The Doctors Are In

It’s Career Week at UMBC – an annual event focused on helping students and recent alumni select and secure jobs. Justin Alexander ’09, ancient studies, is looking for work this spring. He clutches a copy of his resume as he enters the University Center Ballroom.

He’s come to the right place. This is the Resume ER, a clinic staffed by a rotating team of employers and alumni dedicated to triage and surgery on clutter and disorganization in the gateway document for all jobseekers.

Two staffers from UMBC’s Career Services Center – Lori Logan-Bennett, associate director of recruitment and marketing, and Sue Plitt, coordinator of employer relations and job development – are on hand to help direct those seeking to make their c.v. just right.

Since the event’s inception in 2009, volunteers have pointed out flaws that may trip up jobseekers at the very first step. After all, the resume is usually the first impression a potential employer glimpses.

“Typographical errors and students underestimating their abilities are two of the biggest problems we see,” says Plitt.

“They don’t think critically about what they can offer an employer,” adds Logan-Bennett. “Sometimes, they follow a template.”

Plitt and Logan agree that resumes should be refreshed for each job opportunity. Including words from the employer’s job description is key.

Alexander says he got just what he was looking for at the clinic: “I had formatting issues and realized that I needed to make my words jump off the page.”

— Derek Roper ’11

Page Turners

Each fall, UMBC’s New Student Book Experience provides an opportunity for freshmen and transfer students to connect with the university community through a shared conversation about a single book. Faculty and staff moderate small-group discussions about the book during orientation, and new students can even enter a writing contest.

In 2010, the book is The Translator: A Tribesman’s Memoir of Darfur by Daoud Hari – a memoir that views the genocide in the Western Sudan through the eyes of a native who translates for foreign journalists.

But how does a book get selected? The process is a mirror of the experience itself: A committee comprised of faculty, students and staff gets together and reads.

Anyone in the UMBC community can nominate a book. But it is the committee – led by Michelle Scott, associate professor of history, and Janet McGlynn, director of communication and outreach in the Office of Undergraduate Education – that sifts through the nominations and finally settles on three books that go to President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, and Provost Elliot Hirshman for a final decision.

Committee meetings are often the scene of passionate debate on the merits or flaws of particular books. The group must select books that are of a high quality and broad enough in appeal to take in the diversity of the university. The books must also be widely available for purchase, so that students can read them before arriving for the fall semester. Opinions fly fast and furious.

In the end, however, a consensus forms. And the winning book becomes an integral part of the university’s conversation.

— Richard Byrne ’86

A Legacy of Leadership

The UMBC community mourns the passing of Albin Owings Kuhn, the university’s first chancellor, at the age of 94. Kuhn died on March 24 at his home in Carroll County.

Kuhn’s oversight of UMBC’s initial planning, development and construction laid the foundation for the university’s continued growth and success as an institution of higher education.

Kuhn earned three degrees from the University of Maryland, College Park (B.S., M.S., Ph.D.). He taught there early in his career as a professor of agronomy (1941-1955) and as chair of the Agronomy Department (1948-1955). He then shifted his career in academic leadership, serving as assistant to the president (1955-1958) and then as executive vice president (1958-1965) of the University System of Maryland, which at that time included the College Park, Baltimore City and Eastern Shore campuses.

In 1965, Kuhn was selected as the chancellor of the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) – the oldest campus in the system. At the same time, he was handed the task of developing a new campus for the University System of Maryland on rolling farmland in Catonsville.

At UMBC’s debut in 1966, Kuhn was proud of the fact that the university opened on schedule.”It worked,” he told The Maryland Magazine at that time. “We opened on the day we were supposed to, right on schedule. Buildings were ready to be occupied; sidewalks were installed; the faculty was here. There were blackboards and even chalk.”

