Heather Rhodes ’02 is completing her master’s in chemical and biochemical engineering.

Nurturing Engineering Talent

A few months into her new job as a chemical engineer, Heather Couvillon Rhodes, a May 2002 UMBC graduate, easily sums up her enthusiasm for her new profession: �Engineers have the opportunity to take knowledge and apply it to real-world problems.� Rhodes is employed by the Department of the Army, Aberdeen Proving Ground.

In fact, Rhodes began applying the knowledge she learned in favorite subjects such as math and science to real-world problems long before graduation. As a co-op student at the Indian Head Naval Surface War Center, she worked to design rockets, warheads and rocket launchers for the U.S. Navy.

�In high school I was good in math and science and it was a natural for me to major in engineering,� says Rhodes. She received full-ride scholarships from UMBC, Cornell and Virginia Tech. She chose UMBC for its proximity to co-op and career opportunities in Baltimore and Washington.

When Rhodes came to UMBC she found supportive mentors and female role models in the sciences. Jill Randles, the 2002 recipient of the UMBC President’s Commission for Women Achievement Award, was Rhodes� engineering advisor her first two years at UMBC. �She supported and challenged me during what was a very challenging first semester academically. She was the rock that held many of us together,� says Rhodes.

Rhodes founded WISE (Women in Science and Engineering) at UMBC to encourage and support other women in science and engineering fields. The organization helps students connect with professionals in the field through talks and networking. �Many women and girls don�t know about engineering,� explains Rhodes. �My advice is to follow your natural interests; connect with successful engineers through groups such as WISE. They can be a resource and source of inspiration for you.�

�Taryn Bayles [chemical and biochemical engineering lecturer] continues to be an inspiration for me,� says Rhodes, �I�m completing my master�s in chemical and biochemical engineering through UMBC�s combined bachelor�s/master�s program, and her door is always open to students.�

Rhodes credits undergraduate research experiences and faculty mentors for nurturing her talent for problem-solving. She conducted an independent research project on an imaging system for pressure-sensitive paints in Assistant Professor Lisa Kelly�s (chemistry and biochemistry) lab. Rhodes presented her findings, which will have applications in aerospace, aviation, automobiles and medicine, at UMBC�s Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day.

�Professors at UMBC really care about students�how they think and how they solve problems� says Rhodes. It�s this initiative and these problem-solving skills that impress Rhodes� supervisors in her new job and current undergraduate engineering students. She currently serves as an advisor to Alpha Sigma Alpha sorority members.

What are Rhodes� future plans? After she completes her master�s degree this December, she is considering applying her knowledge to an M.B.A. program or law school. �I�d like to develop my management skills while staying technical,� adds Rhodes.

 
Brian Maguire is a visiting assistant professor and director of distance learning in the Department of Emergency Health Services.

On the Front Lines of Emergency Response

When faced with a medical emergency, the last thing most of us think about is the potential dangers for the medical personnel who respond to our call for help. An innovative new study, led by UMBC�s Brian Maguire, shows that emergency medical services providers face a number of unexpected risks every day.

Maguire, a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Emergency Health Services, took on the project after finding that there were no existing statistics on occupational safety among EMS personnel. �There was no database to document job-related incidents of death, injury or illness for EMS workers,� says Maguire. �We had to collect all the data from various state and local agencies and create our own database to analyze the long-term trends within the collection of isolated incidents.�

While Maguire�s study is ongoing, Maguire and his colleagues have released the first findings of their study, which report the occupational fatality rate among EMS providers, in the December issue of the Annals of Emergency Medicine. Based on the data in their study, Maguire estimates that the occupational fatality rate for EMS professionals is comparable to that of police officers and firefighters. Transportation incidents account for the largest portion of these work-related deaths; assaults are also a common cause of occupational fatalities among emergency medical responders.

