Be the Solution 2022

UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

BE THE SOLUTION MAGAZINE

Lasting

LEGACIES Gregory F. Ball Reflects on a Transformative Campaign

Spring 2022

Letter from the Chief Development Officer Dear Friends of BSOS,

Dr. McIntosh from the Department of Government and Politics, and from his longstanding service as associate dean of the college.

Please join me in celebrating a milestone that you made possible—the successful culmination of Fearless Ideas: The Campaign for Maryland. Together, we exceeded the campus goal of raising $1.5 billion in support of scholarships, research, and innovative student experiences.

The BSOS community far surpassed our goal of raising $56 million for this campaign, bringing in more than $65 million from 11,000 loyal and generous alumni, donors and friends.Your support helped to enhance the academic experience for our students, and provided our faculty and researchers funding to advance their work. Thank you!

Dr. McIntosh and I look forward to seeing many of you again soon, as BSOS and UMD are offering more in-person events. We’ll also continue holding some alumni events online, which has proven to be convenient in many ways. In any format, our faculty, staff and students value the opportunity to engage with our alumni and our donors.

If you would like to learn how you can support initiatives within the college, please email me at beaver@umd.edu. I also invite you to read more at bsos.umd.edu, and to connect with us on social media. Please send your updates and feedback to bsosalumni@umd.edu.

Kenny Beaver (Photo: John T. Consoli/ University of Maryland)

Congratulations to Vice President for Research Gregory F. Ball, our immediate past dean, for leading these extraordinary efforts. Dr. Ball served our community from 2014 through February of this year, and led our college through this milestone campaign. BSOS continues to be transformed by his leadership and his collaboration. In these pages, we talk with Dr. Ball about his deanship, and we look to the future with news and updates from across the college.

Dr. Wayne McIntosh has once again stepped in to serve as interim dean of the college, as a search progresses for a new dean of BSOS. I know many of you have fond memories of

Thank you, once again, for your engagement and friendship.

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Sincerely,

Kenny Beaver Chief Development Officer, College of Behavioral and Social Sciences University of Maryland

Inside This Issue Lasting Legacies: Gregory F. Ball Reflects on a Transformative Campaign . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 GEDI’s Not-So-Final Frontier . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Opening New Doors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Building a Diverse Pipeline of Scholars: The Summer Research Initiative . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Department News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Peace Chairs News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Alumni and Giving News . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 On the cover: Photo of Dr. Gregory F. Ball by Tom Bacho

BSOS Points of Pride

UMD is No. 3

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in federal social and behavioral research and development funding, according to Consortium of Social Science Associations

MANY OF OUR GRADUATE PROGRAMS AND AREAS OF SPECIALTY ARE RANKED AMONG THE BEST IN THE NATION, AND IN THE WORLD:

NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO.

1 1 8 10 14 16 22 24 28 30 33

CRIMINOLOGY COUNSELING (PSYC & EDUC) GEOSCIENCES (GLOBALLY) AUDIOLOGY SOCIOLOGY OF POPULATION SPEECH-LANGUAGE PATHOLOGY ECONOMICS SOCIOLOGY POLITICAL SCIENCE PSYCHOLOGY CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGY

Lasting

LEGACIES Gregory F. Ball Reflects on a Transformative Campaign

IN 2014 the university launched Fearless Ideas:

The Campaign for Maryland, an ambitious effort to raise $1.5 billion in support of scholarships, campus improvements, research opportunities, and many other projects to strengthen the institution. Also in 2014, Dr. Gregory F. Ball joined the BSOS community as dean, and led the college through many milestones of growth and change.

Now in his new role as Vice President for Research, Ball provides strategic leadership to the combined research enterprise of the University of Maryland, College Park and the University of Maryland, Baltimore, a collaboration that garners $1.3 billion in research funding annually.

Photo by John Consoli

“Greg was a wonderful dean for the college,” said Dr. Katherine Pedro Beardsley, chair of the BSOS Board of Visitors, who formerly served as an associate dean in the college. “His vision for the college, his implementation of new academic programs and support for research, his commitment to service on the campus, and his advocacy and support for the faculty, students, staff and alumni have been superb.”

Ball reflected on how BSOS has grown during a landmark campaign, and how the college plays an integral part in the current and future success of the university.

Scholarships and Student Opportunities

can change all that. That type of support can make a significant difference,” Ball said. “We have established a culture of giving in our college during this campaign that will make for a stronger future.”

Unmet undergraduate and graduate student need remains a priority. While many scholarships had been established before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the instability and hardships the pandemic caused have put the need for student support into sharper focus.

“BSOS students are talented, resourceful, hard-working, and resilient,” Ball said. “I could not be more proud of our student body, and I am grateful that so many alumni and donors share in my belief in them and my commitment to them.”

During the campaign, nine Maryland Promise Scholarships and seven BSOS TerpStart Scholarships were established. Donors helped to found 12 Student Experience Funds, as well as nine new graduate support funds, and 25 new undergraduate scholarship funds.

Ball and his wife, Dr. Margaret M. McCarthy, demonstrated their appreciation for and support of students by establishing two new funds. The Gregory F. Ball Award is given to undergraduate BSOS students who have a demonstrated interest in biological psychology or neuroscience. The Dean Gregory F. Ball Student Experience Endowment provides merit-based undergraduate and graduate student stipends for experiential learning opportunities in the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences.

Overall, the campus exceeded its campaign goal of $1.5 billion at the close of 2021. Supported by more than 11,000 donors, BSOS far surpassed its campaign goal of $56 million, raising more than $65 million. An important part of that achievement was a concentrated focus on establishing new scholarships.

“We focused our fundraising efforts on people-oriented goals, supporting undergraduate and graduate students—this work is fundamental to the academic health of the college,” Ball said. “Our donors answered the call. We worked to ensure that students have access to education and to experiential learning opportunities through scholarships, stipends and through our Student Experience Funds.

“There were students in the college who could not accept unpaid internships because Ball with members of the they could not afford a Metro card. A small BSOS Dean’s Student Advisory Council; the grant from the Student Experience Funds

The Feller Center for Advising and Career Planning

In 2020, the college received its largest-ever donation, a gift of $4 million, from Board of Trustees member Joel J. Feller, GVPT ’90, and Kim A. Feller, ’89, to open the Feller Center for Advising and Career Planning, which provides guidance, resources and support that lead students to academic and career success.

“The Fellers know that BSOS is focused on helping our students explore internships, study abroad opportunities, service-learning projects, as well as intentional career preparation.

Experiences outside the classroom are not just ‘nice to have’—they are essential for our students to succeed while at Maryland, and as they enter the job market,” Ball said.

The scope of the Feller Center was enhanced by gifts from Katherine Pedro Beardsley and Robert Beardsley, and by alumni Bill Fishlinger and Matt Fishlinger. The Beardsleys donated $500,000 to endow and name a director of advising position; the gift will also provide operating support for advising activities. The Fishlingers gave $500,000 to endow a Fishlinger director of career planning.

In October, the Feller family and the Beardsleys joined with President Darryll Pines and with faculty members, students, staff, donors and alumni to commemorate the opening of the Feller Center in a beautifully renovated space on the second floor of Tydings Hall.

“While the pandemic has made it hard for our community to celebrate important moments, seeing so many people enjoying the

Dean’s Graduate Student Advisory Council also provided input to and collaborated with Ball during his tenure as dean.

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Arts and Humanities (ARHU); and opening the Social Data Science Center in collaboration with the College of Information Studies.

Addressing Systemic Racism, Promoting Diversity and Inclusion Following myriad events that shook the national consciousness— including the murder of George Floyd while he was in police custody—Ball helped BSOS to establish the Anti-Black Racism Initiative (ABRI). Led by Professor Rashawn Ray of the Department of Sociology, the ABRI supports scholarship, teaching, and dialogues of all types, and at all levels, to fight against anti-Black From left to right: Vice racism in American society—individual, structural, and cultural.

President Ball, Cory Feller, “Our work has really been to build pipelines in many Kim Feller, Joel Feller, Emily ways—pipelines for recruiting and retaining and supporting Feller, Jordan Feller, and President Pines celebrate the faculty members, staff members, and students who focus opening of the Feller Center their efforts to address inequalities and to improve society,” in Tydings Hall. Photo by new space and thanking the Fellers Ray said. “The university and BSOS have made a series of Mike Morgan. is something I will never forget,” Ball investments over time toward this direction, but we’re eager said. “The generosity of our donors to see more concrete efforts on every level of campus will impact our students and alumni for generations to come.” operations and community engagement.”

