Alumnus Ian M. Ralby Receives Prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarship

Ian M. Ralby, UMBC’s 2002 Valedictorian, will enter the M.Phil. program in International Relations at Cambridge University with funding provided by the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, considered one of the world’s most selective academic awards.

“President Hrabowski and UMBC helped me to become a Gates Cambridge Scholar,” said Ralby, who graduated with a B.A. in Modern Languages and Linguistics and a M.A. in Intercultural Communication. “UMBC nurtured my intellectual curiosity. My work in modern languages and linguistics and intercultural communication helped solidify my passion for international affairs. Through study abroad in Switzerland–made possible by my Humanities Scholarship–I discovered the field of international conflict resolution. UMBC has continued to support me throughout my time in law school and in the practice of law. President Hrabowski remains an important mentor and role model for me. His support has been instrumental in helping me get to where I am today.”

While completing his J.D. at the College of William and Mary in 2005, Ralby was part of a legal team that worked with the U.S. Department of Justice to provide legal research and support for the Iraqi High Tribunal as it prepared its legal case against Saddam Hussein.

When Ralby begins his studies at Cambridge in fall 2007, he plans to focus on means of establishing the rule of law in post-conflict societies, examining how post-conflict justice processes could be better used to facilitate reconstruction. He intends to continue studying for a Ph.D. in International Relations. Ultimately, Ralby plans to devote his career toward assisting failed states as they attempt to recover from collapse.

Since earning admission to the Virginia state bar, Ralby has served as an associate in the Norfolk, Va., office of Hunton & Williams, an international law firm with offices in New York, Washington, D.C., London, Beijing and Brussels.

Read the full news release.

(3/5/07)

© 2006-07 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �

UMBC Draws Top-Seeded Connecticut in NCAA Tournament

Indianapolis-The America East champion UMBC women’s basketball (16-16) team has garnered the No. 16 seed in the Fresno Regional and will take on top-seed Connecticut (29-3) in the first round of the NCAA Tournament Sunday at 9 p.m. at the Hartford Civic Center in Hartford, Conn. The game can be seen live on ESPN2.

After becoming the first team in conference history to defeat the one, two and three seeds en route to the title, the Retrievers are making their first-ever trip to the NCAA tournament. UMBC becomes the fourth America East team to play as the 16th seed, and these squads are 0-3 all-time, including Maine’s 1995 loss to Connecticut. Overall, America East teams are 0-2 in the NCAA tournament against the Huskies.

The Retrievers have never played Connecticut, ranked third in the final ESPN/USA Today Coaches poll. UMBC is one of nine teams making its first appearance in the NCAA Tournament, while the storied Huskies are 58-13 in 18 all-time appearances since 1989, with five national titles and eight Final Four appearances.

Harvard was the only No. 16 seed to defeat a No. 1 seed, taking down Stanford in 1998. If the Retrievers defeat Connecticut on Sunday, they will face the winner of the first round game between No. 8 New Mexico and No. 9 Wisconsin-Green Bay on Tuesday, March 20.

(3/12/07) © 2006-07 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �

UMBC Student and Faculty Entrepreneurs

Look for more information on entrepreneurship at UMBC, and faculty and student entrepreneurs, on the UMBC Web site and myUMBC portal throughout the semester.

Melissa Amor
Senior, Political Science
Amor came to UMBC with plans for a career in law, but in her freshman year she took a class in The Practice of Management and became inspired by the idea of entrepreneurship. Now, she is a finalist in the Most Promising Campus CEO contest, founded by Randal Pinkett and is also interviewing at such prestigious graduate schools as Harvard, Notre Dame and Georgetown.

Amor’s Most Promising Campus CEO contest entry grew out of a class project with students Natalie Collings, Jessica Most and Johnny Tseng ’05, economics, to start a mobile salon. Amor expanded on the group’s ideas by creating a franchising plan for the salon, and hopes the group will reunite to develop the business regardless of the contest’s outcome.

In the 2006 MoshPit Business Plan Competition sponsored by the Greater Baltimore Technology Committee, Amor was part of a team that finished in second place against approximately 174 other entrepreneur student-led teams/companies from the Baltimore area. She also helped UMBC alumni Wan His Yuan and Jason Servary, founders of Openposting.com, market the first online classified community for college students.

Sandor Dornbush,
Ph.D. Student, Computer Science
Dornbush has found entrepreneurial ideas in things that bug him – being stuck in traffic and his dislike for making playlists for his iPod.