As surprisingly high as these fatality rates may seem, Maguire says that these estimates are conservative. �We are often working with only small amounts of information,� explains Maguire, �We can usually only document cases that connect illness or injury to a specific event, which means that, at the very least, we�re certain to have missed any number of long-term health problems that might not be apparent immediately.� Ultimately, Maguire and his colleagues hope that their efforts to collect data on the number of work-related illnesses and injuries for EMS providers will result in a comprehensive evaluation of occupational safety within the profession.

In the meantime, Maguire�s work is certain to have significant impact on the next generation of emergency responders. Maguire also serves as EHS�s director of distance learning and oversees the department�s innovative online Management Studies master�s degree. Now in its fifth year, it was UMBC�s first distance education program. Approximately 70 students are enrolled; many are already active in various fields of emergency medical services management across the United States and abroad.

 
Building an engaged community is what drives Patty Perillo, director of student life at UMBC.

Strengthening the Campus Community

Growing up in a family of eight siblings and 80 first cousins has made a profound influence on Patty Perillo. �One of the fundamental lessons learned growing up as a child was the value of community,� she says. And with most of the family still living within five miles of one another, there is no excuse for missing a Sunday family dinner � or Tuesday game night.

Building an engaged community is what drives Perillo, the director of student life at UMBC. When she is not busy organizing Homecoming activities, advising one of 170 student organizations or running a leadership retreat, you will find her out talking one-on-one with UMBC students � who greet her affectionately as Patty.

�Students need a place to connect both formally and informally,� says Perillo. �UMBC students are bright, active, promising, thoughtful, challenging and they have fun in very different ways. We�ve been deliberate in creating experiences for students that they can connect with on their own level. It�s a model that hasn�t been built before.�

Perillo is the chair of the Student Involvement Council Programming Committee, a group developed to address the issues of student life on campus and the university�s need for campus-wide community events. �I�ve seen a real institutional change since I�ve started working here,� says Perillo. �Administration, faculty and staff are personally invested in the co-curricular lives of the students; and students are creating a place they will be proud to come back to as alumni. It�s a collective, synergistic relationship,� says Perillo. �As a campus, we are all in the midst of building lasting traditions at UMBC. It is a very exciting time.�

Along with her tightly knit staff in the Office of Student Life, Perillo continues to make life-long influences on UMBC students and the community. Programs such as the September 11 Project, LeaderShape, Into the Streets and Welcome Week are designed to foster student success from the developmental level. �What I want to do is support and enhance the learning experience of our students � to take what they learn in class and help them to apply it to every day situations,� says Perillo. �We�re all helping to shape the leaders of tomorrow.�

Perillo holds a bachelor�s and master�s degree in college student personnel from the University of Delaware and earned a Ph.D. in Public and Community Health from the University of Maryland, College Park. Her doctoral dissertation focused on the study of college student drinking behaviors.

 
Jim Bembry is an associate professor of social work.

Teaching from Experience

As if nearly 20 years of teaching and scholarship weren�t enough, Jim Bembry brings a lifetime of experience to future social workers in his classroom.

Bembry, an associate professor of social work, now realizes that his interest in the field began during his own childhood growing up in a tough Philadelphia neighborhood. �At one point, I got into enough trouble to be sent away for over a year,� he says, �During that time, I met a teacher who gave me a lot of wise advice and helped me learn that I couldn�t fight my way through everything.�

Bembry took that advice to heart and soon put his life back together. A few years later, while a junior majoring in sociology at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, he was offered an opportunity that confirmed his interest in helping other young people overcome the same difficulties he faced in his own childhood. He volunteered to work with troubled students in Worcester�s public schools, where he served as a part-time counselor for three to four schools, meeting with several students at each school. �I couldn�t have been very effective,� says Bembry, reflecting on the experience, �but the kids came to school on the days that I met with them and that was a definite improvement.�

After graduation, Bembry worked for two years as a residential counselor at a facility in Virginia before returning to school for a master�s degree in social work from Temple University. His field placements at Temple included time spent teaching undergraduates, but he was a practicing social worker for seven more years before he began teaching full-time.

