Hello Future Retrievers,

Today is the day of our Undergraduate Commencement, and we couldn’t be prouder of our Retrievers who are leaving the Dawg House! With nearly 2,000  graduates, the Class of 2016 will now be able to turn the tassel and close this chapter of their lives. UMBC’s “Top Knotch” education has prepared our new alum to go on to receive graduate degrees at schools like Harvard, Stanford, and Princeton; begin positions at major government agencies and companies, like Amazon and Northrop Grumman; or to career opportunities around the globe.

To learn more about the Class of 2016, please click here.

Check out our Assistant Vice Provost of Undergraduate Admissions, Orientation, and School Partnerships, Dale Bittinger, with some of graduating student workers. He’s even matching!

Congrats again Retrievers!!!

Remember, you can always stay up to date and find out what’s going on with the Office of Undergraduate Admissions by following us on our social media sites @UMBCadmissions!

As the academic year draws to a close, we thought we might take the time to introduce you to some of our Alumni Association Scholarship recipients. Today, we hear from Joelle Cusic ’16, biochemistry and molecular biology.

Name: Joelle Cusic

Major: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Grad Year: 2016

Extracurriculars: Shock Trauma volunteer at UMMC, URA scholar, Woolie, hospital lab volunteer, violin

Why did you decide to attend UMBC? I decided to attend UMBC because I felt that I would receive a strong science education with the opportunity to do research, which would provide me with a strong foundation upon which I can build when I enter medical school.

What’s been the most amazing discovery you’ve made so far as a student here? The most amazing discovery I’ve made so far as a student at UMBC is that I can achieve my goals and far exceed my own expectations. I’m still amazed that I’m a Biochem major. There is always room to improve and grow and looking back over the last few years here, I have seen just how far I’ve come as an individual and as a student.

What are you most proud of accomplishing in your time at UMBC? If there is anything I’m most happy about accomplishing, it is that I have had the opportunity to expand my own mind through research while helping other through being a teaching assistant.

What would you say to the people who provided your scholarship? I would say thank you for helping me pursue my dream of becoming a medical doctor. Your gift has helped me immensely as I finish out my last year of undergrad and my parents and I are truly grateful. Your gift has allowed me to take another step closer to reaching my goal.

What do you hope to do after graduation? Once I graduate with my bachelor of science in biochemistry and molecular biology in May 2016, I will be applying to medical school in the hopes of matriculating in fall 2017. During my year off, I plan to find a position in a local hospital and perhaps a research internship. I am also in the midst of applying for a spot in a six-month medical missions trip, which is based in New Zealand and will run from January to June of 2017, that will serve the islands of the South Pacific. However, my ultimate goal is to become an oncologist, which I believe would allow me to be able to have the opportunity to treat patients and promote health wellness and prevention within the community while also opening the door for me to do research on genetic diseases.

Help students like Joelle pursue their educational goals by making a gift today.

There is a hum that accompanies the current exhibition, The Glass Knife, by Stephen Bradley and Kathy Marmor in the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery. The installation is structured by the artists to illuminate Keith Porter’s life-long relationship with the micro world of cells, integrating select elements from Porter’s archive within a series of sculptures that allude to his scientific laboratory setting. Both visually and aurally, these works build a sensory experience of discovery as homage to a creative life in science.

“With The Glass Knife, Bradley and Marmor propose a model of imagination that embraces a vision mediated by technology that extends our seeing,” says Emily Hauver, curator of the library gallery exhibitions. “The artists as curators offer metaphoric insight into Porter’s scientific inquiry made possible with his groundbreaking use of the electron microscope that changed the world of cellular science.”

Entering the installation viewers find several workstations, each uniquely presenting a way through rather than a mere reflection of Porter’s working methods and invention. In some, actual artifacts — specimens, images, illustrations, and tools — are embedded within these works alongside the studied re-imaging of the artists.

Porter was the chair of biological sciences at UMBC from 1984 to 1988; today the university’s Keith R. Porter Core Imaging Facility is dedicated to him. He was one of the first scientists to study whole cells and the first to make photographs of tissue cells with the aid of an electron microscope. At the Rockefeller Institute in the 1940s, he produced the first image of an intact cell, made possible by his development of an innovative slicing technique and specimen preparation for viewing and photographing with the electron microscope. The exhibition title “The Glass Knife” refers to the sharp wedge-shaped glass tool he invented.

“It must be evident by now to even the most confirmed skeptic,” Porter said in 1956, “that electron microscopy is destined to have a profound influence on the future development of biology and related sciences.”

