07-31-2022 EDU - Flipbook - Page 2
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The Baltimore Sun | Sunday, July 31, 2022
STEM programs
Students gain hands-on access to science and technology advances
By Linda L. Esterson, Contributing Writer
A
Notre Dame University of Maryland
program gives undergraduate students
an opportunity to participate in cutting
edge research in a partnership with Johns
Hopkins School of Medicine. Named for a
long-standing member of the biology department and
a longtime faculty member at Notre Dame of Maryland
University, the Sr. Alma Science Year Program enables
up to three top science majors in the undergraduate
Women’s College to intern for a year with some of the
world’s top scientists.
The program prepares the next generation of
women scientists for advanced degree programs
and successful careers in the biomedical research
industry. Selected by the biology department in
the spring semester, the rising junior and senior
level students work full-time for 10 weeks in the
summer as research assistants after being matched
with a Johns Hopkins University scientist. Then,
the students work up to 10 hours per week during the academic year to continue the immersive
research experience. Many students go on to
publish their research as a co-author of a journal
article with their Johns Hopkins research mentor.
“We've had students work on Zika virus vaccines, we've had people with a background in
math work on modeling eye movements, and
[others work on] understanding neuroscience.
We've had people doing what we call wet lab
research, really working on the bench,” explains
Rebecca Zordan, Ph.D., associate professor of
biology, biology department chair and coordinator of the Sister Alma Program at Notre Dame of
Maryland University. Students also work in medical clinics, assessing patients and learning about
public health programs.
Some students remain beyond the academic
year to continue the research work as they apply
for graduate and doctorate programs.
“The ultimate goal is supporting our students
both financially and by giving them the opportunity to have this research experience that is much
more in depth and much more comprehensive
[than on our campus],” says Zordan. “They can
use it as a launching-off point… for their future
careers in the sciences.
“Our program is preparing women to transform the world.”
A grant from NASA is helping to train the
next generation of African Americans or minority students in the field of atmospheric sciences,
environmental sciences, or in general geoscience.
Six minority serving institutions (MSI) combined
efforts to apply for the grant, which garnered $8.2
million to fund full-time, paid internships for
16 students at Coppin State University, UMBC,
University of Maryland Eastern Shore, Morgan
Isa Dallasta, a 2022 graduate of Notre Dame of Maryland University, stands in front of MRI scans in Dr. Elisabeth
Marsh’s lab at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center.
State University, Howard University and Hampton
University, says Mintesinot Jiru, Ph.D., professor
and chair of the department of natural sciences at
Coppin State University.
Over eight weeks from mid-June through
mid-August, 25 rising sophomores who are STEM
majors, including nine from non-minority serving institutions, were spending time at each of the
institutions and at two NASA centers, participating in hands-on research experiences. Faculty
researchers and NASA mentors were delivering
lectures and leading different laboratory exercises
at each location. One of the module experiences
was to be flying in a NASA research aircraft to
collect atmospheric data and return to the classroom for interpretation. Another was a study of
emerging environmental contaminants using air
filters to analyze the composition of contaminants
at Coppin University. At UMES, where oceanic
studies is a strength, they will analyze water quality samples.
“Each institution has its own forte,” says Jiru.
“We want to give them a variety of diverse experiences that expose them to the three areas –
environmental science, atmospheric science and
geoscience.”
Following the internship, students will continue self-study in the fall, with the opportunity
to present their research at a national conference.
Following the summer internships, the schools
expect to follow the students throughout their
academic journeys and provide continuous mentoring and hold events for the cohort participants
over subsequent academic years. The school partners also hope to collaborate further to secure
additional grant funding for student STEM experiences.
“It’s meeting our goal in all of this to really entice them into the STEM discipline,” Jiru
explains. The aim is to increase the minority
presence in federal agencies like NASA or NOAA
(National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency).
“The program also helps students develop different skill sets because they are going to be exposed
to data analysis, data handling and data processing, and there’s a lot of critical thinking that goes
along with it.”
The NASA program will continue for the next
three years, opening the door to three new cohorts
of students.
New this fall is a master’s degree program
in data science at the University of Maryland
College Park. Offered jointly by the University of
Maryland college of information studies (iSchool)
and the Merrill College of Journalism, the program aims to provide the next level of data journalism for those already working in a newsroom
with minimal data experience and others who
desire to become journalists or want to work in
a non-governmental organization and share data
stories, according to Rafael Lorente, associate
dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism,
University of Maryland College Park.