Dornbush is part of a research group led by one of his mentors — computer science professor Zary Segall-which specializes in human aware computing-making computers wearable, ubiquitous and most importantly, able to sense and adjust to a user’s mood, surroundings and social situation.

Last year, with the help of visual arts professor David Yager and the encouragement of Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship Director Vivian Armor, Dornbush took his idea StreetSmart Traffic to the Greater Baltimore Technology Council’s “Mosh Pit” business plan competition and placed third overall. The idea uses peer-to-peer wireless communication to boost a standard GPS driving aid.

More recently, Dornbush expanded on an idea for a smart MP3 player developed by Segall. The “XPod” learns the type of music its owner likes best and automatically plays the perfect song for studying in the library, working out in the gym or chilling out at home. The project was the source of a widely cited research paper, which led to media coverage in Electronic Musician, Newsday, the Baltimore Sun and others.

“The Mosh Pit competition was very fun and I learned a lot about how to develop and pitch a business plan,” said Dornbush. “I was kind of amazed by the support and attention that I got from the University when I did as well as I did. I would strongly recommend anybody with novel ideas that have market potential to pitch their idea.”

Doug Hamby
Associate Professor, Dance
After participating in the Alex. Brown Center for Entrepreneurship’s Faculty Summer Institute, Hamby created a Dance and Entrepreneurship class, which he is teaching during the spring 2007 semester. Students in the class have formed a dance company, and will be creating new dances and promoting the new company’s concert (12 p.m., April 27, Fine Arts 317). They spend two hours per week developing the new work and two hours learning about marketing and promotion.

Hamby said the class evolved out of years of talking with students about how to use their degree in dance. “They have to find their niche, they have to learn how to brand themselves and they have to be professional in how they go about this. Artists have to be entrepreneurial, to think in a creative way, to look for opportunities in order to get work,” he explained.

“I’ve founded my own company and produced many concerts, so I want to share my experience in a more formal setting with students,” Hamby added. “I think learning how to be an artist-entrepreneur changes them. It helps them prepare more while they are in school for life after graduation. They concentrate more on what they need to do in order to have the kind of career they want.”

Kriste Lindenmeyer
Professor and Chair, History
“Humanities and social science scholars have always been entrepreneurs – they just don’t know it,” said Lindenmeyer. “They are creating new fields of research and finding new ways to look at old problems. Entrepreneurship is about finding innovative solutions from a variety of perspectives.”

Lindenmeyer’s exposure to entrepreneurship began when she became a volunteer email list editor for Humanities Net (H-Net), an international consortium of scholars and teachers pioneering new communication technology in order to advance teaching and research in the arts, humanities and social sciences. “H-Net took the latest technological opportunity that scientists and engineers were using and adapted it to our own fields of interest,” Lindenmeyer said.

At UMBC, Lindenmeyer says she sees many examples of entrepreneurship, including collaborative projects across disciplines. She serves as a consultant for a National Institutes of Health-funded project led by principal investigator Lee Boot, associate director of UMBC’s Imaging Research Center, entitled The Fieldtrip Project. UMBC faculty from a wide range of disciplines are developing an online community designed to stimulate discourse among teens concerning issues affecting their orientation toward school and learning. The community will include an episodic reality show, online role-playing game and discussion forums, among other media. Co-investigators for The Fieldtrip Project are Susan Sonnenschein, psychology, Linda Baker, psychology and Dongsong Zhang, mechanical engineering. In addition to Lindenmeyer, the consultants are Wayne Lutters, information systems and David Mitch, economics. Information systems Ph.D. student David Gurzick is the project’s graduate assistant.

Antonio “Tony” Moreira
Vice Provost for Academic Affairs
Professor, Chemical and Biochemical Engineering
With over 25 years of experience working with the biotechnology industry, Moreira has turned his expertise into a company with global reach. In 2000, he partnered with a European consulting firm to form SPI USA, Inc., which specializes in training and consulting services that help biotech clients comply with US Food and Drug Administration regulations and maintain best processes and practices for manufacturing.

What began as a corporate training CD-ROM has since expanded into a global business beyond biotech connecting UMBC and Maryland to the world. “We currently have projects in India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Portugal, Albania and the U.S.,” said Moreira. Located in bwtech@UMBC research park, SPI USA has also hired many student interns from UMBC’s Shriver Center, some of whom have been assigned to positions in SPI’s European offices.