Kuhn’s commitment to making it work was intensely personal. UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, observes that “[Kuhn] and his family moved into one of the original farmhouses on the campus grounds – a small gray house that became his family’s residence, his office, and a welcoming place frequented by UMBC students and faculty members. Its porch became the catalog center for the library’s nascent 20,000-volume collection. That farmhouse is gone today, replaced by our library, which was named to honor Dr. Kuhn.”

Kuhn held both chancellorships until UMBC’s second commencement in 1971, when he gave up his leadership position at UMBC. He served as UMB’s chancellor until 1980.

Hrabowski notes that he continues to offer these thoughts – which Kuhn gave to the university’s first graduating class in 1970 – at each UMBC commencement: “If you bring to the future the same personal qualities and personal commitment you have brought to this campus as students, good and important things will happen to each of you, as well as to those around you… and the university community will be proud to have played a part in your life.”

— Richard Byrne ’86

Shovel Ready

As UMBC Magazine went to press, the university learned that the Maryland General Assembly approved $37.4 million for the first year of construction of a Performing Arts and Humanities Building.

Ground will be broken in June for the $170 million project. The first phase will include classrooms, class and open laboratories, multimedia study and collaboration spaces, a 275-seat main theater, a 100-seat black box theater, and support spaces.

John Jeffries, dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, was delighted by the news. “At long last,” he observes, “our theatre department – and in the second phase, our music and dance departments – will have facilities worthy of their students and their talent.”

The presence of the humanities is also a big part of the equation, Jeffries adds. “The prominent position of the Dresher Center in the building,” he says, “and the presence of English and other humanities departments, will also substantially advance research, teaching and learning in the humanities at UMBC.”

Jeffries concludes by noting that “it will be a signature building on campus that will make it plain how important the arts and humanities are to UMBC and the state of Maryland.” The second phase of construction, which is planned for 2012, will include new dance and concert halls, and a new home for the departments of music, dance, philosophy and ancient studies.

— Richard Byrne ’86

It’s no secret that these are tough economic times. So what advantages do UMBC students have in the struggle to find and secure a career? The great education that they receive at UMBC is one asset. But the strength of the university’s commitment to securing internship opportunities is another head start that UMBC students have in the job hunt.

As UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, points out in our “Up on the Roof” feature, the university works hard to nurture relationships with potential employers in the Baltimore-Washington corridor. He also emphasizes the number of opportunities that UMBC has created on campus, observing that over 2,000 students gain work experience on the campus itself each year.

In this issue, we’re spotlighting the power of internships to shape and even transform one’s career aspirations and trajectory. In “Turn to Earn,” we feature the stories of four UMBC alumni whose internships took them in a much different direction than they may have planned for themselves at the outset of their time at UMBC.

It’s no accident that three of the four alumni we profile obtained their internships from UMBC’s Shriver Center. The center is a powerhouse for applied learning on campus, placing 1,300 students into internships each year and winning high marks from students and employers for its efforts. (Can you help The Shriver Center place a student? You can contact the center at shrivercenter@umbc.edu or 410-455-2493.)

The mentoring efforts of UMBC faculty also play a huge role in giving students a leg up on internships and other networking opportunities.

Christopher Corbett, author and professor of the practice in the English department, is just such a mentor for his students and the college journalists at UMBC. Noted author and screenwriter Rafael Alvarez (The Wire, Homicide: Life on the Street) profiles Corbett in this issue of UMBC Magazine, and his piece traces Corbett’s path to success working at local newspapers in Maine and at the Associated Press in Baltimore.

These days, Corbett is imparting the lessons of those years in the journalism trenches to a new generation of students – through his classes and his job as faculty advisor to The Retriever Weekly. And it is Corbett who has helped many of his charges – including Jamie Smith-Hopkins ’98 of The Baltimore Sun, who is also profiled in our piece on life-changing internships – get their foot in the door at media outlets with a timely call to an editor.

“My experience has been that work begets work,” Corbett tells me. “Which I think is a truism of the trade. I’m sure you’ve known people who’ve had an internship and then somebody got drunk or ran off with the donut shop waitress, and then somebody got a job because they were there and these things happen.”