“We really think the best journalism these
days, particularly investigative and in-depth, is
both collaborative and based on data sets,” Lorente
explains. “It’s kind of the purview of the New York
Times and ProPublica and the Washington Post
and big giant collaboratives around the world,
but we’d like to see if we can spread this around
a little more.”
Data journalism allows reporters to research
in a way they haven’t in the past. For instance, a
group of students in the iSchool worked with faculty to write code that used key words and phrases
to review thousands of newspaper pages in the
Library of Congress and other archives to create a
database for public use.
“With almost everything that we've done lately, data is really central,” Lorente notes. “We've
had to scrape data from websites. We've had to
put together our own databases of climate data
from various different sources because nobody
kept it the way we needed to, in order to do what
we wanted to do. It just comes into play over and
over again.”
The master’s degree will be offered as a hybrid
program with in-person instruction as well as
asynchronous online components. The coursework covers such areas as data journalism, open
source intelligence, data visualization, computational journalism and big data structures; some
are provided through the college of journalism
while others are presented by the iSchool. Those
completing the program will be equipped to tell
data stories. Lorente believes these graduates will
secure better and higher paying positions than
those not concentrating in data studies.
“In many ways, it's just more secure, because if
you can tell data stories for The Washington Post,
and The Washington Post lays you off, you can
tell data stories for any corporation in America,
too,” Lorente explains. “If we use data correctly
and transparently, we can very easily say to people,
here’s what we did, here’s how we did it. Here’s the
data. Prove us wrong.
“The data [provides] a certain amount of
power and democratizes journalism that way.”
Universities expand liberal arts studies
Programs reflect the changing needs of both the workplace
and the greater community
A capstone project at Loyola allows students to create their own venture alongside a community partner.
By Carol Sorgen, Contributing Writer
A
t University of Maryland, Baltimore
County (UMBC), Assistant Professor
of English Keegan Cook Finberg,
Ph.D., wants students to know that
poetry is not just a “rarefied” form of
literature that is studied only in the classroom, but
is also a means to connect to the community in
which they live and study.
To that end, Finberg introduced a class on
“Baltimore Poetry and Politics,” which was first
taught during the fall semester of 2021. The class
was inspired by Finberg’s fellowship at the Baltimore
Field School, which is doing community engaged
work at UMBC. The Baltimore Field School is
supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation,
which provided a $125,000 grant for the development of an initiative to promote diversity, inclusion
and social justice in the public humanities.
The course investigated the links between
social justice and poetry by exploring the history of
Baltimore’s Black Arts Movement, the 2015 uprising, and recent mobilization around issues such
as red-lining, inequity and underinvestment in
the city. In addition to reading poetry that reflects
these times, students also had the opportunity to
meet guest speakers such as Melvin E. Brown, poet
and former editor of the poetry and art magazine Chicory, Black trans/queer activist/poet/artist/
musician Jamie Grace Alexander, Celeste Doaks,
author of American Herstory, and late poet Lucille
Clifton’s daughter Sidney, who has purchased and
restored the Clifton family house as a space for
emerging and established artists and writers.
“I wanted to give students a snapshot of how
poetry works alongside activism and how the
content of poetry can reflect the activist struggle,”
says Finberg, who is currently working on a book
about the politics of post-1960s poetry in the
United States.
During the semester, students received a broad
education not only from the reading of poetry itself,
but also of history and criticism, in addition to
writing their own poetry, critical essays, and creating Public Poetry Projects that combined poetry
and the community.
“It was fun and exciting,” says Finberg, who is
looking forward to continuing some aspect of the
class during the spring 2023 semester.
Angelika Albertorio, a 23-year-old Laurel,
Maryland, resident who graduated in January 2022
with a double major in dance and English literature,
found it particularly enlightening to be in a class
where the students’ readings focused on a place
with which she and her fellow classmates had a
relationship. “It's like when you see a movie and the
setting is somewhere you've been before or when a
song lyric mentions your hometown, there's excitement in engaging with art about a place you know,”
she says. “It places it in your physical world, offering a way in to connect with others that have experienced this same location. I feel like I have learned
so much about the city that I have lived a mere 25
minutes away from for the majority of my life.”
Perhaps surprisingly, the course, which counted
as a humanities credit, was not meant for English
majors. “This was important to me,” says Finberg,
explaining that she wanted to attract a range of students, from social work to STEM majors.
