Bright Futures

UMBC’s growing reputation as a hub for research with powerful impact isn’t founded on the achievements of renowned scholars who have created laboratories or explored the limits of the arts, humanities and social sciences at the university alone. It is also built on a growing number of impressive younger scholars who have found a home for their work at UMBC.

The pedigree of the scholars who will propel research and teaching at the university in its next 50 years can be measured in part by the number of early career teaching and research awards these up-and-coming faculty members have received.

One of the most prestigious of these honors is the National Science Foundation’s Early Career Development (CAREER) award, which was created to support “junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholar through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.” UMBC faculty members have received 29 NSF CAREER awards over the last two decades.

UMBC Magazine would like to introduce you to some of the faculty who represent the bright future for research and teaching at UMBC – and how they are already making their mark on academia and the world.

Christopher Hennigan

Everyone dreads a bad air day when it pops up on a weather forecast, but knowing how those conditions are created is essential to finding ways to ameliorate or prevent the damage to health and climate.

Christopher Hennigan, assistant professor of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering, is at the forefront of analyzing these issues. His work focuses on pollutants known as particulate matter or aerosols—small particles in the air that have detrimental effects on human health and important implications for climate change.

This work has come to the attention of the National Science Foundation (NSF), which gave Hennigan a CAREER award of $524,606 to characterize the effects of acid-catalyzed reactions on the atmospheric transformation of volatile organic compounds into secondary organic aerosol (SOA).

SOA is an ubiquitous component in the atmosphere that contributes to aerosol effects on human health and climate, but there has been disagreement between laboratory studies and ambient readings on the role of particle acidity in its formation. So Hennigan and his team are developing new methods to rapidly measure particle acidity through automated system that provides the best combination of high time resolution and accuracy.

When Hennigan’s new technique is deployed, it will provide more accurate models representing SOA formation, thus improving scientists’ ability to make predictions related to ambient aerosol events.

“The five-year duration of the CAREER award is especially advantageous, as it will allow us to push the work forward in a highly significant way,” says Hennigan.

–Dinah Winnick

UMBC professors are navigating the startup economy – and finding harmony between research and commerce.

By Elizabeth Heubeck ’91

Mark Marten, a professor of chemical, biochemical and environmental engineering, was recently selected to participate in I-Corps. His startup, MycoInnovation LLC, is working to develop an additive for chicken feed that would be cheaper and safer than antibiotics, which are currently used in the majority of chicken feed to make the animals grow more efficiently. (The startup also received a $100,000 award from the Maryland Innovation Initiative.)

Marten has been at the university for two decades. He describes I-Corps as “entrepreneurial boot camp,” and he credits the program for making it possible for him to even imagine starting a company. 'We have a lot to learn,” he adds. “We’re not business people.”

Bright Futures

UMBC’s growing reputation as a hub for research with powerful impact isn’t founded on the achievements of renowned scholars who have created laboratories or explored the limits of the arts, humanities and social sciences at the university alone. It is also built on a growing number of impressive younger scholars who have found a home for their work at UMBC.

The pedigree of the scholars who will propel research and teaching at the university in its next 50 years can be measured in part by the number of early career teaching and research awards these up-and-coming faculty members have received.

One of the most prestigious of these honors is the National Science Foundation’s Early Career Development (CAREER) award, which was created to support “junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholar through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.” UMBC faculty members have received 29 NSF CAREER awards over the last two decades.

UMBC Magazine would like to introduce you to some of the faculty who represent the bright future for research and teaching at UMBC – and how they are already making their mark on academia and the world.

Christopher Hennigan

Everyone dreads a bad air day when it pops up on a weather forecast, but knowing how those conditions are created is essential to finding ways to ameliorate or prevent the damage to health and climate.

Christopher Hennigan, assistant professor of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering, is at the forefront of analyzing these issues. His work focuses on pollutants known as particulate matter or aerosols—small particles in the air that have detrimental effects on human health and important implications for climate change.