Moreira brings lessons learned from business back to classes he teaches at UMBC. “We often invite speakers from industry and the FDA to be guest lecturers to give current experience to the classroom,” he said. “And we use case studies on ongoing issues in industry in lectures and class discussions.”

The collaboration also benefits the research of faculty and graduate students. “We are very focused on the biotech industry’s real needs,” Moreira said. “We now have a major collaboration with the FDA which involves other chemical engineering faculty and has resulted in very significant scholarly publications and invitations for our faculty and students to present at major research conferences.”

(2/19/07)

© 2006-07 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �

TV Grows Up Fast at UMBC

“Quiet on the set, please!” will soon be a familiar refrain at UMBC. Retirement Living Television (RLTV), America’s first network devoted exclusively to people age 55 and over, recently gave the University’s on-campus TV studio a $1.3 million dollar upgrade and has begun offering students hands-on experience behind the scenes of nationally broadcast programs.

RLTV began as a media offshoot of Erickson Retirement Communities and has since grown to reach over 26 million U.S. households through DirecTV and Comcast. RLTV produces two of its programs – “The Voice” and a yet-to-be-named advocacy show – at the revamped UMBC studio. The network will eventually broadcast from a new $20 million TV production and information technology facility at bwtech@UMBC Research and Technology Park.

The campus community is invited to celebrate UMBC’s partnership with RLTV on Friday Feb. 16 from noon to 2 p.m. at a studio open house featuring UMBC president Freeman Hrabowski, Erickson founder and CEO John Erickson and RLTV president Brad Knight. UMBC communication faculty and students will be on hand as RLTV production staff demonstrate the studio’s capabilities and discuss the programs produced there. The studios are located on the second and third floors of Academic IV, A Wing.

“The new studio and the new relationship with RLTV are already creating amazing opportunities for students studying media and communication to do hands-on creative and technical work in the field,” said Jason Loviglio, associate professor of American studies and coordinator of media and communication initiatives. “We’re lucky to have this exciting new resource right here on campus.”

The first crop of UMBC student interns is eager to get to work. For sophomore English/political science major and Humanities Scholar Adrienne Hawkins, the RLTV studio offers a chance to expand communication skills she developed through her high school’s TV program and as a writer for The Retriever Weekly student newspaper. “I would like to eventually run a successful television show, and this internship would be a step in the right direction,” she said.

“The RLTV staff always welcomes those eager to learn and help in the process,” said RLTV studio engineer Sophia Manos. “We hope it turns into a symbiotic relationship for RLTV, the Erickson communities and the UMBC media programs,” she said.

Cathryna Brown, a senior interdisciplinary studies major, is also looking forward to connecting with RLTV. Both Brown and Hawkins are working towards completion of the certificate in Communication and Media Studies.

Brown and other students recently worked with UMBC’s New Media Studio to create digital video illustrations of stories told by residents of Charlestown, an Erickson Retirement Community located near UMBC.

“The Digital Stories project allowed us to come together and communicate on a level that’s rare in today’s world,” said Bill Shewbridge, manager/producer of the New Media Studio. “Several students have described the relationships they have built with the residents as ‘timeless,’ which sums up the spirit of the project well.”

“I’m very excited to be a part of programming that will potentially bridge the gap between children, their parents and grandparents,” said Brown.

For more information on the RLTV Studio or the open house event, please contact Kathy Raab at 443-610-0028 or kraab@rl.tv.

(2/9/07)

© 2006-07 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �

Each year, the UMBC Alumni Association presents awards to honor alumni for their professional and personal achievements and service to the University.   Learn more about our past award winners.

Outstanding Alumnus
Social & Behavioral Sciences
Eric A. Carlton ’91, Africana Studies

After becoming the youngest high school principal in the country at age 29, Eric A. Carlton ’91, Africana studies, later launched Banner Schools, a private company that partners with public school districts to provide a successful educational environment for at-risk youth. The company has three schools in Chicago, one in Miami, and will open another in Detroit. Together, the schools serve some 500 middle- and high-school students from the most troubled environments. A former UMBC SGA vice president and president, member of the men’s soccer team and tutor for the Shriver Center’s Choice Program, Carlton has received numerous accolades for his services as an educator.