“Many students have a fear of poetry,” says
Finberg. “My job is to demystify it for them.”
That was the case for Albertorio who confesses to having had “a mixed relationship with
poetry. I felt very close to it in adolescence only
to become very intimidated by it when I entered
college,” she says. “But Dr. Finberg's class was one
of the last English literature classes I took in college, and it definitely helped me gain a lot more
confidence in my analysis and reading of poetry.
I finished the class with a new enthusiasm to seek
out more poetry to read and an interest in writing poetry of my own.” Indeed, Albertorio’s final
project was a poetry zine titled "charmED city" that
explored Baltimore’s famous nickname, “Charm
City.” Albertorio explains that through the lens of
magic and power, and the use of color, collage and
poetry, she created a small mosaic of Baltimore,
juxtaposing what is outwardly advertised and what
is internally experienced.
“Students think poetry is hard and is separate
from their everyday pursuits,” Finberg adds, “but I
want them to see that poetry can be an active form
of knowledge-making.”
Loyola Offers New Minor in Innovation
and Entrepreneurship
Loyola University Maryland has always been
guided by the Jesuit commitment to the liberal
arts in the education of its students, but it is now
coupling that tradition with an interdisciplinary
social focus, which is evidenced in its innovation
and entrepreneurship minor, which was introduced
in the spring of 2019.
The minor focuses on a hands-on experiential approach that emphasizes the importance of
empathy and the exchange of diverse ideas to create
innovative solutions. The 18-credit minor includes
36 courses from 19 different majors that encourage students to develop an individualized course
of study that complements their existing major or
professional interests. Students in social sciences,
humanities, business, natural and applied sciences,
education, and allied health majors are welcome
to enroll.
William Romani, Ph.D., entrepreneur in residence at Loyola’s center for innovation and entrepreneurship, explains that the minor adds the
development of innovation and human-centered
design to the basic skills of entrepreneurship.
Students have the opportunity to take courses in
many innovative areas including design thinking
and innovative solutions as well as business essentials. A capstone project also gives students the
opportunity to create their own venture alongside
a community partner. “This gives students the
chance to actively promote solutions even before
they graduate,” says Romani.
Romani notes that the curriculum is designed
to prepare students for the job market, whether it’s
pursuing their own entrepreneurial ambitions or
stepping into another type of business setting, from
start-ups to nonprofits to community agencies to
corporations. “Whatever environment they’re in,
they will have to work with others who have different backgrounds and training,” says Romani. “They
will need as broad a background as possible to work
with a multitude of people. That’s just as important
as coming up with great ideas.”
“Loyola is excited to be taking on this role of
preparing students to make an impact on social and
community needs,” says Romani. “Our students
have the opportunity to take courses in all disciplines and apply them in practical situations. We
are dedicated to educating outwardly facing, active
partners in our community so they can thrive not
only in their chosen work environment, but also in
the city in which they live and work.”
University of Baltimore Encourages
Community of Writers
The University of Baltimore’s Master of Fine
Arts program in creative writing and publishing
arts is designed not only to provide students with
the professional skills needed for them to successfully write, edit, publish and promote their own
work, but also to become a member of a vibrant
creative community.
“We want to hone their artistic potential, but
also want to encourage an artistic community
that will last long beyond their years at UB,” says
Betsy Boyd, M.A., M.F.A, program director and
assistant professor in the Klein Family School of
Communications Design. “It’s a pleasure to watch
the students form alliances, from writing groups
to reading series and more, that continue year after
year. That not only benefits them but makes the city
a better place as well.”
The 48-credit program includes a foundation
course on creative ways of seeing, writing workshops from the student’s chosen genre (fiction,
nonfiction, poetry), and publishing arts such as
book arts, electronic publishing and print publishing. Before completing the degree, each student
writes, edits, designs and self-publishes a book,
which they sell at a student book fair. Throughout
the program, alumni come back to meet with students, teach, and even offer job opportunities. “We
love to show students what they can do with this
degree,” says Boyd.
Also central to the program is the concept of
“plorking,” the combination of play + work, which
UB promotes not only as a philosophy of the program but of life as well.
“We want to see our students succeed but not in
a competitive fashion,” says Boyd. “We are helping
them become real artists but, in the process, learn
about themselves, their fellow artists, and the community in which they live.”