Bembry began teaching at UMBC 16 years ago while finishing his doctorate at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. He currently teaches the methods courses in both practice and research for social work majors–a combination that even he admits is unusual in his field.

Melding theory with experience and practice, however, has been a hallmark of Jim Bembry�s career. His research continues to examine how to address the needs of underserved and at-risk young people. Currently, he is leading an evaluation of a state program that promotes discussion between state agencies that provide services for children and youth. The program�s directors hope that Bembry�s evaluation will allow them to obtain long-term federal funding that will allow them to offer more coordinated state responses to issues such as school safety and adolescent pregnancy.

CSEE Professor Penny Rheingans and her colleagues in the Graphics, Animation and Visualization Lab (GAVL) combine art and computer science.

 
UMBC Presidential Teaching Professor Robert Deluty is a clinical psychologist and published poet.

The Poetry of Experience

As a clinical psychologist, Presidential Teaching Professor Robert Deluty has devoted his adult life to exploring the workings of the human psyche. Recent years, however, have seen his work take a more creative turn. In addition to being a researcher, psychotherapist, and award-winning mentor, Deluty is also a poet whose work has appeared in publications such as The Baltimore Evening Sun and The Wall Street Journal.

Psychology is Deluty�s first passion and his research interests have ranged widely throughout the course of his career. In his graduate work and early years at UMBC, he explored the development and treatment of aggressive and submissive behavior in children. He now focuses on how clinical psychologists treat their patients, from  ways of assisting clients in making moral and ethical decisions to the influence of religious beliefs on approaches to therapy.

Deluty began his creative writing career almost  11 years ago when his wife encouraged him to write about a deeply personal event from his own life � the moments leading up to the arrival of his second adopted child. �We were waiting for our son to arrive from Korea,� he recalls, �and it led me to think about my relationship with my own father, who had passed away several years before.� This experience led to an essay that, much to Deluty�s surprise, was published in The Baltimore Evening Sun.

He turned to writing poetry after a failed attempt at an essay evolved into a publishable poem. He has since published over 500 poems in a variety of publications, including his book, Within and Between, released in 2000. Deluty�s poetry takes many forms, although he most frequently writes in a Japanese poetic form called senryu. Senryu share the same structure as haiku, but, unlike haiku, usually describe human subjective situations and are often satiric, pathetic, or ironic. Like his first essay, much of his poetry comes directly from his own experiences with his family and work.

Deluty�s creative endeavors have not stopped his work in psychology. In fact, his latest research finds common ground within the two fields. In a recent article published in the Journal of Poetry Therapy, Deluty explores the common processes and goals of a psychotherapist and a writer of haiku or senryu poetry. �The psychotherapist and the senryu writer share characteristics such as the desire to bring about new awareness or insight in their audience and the need to be absolutely genuine in the feelings and attitudes they express,� says Deluty. �My writing has made me a better psychotherapist and my work as a psychotherapist has made me a better poet because these common goals and processes reinforce each other in all aspects of my work.�

Click here to read Robert Deluty�s poetry.

Members of UMBC’s Chess Team and Advisor Alan Sherman (bottom row, left)

The Undisputed Kings of College Chess
  

UMBC has won titles at the �World Series, and the �Final Four� and has now completed the �Grand Slam� � of college chess that is.

UMBC�s chess team is well-known as one of the most powerful in the nation, as it has won six Pan American Intercollegiate Chess Championships (The World Series of College Chess) in the past seven years and, in early April, took its first-ever President�s Cup title (The Final Four of College Chess).  They completed their victory tour online by winning the National College Chess League�s online tournament, played over the Internet.

While the NCCL championship doesn�t have a snappy nickname of its own, it has a very special meaning to the UMBC team. They now hold all three major chess titles simultaneously — the Grand Slam of College Chess � a feat no other team has ever accomplished.

UMBC�s win at the President�s Cup effectively made them the undisputed champs of college chess, as they had been edged out in previous years by their rivals at the University of Texas, Dallas. This year was UMBC�s first time competing in the NCCL Championship.