Distinguished Service Award
Eli Eisenberg ’86, Interdisciplinary Studies

Eli Eisenberg ’86, interdisciplinary studies, is connected to UMBC through both service and philanthropy, as a member of the board of UMBC’s Alex. Brown Entrepreneurship Center, the “Exceptional by Example” Alumni Campaign Committee and the 2016 Alumni Strategic Planning Committee. In addition, he has endowed a scholarship in the name of his parents that supports two students per year.  Eisenberg is founder and principal of VPC, Inc., a company providing multimedia production services, event management and studio and technology systems design. Guests at UMBC’s Commencement ceremonies and the spectacular 40th Anniversary celebration have seen VPC’s technical expertise at work.

Outstanding Alumna
Visual & Performing Arts
Sheila López ’92, Visual and Performing Arts -Theatre

After earning her M.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama, Sheila M. López ’92, visual and performing arts/theatre, founded Antecesores, a non-profit organization in Buffalo, NY, that advances, nurtures and celebrates Latino cultures through theatre. Antecesores (translated as “ancestors”) focuses in particular on programs for children, to allow them to explore and discover their cultural heritage. She also works to bring different generations of Buffalo’s Latino community closer together and to provide a cultural bridge between Latinos and those of non-Latino descent.

Outstanding Alumnus
Engineering and Information Technology
Robert S. Marshall ’88, Mechanical Engineering

Robert S. Marshall ’88, mechanical engineering, is president and CEO of AWS Convergence Technologies, better known as “WeatherBug.” Marshall pioneered the networking of weather instrumentation and cameras using the Internet, and has built this capability into the single largest network of weather stations and Internet cameras in the world.  Since it was launched in 2000, WeatherBug has become one of the top 10 news and information sites on the Internet. It is the leading provider of real-time, local weather for broadcast television and, through a landmark agreement with the National Weather Service, now also provides critical weather data to federal, state, and local government agencies.

Outstanding Alumnus
Natural & Mathematical Sciences
Joseph P. McCloskey ’81 M.S., ’83 Ph.D., Applied Mathematics

Joseph McCloskey, M.S. ’81, Ph.D. ’83, applied mathematics, is a senior cryptologic mathematician for the National Security Agency, where he has worked since 1968. As technical director of the agency’s Mathematics Research Group for the past 11 years, he is responsible for coordinating and supervising the professional training of newly hired mathematicians and statisticians. Throughout his career, Dr. McCloskey has received numerous citations, including the prestigious Presidential Rank Award in 2006 and the President’s Award from the Crypto-Mathematics Institute, the agency’s oldest learned society, in 2001. He is the author of more than 80 professional papers, and he has taught one course each semester at UMBC for 20 years

Outstanding Alumna
Humanities
Patricia A. Smith ’74, Ancient Studies

A distinguished attorney, Patricia A. Smith ’74, ancient studies, has acted as People’s Counsel for the State of Maryland, a special solicitor and chief counsel to the Baltimore Police Department for the City of Baltimore, and has served as an administrative law judge in the Maryland Office of Administrative Hearings, as an assistant United States Attorney for the District of Maryland and an assistant attorney general in the Office of the Attorney General for the State of Maryland. She is also an instructor at the Johns Hopkins University.

Sari Bennett Receives National Council for the Social Studies Award

“How can students be citizens of the world if they don’t have the background they need to know about its people and its places?” asks Sari Bennett, clinical associate professor of geography and environmental systems and a longtime advocate for strengthening the teaching of geography at the K-12 level.

On December 2, Bennett, coordinator for the Maryland Geographic Alliance–which has worked with over 12,000 K-12 teachers since 1989–will receive the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) Outstanding Service Award. It honors exceptional service in support of K-16 social studies at the national and local levels.

A member of the National Council for the Social Studies and the Maryland Council for the Social Studies (MDCSS), Bennett has made contributions to the social studies profession at the local, state and national levels. She has been a member of MDCSS for more than 20 years and has served as its president and executive director. At the state level, she has served on numerous committees including the Social Studies Taskforce of the Maryland State Department of Education and has worked on the development of social studies content standards and the Voluntary State Curriculum. At the national level, Bennett has been a three-time program co-chair for the NCSS Annual Conference.

The Maryland Geographic Alliance, jointly funded by the State of Maryland and the National Geographic Society, develops lesson plans and other materials for teachers to use in their classrooms, and presents workshops and summer institutes.

