Terp Winter 2016

SCIENTIST CONCOCTS “X-FILES” PLOTS / 18 SAVOR THE BIG PICTURE WITH A FOOD CRITIC / 26 CAN SERVICE DOGS HEAL VETERANS WITH PTSD? / 30

WINTER 2016 / Connecting the University of Maryland Community

Igniting a

Crisis

synthetic drugs are unpredictable, dangerous—and exploding in popularity. umd research tr acks their deadly path. pg. 20

L E T T E R F ROM T H E E X E C U T I V E DI R E C T OR WINTER 2016 / VOL. 13, NO.2

PU BLISH ER

Peter Weiler VICE PRESIDENT, UNIVERSIT Y RELATIONS ADVISERS

Brian Ullmann ’92 ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT, MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS

Amy Eichhorst EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

Margaret Hall EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CREATIVE STRATEGIES MAGAZIN E STAFF

Lauren Brown UNIVERSIT Y EDITOR

John T. Consoli ’86 CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Hailey Hwa Shin ART DIRECTOR

Liam Farrell Chris Carroll Karen Shih ’09 WRITERS

Natalie Koltun ’16 EDITORIAL INTERN

Kelsey Marotta ’14 DESIGNER

Gail Rupert M.L.S. ’10 PHOTOGRAPHY ASSISTANT

Josh Loock ’16 PHOTOGRAPHY INTERN

Jagu Cornish PRODUCTION MANAGER

Submit and read letters to the editor at terp.umd.edu.

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The University of Maryland, College Park is an equal opportunity institution with respect to both education and employment. University policies, programs and activities are in conformance with pertinent federal and state laws and regulations on nondiscrimination regarding race, color, religion, age, national origin, political affiliation, gender, sexual orientation or disability.

a s a lu m n i a n d f r i e n d s ,

we all have something in common: pride in the University of Maryland.

Today, more than ever, we can take so much pride in our alma mater.

Our students are making a difference. For example, a recent service project led by the student group Terps Against Hunger packaged over 250,000 meals for local hungry families.

We continue to ascend in national and global rankings: umd just claimed a spot in the top 10 for our entrepreneurial programs.

Through the Maryland Sea Grant College, we’re working to protect and restore the Chesapeake Bay and other coastal waterways.

We have partnered with the Phillips Collection, the nation’s first museum of modern art, to launch new arts programs.

Plus, the partnership provides free admission for all Alumni Association members!

And of course, we’re winning conference championships in the Big Ten, and our men’s and women’s basketball teams show everyone what it means to Fear the Turtle!

As an alumni association, one of our goals is to inspire Maryland pride. As a Terp, you can help in many ways: • Cheer on our student-athletes in person or at a game-watch event around the country; • Be an ambassador for the university: Link to Terp stories on our Facebook page (MDAlumniMoCo) and retweet from our Twitter account (@Maryland_Alumni); • Give your time: Mentor a student, provide an internship or join other Terps in a service project.

(Visit alumni.umd.edu for opportunities in your area.)

And, of course, become a member of the Alumni Association! It’s a simple, affordable and visible way to show your Terp pride.

Our goal is to grow membership from more than 21,000 to 50,000 strong within the next five years, enabling us to provide more student scholarships, produce more programs that support alumni personally and professionally, and inspire Maryland pride all over the globe.

Stay fearless, umd!

Amy Eichhorst Executive Director, Alumni Association

Without inspiration, you’ll never climb Mount Kilimanjaro, create the next Google or win a Pulitzer Prize. Inspiration is the spark that propels us, the vision that sets those mental wheels in motion.

UMD is committed to unleashing students’ creativity, to giving life to their biggest dreams. It creates scholarships to ease students’ financial worries and allow them to soak up every available experience. The university surrounds them with creative, passionate peers in living and learning communities, so they can debate late into the night. And it builds innovative classrooms and offers opportunities to study abroad, so students can be exposed to different cultures and perspectives.

Here, students can try and fail—and fail again—as they come up with answers to questions, even ones we haven’t identified yet.

