The Women’s Center at UMBC turns 25 this year! We’re excited to share our important milestone with UMBC’s 50th Anniversary and will be celebrating throughout the year with the rest of campus! We were inspired by Special Collections archival project Archives Gold: 50 Objects for UMBC’s 50th and decided to do our own digging into the Women’s Center archives. Over the course of the year, we’ll be sharing 25 “Then vs Now” archives to celebrate the origin and evolution of the Women’s Center at UMBC.

It’s been a while since our last post because we were prepping for Critical Social Justice. Consequently, this week we’re featuring the awesome posters + a Prezi presentation student staff put together highlighting the Women’s Center history which was showcased at this week’s Critical Social Justice event addressing diversity and inclusion within higher education.

The posters are hanging up in the Women’s Center right now so stop by to check them out. In the meantime, here’s some photos of the posters Shira and Michael made and the link to Daniel’s Prezi Presentation. Prachi also made a really cool zine about our history that we’ll be adding to the 50th Anniversary time capsule that we’re working to get online. In the meantime, you can pick up a hard copy the next time you visit the Women’s Center.

Shira’s poster explored the dynamics of 1991 – the year the Women’s Center opened

Michael focused his poster on important Women’s Center programs and their evolution of the past 25 years.

Prachi created a multi-page zine documenting the history of the Women’s Center. Here’s just one of the pages.

You can check out Dan’s cool Prezi presentation, Historical Foundations of the Women’s Center at UMBC, that explores the evolution of women’s centers and women’s movements from a holistic perspective which he was then able to connect to the programming and services our specific Women’s Center has offered over the years.

A screen shot of one of Dan’s slides from  Historical Foundations of the Women’s Center at UMBC.

What are the memories you have of the Women’s Center over the years that are meaningful to you? What does the Women’s Center mean to you today? Share your memories and pictures with us in the comment section below!
Stay up-to-date with our 25th anniversary on social media using #UMBCWC25. Share your Women’s Center experiences and memories with the UMBC community using #UMBCWC25 AND #UMBC50!

A weekly round-up curated by Women’s Center staff member, Michael Jalloh Jamboria

In the spirit of my friend, who gave us the glorious name ‘Slaying on the Weekly’, every week I will be bringing you some interesting, funny or thought-provoking content from the internet! Be sure to join us next week for more and continue to slay!

Things you should know:

Believe it or not, voting happens in a few very short weeks. Early voting begins November 3rd. The presidential election is important, but so are the 469 Congressional seats up for re-election! That’s a lot! Stay informed and get there to vote!

Article of the Week:

We’re only 3 days from Halloween!!! For those that are going out, be safe! Be sure to check out Everyday Feminism’s article “Is Your Halloween Costume Racist?” This is a really cool guide for making sure our costumes are not making fun of or being disrespectful to people of other cultures, religions, races, etc.

UMBC Happenings:

This week was Critical Social Justice! There were a ton of amazing events all pertaining to our theme, ‘Home’. It was an amazing time, especially with our keynote speaker Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. If you missed the events, some of them are available to watch on the Critical Social Justice Facebook Page. Even though Critical Social Justice is over, we want to encourage all of you to continue to be critical and cognizant of how UMBC is or isn’t a home to the students, faculty and staff it houses!

Also, the theme of Home is really resonating with many of us in the Women’s Center as we watch and pay attention to what is happening at Standing Rock. We’re working on a round-up of resources we’ll post on the Critical Social Justice blog so you can learn more about the Native American and indigenous people in America, the water protectors, the social justice issues related to the Dakota Access Pipeline.

Song of the Week:

I’ve been listening to really great music recently, and I want to share that with all of you! This week’s song is Laputa by Hiatus Kaiyote ft Anderson.Paak.

Until next week! Happy Halloween! 

“We want to create a tight-knit community for students in graduate school, something that is usually a very isolated experience.”

Sitting in Doctor Joby Taylor’s office is a cultural experience within itself. From a portrait of Mahatma Gandhi hanging up, to piles of linguistic and cultural literacy books stacked on his desk, to the punu mask commemorating his time in Gabon mounted in the corner, Taylor’s love for interdisciplinary study can be seen in his office space and his mindset as Director of the Peaceworker Program.

For the past thirteen years, Taylor has dedicated his time to cultivating intercultural, learning environments for the fellows of the Peaceworker program, embracing his own interdisciplinary studies in philosophy, religious studies and global cultures.

Beginning as a fellow himself, Taylor came to the Shriver Center in 1999 to complete his Ph.D. in the Language Literacy and Culture program, with a dissertation titled Metaphors We Serve By: Critical and Constructive Play.

Since 2003, Taylor has directed the program, pulling from his Peace Corps and fellowship experiences to lead others.

“My participation in the program encouraged me to pursue this position and to cultivate an atmosphere that supports positive social change,” Taylor said. “When the opportunity arose, I jumped at it.”

One of the many things that makes UMBC’s Peaceworker Fellowship unique is the academic scope of its fellows. “Most graduate programs have fellows studying a common subject, like education,” said Taylor. “Here, we get to hear from people of all disciplines.”

“We not only get to hear what was unique about their service experiences, but also see the common learning and the possibility to cultivate relationships across cultural divides,” Taylor said.

Taylor in Gabon in 1993, building an elementary school.

UMBC’s Shriver Center may be one of the younger collegiate service-learning outlets, coming up on its twenty-third birthday in December, but its mission and Peacworker program are much more developed than other universities, according to Taylor.

