All five students are graduates of the National Chung Hsing University in Taipei. Chun-chig (Jim) Chang, Ph.D policy sciences '91, now vice chairman of the Council of Labor Affairs, Executive Yuan in the Republic of China, was the first to discover the program. "All of the students shared an interest in public policy and the connection between planning, economics and politics," says Marsha Goldfarb, economics professor and Hwang's advisor. Hwang was able to catch up with Chang, Goldfarb and other UMBC faculty and administrators when Chang visited UMBC on a recent U.S. tour.

Hwang says that many of the Taiwanese students attend UMBC for the "open environment, where people get to know each other better." He also chose UMBC to stay close to his wife as she pursued doctoral studies in social work at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. She now works part-time at Johns Hopkins and cares for their three children.

While at UMBC, Hwang worked on campus as a policy sciences and economics teaching assistant as well as a research assistant for the Maryland Institute for Policy Analysis and Research. He became interested in public health as a research statistician for the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene before joining the Johns Hopkins staff as an analyst in 1993. In 1997, he was awarded a $20,000 dissertation grant from the Health Care Financing Administration. "My dissertation focused on the profit status of kidney dialysis facilities and how the trend of movement toward for-profit ownership affects access to care for people with kidney failure," Hwang explains.

Hwang's position as a research faculty member at Johns Hopkins often involves working with federal and state health policies. "My education at UMBC has provided me with good training in conducting academic research while keeping the bigger pictures of the policies and politics in mind," says Hwang.

Pam (Hawley) McInnis is assistant registrar at UMBC and a graduate student at the University of Maryland University College.