His in-depth experience in experimental embryology and histology, along with his talent to interpret these highly magnified images, enabled him to infer the functional activities of cell organelles such as the endoplasmic reticulum (which he discovered and named) and microtubules. Considered among the founders of the modern field of cell biology, Porter was awarded the National Medal of Science in 1977, some referring to him as the “Father of Cell Biology.”

From a research career spanning more that five decades, he accumulated an extensive archive of research images and personal papers. Planning was already underway for a historically contextualized exhibition, but curators Tom Beck and Emily Hauver’s curatorial vision for the exhibition expanded and led them to invite the artists to work with the archive.

Excited to bounce ideas back and forth, Marmor and Bradley’s collaboration began with a list of topics to discuss and consider as they explored the archive: observation, categorization, logic of inquiry, the subjects of inquiry, artifacts, innovation and limitations, bias, and transformation.

Ultimately they came back to the notion of observation, interpretation and resolution as their framing concept for the series of sculptures they made: an immersive experience through Porter’s archive that would reflect his work and also the man himself. The resulting sculptures in the installation incorporate some artifacts from the archive, but it is the artists’ interpretation through their own processes —  such as sampling images and illustrations to create their own images and gestures in other materials, and recording sound from tools such as an operational electromagnetic electron microscope to create sound elements -— that heighten the experience of discovery in the exhibition.

They selected a mutable metal shelving system as the support structure for many of the sculptures, finding the material worked formally as a reference for the lab setting they intended to invoke with formal qualities that mimic cell structure and their lattice and scaffolding organization.

Marmor says the exhibition is “a tribute to Porter’s creativity” and Bradley chimes in, adding “and persistence.” He is referring to evidence in the archive that Porter would re-image a cell over and over in an effort to see it more clearly, to push as far as he could to “see.” Both relate as artists to this extended process of repetition and adaption that they saw in Porter’s imaging work and the desire for more and clearer images.

Marmor also calls aspects of her work in the exhibition a “tip of the hat to the women” that worked with Porter. She found examples of their contributions in the archive, including the illustration of the microtrabeculae by Catherine A Verhulst in the exhibition and a photograph of Dr. Mary A Bonneville, Porter’s colleague at University of Colorado, Boulder who operated the electron microscope.

Both artists, says Marmor, wanted to offer a historical glimpse into the “situation of his life, a sense of the man…a guy of the 1950s.” One sculpture includes an x-ray of Porter’s lungs showing the damage from tuberculosis he suffered in the 1940s. In another, a personal letter offers rare insight into the life of a renowned scientist.

Also on view is a complementary exhibition of Life magazines, designed by curator Emily Hauver, illustrating achievement in the sciences in the mid-20^th Century. The display contextualizes the era Porter worked in and illustrates the important role scientific imaging was playing is shaping culture around scientific discovery.

The exhibition runs through June 30 in the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery. Gallery hours are Monday–Friday: 10:00–4:30 p.m., and in June open on Sunday: 12:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m.

The Glass Knife is part of SEEING SCIENCE a year long project connecting photography, science and visual culture online and at UMBC through April 2017.

Installation images by Stephen Bradley

A new article in The Baltimore Sun profiles members of the Class of 2016 from Baltimore-area colleges and universities and their unique journeys toward earning their degrees. Carrie Cleveland ’16, social work, shares her uplifting story in the article and describes how she developed a passion for social work.

Cleveland initially enrolled at Rutgers University, but left after three semesters in 1997 after she decided college wasn’t for her at the time. She moved to Maryland in 2006 and began taking classes at Anne Arundel Community College. The article explains that when her daughter was undergoing a medical evaluation after she was born with a congenital heart defect, Cleveland had such a positive interaction with a hospital social worker that she thought to herself: “I want that job.”

On May 19, Cleveland graduates with a bachelor’s degree in social work from UMBC. She explains that the support she received from the UMBC community while working toward earning her degree was tremendous.

“Here I think of myself as a college dropout and this isn’t my place to occupy,” Cleveland said. “But mostly the students are great and have appreciated my experiences and contributions.”

She plans to bring her daughters to her commencement ceremony to inspire them to pursue college degrees, and will begin graduate studies in social work at the University of Maryland, Baltimore in the fall, where she will be doing field work with middle school children with emotional disabilities.

The secret to Cleveland’s success? She says, “It took me finding what my passion was to be able to excel.”

Read the complete article “The unique roads of Baltimore college graduates” on The Baltimore Sun website.

Update: Cleveland’s story has also been featured as part of the #CountAllStudents campaign.

Image: Carrie Cleveland. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC. 

Sara “Cheli” Arussy ’16, chemical engineering

Travis Dennis ’16, chemical engineering

Ganesh Mysore ’16, chemical engineering and political science