UMBC�s success on the chess board has drawn attention to UMBC as a place with unbeatable brain power � an image backed up not only by their impressive wins by also by the soaring SAT scores of first-year students and the University�s federal research funding. UMBC�s reputation in chess, combined with its impressive academic record and scholarship opportunities has attracted some of the very best chess players from around the country and around the world.

The UMBC chess team has garnered attention from a host of national media outlets � from �Good Morning America� and �The Today Show� to CNN and National Public Radio. Why is chess such a big deal at UMBC? Perhaps the Baltimore Sun said it best in an April 8 editorial: �At UMBC, it’s cool to be smart, and the smartest students � even with names like �The Exterminator� and ��The Maryland Mauler� � are the heroes.�

 
A crew of UMBC physicists is living and working 14 miles off the Virginia Coast aboard the Chesapeake Light..

Tracking a Satellite from the Sea

14 miles offshore from Virginia Beach, UMBC Assistant Professor of Physics Wallace McMillan and a rotating crew of scientists are firing lasers into the night sky and launching weather balloons by day to make sure a new multi-billion-dollar NASA research satellite is working properly.

For two months, McMillan and his crew are taking turns living and working aboard the Chesapeake Light, a 1960�s-era U.S. Coast Guard lighthouse platform with a panoramic view of the Atlantic. Chesapeake Light looks a bit like an oil-drilling rig, perched on a rusty steel frame 75 feet above 34-foot-deep waters.

�We provide product validation,� says McMillan. �We�re measuring air temperature, water vapor content, sea surface temperature, and so on, around the clock, and then comparing those to the same measurements taken by AIRS.� AIRS is short for the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder, which was developed in part by McMillan�s UMBC colleague, Larrabee Strow. It is one of several instruments about AQUA, a NASA satellite launched in May that is designed to give the best looks yet at the Earth�s water cycle.

So what good does an Atlantic Ocean lighthouse do for a NASA satellite orbiting the upper atmosphere? �As it happens, the ocean makes a nice, uniform target in the infrared portion of the spectrum where AIRS sees,� McMillan explains. �Making comparisons over the ocean makes for the easiest, thus the first, comparisons we want to make.�

The accommodations on the Chesapeake Light couldn�t be described as cozy � steel is the main motif. But it does have a kitchen, a bathroom, six compact bedrooms, various work rooms, two generators, plus a rec room with a pool table.

Still, the view here is a lot better than a cubicle or lab. The Chesapeake�s catwalk is the favorite spot to watch some spectacular sunsets, the occasional rainbow, dolphins, sea turtles and flotillas of Virginia Beach-area fishermen chasing big schools near the platform.

When they aren�t working, McMillan�s protégés find ways to keep themselves entertained. A photo gallery kept on McMillan�s UMBC homepage shows grad student Kurt Lightner of Ellicott City, doing a strange dance as he launched the day�s weather balloon. �I was trying to appease Thor. You know, the Norse god of weather,� he says with a grin.

 
UMBC rowers cheer on their fellow teammates at a recent regatta.

UMBC Crew Turns Ten

Every weekday morning at 5 a.m., while the majority of campus is still sleeping, one of UMBC�s most hard-working yet under-recognized sports teams can be found on the water near the Hanover Street Bridge, starting their daily practice.

Like other UMBC athletes, Crew team members sacrifice a great deal of personal time and energy for their sport while representing the University well against regional, national and international rivals. But UMBC Crew does so as a club sport with no scholarships and a modest budget.

Rowing is the oldest intercollegiate sport in America, with roots tracing back to 1854, but it has only been around at UMBC for a decade. The team got its start in 1992 as a joint program with the University of Baltimore (UB), but then purchased four shells (the preferred term for the sport�s signature sleek boats) from UB when their program was phased out.