Every issue of Terp features stories that show how the university transforms the student experience. In this issue, we further highlight those efforts with a symbol ( ). We’ll be doing the same in other issues on our efforts to turn imagination into innovation, inspire Maryland pride and discover new knowledge.

TRANSFORM THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE

02 / A Modern Partnership

10 / P uppetry Grows Up

03 / $ 10M Smith Gift

1 1 / C lub Hubbub

04 / G iving Notice

30 / C anine Connection

09 / C areer Recharge

36 / L earning in Depth

departments

CONTENTS WINTER 2016 / VOL. 13, NO. 2

IN BRIEF

features

20

COVER STORY: RUSSIAN ROULETTE IN A BAG

02

A Modern Partnership

03

$10M Smith Gift

Synthetic drugs are cheap, dangerous and unpredictable. umd’s Center for Substance Abuse Research is becoming the government’s central resource to determine what’s in them, and how they’re affecting users.

04

Byrd Stadium Renamed Giving Notice

05

Ask Anne CLASS ACT

06

Guided by Voices

07

Terps on the Hill

BY LIAM FARRELL

08

Presidential Preservation

26

09

Career Recharge

WORDS TO SAVOR

Readers enjoy more than plate descriptions and service complaints with Washingtonian magazine’s Todd Kliman ’91, whose writing pushes the boundaries of food criticism.

C AMPUS LIFE

10

Puppetry Grows Up

11

Club Hubbub

12

A “Baby” Giant

13

Durkin Looks to Boost Terp Football

BY K AREN SHIH ’09

Gameday Uniform

30

INNOVATION

14

CANINE CONNECTION

Faculty Q&A

15

Heat Sick

16

Drop Out, Join In

17

Unreachable Memories

18

Reopening the File PARTING SHOT

36

Learning in Depth

B O LD. FU N . S M A RT. CU R I O US . PRO U D. Find new stories every week at terp.umd.edu.

Not all war wounds are visible. A umd researcher and his students study whether training service dogs could help heal veterans and their families struggling with post-traumatic stress disorder.

BY CHRIS CARROLL

RECENT WEB E XCLUSIVES THAT YOU MAY HAVE MISSED :

• Decluttering queen Natalie Schrier ’98 tackles NYC’s tiniest apartments.

• Brad Loewen ’86 is making the hazardous garment factories of Bangladesh much safer.

• Could researcher Alexey Gorshkov’s technique for creating solid molecules from light lead to lightsabers?

NOW YOU CAN ADD TERP STORIES TO THE APPLE NEWS FEED ON YOUR SMARTPHONE OR TABLET! JUST VISIT APPLE.COM/NEWS AND SEARCH FOR TERP.

IN BRIEF

A MODERN PARTNERSHIP

our arts education, and to the entire campus. We are genuinely a steam university—science, technology, engineering, arts, math.”

Dorothy Kosinski, director of the UMD , Phillips Collection Phillips Collection, says the partnership enhances the original vision of founder Join Forces to Increase Duncan Phillips, who imagined an Collaboration in the Arts “intimate museum combined with an and Humanities experiment station.”

“As we look toward the museum’s 100th anniversary in 2021, we intend a new partnership between the to redefine its role within the cultural University of Maryland and the nation’s community locally and globally,” she first museum of modern art seeks to says. “Together with the University of significantly expand artistic innovation Maryland, we can reach new audiences, and scholarship at both institutions.

The Phillips Collection in Washington, disrupt conventional thinking and inspire new heights of achievement D.C., and umd will together develop and impact.” new courses and programming, create The 4,000-piece collection specializes research and internship opportunities, in American and European masters co-host events and expand access to including Renoir, Rothko, O’Keeffe, one of the world’s most distinguished van Gogh and Gauguin, but much of it collections of impressionist, modern and remains in storage. A highlight of the contemporary art. partnership—a gallery and education “This remarkable partnership fulfills and storage facility to be built in Prince a longtime dream for this campus,” umd George’s County—will make it available President Wallace Loh says. “Not only to a broader audience and encourage does it provide access to this priceless experimentation in the arts. collection, but it brings a new vigor to

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Meanwhile, umd expands its presence in the nation’s capital and has a new place and platform for conversations and collaborations in the arts and humanities.

