2 Corinthians 3:2-3  - “You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone.You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”

Letters of recommendation were common in the early church. When Paul first arrived in Corinth, he did not come with letters of recommendation because at the time there were no Christians there yet. But within a few years, the Corinthians began to wonder whether he was a self-appointed apostle.

Paul argued that if they wanted to know whether he was a true apostle, they needed to look no further than at their own lives. His recommendation was their transformed lives, which were evident to anyone as they had turned away from paganism, immorality, secularism, and idolatry by the power of the gospel and the Holy Spirit.

They were not perfect and Paul knew they had experienced many problems as listed in his first letter to church there. But how did their failings not discredit him? The answer is that their salvation was not in the law. The law could not save them; it could only kill them. The Spirit, however, had brought them from the ministry of condemnation to the ministry of righteousness in Christ; the veil over their hearts was lifted and removed. Thus although they were not perfect, they were free. As Paul told them, “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all with unveiled faces, beholding the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit (vv. 17-18).
(Adapted from the ESV Women’s Devotional Bible.)

Today let’s continue to give thanks and worship God as we consider the transformations, healings, and rescues that he has lovingly done in our lives. Let’s humbly ask God for more letters from Christ in our churches.

-AP

Just one month after honoring UMBC’s continued national leadership in teaching and innovation, U.S. News & World Report has recognized UMBC as a global leader in higher education. The ranking focuses on academic research and reputation, and in UMBC’s case particularly highlights the university’s strength in international collaborations, and the percentage of UMBC faculty publications that are among those most cited.

The 2017 U.S. News Best Global Universities list includes the world’s top 1,000 institutions across 65 countries. UMBC was also featured in the 2016 list, which included the top 750 universities in 57 countries. The ranking considers 12 factors in areas such as global and regional research reputation, publications, citations and citation impact, and international collaboration (see methodology).

In subject area rankings, UMBC ranked #120 globally in geosciences and #141 in space sciences. UMBC’s geoscience research publications are particularly strong, with UMBC ranking an outstanding #5 globally both in the percentage of geoscience publications among the most cited and in normalized citation impact. In space science, UMBC was ranked #12 globally for strength in international collaborations.

Although this particular ranking focuses on faculty research productivity and reputation, there are clear connections between those factors and the experiences of UMBC’s student researchers, across disciplines. As Karl Steiner, vice president for research, reflected in September, when U.S. News announced its national rankings, “An integral part of the student experience at UMBC is the opportunity to participate in and contribute to state-of-the-art research conducted across the campus, addressing some of our society’s major challenges.”

Image: Research team of Vanderlei Martins, professor of physics, with a model of the HARP satellite. Photo by Marlayna Demond ’10 for UMBC.

by David Hoffman and Craig Berger

Kappa Delta Pi is an international Honors Society in Education. We have recently come back to campus and are looking for undergrad and graduate students in the Education field. KDP was founded in 1911 to foster excellence in education and promote fellowship among those dedicated to teaching. There are 1.2 million alumni worldwide. Help build this chapter into something great. Members receive tons of resources, programs and services through the organization. 

If you wanted more information, please check out KDP's website, KDP video, or come to our upcoming meetings listed below. 

10/27: Mandatory KDP Eboard Meeting 7:10pm (Sherman Hall 426) - All members who are interested in an Eboard position next semester are encouraged to come!

11/3: KDP Eboard Meeting 7:15pm and All Member Meeting 7:45pm (Sherman Hall 426)  - Last day to buy Graduation Cords (cost is $15)!

11/17: KDP Eboard Meeting 7:15pm and All Member Meeting 7:45pm (Sherman Hall 426) - Last day to Apply for an Eboard Position for Spring 2017! Application will be sent through email!

12/1: KDP Eboard Meeting 7:15pm and All Member Meeting 7:45pm (Sherman Hall 426) - Last Meeting of the Semester!

Feel free to come check us out!  

Kappa Delta Pi is an international Honors Society in Education. We have recently come back to campus and are looking for undergrad and graduate students in the Education field. KDP was founded in 1911 to foster excellence in education and promote fellowship among those dedicated to teaching. There are 1.2 million alumni worldwide. Help build this chapter into something great. Members receive tons of resources, programs and services through the organization. 

If you wanted more information, please check out KDP's website, KDP video, or come to our upcoming meetings listed below. 

10/27: Mandatory KDP Eboard Meeting 7:10pm (Sherman Hall 426) - All members who are interested in an Eboard position next semester are encouraged to come!

11/3: KDP Eboard Meeting 7:15pm and All Member Meeting 7:45pm (Sherman Hall 426)  - Last day to buy Graduation Cords (cost is $15)!

11/17: KDP Eboard Meeting 7:15pm and All Member Meeting 7:45pm (Sherman Hall 426) - Last day to Apply for an Eboard Position for Spring 2017! Application will be sent through email!