This work has come to the attention of the National Science Foundation (NSF), which gave Hennigan a CAREER award of $524,606 to characterize the effects of acid-catalyzed reactions on the atmospheric transformation of volatile organic compounds into secondary organic aerosol (SOA).

SOA is an ubiquitous component in the atmosphere that contributes to aerosol effects on human health and climate, but there has been disagreement between laboratory studies and ambient readings on the role of particle acidity in its formation. So Hennigan and his team are developing new methods to rapidly measure particle acidity through automated system that provides the best combination of high time resolution and accuracy.

When Hennigan’s new technique is deployed, it will provide more accurate models representing SOA formation, thus improving scientists’ ability to make predictions related to ambient aerosol events.

“The five-year duration of the CAREER award is especially advantageous, as it will allow us to push the work forward in a highly significant way,” says Hennigan.

–Dinah Winnick

UMBC professors are navigating the startup economy – and finding harmony between research and commerce.

By Elizabeth Heubeck ’91

Mark Marten, a professor of chemical, biochemical and environmental engineering, was recently selected to participate in I-Corps. His startup, MycoInnovation LLC, is working to develop an additive for chicken feed that would be cheaper and safer than antibiotics, which are currently used in the majority of chicken feed to make the animals grow more efficiently. (The startup also received a $100,000 award from the Maryland Innovation Initiative.)

Marten has been at the university for two decades. He describes I-Corps as “entrepreneurial boot camp,” and he credits the program for making it possible for him to even imagine starting a company. 'We have a lot to learn,” he adds. “We’re not business people.”

Marjoleine Kars and Kate Brown, both professors in UMBC’s history department, have been awarded prestigious fellowships to study at the European University Institute (EUI) in Italy for fall 2016.

Kars and Brown are recipients of the Fernand Braduel Senior Fellowships, which “provide a framework for established academics with an international reputation to pursue their research at the EUI. Fellowships last for up to ten months in one of the EUI’s four Departments which in turn invite fellows to participate in departmental activities (seminars, workshops, colloquia, etc.),” according to a description on the EUI website.

During her fellowship, Kars will finish her writing her current book project Freedom Marooned: An Atlantic Slave Rebellion in the Early Modern Dutch Caribbean. She is in the midst of finishing a ten-year research project about a little known but immense eighteenth-century slave rebellion in a Dutch colony in South America (now the Republic of Guyana). Kars has previously written a book about a farmers’ rebellion in pre-revolutionary North Carolina:“Breaking Loose Together”: The Regulator Rebellion in Pre-Revolutionary North Carolina (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), and she was a Dresher Center fellow in spring 2015. Read more about her work in the EUI’s announcement of her fellowship.

For her Fernand Braduel Fellowship, Kate Brown will work on her research project Circumnavigation: History’s Renovation in the Age of the Anthropocene. Brown is currently working on a research project about the communities circling the Chernobyl Zone. Earlier this year, Brown was named a 2016 Andrew Carnegie Fellow and she has received significant recognition for her 2013 book Plutopia: Nuclear Families in Atomic Cities and the Great Soviet and American Plutonium Disasters (Oxford 2013). Read more about Brown’s work and research in theEUI announcement.

As part of their residencies, Kars and Brown will also participate in the EUI’s Summer School in Comparative and Transnational History: Theories, Methodology and Case Studies. Kars will present Caribbean Slave Rebellions, Transnational History, and Nationalism and Brown’s talk is titled Soft Bodies: the child centered communities at ground zero of American and Soviet nuclear complexes. 

Learn more about the European University Institute and its prestigious fellowships and research programs on the EUI website.

UMBC Transit will be operating on an interim schedule effective August 21st thru the 28th.  For further assistance please call 410.455.2454 or email at transit@umbc.edu.