“This is something we’re certainly already doing on campus, but now it will be on a larger scale and will attract more people with an interest in learning about and nurturing and supporting these collaborations—it gives them another way in which to engage,” says Bonnie Thornton Dill, dean of the College of Arts and Humanities.

The museum’s Center for the Study of Modern Art has been renamed the University of Maryland Center for Art and Knowledge at the Phillips Collection, remaining committed to interdisciplinary collaborations. These include: • opening educational and scholarly access to the museum’s collection and staff of curators and conservators; • developing courses and seminars for enrolled students and extended studies on art, art history, arts management (in conjunction with the DeVos Institute for Arts Management on campus), museum studies, cultural diplomacy, conservation and other topics;

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE PHILLIPS COLLECTION

• establishing graduate and/or postdoctoral fellowships and offering internships to students and DeVos fellows; • co-presenting the museum’s Intersections contemporary art exhibitions, some of its traveling exhibitions and the Sunday Concert series with umd’s School of Music; • co-publishing the “University of Maryland-Phillips Collection Book Prize”; • expanding programs such as the Creative Voices DC series of lectures, films and more, including bringing them to campus; • digitizing the museum’s archives of 9,500 scholarly books, exhibition catalogues and correspondence, making them easily accessible to scholars, researchers and students worldwide.

The six-year, renewable agreement also provides free museum admission to umd employees and Alumni Association members. umd will invest $3 million in the partnership over that time.

George Vradenburg, the museum’s board chairman, hailed the agreement for creating new opportunities and advancing both institutions’ missions and international reputations.

“Picasso purportedly said of computers, ‘They are useless. They can only give you answers.’ Our increasing visual world demands that we add arts to stem curriculum, so we can ask—and answer— the right questions,” he says. “We believe this type of provocative and inclusive conversation can only arise from a collection of such specific and singular identity as the Phillips’s.”–lb

students in the robert h . smith

will see new scholarships, outside-the-classroom opportunities and enhanced facilities following a $10 million gift from the family of its namesake.

A portion of the gift from the Robert H. Smith Family Foundation will support the MBA Scholarship Fund, helping the school compete for the best applicants by providing additional financial aid.

The gift will also enable the school to expand leadership learning for undergraduates, through extracurricular experiences that complement academic courses. The balance of the gift will allow facility renovations that will keep the school in front of business education and will continue to fund the school’s Center for Social Value Creation.

“The many conversations about the business school that I had with my father, as well as experiences with him there, made me very aware of how important it was to him,” says Michelle Smith, foundation president. “It was natural that I would want to continue to support his legacy and carry on his commitments in the best way I could.”

Robert H. Smith earned an accounting degree in 1950 from the school and became a major developer, then philanthropist in the D.C. area. In 1998 he gave $15 million to the school; the Smith family donated an additional $30 million in 2005 and has made other gifts since then. The Smith School’s stature has increased accordingly; it was recently ranked 22nd in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Smith died in 2009.

“Our business students will directly feel the impact of this generous and visionary gift,” says UMD President Wallace D. Loh. “The Smith family is helping us create next-generation business education, greater experiential learning and wider access through scholarships.”

“We are extremely grateful for the Smith family’s continued support of the Robert H. Smith School of Business,” says Dean Alexander Triantis. “Their generosity will help us continue to attract, challenge and engage our students.” school of business

BYRD STADIUM RENAMED Namesake’s Place in UMD History Prompted Discussion on Diversity byrd stadium will no longer bear the name of the UMD president and alumnus credited with transforming the small agricultural college into a modern university—a man who was also a committed segregationist.

The University of Maryland System Board of Regents, following the recommendation of President Wallace Loh, voted 12–5 in December to change the football stadium’s name to Maryland Stadium and to instead memorialize the accomplishments of Harry Clifton “Curley” Byrd in one of the university’s libraries.

“You can’t rewrite history, but that’s not what I believe we are talking about doing,” Regent Louise Michaux Gonzales ’71 said at the emotional meeting.

“What we are doing is rebalancing honor.”

