Between the Columns: September 2017

in this issue A GREATER COLLEGE PARK PG. 2 THRIVING WORKPLACE PG. 3 / HOMECOMING PG. 8

between the columns a newsletter for faculty & staff of the university of maryland SEPTEMBER 2017

THE BOOM GETS BIGGER

COLE FIELD HOUSE

Greater College Park’s Openings Reach New Peak

BY LAUREN BROWN

Greater College Park is gaining greater speed.

A flurry of commercial amenities, academic buildings and startup ventures are opening this fall along the Baltimore Avenue corridor and into the Discovery District, the research-rich area that stretches up to River Road.

More than 30 such projects are under way or have already opened through $2 billion in private and public investments to revitalize and strengthen the campus and surrounding community.

“Exciting transformations are under way as part of the Greater College Park initiative,” says Ken Ulman, the university’s chief strategy officer for economic development.

“We are proud to work with city, county and state leaders, as well as private-sector partners in creating an innovation ecosystem and more vibrant community for all to enjoy.”

Here’s your cheat sheet for the latest—and where to stop by this semester:

THE HOTEL AT THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND Anchor of all the redevelopment, the 10-story, 297-room luxury hotel and conference center right across from the campus’ main entrance opened Sept. 8, along with three of its restaurants: the Old Maryland Grill, Bagels ’n Grinds and Potomac Pizza. (Kapnos Taverna will follow later this month, and the Red Door Salon & Spa will arrive in early 2018.)

THE DIAMONDBACK GARAGE A glassed-in startup hub in the hotel’s 850-space garage will house the Capital One Innovation Lab, a partnership with umd that will advance work in data analytics, machine learning and cybersecurity. Other tenants include Immuta,

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a private-sector data management firm, as well as the university’s Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship, UM Ventures and Do Good Accelerator.

COLE FIELD HOUSE The dedication of the indoor football facility in the new Cole was held Aug. 2, along with the groundbreaking ceremony for the 43,000-square-foot Center for Sports Medicine, Health and Human Performance, a collaboration with the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore to accelerate research in sports medicine and traumatic brain injury into clinical practice. Other components of the revitalized Cole will include two outdoor practice fields, other football program facilities and the Academy for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

VIGILANTE COFFEE COMPANY Opened at the start of the semester at the site of the old No. 1 Liquors between University View and the Varsity apartments, this specialty brewer, which has a shop in Hyattsville and sells to stores across the D.C. area, promotes education and sustainability. Its new location features an exterior mural depicting “From Seed to Cup.” THE ASSOCIATION OF WRITERS AND WRITING PROGRAMS This organization, which fosters literacy achievement, moved last month from George Mason University in Virginia to office space in the Discovery District, bringing 25 jobs. It is expected to partner with humanities programs at the university.

ART WALK A public space in the Discovery District’s research park

PHOTOS BY JOHN T. CONSOLI; THE HOTEL INTERIOR RENDERING COURTESY OF SOUTHERN MANAGEMENT CORP.

Strive to Thrive Employees Encouraged to Take Follow-up Survey wants to hear from you—again.

The Thriving Workplace Initiative, sponsored by the Office of the President, is a strategic investment in all UMD employees and seeks to foster a culture of engagement, inclusion and empowerment across campus.

Through a partnership with Gallup, all university faculty and staff were asked to participate in a survey about their workplace experiences in Spring 2016. Since then, consultants from the Center for Leadership & Organizational Change (CLOC ) have helped units understand their survey results and create action steps for implementing change.

To help gauge the success of these steps, the survey will be re-administered Oct. 9–21. An email from Gallup in your @umd.edu inbox will include a link to the online survey.

CLOC and Gallup will also host times when paper surveys can be completed in eight languages (including English) by those without easy access to a computer. When possible, translators will be on hand to assist.

As with the first administration, it’s brief—only five to 10 minutes—and confidential. New this time: Graduate assistants will be included.

THE UNIVERSITY THE HOTEL

ART WALK

opened this summer with sculpture installations, a food truck dining garden, and a shady cluster of hammocks, all with beautiful views for employees, students and visitors to enjoy. Art Walk is across from 5801 University Research Court, an office building under construction as part of a joint-development partnership with Corporate Office Properties Trust (copt).

MILKBOY ARTHOUSE A partnership between a Philadelphia entertainment company and the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, this eclectic restaurant opened in April with outdoor seating and launched live performances this month. See the calendar at theclarice.umd.edu/series/2017-2018-milkboy-arthouse.