Graduate programs for Returned Peace Corps Volunteers can be found around the country and include academic study, a service learning component and a small discussion forum for the fellows. Here at UMBC, the fellowship program includes the same first two components but also has a weekly ethical reflection series which then develops into five seminars throughout the fellows’ studies.

Each semester, the fellows spend their time discussing methods to invoke social change in the surrounding communities with a specific theme in mind.

Over the summer, the program immerses each fellow into the culture of Baltimore through literature and tours of the city. Then, fellows can look forward to discussing the role of the individual in service, social dynamics, cultural dynamics and the role of spirituality in civic engagement.

The UMBC Peacworker Program’s development can be linked to its founder, the Shriver Family. Through tortoise shell glasses and over cups of coffee, Taylor tells me how Shriver’s (the founder of the Peace Corps) legacy and his love for Baltimore can be seen throughout the work his fellows do.

“It’s probably because we’re not a program founded by the Peace Corps but by the Shriver Family,” Taylor said. “Sargent Shriver had close connections to Baltimore, and his family posed the question ‘what would it look like if there was a program that reengaged people as they come home from service?’”

“Our program wasn’t one that arose from the Peace Corps asking us, ‘would you like to have a program?’ The model was created before we ever really joined the Peace Corps network,” Taylor said.

“It’s the Shriver. We’ve Shriver-ized it.”

The post “We’ve Shriver-ized it!” A chat with Joby Taylor appeared first on The Retriever.

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Psalm 112:4, 6-7 - “Even in darkness light dawnsfor the upright, for those who are gracious and compassionate and righteous…Surely the righteous will never be shaken; they will be remembered forever. They will have no fear of bad news; their hearts are steadfast, trusting in the Lord.”

How is it that some people come through incredible challenges the better for them, yet others are crushed by lesser things? How can we remain unshaken and unafraid of bad news like the person spoken about in Psalm 112?

James 1:2-4 in the Message says, Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way.

Growing through challenges has to do with your convictions - what you truly believe. How do you see God? Do you see him as forgiving and loving? If so, you will be able to trust him to sustain you through difficulties. But if you see God as a distant, harsh judge who waits for you to slip up so he can punish you, then you will run from him in hard times because you’ll see him as the problem instead of the answer.

Worry and fear will rob you of faith and prevent you from moving forward. But when you trust God you will have a firm belief in his reliability and a confident expectation that he will carry you through anything that confronts you.

Maximizing your life means taking every opportunity to learn and grow. No one escapes challenges and trials; the difference is in how you face them. Take James and consider these ‘a gift’, then you’ll approach any hardship from a position of strength and come through with increased confidence in God. If you live this way you are like the righteous man in Psalm 112 - you will increase in wisdom and discretion and continue to progress.

We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain… (Heb 6:19 NIV)

Prayer: Thank you Lord that my hope is anchored in You. No matter what comes my way, I choose to believe that you love me, you will provide for me and that my future is secure in your hands.
(From Brian Houston’s daily devotional, Growing Through Challenges.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5Gtr0RCoSQ

-AP

With the 2016 election just days away, UMBC faculty have been in the news discussing voter dissatisfaction with government and the divided political landscape that faces both presidential candidates heading into Election Day.

School of Public Policy Professor John Rennie Short argued in The Conversation that the upcoming election is more about the legitimacy of the political system than deciding who is to govern. In 1964, Short explained that more than two-thirds of Americans trusted the federal government, and just last year that number had fallen to just less than 1 in 5 citizens.

In his article, Professor Short explored the decline of the blue-collar middle class, generational differences, and the financial sector’s influence on politics and society as root causes for the lack of trust in the federal government.

“There are a number of potential crises in democratic capitalist societies. As outlined by German sociologist Jurgen Habermas, they are: fiscal crisis when government expenditure is more than revenue; economic crisis when the economy fails to meet popular expectations; or rationality crisis when there is a failure to make the correct decisions,” Short wrote. “The U.S. may be in the difficult position of undergoing all of these at the same time.”

On Fox News, Political Science Professor and Chair Thomas Schaller talked about why the electorate is so divided and explained that rising polarization goes as far back as the late 1980s and is especially visible in the Bush and Obama administrations.

“Bush ran as a uniter, not a divider,” Schaller said. “He had a national catastrophe, and the country was no more united after eight years than they were before. Obama rides election on the waves of the biggest economic crisis since The Great Depression, and the country is no more united after eight years.”

Schaller also described how the next president will inherit an extremely divided political landscape with both major political parties likely making it difficult to govern.

“Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, it doesn’t matter who we are talking about, is going to come in with a very difficult ability to lead because I think the two camps, red and blue America, are done with each other, and it’s a war of each against the other,” he said.   

In other news, Schaller also explained how the “roll-off” issue, when people cast a ballot for some races but don’t bother with others, will likely impact the results of the election.

Turning attention to state politics, School of Public Policy Professor and Director Donald Norris was quoted in a Baltimore Sun article about the impact of independent voters in Maryland on the upcoming election.

Find a complete roundup of media coverage below:

The ‘legitimation’ crisis in the US: Why have Americans lost trust in government? (The Conversation) 
How division in America is impacting the 2016 election (Fox News) 
Speaking politics phrase of the week: ‘roll-off’ (Christian Science Monitor) 
Amid partisan acrimony, independent voters on the rise in Maryland (The Baltimore Sun)

Image: John Rennie Short in his office. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.