12/1: KDP Eboard Meeting 7:15pm and All Member Meeting 7:45pm (Sherman Hall 426) - Last Meeting of the Semester!

Feel free to come check us out! 

If you have any questions or want to know more information, email our membership chair, Kimberly Truong.  

UMBC’s department of music will present its annual Livewire festival of new music, featuring concerts, discussions and lectures, October 26 – 29, in the Earl and Darielle Linehan Concert Hall and other venues across the university.

This year’s theme, “Livewire 7: The New York School and Beyond,” focuses on an artistic movement that emerged from a group of American composers originally centered in New York — John Cage, Morton Feldman, Earle Brown, and Christian Wolff — and features performances by UMBC faculty and special guest artists.

 
The post-World War II era of the early 1950s ushered in a turbulent and revolutionary period in American art that extended across the fields of music, dance, theatre, and the visual and literary arts. The visual arts witnessed the emergence of abstract expressionism, championed by figures as diverse as Jackson Pollack, Franz Kline, Mark Rothko, and Robert Motherwell; the dance scene exploded with new works by Merce Cunningham, Anna Sokolow, and Paul Taylor; and poets such as Jackson Mac Low experimented with new forms.

In music, the creative focus began to shift from the major figures of pre-war modern music — Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky, both by then living in Los Angeles — to a younger generation of composers based in New York City clustered around John Cage (1912 – 1992), including Morton Feldman (1926 – 1987), Earle Brown (1926 – 2002), and Christian Wolff (b. 1934). Along with pianist David Tudor (1926 – 1996), for whom many of their works were written, the composers gradually became known as the New York School, and were closely aligned with Cunningham and with artists Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns.

In 1951, Cage began to explore the use of “chance operations” in his music, thereby freeing the compositional process from some of his personal likes and dislikes. Feldman experimented with graphic notation that might tell performer to play a high or low note, but not specify a pitch; Wolff wrote pieces in which one performer’s actions might influence another; and Brown constructed works with fixed modules in which the various pages or parts might be performed in different orders.

Throughout, the music explored silence and indeterminacy (although not improvisation), and performers such as Tudor translated this new aesthetic for audiences. For years, their work was subject to derision and ridicule from the classical music establishment, but by the time of Cage’s death in 1992, a couple weeks shy of his 80th birthday, his work and that of his colleagues exerted a profound influence, opening up pathways for younger composers.

“Music and other art forms were practically redefined for me,” says Tom Goldstein, associate professor of music and curator of this year’s Livewire festival, as he described his reaction to discovering the work of the New York School as a young performer. “Here was a revolution, manifest musically in greatly varied notational systems, employment of chance operations, open instrumentation, the relinquishing of compositional decisions to the performer, frequent use and extended duration of silence and unintended sounds, the inclusion of ‘noise,’ experimentation with form (or the absence of it), and the influence of Zen Buddhism. I was so powerfully affected that, for some time, I believed that any late-twentieth-century composer whose music wasn’t filtered through the sensibilities of the New York School bordered on irrelevancy.”

In addition to performances of numerous works by Cage, Feldman, Brown, and Wolff, Livewire 7 includes presentations of music by Thomas DeLio, Malcolm Goldstein, Toshi Ichiyanagi, Ben Johnston, Stephen F. Lilly, Bunita Marcus, Andrew Rindfleisch, Christopher Shultis, James Tenney, and Steve Wanna.

Livewire 7 features special guest artist Malcolm Goldstein, who has been active in the presentation of new music and dance since the early 1960s in New York City. He co-founded the Tone Roads Ensemble and participated in the Judson Dance Theater, the New York Festival of the Avant Garde, and the Experimental Intermedia Foundation. His “soundings” improvisations have received international acclaim for extending the range of tonal/sound-texture possibilities of the violin and revealing new dimensions of expression.

UMBC faculty and staff featured in performances and events include affiliate artist Audrey Andrist; lecturer Matt Belzer; associate professor Lisa Cella; affiliate artist Hui-Chuan Chen; affiliate artist and adjunct professor Patrick Crossland; affiliate artist Nicholas Currie; affiliate artist Gita Ladd; associate professor Tom Goldstein; assistant professor Brian Kaufman; affiliate artist Jacqueline Pollauf; professor E. Michael Richards; affiliate artist Kazuko Tanosaki; professor Airi Yoshioka; associate professor of dance Doug Hamby; director of arts and culture Thomas Moore; and UMBC student performers.

Additional guest artists include violist Karin Brown; pianist Curtis Cacioppo; pianist Paul Hoffmann; visual artist Ray Kass; multi-instrumentalist Stephen Lilly; conductor Jason Love; soprano Stacey Mastrian; and percussionist Michelle Purdy ’10, music.

More information on the complete Livewire 7 festival schedule: http://wp.me/p2xNJ1-1wQ

Images: Header image is “Adam and Eve” by Bunita Marcus (courtesy of the composer). Portrait of Malcolm Goldstein is courtesy of the artist.