The change was among several at Maryland last semester to honor the contributions and sacrifices of African Americans and to take a proactive role in the national discussion about diversity and inclusion on college campuses.

In October, the university unveiled Frederick Douglass Square on Hornbake Plaza, featuring a dramatic 7@ß “ -foot statue of the Maryland native, abolitionist and orator. The Art/Sociology Building was renamed a month later for Parren Mitchell, a former congressman and civil rights leader who in 1952 became the first African American to earn a graduate degree from UMD .

Mitchell had sued for admission to the university, where

Byrd fought integration for decades and defended a “separate but equal” stance on education.

Byrd was an outsize figure on campus for nearly 50 years. He graduated in 1908 as a star quarterback and pitcher, then returned just two years later to become football coach. He was promoted to athletics director, vice president, then president, a position he held from 1936–54.

He combined the Maryland Agricultural College with the professional schools in Baltimore to create the University of Maryland, and after World War II dramatically expanded the size of the campus, overseeing construction of more than 60 buildings, including McKeldin Library, Memorial Chapel and the football stadium. The latter was named for him when completed in 1950.

Loh convened a workgroup earlier in the fall to provide arguments for and against renaming the stadium, and in his letter to the regents, noted Byrd’s foundational role at the university. But he also wrote that during this time of racial tensions nationwide, “Byrd Stadium” is for African Americans a “painful reminder that a generation ago they were unwelcome on this campus.”

Loh will also launch the “Maryland Dialogues on Diversity and Community” this semester to bridge differences and encourage open discussion on issues of inclusion.

“How we understand the past may change,” he noted, “but the facts should not.”—LB

terps everywhere will come together on March 3 for umd’s Giving Day— a 24-hour period to support umd in academics, athletics and the arts. You can change lives by giving to scholarships, Greek life, the Mighty Sound of Maryland marching band, Alternative Breaks, Student Entertainment Events and more.

Visit givingday.umd.edu and check the leaderboard there throughout the day to follow the competitions between colleges and schools.

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STADIUM PHOTO BY JOHN T. CONSOLI; OPPOSITE PAGE PHOTOS COURTESY OF UNIVERSIT Y ARCHIVES; MILK CARTON ILLUSTRATION BY KELSEY MAROTTA

Marylan d defeated Ge orgetown 99 –73 in 197 3.

ASK ANNE

Q: WE’RE LOOKING FOR INFORMATION ABOUT THE 1973 MARYLAND-GEORGETOWN MEN’S BASKETBALL GAME AT COLE. IT WAS GEORGETOWN’S LAST TRIP TO THE COLLEGE PARK CAMPUS UNTIL NOVEMBER’S GAME. CAN YOU LET ME KNOW WHAT VIDEO AND PHOTOS WE MAY HAVE OF THAT GAME AND ANY OTHERS AGAINST THE HOYAS? —pat shannon,

Questions for Anne Turkos, the university archivist

intercollegiate athletics

Q

WE ARE CURIOUS ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED WHEN TWO MEN STOLE A PLANE FROM THE COLLEGE PARK AIRPORT AND CRASHED NEAR CAMPUS. DO YOU HAVE ANY INFORMATION ABOUT IT? —college park aviation museum

A: I was able to find a Diamondback article about the March 1972 incident.

Two men (not students) stole a small Piper Cub plane from the airport, which wasn’t guarded. They both had pilot’s licenses, but lost control of the aircraft and crashed at 4:42 a.m. near the intersection of College and Princeton avenues—nearly hitting the Alpha Gamma Delta sorority house. Officials suspected cloudy weather and the lack of headlights on the plane were factors in the accident that killed both men.

vita min

a&d

pr em i u m chocolate

Milk

100% leidy zern

PASTEURIZED

A: Maryland and Georgetown renewed their rivalry when the Terps hosted the Hoyas in November and won 75–71. Since 1910, the non-conference opponents have competed 64 times, with Maryland coming out on top 37 times. All games between 1973 and 2008 (with one exception) were played at neutral sites. We don’t have film from the 1973 game, but we have plenty of photos, statistics and a written play-byplay. In addition, we have film reels from 12 games from 1959 to 1980 as well as photographs and programs for a number of games from that era.

