Workshop on Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), MIPAR's National Center for the Study of Elections (NCSE), the UMBC Center for Information Security and Assurance (CISA), VSPR, and FairVote hosted an open forum on December 6, 2007 for voting system researchers, election officials, voting equipment manufacturers, policy makers, as well as disabilities and other advocates to discuss proposed draft Voluntary Voting System Guidelines. Drafted by the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines provide a set of specifications and requirements against which voting systems can be tested to determine if they provide all the basic functionality, accessibility, and security capabilities required of voting systems. To see conference presentations, go to the ITIF website.

Energy and Poverty Conference

MIPAR co-sponsors an annual symposium with the Maryland Department of Human Resources (DHR) Office of Home Energy Programs. The symposium focuses on the public policy implications of rising energy costs on low income families in Maryland. This year's conference, Energy and Poverty - Thinking Outside the Box, was held on Friday, March 9, 2007 in the UMBC University Center Ballroom. Click here to go to the conference website.

2006 Post-Election Symposium
On Thursday, November 9, 2006, two days after the Maryland General Election, Don Norris and state political reporters David Nitkin (Baltimore Sun), Charles Robinson (Maryland Public Television), and Tom Stuckey (Associated Press) provided a frank and engaging discussion of the 2006 Maryland General Election - the campaigns, the candidates, the key issues, voter turnout and, of course, election outcomes.

International e-participation and Local Democracy

MIPAR partnered with the British government, the United Nations, the Council of Europe and a range of U.S. and international organizations to present a symposium on new approaches to citizen participation in the information age. The conference, held at the Baltimore Sheraton Inner Harbor Hotel in downtown Baltimore on August 3, 2006, covered topics such as the innovative use of Internet communication technologies by local governments, how to engage citizens with disabilities through e-government, and the future of online campaigning and voting. Speakers included the Honorable Mary Kane, Maryland Secretary of State; Linda Lamone, State Administrator of Elections; and Donald F. Norris, Professor of Public Policy and Director of MIPAR, as well e-democracy experts from the U.S., U.K., and Europe.

Tourism and Economic Development in Baltimore

Annapolis Seminar for Congressional Fellows

Each spring, MIPAR conducts a seminar on Maryland state government for the U.S. Congressional Fellows program. This all-day seminar, held in the Senate lounge of the historic Maryland State House, features presentations by high level state government officials and focuses on similarities and differences between politics and administration at the federal and state levels. This year's seminar will be held on May 9, 2006. MIPAR has conducted this seminar at the request of the American Political Science Association, which administers the Congressional Fellows program for Congress, since 1980.

Electronic Democracy Conference

On May 6-7, 2004 , MIPAR co-sponsored a policy forum on electronic democracy at Oxford University in England in cooperation with the Oxford Internet Institute. Dr. Donald Norris co-sponsored the forum, which provided an in-depth discussion of the use of information technology to improve citizen participation in government. Dr. Norris received funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation for this forum, and invited ten U.S. participants from federal, state and local governments and academia. Thirty participants from the United Kingdom and Europe joined the U.S. contingent.

Faculty and Staff Resources

Grant Development Workshops

Each academic year, MIPAR conducts a grant development workshop for faculty, staff, and graduate
students at UMBC. Topics include: identifying funding sources from federal, state, and local governments and foundations; fundamentals of proposal development and writing; and practical hints about grant development provided by successful faculty grant writers. The most recent Grant Development Workshop was held on December 1, 2006.

MIPAR Faculty Fellowship

The MIPAR Faculty Fellowship was created to encourage faculty across the UMBC campus to develop proposals for applied policy-relevant research. The MIPAR Fellow spends one semester in MIPAR developing a fundable research proposal. Financial support for the fellowship is provided by MIPAR and the Dean of Arts and Sciences.

MIPAR selected three faculty members for the 2005-2006 fellowship. Nancy Miller (Public Policy) will develop a proposal to explore the relationships among patient and physician characteristics. Sara Poggio, (Modern Languages and Linguistics) and Tim Gindling (Economics) will develop a proposal to study intra-family relations and spending patterns of families where one or more family member lives in the Baltimore Metropolitan Area and other family members live in El Salvador.

Previous Faculty Fellows include: 1996-Douglas Lamdin (Economics); 1997-Brad Humphreys (Economics); 1998-David Greenberg (Economics), 2000-Marina Adler (Sociology and Anthropology), 2001-Shelia Cotten (Sociology), 2002-Dave Marcotte (Public Policy).

MIPAR Policy Fellows Program

MIPAR and the Public Policy Graduate Program have created the MIPAR Policy Fellows Program in order to provide full-time Ph.D. students with a unique graduate experience which combines rigorous coursework with first-hand experience in applied policy research efforts addressing topics of immediate importance. The Fellows participate as members of interdisciplinary teams working on MIPAR research projects.