Corbett adds that “my philosophy about internships is that I only send out someone when they’re road-tested…. This isn’t complicated. And, historically, it’s led to people finding jobs.”

The UMBC community is also mourning the passing of the university’s founding chancellor, Albin Owings Kuhn, on March 24. Our feature on Chancellor Kuhn’s legacy can be found in “The News” section. A memorial service for Chancellor Kuhn will be held on Sunday, May 23 at 2 p.m. in the Albin O. Kuhn Library Gallery. A reception will follow.

— Richard Byrne ’86

How challenging and timely internships changed the career trajectories of four UMBC alumni.

By Meredith Purvis, Derek Roper ’11, and Erika Shernoff
Photos by Howard Korn

Mastering an academic discipline is an important step in preparing for a successful career. Yet for many UMBC students, internships have been another key element in career success.

Internships can confirm a career direction and provide some early connections in a chosen field. Sometimes, however, the right internship is more than that. It can help a student take a giant first step in his or her career, or encourage a radical change in direction.

For the four alumni we’ve chosen to spotlight here, internships have made a big difference. One alumna is forging a path in the challenging world of journalism. Another alumnus is making our highways safer. A third alumna went from returning student to coveted programming superstar. And our last alumnus finds his work is helping others play.

What do they have in common? All four alumni point to their internships – whether organized by UMBC’s Shriver Center (which helps place over 1,300 UMBC students in internships every year), or obtained through the help of a professor – as life-changing experiences.

THE RIGHT NOTES

Amy Coveyou ’07, computer science, was a stay-at-home mother of three when she decided she wanted to re-enter the workplace. Taking stock of her bachelor’s degree in music and her years out of the work force raising her family, she wondered just what she needed to do to obtain skills useful for the contemporary job market. Her solution? A new degree in computer science.

“Most people don’t have an opportunity for a do-over on their bachelor’s degree,” she says.

Coveyou knew the challenges involved in re-entering the job market. So she first took classes at Anne Arundel Community College before making the leap to UMBC’s computer science program in 2005. Her goal was a career in programming.

What is it about coding and programming that delights this former music major? Coveyou explains that there is a closer connection than simply a keyboard. “Lots of programmers are gifted musically,” she says. The attention to detail, the counting, the use of numbers, the rhythms – music and math can be both technical and beautiful.

Part of Coveyou’s plan of study at UMBC was to land hands-on experience that would help her advance in the profession. The Shriver Center helped her find one at the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development (DBED) in the summer between her junior and senior years in 2006.

The experience was a success. Working full-time throughout the summer at DBED, Coveyou generated state reports and trained people on a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system, a tool used to manage customer relationships, sales and marketing.

Coveyou quickly rose to a position where she was enforcing database protocols and developing policies to prevent improper entries. By the time she left in March 2007, she was reporting directly to the department head and managing all of the other interns. However, she knew exactly the career she was heading towards and needed to move on. “I didn’t want to be on the administrative track. I wanted to program,” she says.

Coveyou’s next internship proved even more invaluable. In June 2007, she found a programming internship at USinternetworking, Inc (USI) in Annapolis – a chance to show off skills in her chosen subfield. By the time she was ready to graduate in December 2007, Booz Allen Hamilton came calling with an offer that USI wanted to match – with Lockheed Martin and the U.S. Census Bureau also waiting in the wings.

Coveyou knew that Booz Allen Hamilton would be a fierce commute and long work hours, but they were offering the programming job that she dreamed about. And as a Senior Consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton, Coveyou now programs all day long to her heart’s content.

Looking back as an adult making a career change later in life, Coveyou acknowledges that “I thought I was in less of a bargaining position versus younger kids.” But, she adds, “employers saw the value-add of an adult with experience.”

Part of what they valued was Coveyou’s commitment to remaking her education at UMBC as an adult. To others who might be thinking about going back to school long after their babies are tying their own shoelaces, she says: “Stick to it”. She certainly did.