Especially in regards to fostering cross-campus projects, such as exploring a possible Anti-Black Racism minor within BSOS and ARHU, Ball said the work of the ABRI has synthesized multidisciplinary efforts in a constructive way.

Several donors created endowed faculty positions—and also estab“Through the ABRI report, faculty, staff, and students across the lished funds to create and to bolster research centers and initiacollege have provided valuable insights into how to advance racial tives—with an emphasis on fostering research that sheds light on equity and social justice concerns within BSOS and our campus. the most important issues of our times, from COVID-19 to political I take their recommendations to heart, both as related to the coldiscord to climate change. lege and to the broader campus and system communities,” Ball Ball said that recruiting, retaining and supporting talented said. “This work is mirrored in the TerrapinSTRONG initiative, our faculty to lead this critical work was a primary goal of his deanship, campus-wide commitment to creating an inclusive environment.” and thanks donors for helping to make those efforts successful.

“We worked to create an environment where talented faculty can focus on their teaching and their research, and on helping their With a rigorous search process for the next dean of BSOS under students. We created a pipeline of very exciting young faculty, and way, Dr. Wayne McIntosh, a professor emeritus in the Department retained some rising stars,” Ball said. “BSOS faculty get noticed— of Government and Politics who also served as an associate dean some of the best institutions in the nation have approached them for many years, has once again stepped into the role of interim with offers. Being able to stay competitive and attractive to expert dean, as he did before Ball began his tenure. As BSOS begins a new faculty and to new talent has never been more important.” chapter, Ball said he is grateful for continued ties to the college.

Collaboration—across BSOS units, across campus, and outside “Working with the extraordinary faculty, staff, students, donors the university—was a hallmark of Ball’s tenure. Among his many and alumni of BSOS has been a highlight of my career,” Ball said. “As interdisciplinary accomplishments was establishing a popular Vice President for Research, I have the opportunity to connect with neuroscience major jointly offered with the College of Computer, the BSOS community almost every day, as we map out research Mathematical and Natural Sciences; supporting the Philosophy, and collaboration possibilities.”

Politics, and Economics undergraduate major with the College of

Supporting Outstanding Faculty, Innovative Research

A Promising Future

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“His vision for the college, his implementation of new academic programs and support for research, his commitment to service on the campus, and his advocacy and support for the faculty, students, staff and alumni have been superb.”

— Dr. Katherine Pedro Beardsley, chair of the BSOS Board of Visitors

College of Behavioral and Social Sciences: Be the Solution | 5

GEDI’s home on the International Space Station!

Home to important projects!

gedi’ s not-so-Final

frontier the global ecosystem dynamics investigation instrument will cease data collection in january but not before fueling significant projects

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rofessor Ralph Dubayah of the Department of Geographical Sciences (GEOG) knew that if he could put a first-of-its-kind instrument into space to measure forests in 3D using a laser measurement method called Light Detection and Ranging (lidar), that project would advance important research.

He was right. Since the Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation (GEDI) instrument’s launch in December 2018, multiple researchers in GEOG have used its highly accurate forest height, structure, and surface elevation data in their own projects. These projects have focused on measuring and mitigating the impacts of climate change around the world, and in Maryland.

“You work so hard—so many late nights and Professor Ralph Dubayah so much stress to put an instrument into space and then create the data products—to see other scientists in your department able to utilize them to benefit their own research is fantastic. It makes it all worthwhile,” Dubayah said.

With GEDI now in its last year of data collection, we checked in with five GEDI mission team members to see how their research is addressing some of today’s greatest environmental challenges.

College of Behavioral and Social Sciences: Be the Solution | 7

changing the way we look at land use

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rofessor Matt Hansen, a GEDI mission co-investigator, and Research Professor Peter Potapov are interested in using GEDI data to get a better picture of how forests have changed over time.

In late 2020, a $12.75 million grant paid for by the Bezos Earth Fund fueled that interest further. The grant, which seeks to create satellite systems to track Earth’s changing physical landscape and related economic activity and land use from 2000 onward, was specifically awarded to

“We developed a tool to extrapolate the Hansen and Potapov’s Global Land Analysis GEDI-based forest structure measurements and Discovery (GLAD) Lab via the World using the global USGS/NASA Landsat data Resources Institute (WRI). archive and machine learning, and the Hansen said this first-of-its kind resulting global forest extent and height system will address a major problem in maps show the change of forest current land-use change mapping: area and structure from 2000 disjointed data that leads to to 2020,” Potapov said. “So far, unclear results. we’ve found that the forest area “Everybody calls forests decreased by 2.4 percent, and something different, and that the largest reduction of tall everybody maps and estimates forests was in tropical Asia and cropland differently. When you Matt Hansen South America, followed by Africa, synthesize the data, from a bottomcorresponding to the expansion of up perspective, you get very inconagriculture and agroforestry.” sistent and poor information,” “When you do global Hansen said. monitoring like this, you get Through the “Land & an internally consistent story,” Carbon Lab” project with WRI, Hansen said. “You can compare the GLAD Lab’s research faculty, apples to apples in order to see postdocs, analysts, graduate Peter Potapov who is deforesting the most, who students and student interns aim is making the most improvement and to solve that issue by late 2025. They’re reducing deforestation, or who is convertdownloading GEDI data and other satellite ing the most wetlands.” information, then are reviewing, correcting More information on the economic and identifying signals for certain land covchanges related to the land-use changes ers and uses. identified by the GLAD Lab will be provided The team is then applying algorithms

by WRI. WRI is also tasked with providing that allow them to more automatically and information on associated carbon emissions. accurately map these changes over time.

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setting some rules to get good results

ince serving as GEDI mission research scientists, Assistant Professor Laura Duncanson and Associate Research Professor John Armston have ensured that the data provided by GEDI doesn’t further complicate the climate change conversation.

Just before GEDI’s launch, Duncanson and Armston created a “biomass protocol” document that provides researchers from around the world with a list of best practices for using GEDI and similar instrument data to create biomass estimates. Biomass is the living material—a.k.a. carbon—that lives within vegetation. The more carbon that is stored in forests, the better, as the

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carbon released from deforestation is a significant climate change contributor.

Duncanson and Armston hypothesized that if GEDI was providing new data, without new guidelines for its use, there would be John Armston too many international researchers creating too many biomass products—and no easy way for decision-makers to know which estimates are most accurate.

“We realized pretty quickly that researchers were just going to confuse everybody

mapping forests on the ground ... and in maryland

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rofessor George Hurtt and Research Professor Michelle Hofton, GEDI co-investigators, are taking on GEDI-fueled projects that hit a little closer to home.

Hofton is collecting lidar measurements from airplanes through the Land, Vegetation, and Ice Sensor (LVIS), a 3D data collection method that preceded GEDI and, Hofton explained, “built the data community and got people familiar with what data products GEDI would put out.”

Maryland; then Maryland, Pennsylvania and “LVIS is an airborne facility run by NASA Delaware; then the 11-state region spanning that collects lidar data just like GEDI,” Virginia to Maine; and now the nation and Hofton said. “What we’ve done with LVIS globe using GEDI. in recent years is fly on GEDI tracks and “But we aren’t just mapping forest collect calibration and validation data for carbon now,” Hurtt said. “We are GEDI, so that when we intercomusing that information in compare the two, we can use it to puter models to explain past improve the GEDI data precichanges, and to quantify how sion and accuracy for people much carbon our forests can to use in biomass estimation.” absorb in the future.”

Since 2019, LVIS has underAt COP26, Maryland flown GEDI tracks in North George Hurtt Department of the Environment Carolina’s Coweeta Experimental Secretary Ben Grumbles Forest, Costa Rica’s La Selva announced the state would Biological Station, West Africa’s be using these new data French Guinea, and other parts as an official forest carbon of the Eastern United States. In data source. Undergraduate late 2022, Hofton plans to fly students have been granted over Papua New Guinea and funds to implement this Indonesia for another GEDI same system on campus, too, calibration-validation project.

Michelle Hofton through the Campus Forest Hurtt is no stranger to LVIS, Carbon Project Hurtt has also or to aircraft lidar data. Before GEDI, helped create.