Since then, UMBC Crew has developed dramatically. UMBC now owns nine very competitive racing shells, including one named after UMBC�s president, the Dr. Freeman A. Hrabowski, III. The team practices year round, working in afternoon training sessions three days a week on top of the early morning practices. UMBC shares a boathouse located in South Baltimore�s Middle Branch Park with crews from Johns Hopkins and Loyola universities as well as the Baltimore Rowing Club.

An increasing number of students are drawn to crew as not only a great way to stay in shape, but also as a sport with a rich history and a deep spirit of camaraderie. There is no �bench� in crew, i.e. every member is matched with teammates of similar strength and size so that everyone rows at each regatta (race).

The UMBC program is always one of the top third of thirty programs in the mid-Atlantic region. The team competes against nationally-known universities like Army, Michigan State, Drexel, North Carolina, Virginia Tech, Penn State and local powers like Washington College, Johns Hopkins and Loyola. The Crew team travels as far as Boston and Philadelphia to compete, and attends a summer training camp in Clemson, South Carolina each year.

UMBC Crew�s four-person coaching staff is one of the largest and most talented in the region. Head Coach Jim MacAlister is joined by assistant coaches Evan Rea, Jennifer Simpson, and Renee Foard. Rea and Simpson are both UMBC graduate students, and Foard is an alumna and former UMBC rower. The coaches are proud not only of their rowers� history of winning medals, but also the team�s average GPA of 3.6.

Rea epitomizes the dedication and passion of UMBC Crew. Recently, in the midst of an eight-mile row in the rain, he said, “I love this sport. How many people can say they woke up and saw something like this today? It�s beautiful.�

The team has four more regattas scheduled for the fall, including this weekend�s Occoquan Chase at George Mason University, and then resumes competition in February for the spring season.

�Crew is unusual among sports in that men and women practice together, use the same equipment and more importantly cheer each other on,� says Lou Cantori, the team�s faculty advisor and a professor of political science at UMBC. �They are a genuine team of brothers and sisters.�

 
UMBC Psychology chair Carlo DiClemente’s work has revolutionized treatment for alcoholism and drug abuse.

The Psychology of Conquering Addiction

Psychology professor and department chair Carlo DiClemente began studying addiction among smokers while completing his dissertation at the University of Rhode Island. Now, more than twenty years later, his research has revolutionized how health professionals treat alcoholism and drug abuse.

In October, 2002, DiClemente’s work was recognized nationally when he received one of five Innovators Combating Substance Abuse awards from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF).

“I was first drawn to studying smoking because it was a behavior that was easy to evaluate and where it was always possible to find people actively trying to change their behavior,” says DiClemente, “What I found was that many different treatments produced change equally well and that people who stopped smoking without any outside medical intervention could be as successful as those who had.”

From these observations, DiClemente, with colleague James Prochaska of the University of Rhode Island, went on to develop a model for the process of change among addicts. This model, the Transtheoretical Model of Change, identifies stages of change and other factors that predict treatment outcomes.

Previously, treatment for substance abuse was thought to benefit only people who were motivated to enter treatment on their own. The Transtheoretical Model, however, is a more effective treatment developed for the individual rather than a “one size fits all” approach.

DiClemente has also applied the model in studies on alcoholism and will soon use his $300,000 RWJF award to fund a study of the model for cocaine users. The funding will also allow DiClemente to gather a small group of substance abuse researchers and treatment providers who use the Transtheoretical Model to discuss the most effective ways to apply it in treatment.

Since 1984, when DiClemente and Prochaska published their first book on the Transtheoretical Model, it has been incorporated in the treatment of a number of health and addictive behaviors in the United States and abroad. “I’ve been in touch with colleagues as far away as Germany and New Zealand who are using aspects of the Transtheoretical Model to assist patients with a wide variety of health problems such as asthma and diabetes, as well as substance abuse.”

The continuing importance of his work keeps DiClemente excited about his research. “I’ve seen the ravages of alcohol and drug problems. To see the impact this model and my research has made gives meaning to my work. It’s been wonderful to be part of a process of helping people understand how to get from addiction to recovery.”