Weekday

Arbutus/Irvington

8:00am, 9:00am, 10:00am, 12:00pm, 2:00pm, 4:00pm, 5:00pm

Catonsville Line

8:00am, 9:00am, 11:00am, 1:00pm, 3:00pm, 5:00pm

Halethorpe

8:30am, 10:10am, 12:30pm, 1:30pm, 3:00pm, 5:15pm

Downtown

8:00am, 9:00am, 10:30am, 12:00pm, 1:00pm, 2:00pm, 5:00pm

BWI MARC

12:00pm, 4:40pm

Route 40/Rolling Road

9:00am, 11:00am, 2:00pm, 4:00pm

Arundel/BWI MARC 

9:30am, 12:00pm, 3:00pm, 4:00pm

Weekend

Arbutus/Irvington

8:00am, 9:00am, 10:00am, 12:00pm, 2:00pm, 4:00pm, 5:00pm

Catonsville Line

9:30pm, 12:00pm, 2:00pm, 3:30pm, 5:00pm

Downtown

10:00am, 1:00pm, 5:00pm

Route 40/Rolling Road

11:00am, 2:00pm, 4:00pm

Arundel/BWI MARC 

9:00pm, 12:00pm, 3:00pm

A new research article in CBE – Life Sciences Education analyzes 10 years of data that demonstrate one powerful conclusion: UMBC’s Dissertation House Model effectively increases degree completion among minority Ph.D. candidates.

Renetta Tull, associate vice provost for graduate student professional development and postdoctoral affairs, and Janet Rutledge, dean of the Graduate School at UMBC, developed the Dissertation House Model with colleague Wendy Carter-Veale, dissertation coach for the Dissertation House program.

“We’ve learned that providing time, space, support, and community is a winning combination for working on a milestone such as the doctoral dissertation,” says Tull. “One of our mottos is ‘From ABD (all but dissertation) to Ph.D.’”

The program puts that combination to work, and graduation rate data as well as more than 200 personal reflections from participants back up its effectiveness.

Schools can implement Dissertation House in a variety of formats, from multi-day retreats to a few hours in a classroom. The most common structure is several consecutive full days where students set goals and participate in mini-lectures on topics such as time management, public speaking, and avoiding burnout. They also receive one-on-one support from a dissertation coach and have opportunities to meet with their advisor.

At least five hours of each day are spent writing in a group setting, but the program goes far beyond providing a dedicated writing space. Many students form positive, lasting relationships with their peers and mentors through the course of the program—relationships that propel them through challenging moments in their PhD careers.

“We promote career-life balance, health and wellness, and support for peers,” says Tull. “We’ve taken care of babies for students, supported students through sickness and loss, and celebrated all successes.”

Carter-Veale, Tull, Rutledge, and Dissertation House alumna Lenisa Joseph found that participating in Dissertation House increased the likelihood of PhD students graduating by 92%, and increased their likelihood of retention by 64%. Notably, 98% of students who returned surveys said the program helped them make progress on their dissertations and that it was a good use of funding.

“We’re pleased that the model has helped so many students to reach their goals,” says Tull.

Dissertation House is part of The University System of Maryland’s Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate initiative, PROMISE – AGEP, a program of the National Science Foundation. It has already been replicated at other schools around the U.S. and in Puerto Rico.

Read the original research article in CBE – Life Sciences Education: The Dissertation House Model: Doctoral student experiences coping and writing in a shared knowledge community.

Image: Graduate students at work at the University System of Maryland’s Summer Success Institute 2015; Photo by Cheriss May for PROMISE: Maryland’s AGEP.

The Walters Art Museum is among America’s top 50 art museums. Situated in the historic Mt. Vernon district of Baltimore, the Walters has an internationally renowned collection of over 33,000 objects. It presents major exhibitions annually, has a world-class conservation studio and research program, and is a leader in education. The Walters’ Advancement Division consists of Development, Marketing & Communications, Visitor Services, and the Office of the Board of Trustees.