Hurtt and Dubayah used high resolution “It’s a microcosm of what we are aircraft lidar data to map how much forest trying to do for the state of Maryland, carbon was stored in Anne Arundel County which in turn is a microcosm of what we and Howard County in Maryland. are trying to do for the country, and world From there came additional projects using GEDI,” Hurtt said. to map forest carbon across the state of

Earthdata Dashboard: a user-friendly web by using GEDI and other satellite data to platform through which discrepancies put out many different products that all are resolved, and harmonized have a little bit of a different flavor, estimates of biomass created. a little bit of a different approach At last fall’s 26th annual to answering the question, and United Nations Climate that all quantify uncertainties Change Conference (COP26), differently,” Duncanson said.

Duncanson debuted the site “We wanted to have everyone to the highly exclusive list of follow the same methods for Laura attending global leaders, showing validating them so at least that Duncanson them the latest mismatched maps would be consistent.” and explaining their hope of creating a site Their “Aboveground Woody Biomass Product Validation Good Practices Protocol” where visitors, especially policymakers, was published in March 2021. A few months can easily extract information and make informed decisions. later, the protocol inspired the Biomass

Since then, Armston and Duncanson have developed algorithms that convert GEDI data into biomass estimates. In late 2021, they created one—as explained in a Remote Sensing of Environment journal article earlier this spring—capable of measuring how much aboveground carbon is found in the world’s forests.

“GEDI doesn’t measure biomass, it measures vegetation height and cover,” Armston said. “That paper describes how we convert those estimates to biomass using relationships between structure and mass, and how we model that relationship over the whole globe.”

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College of Behavioral and Social Sciences: Be the Solution | 9

Opening New Doors

BSOS students may now choose from more career-enhancing programs, offerings

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hile much of the world put projects on pause because of the COVID-19 pandemic, BSOS moved forward with a new mix of undergraduate and graduate program offerings—all of which are now open for enrollment.

We talked to program directors about the five educational opportunities they helped to introduce to the college, from a “long-timecoming” undergraduate major in neuroscience to an innovative way for students to show potential employers their skills.

Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience

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he university has offered the graduate Program in Neuroscience and Cognitive Science since 1996.

Recently, demand for a standalone undergraduate major in neuroscience has grown.

“Vice President for Research Gregory Ball, dean of BSOS at that time, came to us from Johns Hopkins University, and his involvement with undergraduate neuroscience there encouraged him to push to make sure one was established here at UMD,” said Dr. Hilary Bierman, PSYC '01, director of the Undergraduate Program in Neuroscience. “Dr. Ball, along with Dean Amitabh Varshney of the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences, and many faculty and staff members made it happen.”

The program was established in fall of 2020 as a Limited Enrollment Program, and the major has already attracted about 240 students, providing them “with a knowledge base in neuroscience and related fields, exposure to research strategies and techniques, training in scientific reasoning and critical thinking, and the development of effective professional scientific communication skills,” Bierman said.

In addition to learning the fundamentals of the field, students must take at least five courses from one of two approved tracks: the Behavioral and Cognitive Track, or the Molecular, Cellular and Physiological Track.

Photo by iStock

“Options within our curriculum can prepare our students for graduate Ph.D. or Psy.D. programs, or medical school. However, we know—and appreciate—that these are not the only, or necessarily the best options for many neuroscience majors,” Bierman said. “We are cultivating citizen-scientists who appreciate the wonders of the nervous system, think critically, and promote scientific approaches to problems.”

BSOS Online Learn more at neur.umd.edu

Master of Professional Studies in Security and Terrorism Studies

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equests from students enrolled in the Graduate Certificate in Terrorism Analysis offered by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) drove the decision to create the new Master of Professional Studies in Security and Terrorism Studies.

Marcus Boyd, START’s director of graduate studies, said that after looking into similar programs offered in the D.C. area, the program’s development team “realized there was a significant gap in educational opportunities for analysts and practitioners.”

To meet that need, members of START’s leadership team consulted students, the Office of Extended Studies, and numerous BSOS faculty members before launching the program in fall 2021.

“We want them to come out of the program thinking like social scientists, critically examining the information they have before them and synthesizing it in innovative, methodologically rigorous ways,” said Boyd of the roughly 40 students enrolled in the program. “For example, we want our students to understand what motivates bad actors—whether they are terrorists, non-state actors like transnational criminal organizations, or state actors—and identify strategies to counter those actors.”

Photo by Shutterstock

The 1- to 2-year program is hosted through the university’s Graduate School and is offered entirely online, enabling student enrollment from around the world.

BSOS Online Learn more at go.umd.edu/MPSsecurityterrorism

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Applied Political Analytics (B.A. + M.S., or M.S.)

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nitiated by Professor Margaret Pearson of the Department of Government and Politics (GVPT), and by Professor Frauke Kreuter of the Joint Program in Survey Methodology (JPSM), the new 4+1 and standalone M.S. in Applied Political Analytics (APAN) launched in early 2020, led by Director Candace Turitto.

The program’s first cohort includes 14 students; half on the B.A. + M.S. degree track, and half working toward their M.S. “Most advanced political science degrees are Master of Arts programs,” Turitto said. “Even in the industry, firms and organizations who do incorporate data analysis into their decisions often have to partition these tasks. They have one person or team that collects and cleans the data and runs some statistical tests, then another person or team who interprets what that all means and can communicate that conclusion clearly without living in the weeds of statistics and ‘math talk.’”

APAN graduates will be equipped to both collect data and interpret it in a compelling way.

The share of program credits dedicated to advanced political science and data science are equally split: 18 and 18, respectively.

During their final year, students complete a major project in a program course of their choosing, a requirement that intends to give students hands-on, career-like experience.

The first cohort of APAN students are learning to incorporate data analysis into their research and professional practice.

“Walking into an interview with the patience, tools, and theoretical foundation to take a political question and thoroughly answer it from start to finish is rare, and that will make our graduates stand apart,” Turitto said.

BSOS Online Learn more at go.umd.edu/APAN

Bachelor of Science in Social Data Science

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SOS and the College of Information Studies (iSchool) launched a new social data science major in February. The program—which ultimately requires students to complete a capstone project—equips graduates with the skills needed to appropriately collect, analyze and interpret data about people.

Previously, the only way to gain social data science training at the undergraduate level was through concentrations in computer science and business, plus piecing together certain iSchool and BSOS courses.

“There is a lot more that is possible in terms of data collection today,” said Co-Director Brian Kim, an assistant research professor in JPSM. “Now you can collect data through online surveys or surveys on smartphones, and there are different ways of analyzing that data—and, most importantly, different ways to handle that data in terms of privacy, ethics, bias, fairness and equity.”

Classes covering just that—but not necessarily calculus, to be inclusive of students whose quantitative backgrounds are still developing—will be accompanied by social science classes in a track of students’ choosing. Students may focus on African American studies, anthropology, economics, geographical sciences and GIS, government and politics and international relations, psychology, sociology or—coming in fall 2023—public health.

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Photo by iStock

“Students who are willing to invest the time and energy can accomplish their academic and professional goals in social data science, even if they did not have access to upper-level math courses earlier in their academic careers,” said Associate Dean Katherine Russell.

BSOS Online Learn more at sdsc.umd.edu

Bilingual Speech-Language Pathology for Practitioners (Post-Master’s Certificate)

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or José Ortiz, co-director of the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences’ new Post-Master’s Certificate in Bilingual Speech-Language Pathology for Practitioners, creating the program was personal.

“As an early-career speech-language pathologist, I did not have a good sense of the best approach to working with bilingual clients, and there is a lot more to bilingual service delivery than simply being proficient in a language other than English,” said Ortiz, who is also the director of the department’s Language-Learning EarlyAdvantage Program (LEAP) Preschool. “There are very few programs set up to provide practicing clinicians with the knowledge and skills needed to provide services to clients from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, and we are starting this program with the goal of moving our field forward.”

Ortiz and department leadership designed the certificate’s 12-credit curriculum and created three of its four required courses.

Ortiz also created languagediversity.org, a site that deepens course content and enables discussion by providing clinicians with potentially helpful research, interviews, and other tools.

The certificate—which became available this spring to all individuals with a graduate degree in speech-language pathology, regardless of whether they are bilingual or monolingual—can be completed in 12 months.

José Ortiz, co-director of the new Bilingual Speech-Language Pathology for Practitioners program, with LEAP Preschool students.