— Erika Shernoff

SAFETY FIRST

Many kids only think they know what they want to be when they grow up. But others are certain from a very early age – and then follow through.

Take Gamunu Wijetunge ’01, emergency health services, for instance. When he was only four years old, Wijetunge knew he would grow up to be a paramedic. “You have an immediate impact,” he explains. “Your patients are right in front of you, maybe in the worst moment of their lives. But you get to make an impact on the spot.”

Wijetunge was already well along pursuing that path as a student at Montgomery Blair High School. Already, he had become a volunteer emergency medical technician (EMT). He followed that dream to UMBC and enrolled in the university’s emergency health services program.

But Wijetunge’s path took a precipitous and unexpected turn. In his junior year, with an eye toward earning some money over the summer, he signed up for an internship with Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT). The internship included 30-day stints at both the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) and the state’s Motor Vehicle Administration (MVA).

Wijetunge’s summer internships taught him a lot about how each organization worked. Employees also took him under their wing. One mentor at the MVA took a special interest in his career, encouraging Wijetunge to get involved with basic research and act as a fresh set of eyes for ongoing projects.

“He took me seriously,” Wijetunge recalls, “and didn’t make any assumptions about me.”

In the fall semester, Wijetunge continued exploring the administrative path through an internship at the Maryland State Highway Administration’s Office of Traffic Safety. His inside knowledge of the MVA came in handy at OTS when Wijetunge was assigned the seemingly mundane task of sorting through old crash fatality data from the MVA.

His bosses told him a crucial chunk of data from the MVA had been missing for several years, but Wijetunge knew where to look. He drove to his former workplace and returned later that day with the missing data. His new supervisors were impressed with the initiative he’d taken, and he played an important role in completing the project.

The internships led Wijetunge to consider a career in safety administration. “My internships were short,” he says, “but they exposed me to how the government can work and all that it can do,” he says.

Today, Wijetunge works as a highway safety specialist for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s (NHTSA) Office of Emergency Medical Services, where he focuses on issues such as disaster preparedness and emergency medical services workforce development. He builds strategic plans that make it possible for paramedics in the field to do their jobs better.

And he has not forgotten his first love. On weekends, Wijetunge leaves his suit and tie behind and volunteers as a paramedic. It’s a unique perspective that most administrators don’t get.

“I get to enjoy two dynamics,” he observes. “During the week, I’m operating at the 10,000-foot level, working on things that may take years ’til we see the impact. But working in the field, I get to see the impact of my office work. It keeps me motivated.”

— Meredith Purvis

THE REAL DEAL

When a raffle of a $1.6 million house in Baltimore County falls through or Maryland homeowners find their homes underwater, Baltimore Sun business reporter Jamie Smith Hopkins ’98, English, has the scoop.

The real estate beat is an important one for any local paper. And Hopkins credits her investment in several internships as a key to building a career out of her passion for writing. Hopkins spent most of her high school years in home schooling before enrolling at Howard Community College. After submitting a comic strip to the college’s newspaper, she found herself pulled even deeper into the enterprise.

The community college newspaper also gave Hopkins a chance at her first internship, working for Patuxent Publishing Company. The pieces that she wrote for Columbia Magazine’s advertising section required leg work on her part. “They sent interns out to cover themes like camps, and you would have to go around to these summer camps and get ideas to formulate themes,” she recalls.

Once she arrived at UMBC, Hopkins found a mentor in Christopher Corbett, a professor of the practice in the university’s English Department. “Corbett is excellent at his job and promotes the importance of getting internships,” she says. Eventually, Corbett helped her land an internship at a place where she knew she wanted to work: The Baltimore Sun.

When she entered The Sun’s newsroom on her very first day, Hopkins says that it reminded her of the busy hum and clatter of the Washington Post newsroom in the film, All the President’s Men. “It was more than I expected,” she says. As an intern, she wrote news briefs and obituaries. “It is a great way to learn how to get information correctly and how to interact with people since it is a difficult time for people to be talking about the recently deceased.” She also managed to place a feature about Baltimore’s embattled Bromo Seltzer tower in the paper.