Q: I LOVE CHOCOLATE MILK AND HEARD A RUMOR THAT IT WAS CREATED AT UMD. IS THAT TRUE? —marisa tan ’13

A: No, but Leidy Zern M.S. ’29 did invent a process that created less sedimentation in chocolate milk—which made its commercial manufacture possible. He worked with Professor Richard Munkwitz as a graduate student, and the two patented their method in 1932.

Questions may be sent to terpfeedback@umd.edu or @UMDarchives on Twitter.

ONLINE | lib.umd.edu/univarchives BLOG | umdarchives.wordpress.com FACEBOOK | University of Maryland University Archives

WINTER 2016 TER P

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CLASS ACT

ALUMNI PROFILE / STACEY SHER ’83

GUIDED BY VOICES Terp Enjoys Reel Success as Hollywood Producer producer stacey sher ’83 learned early in her show business career that resilience is a necessary trait, especially if it involves Twisted Sister.

Working as an assistant on the music video for 1984’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It,” Sher had to track down the actor who played the main antagonist in “Animal House” so the concept could be pulled off. She found Mark Metcalf—better known as Neidermeyer—at an off-Broadway theater and flew him out cheap to film one of the most memorable music videos of the 1980s.

“Film is a meritocracy,” she says.

And Sher has succeeded in Hollywood by consistently bringing iconic voices to movies and television, producing everything from Quentin Tarantino’s “Pulp Fiction” and Steven Soderbergh’s “Out of Sight” to Zach Braff ’s “Garden State” and even the Comedy Central cop-farce “Reno 911!”

“I love singularity of voice and story combined in a genre,” she says. “What I have really been interested in is influencing the mainstream.”

Sher grew up in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla., in a film-loving family that introduced her to the 1970s Golden Age of cinema defined by directors like Stanley Kubrick, Martin Scorsese and Hal Ashby. She originally contemplated a career in sports broadcasting, but a lack of female role models and encouragement from umd professor emeritus Douglas Gomery led her to pursue producing.

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She graduated with an m.f.a. in 1985 from the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts, and the first script she brought to a studio was made into the 1987 film “Adventures in Babysitting.” A few years later, Sher noticed a write-up in Variety that a lot of well-known actors were attached to an unknown director’s project. She got hold of the script, “Reservoir Dogs,” and through friends she met Tarantino, making a blind deal for whatever his next project would be—in this case, “Pulp Fiction.”

Sher says she’s drawn to projects that have a “combination of unique voices along with an exploration of the human condition, even if it’s in a stoner comedy like ‘How High.’”

Nominated twice previously for Oscars, she looks to be a contender again this year, with Tarantino’s “The Hateful Eight” getting award buzz.

Sher, who started her own production company this year, tries not to pay attention to that, preferring to just focus on creating work she loves, whether that means getting coffee for someone on set or navigating the untimely injury of a star actor during filming.

“For a producer, there is no job too big or too small,” she says.

“You hold the vision intact for everyone.” –lf

COLLAGE BY HAILEY HWA SHIN

Terps on the Hill w UMD Grads No Strangers to National Politics w

I

owans and New Hampshirites are being pummeled with political ads, pollsters are burning up phone lines and pundits are making (and changing, then changing again) their predictions. Yup, it’s a presidential election year.

This one has featured a Terp, Carly Fiorina mba ’80, vying for the Republican nomination, but other umd grads have made their mark on the national political scene, too. Here are a few who have strolled Washington’s hallways. –lf w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w