“For practicing clinicians, this is a unique opportunity to gain skills that are essential for working with clients from diverse linguistic backgrounds,” Ortiz said. “This will result in a substantial benefit to our clinicians, as well as the communities that they serve.”

BSOS Online Learn more at go.umd.edu/bilingualSLP

Digital Generalist (Badge)

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ince April, GVPT and Geographical Sciences (GEOG) undergraduate students have been able to earn a “Digital Generalist” badge that signals their ability to demonstrate knowledge and skills in six data science categories: analytics; probability and descriptive and inferential statistics; manipulation; visualization and communication; ethics; and data security.

The badge, which can be added to students’ resumes and LinkedIn profiles, was developed to help students better market their skills to employers.

The employer coalition known as the Greater Washington Partnership (GWP) established the Capital CoLab to work with academic partners to identify students who can help fill the many positions available in the Washington, D.C. area’s digital tech sectors.

The long-term goal is to offer this opportunity to all BSOS students, with the first badges being offered to GVPT and GEOG students because the majors’ required coursework is already

significantly aligned with employers’ identified needs.

There are just a few BSOS students participating in the pilot program of the digital tech credential badge so far. The program was designed to ensure that there is a clear benefit to students earning the “Digital Generalist” badge through increased internships, scholarships, and job placements with GWP employers.

“This is one way for students to better articulate their skills to employers, and a way to help employers understand that many BSOS students have the data science and technical skills that employers need, along with social science, communication, crosscultural skills and more,” Russell said.

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BSOS Online Learn more at badging.umd.edu

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Building a Diverse Pipeline of Scholars Gift from SRI Founder Robert Steele to Support Two 2022 Scholars

The 2018 SRI cohort

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Since its inception in 1999, the BSOS Summer Research Initiative (SRI) has successfully encouraged students from underrepresented minority groups to engage in social and behavioral science research, and to pursue graduate degrees in related fields. The SRI has become a strong pipeline to encourage talented undergraduates on the path to graduate school, and toward distinguished careers in fields including academia.

ow, a generous $6,000 gift from Dr. Robert “Bob” Steele, a former BSOS associate dean, will support two of the 12 to 14 scholars selected to participate in this year’s iteration of the program that he helped to establish more than 20 years ago.

“The SRI is one of the college’s most effective programs dedicated to recruiting, guiding and supporting talented students who are members of underrepresented minority groups,” said Interim Dean Wayne McIntosh. “We are thankful to Dr. Steele for his ongoing support of the program that he initiated and built. His commitment inspires our community, and helps to ensure the future success of our scholars.”

The now college-wide program—hosting juniors and seniors who are members of underrepresented minority groups in a house on UMD’s Fraternity Row for an intensive, 8-week living-learning research apprenticeship—was born out of Steele’s observation that the undergraduates in his faculty department, the Department of Psychology, were struggling to get into Ph.D. programs.

After witnessing success in Psychology, the BSOS dean at that time, Irwin “Irv” Goldstein, asked Steele to expand the program to the rest of the college—a task Steele knew would require buy-in from multiple entities if the program were to last.

Steele managed to get an initial shared commitment to the program split between the Office of the Dean, the Office of the Provost, and the participating BSOS departments. Today, the Graduate School and the Office of the Vice President for Research also help support the SRI, and the program has been emulated by others across campus as well.

Highlights of the program have included field trips to D.C. agencies and points of interest, research projects conducted by SRI scholars with support from faculty mentors, and a final poster session where scholars present their research to their peers and to the public.

“Bob built it to last,” said Assistant Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Kim Nickerson, who has directed the SRI since 2006. “He didn’t just whimsically say ‘Let’s try this this year, and maybe we will try something else next year.’ He really was

“These students had the grades and recommendations, but they were lacking in hands-on experience.”

– Dr. Robert Steele

An SRI scholar presents her research at a poster session in 2020.

thoughtful in trying to build the program so that it could be sustainable, and sustained.”

Beginning in 2007, a six-year Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate grant from the National Science Foundation helped BSOS bolster the program, allowing the duration of the program to lengthen from six weeks to eight. This support also helped to elevate the program's reputation.

Today, the program’s annual applicant pool ranges from 300 to 600 undergraduate students from institutions nationwide, including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.

“I always tip my hat to Bob because he did something that needed to be done,” Nickerson said. “He said, ‘We have a great college with great researchers throughout. We ought to bring minorities to our campus to do research in the summer, and maybe we can recruit them into our graduate programs.’ And that’s exactly what the SRI has done.”

The SRI program was a transformative experience for William Bishop, a participant of the 2016 cohort who is now working toward his Ph.D. in American Politics within the college. It’s also the program through which Bishop met Department of Government and Politics Professor Mike Hanmer, who helped him participate last fall in a news polling fellowship with The Washington Post.

“I had a great experience working with my mentor, Dr. Antoine Banks, for that summer, and that’s really the reason I came back to the University of Maryland,” said Bishop. “I

SRI Online The 2022 SRI is back in-person after a two-year virtual hiatus caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. To learn more about SRI scholars and activities, visit go.umd.edu/bsossri.

BSOS Diversity Fund The BSOS Diversity Fund was established to support the diversity initiatives and programming within BSOS, including the SRI. Learn more and donate at go.umd.edu/bsosdiversityfund.

felt that the Department of Government and Politics was somewhere where faculty was doing research that I was interested in, and I felt supported there. It was pretty easy for me to decide to come back.”

Helping students make decisions about their future that, in turn, can help to solve some of the world’s greatest challenges is exactly why Steele continues to give to the BSOS SRI program.

“One of my operating principles is that if you want to talk about expanding research into issues around social justice and issues that impact the psychosocial needs of minorities, you have to have people who mirror those experiences,” he said. “My hope is that these students will see this as a career path for them, and that the program will continue to provide them with the support they need to make that possible.”

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College of Behavioral and Social Sciences: Be the Solution | 15

UMD Researchers Travel to Kenya to Continue Innovative Kinship Study Richardson Named among Inaugural Cohort of MPower Professors

Professor Sangeetha Madhavan, fourth from right, visited Kenya in February to conduct training for an ongoing study on kinship and child well-being.

PROFESSOR AND CHAIR SANGEETHA MADHAVAN of the Department of African American Studies (AFAM), Associate Research Scientist Michael Wagner of AFAM, and colleagues in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and in the School of Public Health—along with their Kenyan collaborators—have started data collection for Wave 1 of the JAMO project. JAMO is the Swahili acronym for the Kinship, Nuptiality and Child Outcomes project.

Supported by a $3.2 million grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the project measures “marriage as a process,” the contours of kinship support, and the implications for children’s health and well-being in densely populated communities in Nairobi.

After spending the first year working on Zoom developing and testing all the instruments, the entire research team gathered in person in Nairobi in February. During the intensive two-week training, Madhavan and colleagues worked with the local interviewers to ensure that everyone understood how to administer the survey.

“We are incredibly lucky to have an amazing data collection team who not only know the context inside out, but truly understand the goals of the project,” Madhavan said.

The UMD researchers also spent a couple of days in the field sites, sitting in on interviews and getting familiar with the communities. In the first wave, the team will collect data from 1,250 mothers, their young children and kin.The work is expected to last until mid-June, after which preparations will begin for Wave 2 later in 2022.

This important work sheds light on how families balance work, education and the needs of children, while facing the challenges of poverty.

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FOUR PROFESSORS from the University of Maryland, College Park and four professors from the University of Maryland, Baltimore were chosen as the inaugural MPower Professors. Joel and Kim Feller Professor of African American Studies and of Anthropology Joseph Richardson was included in this distinguished cohort. This award from the University of Maryland Strategic Partnership: MPowering the State recognizes, incentivizes, and fosters faculty collaborations between the universities.

Richardson also is a professor in the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

Richardson directs the Transformative Research and Applied Violence Intervention Lab. His research focuses on gun violence, violence and trauma among African American boys and young men, incarceration as a social determinant of health, and parenting for low-income African American male youth. He utilizes the busiest trauma centers in Maryland as his research labs to investigate gun violence, trauma and the effectiveness of hospital-based violence intervention programs.