“The Sun was an excellent place to intern,” she says. “The people there are just helpful. They want people to succeed and help young reporters to be able to improve.” In December of 1998, the budding reporter graduated and landed a job at the Ames Tribune in Iowa with help from Sun’s editor, Bill Marimow. “I agonized about leaving and talked it over with friends and family.”

In the midwest, Hopkins covered the education beat. “They had us writing constantly, which was great for a writer’s experience,” she recalls. After a brief stint at the Tribune, the reporter returned to Maryland after Halloween to The Sun as a full-time employee.

These days, Hopkins is a reporter working in old media (writing stories for the paper) and new media, tackling “buying, selling and renting in the Baltimore area” on her blog: The Real Estate Wonk.

Hopkins says that practicing the craft of journalism – either on an internship or at the student paper – is a key to success. But internships, she adds, give you that feel for the profession and the give-and-take of a real newsroom. “There’s nothing better than to be edited by a good editor,” she says.

— Derek Roper ’11

GAME FOR ANYTHING

Video games are a way to play. But what if you could make that play pay off as a career?

For Elliot Pace, ’08, mathematics, it was an internship in the gaming world four years ago that eventually won him a job at a video game company.

In high school, Pace played a lot of video games. But that wasn’t the limit of his curiosity. “I was equally curious about how they worked and how they were made,” he explains. Pace pursued that interest by investigating pick-up tips and strategies for writing programming code for games. “By the end of my senior year in high school, I learned how to write software capable of drawing triangles on the computer screen.” He had also learned how to make sound effects.

At UMBC, the aspiring programmer spent what he calls an “endless” amount of time honing his programming skills, creating small 3-D games to showcase all his work. “College is the best time to learn as much as possible,” Pace observes. But that effort made him ready to seize an opportunity he saw in 2006.

As Pace walked across campus one day, his brother pointed out fliers advertising a Firaxis Games event at UMBC. The event had been set up by Casey Miller, the Shriver Center’s assistant director of internships.

Pace and 30 other students attended the gaming presentation by the staff of Firaxis Games, which was hosted by the UMBC game development club. The budding UMBC gamer even got a chance to talk one-on-one with the company’s director of technology – and an opportunity to share the video game side projects that he had spent so much time working on.

Pace exited that interview with an appointment for a formal internship interview. By spring 2007, he was working part-time as a paid intern at Firaxis on some of the company’s bigger projects – including a role as a support graphics programmer for one of the artists on the game Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution (2008). He also received an offer to return full-time after graduation, and he has worked as a graphics programmer at Firaxis ever since.

“The internship changed my life and had absolutely zero drawbacks,” Elliot said.

These days, Pace’s typical day begins at 10 a.m. with his uniform usually being a t-shirt and blue jeans. His lunch hours are unorthodox as well: he takes his lunch at noon and for an hour he plays online games with co-workers. By 6 p.m. it’s usually time to clock out.

And if he is working late on a deadline, the company usually orders up dinner from local restaurants.

Pace says he has no doubt that he would be writing software somewhere, perhaps for business or math applications. But his turn into gaming turned into a joyride.

“It would have been much less exciting, so I would have continued to try and get a job in the game industry,” says Pace. “It is where I belong.”

— Derek Roper ’11

Shari Elliker ’83, interdisciplinary studies, and Neil Beller ’83, interdisciplinary studies, spend Thursday mornings together on WBAL-AM in the glow of the “On Air” sign, with Beller as a regular weekly co-host on Elliker’s successful AM talk radio show.

Radio is a shared bond between Elliker and Beller since they shared the microphone on a popular program on WMBC in the 1980s. An active supporter of UMBC’s baseball team, Beller is also an Emmy-winning editor and the president of Kit & Kaboodle Productions. And in addition to The Shari Elliker Show (which she has hosted since 2007), Elliker is an actress and an in-demand voice for narration, commercials and other promotions in the Baltimore-Washington area and elsewhere.

