02-06-22 Education - Flipbook - Page 2
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The Baltimore Sun | Sunday, February 6, 2022
STEM programs
Food as science
Advancing education for all students
By Linda L. Esterson, Contributing Writer
S
TEM education remains a focus for students at all educational levels and ages.
New courses and programs continue to be
created for college students as well as business leaders, and outreach for young students in middle and high schools continues to evolve.
Business leaders today are using advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning as a competitive advantage as they leverage data to make important operational and strategic decisions. In an effort
to assist business leaders in understanding data and
its application, the University of Maryland launched
the artificial intelligence and machine learning for
business leaders program last fall.
The new certificate program is directed to business owners and senior vice president level executives. “Their knowledge of machine learning and
artificial intelligence was one of curiosity but one
they were tentative about,” says Suresh Acharya, professor of practice and academic director for the M.S.
in business analytics program at the Robert H. Smith
School of Business at the University of Maryland,
regarding his experiences with C-suite executives.
“They are great business leaders. They know how to
run their business. They know that this new technology is here, and maybe some of their competitors are
starting to use it. And maybe they have a competitive
edge, but they don't really understand it. There is the
fear of the unknown.” Acharya spent the majority
of his 25-year career in industry, in analytics and
machine learning, and the last few years switched his
focus to academia to share his expertise with the next
generation of business leaders.
The program’s first lecture defines the terms
artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning
(ML) in detail, discussing artificial intelligence that
is utilized today as Alexa and driverless cars and
machine learning like teaching ATM machines to
understanding the image on a handwritten check or
using a computer to interpret an X-ray.
The equipment being utilized is not necessarily
replacing jobs but spurs a change in jobs to be more
creative and strategic, Acharya notes. A bank teller,
for instance, no longer simply dispenses cash but
now adds value in assessing account activity and perhaps recommending a switch to another product that
provides a better service to the customer.
The program evaluates the impact of AI on
business and the benefit of utilizing technology in
the domains of supply chain, health care, finance,
marketing and people analytics.
“What business leaders need to understand is
that the world of AI ML is moving fast, and the
technology is sweeping us away unless the leaders
are grounded,” Acharya continues. “This is what the
program helps them do. It’s not a coding class or one
where we prove mathematical theorems. What you
need to understand are the parameters, what it can
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do, what kind of data makes sense and to understand
where this can take you.”
In total, the self-paced, online program includes
six modules, each featuring a different expert instructor and offers optional live expert sessions to complement the material. The second rolling enrollment
period began early this month.
In 2020, UMBC piloted a new upper-level elective course for biochemistry and chemistry majors
that studied the science of beer and brewing, from
field to glass. The chemistry and biochemistry of
brewing not only proved successful with 17 students
enrolled, but also the instructors found the need to
expand the course into two semesters to adequately
cover the material.
In the fall, the first course focused on raw materials, which includes cereal grains, hops and water,
and the production of what’s called sweet hop wart,
which is the liquid that comes from the brew house
prior to fermentation. The course is interdisciplinary
in nature, discussing a variety of topics including
plant structure in the barley kernel, carbohydrate
chemistry and enzymology, and it applies information from previous coursework to the enterprise of
brewing beer.
“We took a deep dive into what the constituent
chemistry of those raw materials are, how those raw
materials are altered biochemically and chemically
through the brewing process, starting with malting,
and how brewers can manipulate those raw materials
to get the wart that they want,” says Steve Frazier, a
former brewer who serves as lecturer for the courses.
This spring, the second course will continue the
process through fermentation; how feeding wart, the
seeds and all of the biochemistry and chemistry is
involved in producing beer. The course also discusses
beer finishing, the chemical aspects of the makeup of
beer, how beer ages, flavor chemistry and the societal
consumption of alcoholic beverages.
With the emphasis on applied sciences, industry
professionals visit class to supplement the curriculum. A maltster, a hops geneticist and a hops chemist
served as guest lecturers this fall. Future speakers
could include microbiologists, yeast experts and
biochemists to discuss fermentation in more depth.
The experts also share details about their career
paths, including how they became involved in microbrewing, which provides insight for students into
potential employment opportunities following graduation, notes Paul Smith, associate professor and
undergraduate program director for chemistry in
the department of chemistry and biochemistry at
UMBC. The maltster, for instance, spent 10 years in
the fuel ethanol industry and one of the hops experts
has a Ph.D. in organic chemistry.
Plans are underway to formalize the courses into
a brewing track for both chemistry and biochemistry
majors, which would be noted following completion
on student transcripts starting in fall 2022.
In an effort to promote STEM education early,
particularly in the field of transportation engineering, Morgan State University offers a four-week
summer program for top tier middle and high school
students. With the program, the university’s national
When Avi Newman was young, he
started cooking. He attended summer
camp at a cooking school and would return
home to cook for his family in Rockville,
Maryland. In high school, he worked as
a chef assistant at a recreational cooking
school.
“I’ve always been passionate about
it,” says Newman, 24, a senior at UMBC.
"That’s why I got into science. I was always
interested in food and cooking. It’s just
applied chemistry.”
As he prepares to graduate this spring,
Newman acknowledges the coronavirus
pandemic has kept him in school longer
than anticipated. In his sixth year, he’s triple
majoring in biochemistry, biology and
philosophy, with a minor in statistics. He
plans to continue research at UMBC and
enroll in graduate school with a life goal of
becoming a research professor.
Newman was delighted to discover
UMBC’s new elective courses related to food
science and food chemistry in microbrewing
called the chemistry and biochemistry of
microbrewing.
“Although I'm not the biggest beer
drinker, I've definitely come to appreciate
the process and the production, both
scientifically and industrially throughout the
semester,” he says. “(And) how something
that seems so simple to produce can be so
complex and so intricate, due to just the
chemistry, the biochemistry, the physics, the
engineering involved. The biology, even.”
Newman would consider working in
quality control or being involved in the
chemistry at a brewery following graduation.
“You do the same thing in a chemistry
lab that you do in the kitchen. A recipe is
just a protocol,” he explains.” The ingredients
are your reagents you have to follow. There's
wait times. You mix stuff, you wait it out, like
it's all the same. Like methods. Just one is
you're making food and one you're making a
buffer, some sort of scientific reagent
or something.”
transportation center, part of the school of engineering, aims to encourage a diverse workforce for the
industry beyond transportation drivers.
Transportation engineering involves a variety
of careers dealing with infrastructure and design of
roads, automated cars, autonomous cars, autonomous wheelchairs, and other technology related to
transportation and how they intersect and make
people’s lives easier, says Queneia Harley-Burkeen,
education coordinator, national transportation center at Morgan State University.
This summer marks the 25th year of the summer program, which coincides with the amount of
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