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Putting HPV Pain to Paper DURING A 2019 TRIP TO KENYA to train peer educators to conduct research on the government’s HIV rapid-test rollout, a trainee told Assistant Professor Matthew Thomann of the Department of Anthropology how the end-of-life AIDS patients at the care center—which also served human papillomavirus (HPV) patients—were tired of being kept awake all night listening to HPV patients cry, scream and writhe in pain.

Moved by such suffering, Thomann today is serving on the frontlines of Kenya’s fight against this sexually transmitted infection that first presents as warts, but can progress into various forms of cancer.

Supported by a $40,000 Fulbright Scholar award, Thomann is on a mission to understand typical HPV patient trajectories among Kenyan men who have sex with men (MSM) and transgender women—from those with mild cases healed by topical cream to those who require surgery to remove obstructive anal warts—and also to document how their pain is managed.

“We don’t really talk about pain in the Global South,” said Thomann, who worked in Nairobi in the spring. “Analgesics, morphine, muscle relaxers, basic things we would expect in a post-surgical situation are scant,” and minor conditions that might be dealt with easily in places like the United States progress until they require surgery in Kenya.

Treatment for HPV isn’t easy to come by in Kenya—especially for MSM and transgender women, he said. Because homosexual acts are illegal there, there are few clinicians willing to treat people with anal warts, and many sufferers refuse to seek treatment until the warts intrude on their daily lives.

As a result, many patients present with tissue death, or even sepsis—a potentially deadly reaction to severe infection. Add in the COVID-19 pandemic, which canceled HPV surgeries from early 2020 to January 2022, and Thomann is seeing extreme cases during his overnight observations of patients.

Assistant Professor Matthew Thomann (right) and research assistant John Maina stand outside the recovery center in Nairobi, Kenya, where they help HPV patients.

While he waits for the official green light to conduct interviews with willing patients, Thomann helps however he can.

He prepares high-fiber meals, answers questions about medications, and prepares post-surgery salt baths. He also helps patients physically and mentally ease into a treatment many of them fear will be agonizing.

Thomann is set to leave in late June, but said his work won’t stop there. He hopes to develop a better understanding of why marginalized groups in Kenya lack access to painkillers, and ultimately, to help establish an HPV vaccine program.

Changing mindsets about the HPV vaccine and pain management won’t be easy, but he said it could be life-changing for many.

“People handle pain differently, they express pain differently, but we all feel it,” Thomann said.

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College of Behavioral and Social Sciences: Be the Solution | 17

Study Finds Black Offenders More Likely than White Offenders to be Eligible for Life Sentences A STUDY PUBLISHED in Criminology by researchers at UMD and at Arizona State University finds that Black and Hispanic offenders were more likely to be eligible for life sentences under federal sentencing guidelines, but not more likely to receive life sentences.

Photo by Irina Sitnikova courtesy of the School of Public Policy

UMD Research Focuses on Improving Police-Community Relationships in Baltimore

The study analyzed seven years of federal sentencing data to investigate the associations between life sentences in federal courts and race/ethnicity.

A TEAM OF UMD RESEARCHERS was awarded a $370,000 grant from Arnold Ventures, with additional funds from the Abell Foundation, for a project to inform policymaking on the allocation of responsibilities between the police and other agencies in Baltimore. The goal is to help reduce crime and to improve police-community relationships.

“Two out of three people serving life terms are defendants of color, and Professor Brian our study raises additional Johnson concerns about the extent to which life sentences are impacted by racial bias,” said Professor Brian D. Johnson of CCJS, the lead author.

The project is a collaboration between researchers affiliated with the Maryland Crime Research and Innovation Center, which has links to the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice (CCJS) and the School of Public Policy. Distinguished University Professor Peter Reuter, who has appointments in both units, leads the research team. His Co-PIs include Brooklynn Hitchens, Greg Midgette, and Lauren Porter in CCJS, and Thomas Luke Spreen in Public Policy.

The team will start by conducting interviews and focus groups with residents to better understand what the police do—or do not do—that might be distressing, and their perceptions of how the police could do their jobs differently. The project team will also cultivate relationships with a variety of community organizations to ensure that the full range of community perspectives are represented in the study.

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BSOS Online Read more at go.umd.edu/policecommunity

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Johnson and his colleagues analyzed data on more than 366,000 non-immigration offenders convicted and sentenced in 90 federal district courts from 2010 to 2017. They considered the demographic and legal factors associated with eligibility for life sentences, as well as the factors that shape judicial decisions to impose such sentences.

The researchers also examined intermediate punishment processes that may indirectly contribute to racial disparity.

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BSOS Online Read more at go.umd.edu/sentencingstudy

Economics Leadership Council Establishes Department’s First Mentoring Program HELPING STUDENTS IN THE Department of Economics become career-ready is a founding principle of the Economics Leadership Council (ELC), an alumni service organization that launched in 2018. The ELC recently funded two new positions and established the department’s first mentoring program.

“I’m thrilled to give back and delighted that the ELC has been able to help seed impactful, student-focused initiatives,” said ELC member Tom Teles, ECON ’92, a retired partner of Goldman Sachs Asset Management.

“We feel it’s essential to provide our students with the best career opportunities,” said Neil Moskowitz, ECON ’80, an ELC member and recipient of the BSOS Distinguished Alumnus Award.

The ELC created a Career Outreach Strategist position, as well as a Graduate Assistant position. Ronda Ansted, who runs Be the Change Career Consulting, was selected for the former. She has added multiple career and internship resources sections to the department website for students, alumni and potential employers; organized a mix of in-person and virtual “Economics Employers Pop-Up Shops”; and manages a newsletter sharing information on how alumni use their degrees.

Ansted has also played a big role in the ELC’s latest endeavor, a program through which alumni “ELC Affiliates” are assigned undergraduates to mentor for one academic year.

Risha Baxi, a junior economics and government and politics double major who is mentored by Ellen McGeoch, ECON ’10, is especially grateful for being one of the 27 students selected to participate in the new mentoring program.

“I wanted to be a mentee because, especially through COVID, it’s been difficult to explore different career paths,” Baxi said.

“Working with Ellen has been rewarding because she’s talked to me a lot about her experiences entering the workforce as an ECON major during a recession, and taught me about many different areas she pursued post-undergrad, which has helped me narrow down a few fields I want to work in.”

ECON major Risha Baxi connects with alumna Ellen McGeoch during a virtual mentoring session.

Mentors and mentees check in via Zoom to discuss resume building, interview prep and other potentially helpful life experiences.

“I was interested in joining a program where I could work with the same students over time and help them on their journey to employment, while also having the opportunity to work with leadership to create and build a scalable model for the program,” said McGeoch, a senior research and operations manager for NeuroFlow.

Scaling up the mentoring program is a long-term goal of the department that the ELC intends to support. Future goals include creating a certificate of program completion, finding additional mentors, and encouraging more students—especially first-generation college students—to participate.

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BSOS Online Learn more at go.umd.edu/EconomicsLeadershipCouncil

College of Behavioral and Social Sciences: Be the Solution | 19

Professor Nakalembe Honored with the Highest Civilian Award of Uganda ASSOCIATE RESEARCH PROFESSOR CATHERINE NAKALEMBE of the Department of Geographical Sciences (GEOG) was awarded Uganda’s Highest Civilian Award, the Golden Jubilee Medal, for her efforts to improve food security in Africa. The award was presented to her parents by President of Uganda Yoweri Museveni at a ceremony in Nakalembe’s hometown, Kampala, in January.

program in Uganda that supported more than 300,000 households in the Karamoja region.

“It’s an honor to be recognized this way,” said Nakalembe, a proud Ugandan native. She serves as the Africa Program Director for NASA Harvest, a food security and agriculture program, and is a member of the NASA SERVIR Applied Sciences team, which supports local decisionmakers in addressing climate-related challenges.

Nakalembe works with national ministries and regional organizations to help their countries develop satellite data-based crop monitoring and early warning systems that forecast future crop failures. These tools enable countries like Uganda to take preventative measures against the potentially devastating consequences of crop failure.

As part of the 2017 Ph.D. she earned from UMD, Nakalembe developed the trigger mechanism of the disaster risk financing

Story by Catherine Miranda courtesy of the Department of Geographical Sciences

Examining the Global Impact of Americans’ Diets A STUDY PUBLISHED in Nature Food by Dr. Giovanni Baiocchi and fellow GEOG researchers Dr. Kuishuang Feng and Dr. Laixiang Sun, Pan He at Cardiff University, and Klaus Hubacek at University of Groningen confirmed what many might already suspect—that wealthier Americans tend to eat less sugar and more meats, dairy and fruits, but have a worse impact on the environment.