Why does radio remain a vital medium?

Beller: When you express an opinion on Shari’s show, you know it’s going to spark something in a lot of people up and down the East Coast. I used to come on and say, “What ails me?” And the phones would light up. And people won’t have this conversation with you on a side street, but they will on the radio.

Elliker: Radio is an interesting medium – and especially talk radio – because it is unscripted. It is a very intimate medium. People are talking directly to you. You have one instrument: your voice. That’s what makes it so personal. In your car. I am talking to you. And it’s a big complement to be invited into people’s car, or office or home.

What was having a radio show together at UMBC in the ’80s like?

Beller: Shari and I have great chemistry. Always have, always will. Sometimes listeners will ask if we work together, have dated, or were married.

Elliker: We have that basis of resentment there. You dated my roommate. (Laughter.)

Beller: I was in the sports department at WMBC, and I had my own show on Wednesday night. The things I was doing on the radio you could not do today. It was very unpolitically correct. It wasn’t risqué…

Elliker: (Interrupts, with laughter.) Well, maybe it was a little bit…

Beller: I invited her to be on the show with me.

Elliker: And I’d come over after ballet class and do the show.

Beller: We just started coming up with bits. We had hilarious PSAs. (Laughs.) I don’t know if we’d want to mention some of them…

Elliker: (Laughing.) No. And I was the station’s general manager, so if you weren’t going to get in trouble with me, you weren’t going to get in trouble.

How formative of an experience was working at UMBC’s radio station in that era?

Elliker: The only hands-on experience I got at UMBC was at the station… As an Option II student, we didn’t have a chance to get our hands on a lot of equipment – be it camera equipment or audio equipment. The courses were a lot of theory. Being at the radio station was really the place where we could play house. Where we could pretend that we were doing what we wanted to do.

Beller: There was no one standing over your shoulder. You had to watch what you said, yes. But you could play what you wanted. And have fun and do comedy. I would tell Shari that I was going to the bathroom and then run out and call the station…

Elliker: The radio station was the single most valuable experience I had at UMBC.

Beller: It had an almost “WKRP” feel to it. There were so many characters. And when you didn’t have class, you could come hang out at the station…

Elliker: There were no fraternities, no sororities. That was something that UMBC didn’t offer at that time. You had to make your own fun.

— Richard Byrne ’86

How UMBC is pushing the frontiers of research and training in cyber security – and keeping its own networks safe from attacks.

By Joab Jackson ’90
Photo Illustrations by Aaron Goodman

Defending UMBC from web attacks is a more than a full-time job. It’s a 24/7/365 undertaking.

Earlier this year, for instance, Mike Carlin ’96, biological sciences, Ph.D. ’09 information systems, was driving to New York. UMBC’s assistant vice president of Infrastructure and Support paused to check his Blackberry at a rest stop in New Jersey when he received what looked to be an official UMBC e-mail, informing him that his UMBC account password was about to expire, and that he should log in and re-register immediately.

The missive had a UMBC logo. And the link at the bottom of the page seemingly took the recipient to a UMBC Web site. But Carlin, who oversees network security at the university, would have known if there was system-wide reset of passwords.

The spammers had sent their e-mail to one of the people at UMBC who knew definitively that it was a fake.

But Carlin also knew that thousands of other UMBC faculty, staff and students who likely got identical phony dispatches might not know. Some would take the bait, be led to a fake Web site and unwittingly submit their passwords and other information. The spammers could then log into these user accounts and send out millions of spam messages to the rest of the cybersphere.

Carlin and his department responded swiftly. First, they alerted all UMBC e-mail account holders about the fake notices, and followed up with a campus-wide blog post providing more information. They also blocked the Web address of the fake UMBC log-on, so people on campus couldn’t access the site – and alerted the university’s help desk to respond to incoming inquiries.