Currently, Bennett and the Maryland Geographic Alliance are working with Sultana Projects, Inc. on lesson plans for the John Smith Four Hundred Project, which will retrace Captain John Smith’s 1608 Chesapeake expedition. In addition, they were asked by the Maryland State Department of Education to create educational materials and lesson plans for this year’s 300th anniversary of the Port of Baltimore. Previous projects include a collaborative project with Tom Rabenhorst, senior lecturer in geography and environmental systems at UMBC, and his students on a digital atlas of Maryland for 4th graders.

(11/28/06)

© 2006-07 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �

Monitoring the Health of Vulnerable Populations

Working in the nation’s capital changed Todd Eberly ’06 , Ph.D. public policy, from a political scientist to a specialist in poverty and public health. The shift seems to be a good fit, as Eberly recently won the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration’s dissertation award for his work on how managed care affects services received by enrollees in Medicaid, the nation’s health insurance program for low income individuals.

After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Pennsylvania’s Clarion University, Eberly went to work in Washington, DC analyzing federal health policy. “I saw good policy options ignored and bad policy options embraced,” Eberly said. “I realized that I wanted a better understanding of the policy process.”

The experience drew Eberly to UMBC’s Department of Public Policy in a quest for a way to make a real-world difference. “The UMBC program goes beyond theory and really deals with practical application.,” he said. “Political Science is still my passion – but I feel that the interdisciplinary approach of the UMBC program made me a better political scientist.”

Maryland started the HealthChoice managed care program eight years ago as a way to control costs for over half a million state residents receiving Medicaid, including 30 percent of Maryland’s children. However, researchers were unsure whether managed care met the needs of socially vulnerable populations, particularly racial and ethnic minorities.

Eberly’s study of before-and-after data on Maryland Medicaid recipients found that the program increased preventive care receipt by black, white and Hispanic children and adolescents, along with black and Hispanic adults. “The improvements for minority youth were particularly noteworthy, because children are especially vulnerable,” said Eberly. “Access to preventive care is key to the promotion of good heath and quality of life.”

Eberly now continues his work as a senior research analyst at UMBC’s Center for Health Program Development and Management (CHPDM) and as an affiliate assistant professor in public policy and an adjunct professor in political science and sociology.

“I’m still very interested in the politics of poverty and social policy design,” Eberly said. “It has the potential to impact so many lives, so I want to know whether policies are working to make lives better or just perpetuating inequalities.”

(11/15/06)

© 2006-07 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �

A Closer Look at the Inner Space of Disease

Dan Fabris, associate professor of chemistry, became fascinated with the machinery of life at an early age. Now his passion for understanding the inner workings of cells is bringing UMBC a powerful new tool in the fight against diseases like cancer and AIDS.

Fabris was recently honored as one of just 14 U.S. researchers and the leader of the only lab in Maryland to receive a National Institutes of Health National Center for Research Resources (NCRR) High-End Instrumentation grant. With the $1.5 million grant, UMBC has purchased an extremely powerful, high-resolution, mass spectrometer known as a hybrid, 12 Tesla quadrupole-Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance or Q-FTICR.

The Q-FTICR allows researchers to see molecular-level biochemical reactions that impact drug resistance by HIV, other retroviruses and cancer. UMBC will soon become one of just a handful of U.S. institutions and only three on the east coast to have such a powerful mass spectrometer.

When the custom built instrument arrives in the spring 2007, it will be in high demand by biomedical researchers at UMBC and from across the region. Fabris’s lab will share the Q-FTICR with colleagues in similar research fields like Michael Summers (HIV), Lasse Lindahl (antibiotic resistant germs), Kathleen Seley-Radtke (antibacterial and antiviral drugs) and James Fishbein (cancer).

Fabris’s interest in the machinery of life started as a boy. “I used to drive my parents crazy by taking appliances apart to look inside them, save for being unable to putting them back together afterwards,” Fabris said. “Cells are the most amazing example of how molecular machines work together to accomplish the complex tasks that sustain life.”

(11/8/06)

© 2006-07 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �

Monitoring the Health of Vulnerable Populations

Working in the nation’s capital changed Todd Eberly ’06 (Ph.D. public policy) from a political scientist to a specialist in poverty and public health. The shift seems to be a good fit, as Eberly recently won the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration’s dissertation award for his work on how managed care affects services received by enrollees in Medicaid, the nation’s health insurance program for low income individuals.

