in this issue DO GOOD PG. 2 / HISTORIC SURVEY PG. 3 / ACCOLADES PG. 3 / DROID DELIGHT PG. 6 / BOOKSHELF PG. 6 / THE WHEEL DEAL PG. 7 / BABY STEPS PG. 8
between the columns a newsletter for faculty & staff of the university of maryland OCTOBER 2016
A RESE UMD
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GETS GREAT Initiative to Advance Social Change on Campus and Beyond
ONE OF THE MOST AMBITIOUS PROJECTS in University
of Maryland history promises to amplify the power of Terps as agents of social innovation and to support the university’s mission of service. The initiative announced Sept. 22 creates the nation’s first “Do Good campus,” and establishes the Do Good Institute to serve as a hub of activity for philanthropy, nonprofit management, public policy and leadership. This program builds on the success of the School of Public Policy’s Center for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership and its Do Good Challenge. The annual competition celebrating social entrepreneurship, and related Do Good efforts have produced extraordinary results since its founding in 2012. Among them: • The founder of social venture Hungry Harvest earned $100,000 on TV’s “Shark Tank;” • Students Helping Honduras raised over $100,000, built four schools and developed a partnership between the university and communities in Honduras; • Terps Against Hunger packaged and delivered over 1 million meals to local food banks; • Food Recovery Network’s founder was named by Forbes as one of the Top 30 Social Entrepreneurs under 30. “This initiative will engage every student, from orientation to graduation, in experiences and programs that will tap their passion and prepare them for a lifetime of making an impact in the world while preparing a new generation of
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Do Good leaders,” says Robert Grimm Jr., founding director of the center, and now the institute. Through an investment of at least $75 million from individual and family gifts, state funding, and corporate and foundation grants, the university will: • Create the Do Good Institute to serve as the campuswide hub of social innovation, programs, research and thought leadership on nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations and social change; • Build a new home for the School of Public Policy and launch a Do Good Accelerator to scale up the impact of student projects and ventures participating in the Do Good Challenge; • Cultivate signature research, house the leading scholarly journal in the world in this area and hire three endowed faculty members to cement umd’s reputation as a national authority; • Develop Do Good Campus initiatives to build and strengthen research and educational collaborations with all schools and colleges. “The Do Good Initiative establishes the University of Maryland as a global leader in advancing social change, philanthropy and nonprofit leadership,” says President Wallace D. Loh. “We believe that our Do Good campus will lead to a ‘Do Good World,’ where we will have a positive impact on all of the world’s citizens.”
SURVEY TO HIGHLIGHT ASIAN AMERICANS
“ WE SEE THIS GROUP AS LIKELY HAVING A PROFOUND IMPACT ON AMERICAN SOCIETY. ”
As Election Nears, Researcher Focuses on Little-Examined Group BY LIAM FARRELL HEADING INTO THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, a UMD
researcher is investigating the civic engagement of one of the nation’s most important, yet understudied minority groups: Asian Americans. Janelle Wong, professor of American studies and director of the Asian American Studies program, is part of a team that was awarded more than $500,000 by the National Science Foundation to survey 3,600 people in 17 racial and ethnic groups using 11 Asian languages. The survey will ask Chinese, Filipino, Vietnamese, Pacific Islanders and other Asian Americans about personal experiences and attitudes related to topics like immigration, race relations and political participation. “We see this group as likely having a profound impact on American society,” Wong says.
The Asian-American population, estimated at more than 18 million, grew 46 percent between 2000 and 2010, the fastest among minorities; but despite that demographic explosion, the group lags behind whites, blacks and Hispanics in voting rates. Wong says Asian Americans’ language barriers, concentration in non-swing states and tendency to register as independent help feed a cycle of not participating—and not being encouraged to participate— in the political process. This leaves a potentially huge constituency of voters to tap into. “This is a population that is really dynamic,” she says. “They are really coming of political age right now.” Besides Wong, the team includes researchers from the University of California, Riverside; University of California, Irvine; and University of California, Berkeley. The first results are planned for release this month.