COLLEGE PARK ACADEMY The public charter middle and high school, which operates in partnership with the university and focuses on blended learning, has moved to a new permanent home at the corner of River Tech Drive and River Road.

CVS This $40 million development, a partnership between Choice Hotels and Southern Management Corp., replaces a long-vacant auto dealership. The standalone store and pharmacy is scheduled to open this fall, with Cambria Hotel and Suites to follow.

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND RESOURCES, VISIT PRESIDENT.UMD.EDU/THRIVE OR CALL 301.405.1336.

LOTSA STONE FIRED PIZZA: A fast-casual restaurant, it opened in July in the former Toll Bros. sales center in Terrapin Row on Knox Road.

TO LEARN ABOUT PROGRAMS DEBUTING THIS FALL, VISIT GO.UMD.EDU/TWIPROGRAMS.

For more information, visit greatercollegepark.umd.edu.

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Healing

AFTER HATE While the arc of the moral universe may bend toward justice, that has never meant it doesn’t need help, or that there aren’t forces trying to push it the other way.

Be they the ideals of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness enshrined in our Declaration of Independence or our pledges of egalitarian education here at the University of Maryland, we work each day to strive toward goals that are difficult to meet—but all the more worthy for being so.

We seem to have entered a new era of divisiveness. From children spewing racial slurs in school hallways to protestors fighting in the streets, from workers donning bulletproof vests while dismantling Confederate monuments to congressmen being shot at baseball practice, hatred’s tide has seemingly risen again. umd itself was taken by the current in the early hours of May 20, when 2nd Lt. Richard Collins III, a Bowie State senior, was fatally stabbed, allegedly by a then-UMD student who had once joined a racist group on Facebook.

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“Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages,” said the abolitionist and Maryland native Frederick Douglass, whose statue watches over Hornbake Plaza.

“They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties.

They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship.”

The events of recent months have prompted concerned conversations in office corridors; debates online and in newspaper columns; pensive commutes to and from College Park.

BTC reached out to people from across the spectrum of the our community—faculty, staff, students and alumni—and asked for their thoughts on hate in America and on college campuses, and how institutions and individuals can find a path forward. In the next pages, you can find excerpts from their responses. For full transcripts of our conversations with these Terps and others, visit terp.umd.edu .

RABBI ADERET

Drucker

DIRECTOR OF JEWISH LIFE AND LEARNING AT MARYLAND HILLEL

“There is something to be said about the responsibility of holding public office. When figureheads say certain things, their words hold weight and they are sending a message to people, whether they intend to or not. If the message is one of hate and discrimination, then it sends a message that hate and acts of violence are acceptable.”

PHOTOS BY JOHN T. CONSOLI

Ana Patricia

Rodriguez ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF U.S. LATINA/O AND CENTRAL AMERICAN LITERATURES

“We create landscapes of racism by having buildings named after racists or people who generate hate, like former university president Curley Byrd, like segregationists and all sorts of other people. If we invert that paradigm and start landscaping our university with figures that are more representative of the diversity of our country— Frederick Douglass; Parren Mitchell; the man whose name is on this building, Juan Ramón Jiménez, the first Nobel literature prizewinner of Spanish descent—we also recognize the presence of Latinos and Hispanics and others in the United States.”

Rashawn Ray

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY

“If people are going to engage in hate crimes, why wouldn’t it be in a setting that they feel that they are losing, that they feel they don’t control? Here, it’s much more pluralistic: For people who are used to different forms of segregation and certain forms of isolation from racial minorities, a place like the University of Maryland is a threat to them.”

TA M A R A A DA M S ’ 1 8 CRIMINOLOGY & CRIMINAL JUSTICE AND ECONOMICS MAJOR; PRESIDENT, BLACK STUDENT UNION

“If we all tried relating to each other more often, we wouldn’t be so separated by stereotypes or previous incidents. For me, being an African-American student on this campus, it could mean supporting the Latino Student Union, or even going with someone who has completely opposite views from me to their event and kind of seeing what their views are and why they think that way. I think that can, in some sense, make you feel safer, if you seek to understand instead of combat.”

PHOTO OF TAMARA ADAMS BY JUSTIN DERATO

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TA R I F

Shraim ’01 MUSLIM CHAPLAIN

ROGER L.

“We’re clearly witnessing a significant rise in not just hate crimes, but in the language and speech that dehumanizes the other, that marginalizes that other, that is an expression of people’s hate to each other. It’s witnessed in people’s communication, in social media and social culture, in entertainment and in the way that people interact with each other.”