qq Steny Hoyer ’63 has become one of the most powerful lawmakers in the country. He’s now House minority whip, and from 2007 to 2011, he served as its majority leader, making him Maryland’s highest-ranking member of Congress in history. qq In addition to Hoyer, four other Terps are serving in Congress: U.S. Reps. Dutch Ruppersberger ’67 of Maryland, William Lacy Clay ’74 of Missouri, Cheri Bustos ’83 of Illinois and Eric Swalwell ’03 of California. qq Millard Tydings 1910 was a Maryland congressman, then a U.S. senator from 1927–51. He is best known for co-authoring the law that led to independence for the Philippines and for chairing a subcommittee to investigate Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s charges of communists in the Department of State. Tydings eventually dismissed those claims as a hoax but lost a reelection bid in what some see as an early result of McCarthyism. His son, Joseph Tydings ’50, served as a U.S. senator as well, from 1965–71. qq William Purington Cole Jr. 1910, namesake of Cole Field House, was elected to the House of Representatives seven times between 1927 and 1942. A veteran of World War I, he is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. qq Thomas Kindness ’51 served six terms as an Ohio congressman from 1975–87, then failed in a bid for the U.S. Senate. He attempted a comeback in 1990, but lost the primary to John Boehner in the former House speaker’s first federal race. qq Tom McMillen ’74 was also a three-term congressman from Maryland in addition to a legendary Terp basketball star and Rhodes scholar. qq Parren Mitchell M.A. ’52 was elected the state’s first black congressman in 1970 and served eight terms. The Art/Sociology building was renamed for him in November. w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w w

ILLUSTRATION BY JEANETTE J. NELSON

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ALUMNI PROFILE / WILLIAM ALLMAN ’74

Presidential Preservation Alum Works in Living Museum, the White House, for 40 Years when a new administration moves into the White House next year, everything from Cabinet secretaries to the Oval Office’s carpet will change. But it’s the job of Chief Curator William Allman ’74, welcoming his eighth president, to make sure its priceless art and furnishings are preserved for generations to come.

“The White House is not a traditional museum, with its collections under glass or behind ropes,” says Allman. “The greatest challenge is… letting people sit on the chairs, walk on the rugs or eat off the china.”

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He and his staff of four are responsible for a wide range of pieces, including the famous full-length portrait of George Washington

by Gilbert Stuart, displayed at the White House since it opened in 1800; a Steinway grand piano with gold eagles for legs; and a chair carved from a single log and given to Herbert Hoover in 1932.

Growing up in Bethesda, Md., Allman often visited museums, historic houses and presidential libraries with his family, so a history major was the natural choice at Maryland. After graduating, he worked two temporary jobs with the National Park Service, where he researched furnishings for the White House. His work was so well received that he was invited to join the curator’s office in 1976.

He says all the presidents he’s served have left their marks on the White

House. Most recently, first lady Michelle Obama requested the Old Family Dining Room be refurbished to display the abstract American art she and President Barack Obama favor.

There are unexpected perks to his job, like getting a last-minute spot at a state dinner for the emperor of Japan in 1994.

But it’s a story like that of a simple armchair from 1817 that makes him happiest.

It was sold in 1882 at auction, and early in Allman’s tenure at the curator’s office, the then-owner asked about its history.

“I told him all about it and asked if he would keep us in mind if he should ever choose to part with it,” Allman says.

“Ten years later, he gave it back to the White House.”–ks

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE WHITE HOUSE

CLASS NOTES

ALUMNI PROFILE / JAMIE MCINTYRE M.A. ’14

Submit your class notes and read many more at terp.umd.edu.

CAREER RECHARGE Defense Journalist Returns to Learn, Sticks Around to Teach jamie mcintyre m . a . ’14

had a leg up on fellow journalism students when he arrived on campus in 2009: decades of experience, from staying alive in war zones to conveying the horror of the 9/11 attack at the Pentagon on live TV without a script.

But they had an advantage over him too. They were entering the business during a momentous shift in how news is produced and disseminated, and possessed effortless familiarity with new technology and the pace of change.

After spending a year at UMD getting back on the cutting edge of journalism, McIntyre is sharing his expertise in front of the camera—and now behind it as a proponent of smartphone-driven journalism—as a lecturer in the Philip Merrill College of Journalism. “The revolution in storytelling has a lot to do with the simple tools we have now we didn’t have 20 years ago,” he says. “The ability to be

nimble and create compelling videos with just what’s in your pocket is the way it’s going.”

McIntyre had covered wars as CNN’ s Pentagon correspondent for 16 years when a network shakeup left him jobless, but with a year of paychecks under his contract.