JANELLE WONG PROFESSOR OF AMERICAN STUDIES AND DIRECTOR OF THE ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES PROGRAM
ACCOLADES
MARYLAND ATHLETICS’ MARKETING DEPARTMENT was a finalist for the
2016 Marketing Team of the Year award from the National Association of Collegiate Marketing Administrators. The department won the prize in 2015.
Criminology and criminal justice Professor LAWRENCE W. SHERMAN
was appointed to Swedish knighthood by King Carl XVI Gustaf. Economics Professor
Professor NELLY STROMQUIST of the Higher Education, Student Affairs, and International Education Policy program was named an honorary fellow of the Comparative and International Education Society. JEFFREY HERRMANN, a professor
of mechanical engineering with a joint appointment in the Institute for Systems Research, received the Institute of Industrial Engineers’ 2016 iie/Joint Publishers Book of the Year Award for his textbook, “Engineering Decision Making and Risk Management.”
KATHARINE G. ABRAHAM was
appointed by President Barack Obama to serve as chair of the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking. The American Marketing Association selected MICHEL WEDEL, PepsiCo Professor of Consumer Science, for its Charles Coolidge Parlin Marketing Research Award. Professor JOHN BARAS of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering was elevated to fellow in the International Federation for Automatic Control.
Fire Protection Engineering Professor JAMES MILKE received the Society of
Fire Protection Engineers’ 2016 Arthur B. Guise Medal. DENNIS KIVLIGHAN, professor
of counseling psychology, was selected as editor of the Journal of Counseling Psychology.
FEARLESS IDEAS Every issue of Between the Columns features our students’ and faculty’s discovery of new knowledge. In this issue, we further highlight those efforts. We’ll be doing the same in future issues on our efforts to inspire Terp pride, transform the student experience and turn imagination into innovation.
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Researchers Guard Earth’s Environment BY CHRIS CARROLL
They monitor the health of oceans and forests from space. They predict when and where floods will strike, measure the likely effects of a warming climate and hunt down hidden sources of deadly pollution. These are just some of the ways that Terp scientists and scholars—working at one of the world’s leading institutions conducting research on global sustainability and climate science—stand watch over the health of the earth and its inhabitants.
ILLUSTRATION BY GABY HERNANDEZ
UNDERCOVER POLLUTERS Sulfur dioxide spews from fossil fuel-burning power plants and factories, causing breathing problems particularly for the young and old and damaging forests through acid rain. Now, using nasa satellite imagery, a researcher in umd’s Earth Systems Science Interdisciplinary Center (essic) has helped uncover dozens of unreported sources of sulfur dioxide around the world. While the United States has well-established pollution reporting mechanisms, “for many other parts of the world there is no such information,” says Can Li, essic associate scientist. “So that’s why we want to have an independent check.” All told, the sources uncovered produce 12 percent of all human-made sulfur dioxide emissions.
expected result of climate change—more bouts of extreme heat and rain—should significantly increase future rates of salmonella infection, hitting coastal dwellers particularly hard. “The risk is not equally distributed,” Amir Sapkota says. “Adaptation strategies at local and national levels need to account for differential burdens of infectious disease associated with climate change.”
FOREST GUARDIANS
BEE AWARE Honeybees are struggling, with parasites, disease and other factors contributing to 44 percent of colonies dying off in 2015–16, a higher rate than in the previous years. We know the scope of this loss thanks to the Bee Informed Partnership, a nationwide research collaboration headed by Dennis vanEngelsdorp, a umd assistant professor of entomology. The results from the group’s annual survey of thousands of beekeepers, showing high summer losses alongside the more typical winter colony losses, are “quite alarming,” says vanEngelsdorp. The survey and resulting analysis support the work he and many others are doing to help bee colonies continue pollinating plants and crops.