After receiving his bachelor’s degree from Pennsylvania’s Clarion University, Eberly went to work in Washington, DC analyzing federal health policy. “I saw good policy options ignored and bad policy options embraced,” Eberly said. “I realized that I wanted a better understanding of the policy process.”

The experience drew Eberly to UMBC’s Department of Public Policy in a quest for a way to make a real-world difference. “The UMBC program goes beyond theory and really deals with practical application.,” he said. “Political Science is still my passion – but I feel that the interdisciplinary approach of the UMBC program made me a better political scientist.”

Maryland started the HealthChoice managed care program eight years ago as a way to control costs for over half a million state residents receiving Medicaid, including 30 percent of Maryland’s children. However, researchers were unsure whether managed care met the needs of socially vulnerable populations, particularly racial and ethnic minorities.

Eberly’s study of before-and-after data on Maryland Medicaid recipients found that the program increased preventive care receipt by black, white and Hispanic children and adolescents, along with black and Hispanic adults. “The improvements for minority youth were particularly noteworthy, because children are especially vulnerable,” said Eberly. “Access to preventive care is key to the promotion of good heath and quality of life.”

Eberly now continues his work as a senior research analyst at UMBC’s Center for Health Program Development and Management (CHPDM) and as an affiliate assistant professor in public policy and an adjunct professor in political science and sociology.

“I’m still very interested in the politics of poverty and social policy design,” Eberly said. “It has the potential to impact so many lives, so I want to know whether policies are working to make lives better or just perpetuating inequalities.”

(11/15/06)

© 2006-07 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �

A New Map for American Politics

As an associate professor of political science specializing in the U.S. electoral system, Tom Schaller is usually excited come Election Day. But Nov. 7 will bring added anticipation as Schaller celebrates the publication of his latest book, �Whistling Past Dixie: How Democrats Can Win Without the South� and waits to see how his strategic map for Democrats� electoral success holds up to the will of the people.

The book argues that religion and race have already swung the South irrevocably to the GOP and “values voters.” Schaller advises the Democrats to focus on the Midwest and Interior West states, made more receptive to Democratic messages thanks to pocketbook issues and changing demographics.

“Dixie” was published by Simon & Schuster and edited by the legendary Alice Mayhew, who also works with best-selling authors Jimmy Carter, Bob Woodward and Stephen Ambrose. The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, Kirkus Reviews, The Economist, and The Chicago Tribune have given “Dixie” good reviews. The Times seems to like Schaller’s writing, as he recently began an election-year columnist stint for Times Select, the paper’s premium online content.

According to Schaller, “Dixie” began as a conventional wisdom-challenging conversation with a former graduate school colleague. “He said, so matter-of-factly, that the Democrats could win without the South,” said Schaller. “I thought about it a lot, started looking at the historical numbers and the more recent data, and realized the case could be made — and made easily.” Schaller traveled to five states – part of what he calls the “Democratic Diamond”: Ohio, Wisconsin, Montana, Colorado and Arizona – plus South Carolina, to research the book.

Unlike many Washington pundits, Schaller is up front about his longtime loyalty to Democratic causes and candidates. �I think it’s important to be transparent about my partisanship and personal preferences as a way to mitigate media bias,� said Schaller.

One of Schaller’s former students, Sean Latanishen (Political Science, ’02) worked as a research assistant and one-man ideological check-and-balance system during the writing of “Dixie.” “Sean is brilliant, and has an encyclopedic grasp of modern American politics,” Schaller said. “That he is a conservative only helped, because he’s a natural skeptic of many of my arguments. He is that rare student who keeps me on my heels with his tough questions and challenges.”

The midterm elections will offer no respite for Schaller, whose analysis will be in high demand by regional and national media. In the past three years, he’s written 20 columns for the Washington Examiner, over 30 pieces for a variety of newspapers and magazines, and has blogged for The Gadflyer and the American Prospect. Despite this prolific resume, Schaller doesn’t plan to become a full-time author anytime soon.

“The sum total is that I’ve really written two books in the past three years, while editing and publishing a co-authored third book,” said Schaller. “So all I really want to do after the election is to go into hiding for a while and spend some time with my wife and dog.”

Schaller will discuss “Dixie” on Tuesday, Nov. 14, at 4 p.m. in the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery as part of UMBC’s Social Sciences Forum.

(10/23/06)

© 2006-07 University of Maryland, Baltimore County � 1000 Hilltop Circle, Baltimore, MD 21250 � 410-455-1000 