The researchers also found that making dietary changes could decrease foodrelated greenhouse gas emissions by 2%, land use by 24%, and energy consumption by 4%; these changes are technically within budget for 95% of Americans. It is not, however, something easily achieved by 38% of

Using satellite data that monitors crops and guides agricultural decision-making in countries that are vulnerable to drought and food insecurity, Nakalembe has developed a food security and crop monitoring bulletin for Uganda, as well as Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda and Eastern Africa.

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Black and Latinx individuals in the lowest income and education groups.

“For the poorest households, nutritious food affordability can be increased by targeted income support in combination with nutritional assistance,” Sun said. “The current regulatory and policy frameworks in the food sector can also be revised to support healthier diets and set up adequate monitoring and accountability systems to ensure compliance.”

If people can afford to have a healthier diet with less environmental impact, the research team says they should be encouraged to improve their diet and have a lower impact on the environment. The changes would not be without challenges.

“How do we overcome cultural barriers, and how do we motivate people to switch?”

Baiocchi asked.

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Image by iStock

BSOS Online Read more at go.umd.edu/dietstudy

Image by Jenny on the Moon via iStock

Study Shows Female Candidates Increase Voter Turnout—Under Certain Circumstances A STUDY PUBLISHED IN Political Behavior on women in politics, by women who study it, has established a connection between the number of female candidates who run for office and the number of people who show up to vote—at least under certain circumstances.

Professor Stella Rouse, Ph.D. candidate SoRelle Wyckoff Gaynor, and recent Ph.D. graduate Alauna Safarpour of the Department of Government and Politics, along with Georgetown University’s Professor Michele L. Swers, specifically found that in a gendered political environment, female candidates brought more voters out to the polls.

“This research shows that female candidates can mobilize voters—including those less likely to vote, like young people—but that this mobilizing effect is dependent on political context,” said Rouse, noting that the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the Women’s March were front and center during the 2018 election cycle. “We found that during a non-gendered electoral context, the 2014 midterms, female candidates did not have a mobilizing effect.”

To demonstrate this outcome, the researchers used voter file data to ensure that their results weren’t “affected by overreporting of voting, which is often the case with surveys,” and studied the 2014 and 2018 general and primary elections in Pennsylvania and Washington, as both states had multiple female candidates run in both years.

In their analyses, the researchers found that both states saw an increase in general election voter turnout from 2014 to 2018: Pennsylvania by 3.7% and Washington by 1.7%. In Pennsylvania’s 2018 primary election, there was a 0.6% increase in Democratic voter turnout—those eligible to vote in the closed primary. In Washington’s 2018 primary, female candidates increased voter turnout by slightly over 1%.

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Tom Perez, Faculty Discuss American Politics at Feller Lecture FORMER SECRETARY OF LABOR and former Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez, a Maryland gubernatorial candidate, was the featured speaker of the Feller Lecture on April 21 in the Adele H. Stamp Student Union.

Perez engaged in a timely discussion on American politics, bipartisanship and identity politics with Assistant Professor Chryl Laird and Professor Janelle Wong of the Tom Perez Department of Government and Politics.

The Feller Lecture was established by a generous donation from alumni Joel J. Feller, GVPT ’90, and Kim A. Feller, ’89, longtime supporters of UMD and of BSOS. The first Feller Lecture was held in 2018 and featured Chuck Todd, moderator of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” and noted journalist Mike Viqueira, GVPT ’86. The 2021 Feller Lecture, held virtually, featured Rep. Eric Swalwell, GVPT ’03, (D-Calif. 15).

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BSOS Online Watch the Feller Lecture and more at youtube.com/bsosumd

BSOS Online Read more at go.umd.edu/womeninpolitics

College of Behavioral and Social Sciences: Be the Solution | 21

Personal Audio Reimagined UMD RESEARCHERS HAVE DEVELOPED NEW technologies that allow TVs, headphones and other audio devices to be customized to users’ unique hearing needs and abilities.

The technologies are part of the RealSpace 3D digital sound simulation suite developed by VisiSonics, a spatial audio technology company in the university’s Discovery District, led by Professor Ramani Duraiswami of the Department of Computer Science and of UMD’s Institute for Advanced Computer Studies.

VisiSonics’ newest technology is one that takes audio personalization to another dimension.

“It’s one thing to measure what’s going into the ears; it’s another to understand what’s going on within the ear and the brain,” said Professor Matthew Goupell of the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences.

Goupell received $10,000 in Photo by Mason Levinson, ’92 Phase I funding from VisiSonics and $90,000 from the Maryland Industrial Partnerships program to work with the company to develop a remote hearing test that would allow audio experiences to be optimized according to a user’s hearing ability.

The test—an audiogram—measures hearing at various frequencies and allows hearing scientists to not only identify whether a person might have hearing loss, but also why they might struggle to understand certain speech sounds and not others.

In his Auditory Perception and Modeling Lab, Goupell and audiology graduate student Sarah Weinstein have been conducting the experiments that enable VisiSonics to deliver a highly accurate, remote audiogram assessment through an application that can be used on mobile devices or computers.

In March, they received another $100,000 in Phase II funding from VisiSonics and the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute to make the audio in podcasts, movies, games and other entertainment even more understandable for listeners.

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BSOS Online Read more at go.umd.edu/audiogram

22 | College of Behavioral and Social Sciences: Be the Solution

Dr. Nicole Nguyen (right) works with graduate students to offer services in the Hearing and Speech Clinic.

On-Campus Hearing Clinic Opens Doors to the Privately Insured THE HEARING AND SPEECH CLINIC in LeFrak Hall has long offered free hearing screenings. Now, some individuals identified by those screenings as requiring additional, comprehensive evaluations no longer have to pay for these services out of pocket, as the clinic accepts payment from the university’s preferred Blue Cross Blue Shield and United Healthcare insurance plans. The clinic also continues to accept Medicare and Medicaid.

The clinic can now help to improve more individuals’ quality of life, and to provide a higher-quality learning experience for the department’s graduate students, said Dr. Nicole Nguyen, associate clinical professor and director of clinical audiology in the Department of Hearing and Speech Sciences.

“Our clinic is a teaching facility for our graduate students, so we wanted to make sure that they see a wide range of different types of patients from different socioeconomic backgrounds and parts of the local community that are more representative of the general population,” Nguyen said.

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BSOS Online Learn more at hespclinic.umd.edu

JPSM Director Partha Lahiri Receives Small Area Estimation Award THE SMALL AREA ESTIMATION (SAE) Award Committee selected Partha Lahiri, director of the Joint Program in Survey Methodology (JPSM) for its 2020 SAE Award. The global award recognizes “an individual who has made outstanding contribution to the research, application, and education of small area estimation.”

63rd International Statistical Institute World Statistics Congress.

Lahiri is a professor in both JPSM and in the Department of Mathematics in the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences, and is affiliated with the Maryland Population Research Center (MPRC), Social Data Science Center (SoDa), and the Maryland Transportation Institute. He also is an adjunct research professor at the Institute of Social Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

“In recent years, there is a growing demand from different survey organizations to use SAE for the production of reliable granular level statistics.

SAE essentially uses statistical models to extract information from multiple existing survey and big data sources, and hence is much more cost effective than traditional methods that require new data collection,” Lahiri said. “I am truly honored to receive this prestigious award and to join a select, elite group of past SAE award winners.”

Lahiri also is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association and of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics, and is an elected member of the International Statistical Institute.

UMD is scheduled to play host to the next international SAE annual conference in May, in both in-person and virtual formats. The event will focus on SAE, surveys and data science.

The award was presented to Lahiri at the SAE2021 conference held virtually from Naples, Italy, in September. The SAE2021 conference was designated as the Satellite Conference of the

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BSOS Online Learn more about the SAE conference at sae2022.org

Expanded Master’s Program in Survey and Data Science

of Information Studies (see story page 10).

The major will culminate in a B.S. degree.

The social data science major will equip graduates with the skills needed to appropriately collect, analyze and interpret data about people. Procuring and processing such social data will be explained in classes covering programming, statistics, data visualization, questionnaire design and more.

IN ADDITION TO JPSM’S historical emphasis on survey design, methodology, and statistical tools for analyzing complex survey data, there is now an expanded Master’s Program in Survey and Data Science.