HOT PROBLEM Climate change could make us sicker. That’s the finding of a Maryland-based study led by associate professors Amy and Amir Sapkota, spouses and colleagues in the School of Public Health’s Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health. By tracking historical weather data and correlating it with health records, they showed that one
Forest loss contributes to climate change and declining biodiversity worldwide. But before Matthew Hansen, a umd professor of geographical sciences, created the first-of-its kind Global Forest Change map, gauging the health of forests worldwide took much more than just a click on a website. Hanson and his colleagues today are using data from advanced earth-imaging satellites to provide the most finegrained information available about where forests are under siege, arming scientists and policymakers alike in the effort to preserve delicate ecosystems and get in front of climate change.
WATCHING THE WATER Major flooding kills thousands of people and costs billions of dollars each year around the world. An experimental tool produced by umd researchers to determine where water is about to rise catastrophically might put a dent in those totals. The nasa-funded Global Flood Monitoring System (gfms) uses real-time precipitation data to pinpoint impending floods based on years of flood modeling data comparisons. It was developed by essic researchers Robert Adler and Huan Wu. Wu grew up near the banks of the mighty Yangtze River in China. “Every year for the monsoon season, there is flooding. Even when I was a child I saw that,” Wu says. “Flooding information can be really useful in saving lives, saving people.”
BOOKSHELF
OVERJOYED WITH HIS DROID BY LAUREN BROWN
In THE GREAT WILLIAM: WRITERS READING
English Professor THEODORE LEINWAND shows how seven renowned writers personally engaged with the work of William Shakespeare. SHAKESPEARE,
MATTHEW G. KIRSCHENBAUM,
an associate English professor, explores the evolution of how things have been written down in TRACK CHANGES: A LITERARY HISTORY OF WORD PROCESSING.
The Cold War impact of German politics on the Middle East is the subject of UNDECLARED WARS WITH ISRAEL: EAST GERMANY AND THE WEST GERMAN FAR
by history Professor JEFFREY HERF.
LEFT, 1967–1989
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BOB MARTINAZZI only had to lift a finger to win a starring role at a Washington Nationals game, the AwesomeCon convention and even a White House party with the president and first lady. Martinazzi, director of construction and facilities procurement, transportation and physical distribution in the Department of Procurement and Strategy Sourcing as well as a lifelong “Star Wars” fan, built a full-size, fully functional R2-D2 robot that he controls with a small remote and brings to community and charitable events. “I really get a kick out of it,” he says. “I enjoy having R2-D2 in my living room, making random noises.” Martinazzi, who saw the original “Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope” in the theater five times in 1977, wasn’t the first little boy awestruck by the film. But he was surely among only a few who wanted to build their own adorable droid. R2, he says, inspired him to pursue a career in engineering. He graduated from the Naval Academy, then earned master’s degrees in civil and environmental engineering from umd in 1995 and 1996. And while his love for the “Star Wars” franchise (and his Kenner action figures) faded in early adulthood, it was rekindled by the release of new books, updated 3.75-inch figures and special-edition DVDs of the trilogy. At a “Star Wars” convention in 2002, he discovered a group of fellow “tech geeks” who’d built their own R2s. A decade later, a friend in the D.C. Metro Area Star Wars Collecting Club finished his own, convincing Martinazzi that it was doable and affordable. He spent eight months cutting, sanding and painting styrene plastic, gluing the parts together following instructions online, then building the motor and electronics (incorporating a PlayStation 3 move controller).
Since finishing his droid in 2014, Martinazzi continues to tinker with it, upgrading its lights and opening panels to R2’s head. Between attending Cub Scout and library events, Martinazzi was invited to the White House in December for the screening of “The Force Awakens.” There, children of fallen military members gawked, smiled and took photos with his R2-D2, while Martinazzi controlled him from a distance. When President and Michelle Obama appeared, Martinazzi was prepared: He’d programmed R2 to break out with “Hail to the Chief” and “Uptown Funk,” then the first lady’s favorite song. And while his own kids, ages 11 and 15, aren’t “Star Wars” junkies, Martinazzi says he isn’t giving up on his son tagging along for R2 appearances: “I’m trying to get him a Jawa costume while he’s still short.”