Worthington INTERIM ASSOCIATE PROVOST AND CHIEF DIVERSITY OFFICER; PROFESSOR OF COUNSELING, HIGHER EDUCATION AND SPECIAL EDUCATION

“College campuses essentially are microcosms of the larger society, and when we think about the ways that hate takes place more broadly, they’re going to transfer to college and university campuses in many of the same ways they occur outside of the campus context.”

Shannon

GUNDY

DIRECTOR OF UNDERGRADUATE ADMISSIONS

“I work with students all the time who are searching for colleges and searching for their home for the next four years, and while education is the central part of that, also important is the sense of community that they want to have. So I think it’s important for people to understand who we are purporting to be as a community, so that students know this is a place that’s going to be comfortable for them and a place where they want to live, learn and grow.”

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Jennifer Roberts

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF KINESIOLOGY

“We need spaces where people feel safe to communicate, whether in a forum or small group setting. I keep my door open for students, and I tell them, ‘If you want to talk with me, feel free,’ because I know that I’m one of few faculty who look like them, so sometimes they feel a little bit safer or more comfortable talking to me. It’s important to have those kinds of opportunities where people can have clear, open communication and express what they’re feeling. It’s good that we do it afterwards, but if we do it beforehand, maybe we can prevent it from escalating to a point where we have something that was as tragic as what happened in May.”

JV SAPINOSO M.A. ’03 ASSISTANT DIRECTOR AND UNDERGRADUATE ADVISER, DEPARTMENT OF WOMEN’S STUDIES

“For folks who experience racial privilege, there’s a notion of, ‘I didn’t ask for it, I’m not doing anything to hurt other people.’ Well, if you’re not examining your privilege, then you are maintaining and supporting racism. With privilege goes responsibility.”

Steps Toward Solutions This summer, turning introspection into action started with a bagged lunch.

The Office of Undergraduate Studies organized a weekly discussion series for faculty and staff to work to understand the complex problems of hate and divisiveness, just one way the university has sought to confront and identify steps to address them.

Over their lunches, hundreds of members of the Terp community came together for conversations on such topics as free speech versus hate speech, identity privilege and teaching strategies for sensitive issues.

“They liked being together with people from all over campus,” says Cynthia Kay Stevens, associate dean of the Office of Undergraduate Studies, who helped organize the sessions. “Being able to have some pretty frank conversations on issues of race and how that can create challenges was helpful.”

Other recent campus actions include: • Convening a task force on hate-bias and campus safety, co-chaired by Lucy Dalglish (dean, Philip Merrill College of Journalism), Warren Kelley (assistant vice president for student affairs) and Ja’Nya Banks (Student Government Association diversity chair)​.

• Creating a trained, rapid-response team for hate-bias incidents.

• Observing a campus-wide moment of reflection in conjunction with Bowie State University on AUG. 30 to honor Collins.

• Introducing “March: Book Three” by U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell as this year’s First Year Book. The 2016 National Book Award-winning graphic memoir is about Lewis’ landmark civil rights work.

• Welcoming U.S. Rep. Anthony Brown (D-Md.) to speak on campus about race, politics and reconciliation on AUG. 31.

• Organizing a series of campus discussions through the Anti-Defamation League and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion.

• Strengthening Intercollegiate Athletics policy to explicitly prohibit hate-bias symbols or actions and to add fake weapons and flammables to its list of items banned from athletic venues.

• Planning a university-wide survey on the campus climate.

For details, visit umdreflects.umd.edu

PHOTOS BY JOHN T. CONSOLI

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OCTOBER

22 TO 29

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND BRINGS YOU A WEEK OF FEARLESS IDEAS—THE CORE OF ALL WE DO HERE. BE A PART OF IT: HEART-POUNDING ATHLETICS. FOOTBALL TAILGATES. GOOD EATS. GREAT FRIENDS. INSPIRING ART. SMART CONVERSATIONS. BELLY LAUGHS. AND A TRIPLE SCOOP OF TERP PRIDE.

HOMECOMING COMEDY SHOW

HASAN MINHAJ OCT. 26

HOMECOMING 2017

TERPS VS

HOOSIERS OCT. 28

TERP CARNIVAL OCT. 27 #UMDHOMECOMING

YOU’RE INVITED. SEE THE FULL SCHEDULE AT HOMECOMING.UMD.EDU

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