“We have made this important change to meet increasing demands from the federal statistical system and the private sector to expand their survey and data science capabilities,” Director Partha Lahiri said.

The M.S. in Survey and Data Science offers three specializations: Survey Statistics,

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Image by iStock Social and Psychological Science, and Data Science.

JPSM also played a key role in the launch of a new social data science undergraduate major offered by BSOS and by the College

BSOS Online Learn more about the Master’s Program in Survey and Data Science at jpsm.umd.edu Learn more about the social data science undergraduate major at sdsc.umd.edu

College of Behavioral and Social Sciences: Be the Solution | 23

UMD Graduate Students Create AI-Powered Tool to Extract Threatening Language A PAPER PUBLISHED in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences introduces a new online tool that can help users determine what share of a speech, article or other text uses threatening language.

Led by Virginia Choi, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Psychology (PSYC), the paper outlines how she, PSYC Ph.D. student Xinyue Pan, former PSYC professor Michele Gelfand, and Snehesh Shrestha, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science, created a 240-word “threat dictionary.” The process feeds Wikipedia articles, Twitter posts and randomized web pages through an AI-powered word-embedding model that draws comparisons between words with the same meaning.

The team chose those platforms to ensure that they could capture what threatening words are used in both formal and informal contexts.

“In the past, people would use subject-matter experts to come up with a list of words that capture the psychological construct of interest; they would bring people together who know a lot about it, go through the literature on it, and go from there.

That’s a ‘closed room’ process that might not really reflect how people talk about something,” Choi said. “Using word-embedding models, overall, you are sampling more of the way people are talking about things, correctly.”

To ensure the words they came up with could truly communicate varying levels of threat depending on the words used as well as their frequency, the team uploaded historical documents to an analytical tool to see whether an increased prevalence of threatening language matched with particularly turbulent times in U.S. history.

“It took a lot of work to iterate, apply, and test the dictionary to ensure validity,” said Shrestha, who built the online tool and sourced, gathered, and helped analyze data from newspapers and presidential speeches. “It is one of the first of its kind to provide an index measure of threat.”

The tool has the ability to provide insight into how threatened people were feeling during certain points in history—including history in the making, where COVID-19 is concerned.

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Illustration via iStock

“With a supervised machine learning classification test, we showed that the threat dictionary was one of the most important features in classifying whether a tweet explicitly talked about COVID-19,” said Pan, who collected and analyzed the 240,000 Twitter posts the team studied. “We also showed that—among COVID-related tweets—the use of threat words increased as the pandemic escalated, and tweets with more threat words were more likely to be retweeted.”

The researchers hope the threat dictionary will prove useful in analyzing important world events.

“We hope the threat dictionary will be of broad appeal to people across the social and computational sciences to be able to understand the contagion of threat across social media and its collective consequences,” said Gelfand, who now serves as a Professor of Organizational Behavior and Psychology at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

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BSOS Online Read more at go.umd.edu/threatdictionary

UMD, Google Unit Partner on Developing VR Training Platform for Police A NEW PARTNERSHIP between UMD and Jigsaw, a unit of Google, will create groundbreaking virtual reality (VR) training for police officers to learn and evaluate de-escalation and communication skills.

The ongoing development of Jigsaw’s “Trainer” platform includes new studies and input from four higher education institutions, including UMD’s Lab for Applied Social Science Research. The lab is led by sociology Professor Rashawn Ray, who serves as this project’s co-principal investigator, along with Assistant Professor Long Doan.

“This program is going to completely revolutionize police training, to put officers in a safe environment where they can aim to get better and more objective,” Ray said.

Interactions between police and the general public and the disproportionately fatal consequences suffered by Black Americans have become major flashpoints following the deaths of Freddie Gray in Baltimore, Breonna Taylor in Louisville and George Floyd in Minneapolis, among others.

Jigsaw developed Trainer in consultation with experts from across academia, law enforcement and civil rights groups.

Trainees can don a VR headset and controllers to interact with digital environments and avatars. Participants can move objects like a baseball bat out of a house and conduct interviews while supervisors watch and keep track of their performance.

The research team is excited about using cutting-edge technology to try to solve not only a social problem, but a research

SOCY Ph.D. candidate Connor Powelson demonstrates the innovative virtual reality program.

problem that’s been seen as insurmountable for a long time: balancing internal and external validity of studies on policing.

“Researchers have been in a Catch-22 where the real world is too messy to pinpoint racial bias, and the lab is not real enough.

This technology bridges that gap by immersing officers and creating life-like physiological and emotional responses to better mimic the real world, but still maintaining the experimental control that we as researchers like to pinpoint racial bias,” Doan said. “We’ve done some preliminary work demonstrating the effectiveness of the VR setting in measuring disparate treatment, and have some more work studying disparate treatment directly.

We hope that with this continuing relationship, we can further expand the capabilities of studying and addressing disparities in policing and in other domains.”

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Adapted story by Liam Farrell appears courtesy of Maryland Today.

BSOS Faculty Named as Distinguished University Professors THREE BSOS FACULTY MEMBERS were named among the 2021 Class of Distinguished University Professors, the highest honor that the university bestows on faculty members for scholarly and academic contributions. Congratulations to our esteemed colleagues, pictured from left to right: Katharine Abraham (ECON/JPSM/Maryland Population Research Center), Sonalde Desai (SOCY/Maryland Population Research Center) and Christopher Justice (GEOG).

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College of Behavioral and Social Sciences: Be the Solution | 25

PEACE CHAIRS NEWS

Bahá’í Chair Events, Publications Address Complex Topics Affecting the World AS THE WORLD GROWS MORE COMPLEX, the work of the Bahá’í Chair for World Peace expands in scope.

“The challenges facing the United States and the global community call for a serious examination of the roots of prejudice, racism, sexism, and discrimination of all kinds,” said Professor Hoda Mahmoudi, the holder of the Bahá’í Chair.

Along with partners in the BSOS Anti-Black Racism Initiative, the Critical Race Initiative in the Department of Sociology, the Department of African American Studies, and the School of Public Health, the Bahá’í Chair organized and co-sponsored numerous timely events this academic year. The Chair also published new books, one scholarly chapter, and two academic articles.

In September 2021, the Chair hosted the Global Climate Crisis Conference: Seeking Environmental Justice and Climate Equality.

The event featured six speakers who approached the challenge of climate change through lenses including environmental justice, public policy, urban planning, and political organizing.

Also in September, the Chair co-sponsored a symposium on Critical Race Theory: Public Debates and Teaching in the Classroom. The panel focused on the debates surrounding Critical Race Theory and described its foundation as a framework and set of tooled approaches for understanding and critiquing white supremacy.

The Chair’s Annual Lecture, held in September, featured Professor Angela McRobbie, who presented “‘Breaking the Spell of the Welfare State?’: Public Culture in Neoliberalism’s Gender Regime.” McRobbie offered a feminist perspective on how neoliberalism shapes public culture in surprising and dynamic ways.

In February, Professor Yohuru Williams delivered “Simply Because People Refuse to See: Black Lives Matter in Historical Context.” The lecture explored the history of the struggle for racial equality in the United States from the Civil Rights era through the contemporary Black Lives Matter Movement, with an exploration of key episodes and moments in U.S. history.

26 | College of Behavioral and Social Sciences: Be the Solution

Professor Hoda Mahmoudi (third from right) works with staff and students to present public events discussing the most challenging issues of the day.

Also in February, the edited volume “Fundamental Challenges to Global Peace and Security: The Future of Humanity” was published with Palgrave Macmillan. The volume addresses crucial contemporary issues in international peace and justice and showcases a range of perspectives from both scholars and practitioners.

The forthcoming edited volume “Systemic Racism in America: Sociological Theory, Education Inequality and Social Change” features renowned and thought-provoking social scientists, many of whom have been speakers at Bahá’í Chair events, to address the destructive impacts of structural racism and the recent, incendiary incidents that have driven racial injustice and racial inequality to the fore of public discussion and debate.

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BSOS Online Watch online events and learn more at bahaichair.umd.edu

PEACE CHAIRS NEWS

Sadat Forum Honors the Legacy of Dr. Jehan Sadat DR. JEHAN SADAT—an internationally renowned advocate for peace, women’s rights, and education, with strong ties to the university—died in July at the age of 87. She was the widow of former Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, who was assassinated in 1981. Dr. Sadat was instrumental in founding the Anwar Sadat Chair for Peace and Development.

Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development Shibley Telhami led a virtual Sadat Forum as a memorial for Dr. Sadat in October, with close friends and family members, as well as the former president of UMD who had helped establish the Sadat Chair, William (Brit) Kirwan.

“She was an exceptionally inspiring and admirable person in many ways,” said Sarah Marei, Dr. Sadat’s granddaughter. “She was a role model, because of her strength, and I think she was also very grounded.”

To commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, Telhami convened a virtual Sadat Forum. Former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Ryan Crocker, and Bruce Riedel, former President George W. Bush’s adviser on the Middle East on 9/11, joined Dean Amaney Jamal of Princeton’s School of International and Public Affairs to reflect on the U.S. response to 9/11 and lessons learned.

“Riedel provided previously unknown news during the event,” Telhami said. “In Riedel’s attendance, and only three days after 9/11, President Bush had declared his intent to attack Iraq, without any evidence of link to 9/11.”

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BSOS Online Watch the 9/11 Sadat Forum at go.umd.edu/sadatforum911 Watch the Remembering Jehan Sadat Forum at go.umd.edu/ RemeberingJehanSadat

Critical Issues Study Shares Americans’ Post-Capitol Attack Sentiments NEARLY ONE YEAR after the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, a UMD Critical Issues Poll study published in December provided insight on how that event impacted

Dr. Jehan Sadat, pictured at right, with the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet at the Sadat Lecture for Peace in 2013; photo by John Consoli

Americans’ feelings about the state of their democracy, as well as what citizens believe are top issues facing the country.

The study reported that Republicans (68%) and Independents (61%) expressed more dissatisfaction with the current state of U.S. democracy than Democrats (43%). However, there were some issues that a majority of respondents agreed on across parties. For example, 90% of respondents said that they were somewhat or very concerned about the spread of misinformation, with moderate and slightly conservative respondents showing that they are least likely to believe information from social media.

“The Critical Issues Poll focuses on timely issues of the day— and nothing is more timely or more important than emerging threats to our democracy, which Professor Stella Rouse and I will continue to probe,” Telhami said. “This year, we are also investigating other critical issues, such as race and racism, as well as the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”

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BSOS Online View poll results and analysis on a variety of topics at criticalissues.umd.edu

College of Behavioral and Social Sciences: Be the Solution | 27

ALUMNI AND GIVING NEWS

Donors Make a Difference for BSOS

Transformative gifts to BSOS include:

Thank you to the 383 donors who supported BSOS on Giving Day, held on March 9. During this 24-hour challenge, we raised $257,250 in support of the college, exceeding last year’s total by 167%. Our college was #3 overall on the leaderboard. Thank you for bolstering BSOS programs and initiatives!

n BSOS Board of Visitors member Joseph H. Meltzer, GVPT ’93, donated $250,000 in support of the BSOS Diversity Gift Fund and the Feller Center for Advising and Career Planning. n BSOS Board of Visitors member Steve Cooker, GVPT ’77, donated $25,000 in support of the BSOS Undergraduate Programs Fund. n The Benjamin, Mary and Maryanne Sharp Maryland Promise Scholarship was established by Dr. Benjamin C. Sharp, Jr., GVPT M.A. ’72, Ph.D. ’81, and Mary G. Sharp to support need-based scholarships for BSOS undergraduate students. n The Erek L. Barron and Family Maryland Promise Scholarship was established by the Hon. Erek L. Barron, ’96, to support needbased scholarships to undergraduate students in BSOS. n The Dr. Anat Kimchi Memorial Graduate Award in Criminal Justice was established in Dr. Kimchi’s memory by her parents, Avi Kimchi and Chava Kimchi, as well as her uncle, Kalman Shaham.

Dr. Kimchi was a beloved graduate student in CCJS. This fund supports outstanding graduate students in the department. n The C. James Dowden Endowed Student Support Fund in Government and Politics was established by Sue Dowden in loving memory of her husband, C. James Dowden, GVPT ’65, in support of GVPT students. n The Ulman Family Maryland Promise Scholarship was established by the Hon. Kenneth S. Ulman, GVPT ’97, and Jacqueline N. Ulman, GVPT ’96, to support need-based scholarships for BSOS undergraduate students.

28 | College of Behavioral and Social Sciences: Be the Solution

Fishlinger Lecture Features Congressman Jamie Raskin IN APRIL, BSOS, the Robert H. Smith School of Business and the Center for the Study of Business Ethics, Regulation and Crime (C-BERC) presented the 2022 Fishlinger Family Lecture, featuring remarks

by Congressman Jamie Raskin (D-MD).

Raskin discussed ethical leadership in business and politics.

BSOS thanks Bill Fishlinger, GVPT ’71, and Matt Fishlinger, GVPT ’07, and their families for their generous support of this annual lecture, and other C-BERC activities.

BSOS Online Watch the video at go.umd.edu/cbercraskin

ALUMNI AND GIVING NEWS

Letter from the Director of Alumni and Donor Relations Reflecting on the success of Fearless Ideas: The Campaign for Maryland, I am moved to say thank you for your support and for staying connected with BSOS during a complex time.

Please follow us via social media (Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, all @bsosumd), and visit bsos.umd.edu to learn more about:

Achieving the college’s historic campaign goal of $65 million would not have been possible without our alumni and donors.You are an important element of the BSOS community.You enhance the student experience by providing pivotal career exploration and scholarship opportunities.You support lectures and proDirector of Alumni and Donor fessorships in the name Relations Jenny Kilberg; photo by John Consoli/University of Maryland of academic excellence.

You serve as volunteers at events, in mentorship programs, and on alumni and advisory boards in support of the college’s mission.

n The incoming BSOS Alumni Chapter Board: join them at online and in-person professional development and service events this fall;

It is a pleasure to see so many of you in person, at Maryland Day, at sporting events, and online as we embraced new virtual programming. These online events include our BSOS Alumni Career Development series that provides professional development content to alumni at all stages of their careers, and our A Seat at the Table series, which features stories and lessons from BSOS alumni.

As we look ahead to another busy summer—and a new academic year—I welcome your suggestions for in-person and virtual events. I am also eager to hear your ideas for engaging our students and the newest members of our alumni community.

n Volunteering with the Feller Center for Advising and Career Planning, to share your experience and expertise with our enthusiastic BSOS students looking to connect with alumni; n Networking with other alumni at events hosted by one of the many affinity, professional, or regionally based alumni networks, including the University of Maryland Black Alumni Network, the Terp Entrepreneur Network, or the NY Terps Alumni Network; and n Elevating your alma mater by joining the University of Maryland Alumni Association. Lifetime membership impacts Maryland’s national and international rankings, raises the profile of the university, and helps us to attract the best and brightest students and faculty.

Please connect with me at jkilberg@umd.edu. I look forward to hearing from and about you.

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Go Terps!

Jenny Kilberg Director, Alumni and Donor Relations College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, University of Maryland

Office of External Relations 0145 Tydings Hall 7343 Preinkert Dr. University of Maryland College Park, MD 20742

The BSOS Diversity Fund The BSOS Diversity Fund was established to facilitate initiatives and programming related to diversity, equity and inclusion within the college.

Your gift will help our community explore and address the root causes of structural racism and social inequalities. go.umd.edu/bsosdiversityfund

Be the Solution is produced annually by the Office of External Relations, College of Behavioral and Social Sciences. For more information about this publication, or about alumni engagement and giving opportunities, please contact 301.405.3475 or bsosalumni@umd.edu.

Dr. Wayne McIntosh Interim Dean, College of Behavioral and Social Sciences

bsos.umd.edu

Laura Ewald Ours Senior Director, Communications and Marketing

/bsosumd

Kenny Beaver, ’07 Chief Development Officer Jennifer Kilberg Director, Alumni and Donor Relations

Tom Bacho Associate Director, Creative Services Rachael Grahame, Communications ’17 Assistant Director, Communications and Media Relations

We gratefully acknowledge the numerous contributions of staff members from Maryland Today and in the Office of Strategic Communications for this publication.

Covers and interior pages contain recycled content.

Philippe Mazanov, PSYC ’22 Creative Services Intern Sara Wiatrak, Multiplatform Journalism/GVPT ’22 Editorial Intern Chris Campbell Design and Production