For Carlin and his colleagues in the university’s Office of Information Technology, this sort of fakery is nothing new. But each new attack is a bit more sophisticated than the one before, and each round of potentially devastating e-mails is more polished and more personalized.

“This has been going on throughout higher education,” said Jack Suess ’81 mathematics, M.S. ’95 operations analysis, vice president of information technology and chief information officer at UMBC. Suess and others in the division acknowledge that spammers see higher education as a prime target. Universities have open networks. They have good bandwidth. Universities also boast powerful servers and a fresh crop of new students each year who may know little of the spammers’ scheming ways.

The payoff for such scams can be immense. Andy Johnston, network security coordinator for UMBC, discovered that in one case alone, over six million e-mails were sent from a single account. It’s very doubtful that this was a legitimate use of this account, he adds.

UMBC is not alone in battling electronic intruders seeking profit, secure data, or even a bit of mischief. Network security has become a key demand for almost every organization – and the stakes for getting it right only grow.

As knowledge and the economy become more global and more connected via the Web, organizations and individuals grow increasingly reliant on computers for essential tasks such as online banking, shopping, and even basic information. Computer security has assumed a more critical role in civilization.

The good news is that UMBC is playing offense as well as defense in this increasingly critical arena. The university also helps government, business and other organizations keep the bad guys at bay through research and training that provide expertise and tools to secure the online world today and in the future.

The nascent but growing practice of electronic voting is just such a frontier. The benefits are manifold: ease, expense, speed of counting and even the potential to increase turnout by allowing voting from one’s computer or phone. The downside, however, is that the integrity of democracy demands that the system be foolproof. Every participant must have absolute faith that the system is immune to fraud. Witness the furor over the hanging chads in the 2000 U.S. presidential election.

UMBC associate professor of computer science Alan Sherman has been part of an effort to create such a foolproof electronic voting tabulation system. Noted cryptologist David Chaum originated the idea, and Sherman and fellow researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, George Washington University, the University of Ottawa and Waterloo University have all pitched in to try and make it a reality.

“The reason voting is hard is that you must have both outcome integrity and ballot privacy,” Sherman says. “If you drop either one of those constraints it becomes easier,” Sherman said.

In a functioning democracy, no one wants to make the choice between getting the count right and the right to cast one’s vote privately in the sanctity of the ballot box. But Sherman and his fellow researchers think they’ve cracked the problem. Last November, they tested Scantegrity – a prototype electronic voting system – in Takoma Park in a local election.

For a voter in Takoma Park or elsewhere, Scantegrity works almost the same as any other optical scan ballot. Voters mark choices by filling in bubbles on a printed form, which are then scanned into a machine for tabulation.

What’s different, however, is that the voter casts a vote with a special pen that holds invisible ink. A pen stroke reveals a unique code in the bubble where the mark was made. The voter can write down the code on a receipt. Later, in the privacy of their home, the voter can check the code on a Web site to verify that a vote with this code has been tallied.

The code doesn’t reveal the nature of the vote; only that it was properly counted. Through the use of encryption, voting officials and even third parties can audit the integrity of the vote count without revealing personal details – an approach known as zero-knowledge proof.

About 66 of the 1,700 Takoma Park voters who used the system checked their votes online. The next step is to try the system state-wide, Sherman says.

Voting is just one aspect of modern life that is being moved into the electronic realm. Banking, health records, online shopping, education and official record-keeping all have moved into the realm of cyberspace.

So it’s not surprising that the federal government sees network security as a matter of national security, and believes that attacks on our networks will be thought of as acts of war in the future.

Recently the search engine company Google found that its own servers were being attacked by computers in China, putting the search service we use every day at risk of being disrupted. Google’s corporate officers weren’t the only ones who were alarmed; U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also pressed the Chinese government for an explanation for the apparent attack.

Though the ultimate creators of the Google attacks remain hidden in the murk of cyberspace, the message is clear – aggression can be unleashed in virtual space as well as in real space. And the effects can be nearly as devastating.

