specific size. Similar to the acid rain "cap and trade" program, this policy design would allow land developers to trade "impervious surface credits" and would offer flexibility in how developers choose to reduce impervious surface coverage. This design applies market-based approaches to reduce pollution, making pervious surface a valued good. The product of this design will be a strategic manual for policymakers and practitioners interested in implementing the policy program.

Faculty advisors for the design team are Claire Welty, director, Center forUrban Environmental Research and Education and professor of civil and environmental engineering, and Royce Hanson, professor of practice in public policy.

Center for Art and Visual Culture Wins Awards
UMBC's Center for Art and Visual Culture won two awards in the 2004 Museum Publication Design Competition, sponsored by the American Association of Museums. It won first prize in the books category for Paul Rand: Modernist Design and second prize in the scholarly journals category for Postmodernism: A Virtual Discussion. An article that appeared in the July/August edition of Museum News described both prize-winning publications as "creative and effective, easily competing with publications produced at higher budgets."