PHOTO BY JOHN T. CONSOLI
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THE WHEEL DEAL New Bike-Share Program Picks Up Speed BY LAUREN BROWN TAKE A SEAT—and discover a fast, healthy way to get across campus and around College Park. The university, city and private company Zagster in May introduced mBike, a bike-share program for faculty, staff, students, residents and visitors. Riders can access any of 125 bikes at 15 locations by signing up on the app or online at zagster.com/mbike. They’ll get a code to open a bike’s lockbox, which allows them to lock and unlock the bike anywhere. Rides are free for the first hour, then $3 per hour. Daily and monthly passes are available for $6 and $25, respectively; an annual membership costs $65.
Despite the quietness of summer, 4,500 rides were taken in the program’s first three months, with about 40 trips a day and 128 active members, says Anna McLaughlin, assistant director in the Department of Transportation Services. Naturally, she expects a huge spike in those numbers in the fall semester. Besides the larger environmental benefits of bicycling, such as reducing the carbon footprint, she notes the more individual ones: “It’s a way to avoid the hassle of driving across campus, and it’s a great form of exercise, get fresh air and clear your head. Bike riding is fun, and getting a little bit of fun into your workday is a good thing.”
DIVERSITY TIP BY KEVIN A. WEBB
MENTAL ILLNESS IS STIGMATIZED IN OUR SOCIETY because
we fear the fragility of our minds and bodies. This keeps us from seeking support. We need to educate ourselves instead of avoiding or whispering in the shadows. We need to reframe mental illness as a dimension of diversity, part of the human experience, and interrupt marginalization. The Maryland Dialogues on Diversity & Community continue this fall with a focus on issues of race and racism. For more information on the initiative and upcoming events, visit umd.edu/MarylandDialogues.
PHOTO BY LISA HELFERT
UMD President Wallace Loh stands with, from left, Stephen B. Thomas, director of the Maryland Center for Health Equity; Jonathan Peck, president of the Institute for Alternative Futures; and Soma Stout, executive lead for 100 Million Healthier Lives, at August’s Health Equity and Prosperity Conference.
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INFANT OBSERVERS Researchers Zero In on Why Babies Imitate BY CHRIS CARROLL BABIES HAVE A TOUGH JOB —not just figuring out the world in general, but the behaviors and peculiarities of their fellow humans, too. How do they do it? Researchers from Maryland and the University of Chicago recently tried to answer that question by fitting 36 boisterous 7-month-olds with electroencephalogram (eeg) caps to monitor their brain activity while interacting with other people at umd’s Child Development Lab. In the experiment, babies watched an adult reach for one of two toys, and then were allowed to grab one of the toys for themselves, with the procedure repeated 12 times. As the researchers reported in Psychological Science, the eeg “window” into the baby’s brain predicted how the baby would respond. If the part of the brain that controls motor activity fired up while watching the adult, the baby would grab for the same toy. If it didn’t, there was no imitation. The study is the first in which a baby’s brain activity was shown to predict imitation behavior, and is just “one piece in a larger puzzle of understanding neural networks,” says the
study’s senior author, Courtney Philippi, who conducted the research as a University of Chicago Ph.D. student. Co-author Nathan Fox, a umd professor of education and head of the Child Development Lab, said many related questions remain to be answered, such as what causes motor system activation in some cases and not others. “Imitation is thought to be an important mechanism by which babies and young children learn about the actions and intentions of others,” Fox says. “We intend to build on Courtney’s work to learn about different and more complex forms of imitation and how they relate to the understanding of other people’s goals and intentions.” Philippi, now a postdoctoral fellow in neuroscience at the National Institutes of Health, says infants’ natural curiosity about what people around them are doing aided the study, while their fabled bounciness complicated it. “The test requires them to be still and not moving,” she says. “Infants can be challenging because you can’t just give them directions, and often they aren’t interested in staying still.”
BETWEEN THE COLUMNS is published twice per semester by University Marketing and Communications. Story ideas are welcome and should be sent to Liam Farrell, managing editor, at lfarrel1@umd.edu or by calling 301.405.4629. The mailing list is generated through University Human Resources. Any changes to names and addresses should be made through ares.umd.edu.
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