“As the most wired nation on Earth, we offer the most targets of significance, yet our cyber defenses are woefully lacking,” wrote ex-National Security Agency (NSA) director Mike McConnell in a recent opinion piece in The Washington Post.

UMBC is lending a hand in this battle, as well. Though the university does presently offer a specialized degree in computer security, Sherman says that the fundamentals it teaches its students should give future security professionals the solid basis in computer science which will allow them to quickly formulate knowledgeable responses to future threats. “Computer science is evolving very rapidly,” said Sherman. “It is very important that our priorities are on the fundamental skills and teaching students how to learn to keep up with things.”

A UMBC education in computer science also offers students interested in the battlefields of cyberspace some experience with what may await them. Sherman is also the director for the UMBC Center for Information Security and Assurance, which seeks to bring together the best cyber security practices from across the school’s different academic disciplines. One of the center’s programs is the Cyber Defense Lab, which was set up with the help of a grant from the Defense Department.

The lab runs a mobile cyber defense exercise. Thirty laptops are loaded on a cart, which can be wheeled around from classroom to classroom. On the laptops are pre-configured scenarios covering many of the typical attacks of the day: buffer overflows and wireless intrusions. The students work through the exercises to get a better feel of how to handle an attack.

“Students learn more efficiently when they are in more hands-on exercises,” says Sherman.

UMBC students are also motivated enough to find those experiences for themselves. A group of undergraduates recently created a team to compete in various intercollegiate cyberwarfare competitions. Teams are assessed on their ability to reduce vulnerabilities to cyber attacks and to keep systems running, and UMBC’s contingent took first place overall in the qualifying rounds of the 5th Mid-Atlantic Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition.

Proximity is also a UMBC advantage. The university is close to the headquarters of the National Security Agency (NSA) – an agency which is on the front lines of the cyber battlefield.

The federal government’s Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) plan is helping to settle an influx of 60,000 military people moving into the area to work at the U.S. Army’s Fort George G. Meade. Among those reassigned will be those who will need to defend the country on its computer networks, both public and private. And last December, the state of Maryland awarded UMBC an $83,000 grant to help train this workforce.

The university will use the money to set up a Center for Cyber Security Training as an extension of UMBC’s Training Centers. The centers already offer technical, scientific and professional non-degree training programs to working professionals – and even specialized programs in information security and “ethical hacking.”

The new grant money will go towards expanding those offerings and developing 15 new programs that will meet the specific needs of the NSA and Defense Department, says Kent Malwitz ’92, information systems, vice president of the UMBC Training Centers. Some courses will be taught at UMBC. Others will be designed to allow employers the chance to offer the courses at their offices or other remote sites.

Already about 25 percent of the courses taught at the center are cyber security related. Thanks to this grant, that number will increase.

“You will see thousands of people coming into the area, people coming out of the military and looking to get retrained with the G.I. Bill and then go back into careers in the computer field – those will all be big drivers for us,” says Malwitz.

In order to train the most pertinent personnel – those on the front lines of cyber warfare – the center is also undergoing a certification process set up by the Department of Defense (DOD). This certification will allow the center to develop educational materials more specific to military cyber defense.

“We can really dive into addressing what is the mission you are ultimately trying to accomplish, not just what skills you need,” adds Malwitz.

The UMBC Training Centers are also gaining valuable input in this effort from a security advisory group made up of members of some of the largest Defense Department agencies and contractors who work closely with them – including Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman.

These days, such specified help is sorely needed. The military has a long backlog of workers who need to get security clearances. So those who do have them need to be trained on the latest cyber-security measures. Right now, one contractor will pilfer workers from another contractor, which keeps the entire U.S. military and security establishment weaker as a whole.

Whether it is cyber warfare, electronic voting or just making sure a university’s networks stay up so its students can continue to learn, the message is clear: Cyber security is becoming an increasingly vital part of the nation’s well-being. And UMBC is making sure that its students and the larger community have the tools and expertise to meet the challenges ahead.