He entered the Merrill School’s Returning Journalists master’s program, where experienced pros bypass basic classes and craft their own courses of study. With his war stories and beenthere, done-that worldliness, McIntyre became a voice of authority in the classroom second only to his professors.

Soon faculty members sought to harness his broad experience by drafting him to teach a multimedia class.

But then jobs at NPR and Al Jazeera America—where today he’s back on TV in his old Pentagon stomping grounds— delayed his thesis. With prodding from Merrill faculty, he produced it in 2014 and gave the commencement address.

Returning to school, he says, was a way to recharge and reinvest in journalism—something he recommends to other reporters mulling a master’s.

“I wanted to ask him what I’d be learning and if it would be worth it—because it was a huge risk,” says Courtney Maebus M.Jour. ’15. “He really took the time to talk to me, and I decided to do it.”

Maebus, who later took the multimedia class McIntyre teaches, recently shared a byline in The Washington Post with Pulitzer Prize winner (and Merrill professor) Dana Priest.

“Being an adjunct professor is my fun job,” McIntyre says. “The real satisfaction you get is from the work your students do.”—CC

Former Terp basketball stars LYNETTA KIZER ’12 (left) and MARISSA COLEMAN went to the WNBA finals in October as members of the Indiana Fever. Kizer joined the team this season after playing in Turkey; Coleman, in her seventh season as a pro, was named a 2015 All-Star.

The wildly successful Kickstarter campaign

by MICHAEL ARMANI ’05, PH.D. ’10 (left) and DAVID JONES ’06 for their Micro 3D printer has earned the Guinness World Record for “Most Money Pledged for a 3D Technology Product.” Nearly 12,000 backers raised $3.4 million to bring the project to life. It’s now available at printm3d.com.

Lawyer JIM CLIFFORD ’73 swam across the English Channel in September, making him (at age 63) the oldest male to conquer the “triple crown” of completing that feat, circling Manhattan Island and crossing from Catalina Island to Long Beach, Calif.

• ALUMNI

TRAVEL •

OCT. 1–9, 2016

Italian R i v ier a With its turquoise waters and lush landscape, the Italian Riviera has been captivating visitors for centuries. Walk along Sestri Levante’s streets lined with pastel-colored houses, visit picturesque villages and journey to Tuscany to see a sculptor at work in Carrara.

For more about this and other University of Maryland Alumni Association trips, visit alumni.umd.edu/travel or contact Angela Dimopoulos ’07 at 301.405.7938 / 800.336.8627 or adimop@umd.edu.

MCINT YRE PHOTO BY LISA HELFERT

CAMPUS LIFE

MASTERPIECE

Puppetry Grows Up Artist Draws Adult Audiences Through Unconventional Theater towering 10 feet high and covered in empty takeout food containers, plastic shopping bags and crumpled paper stood the “Dumpster Monster.” It emerged from a wooden container, its outstretched arms and fangs protruding menacingly amidst a cloud of flies and cockroaches, as terrified janitors poked it with brooms.

But this beast posed no real threat.

Rather, it was a work of art spawned by puppeteer Robin Frohardt to convey a message about our culture of waste.

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“People throw so much stuff away every day,” says Frohardt. “We’re basically creating our own monster with all this garbage.”

During the Fall 2015 semester, she was an artist-in-residence with the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies (tdps), showing students that puppetry is a valuable tool for artistic expression on social issues— not just a medium for children.

Through funding from Heather Henson (daughter of Jim Henson ’60) and the Jane Henson Foundation (named for the 1955 graduate), Frohardt is sharing her artwork as well as working with advanced theater students on the fundamentals of puppetry, from the craft’s history to techniques for building and bringing puppets to life onstage.

“It’s really cool because we get to learn from someone who’s actually at the forefront and doing this for a living,” says Chelsey McLaughlin ’17.

Dumpster Monster, looming over onlookers at September’s NextNOW Festival, the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center’s second annual showcase

of innovative artists, was just one in Frohardt’s collection of works. Her first full-length puppet play, “The Pigeoning,” is a darkly comedic piece centered on mental illness and the end of the world.

The play premiered in 2013 and was “exquisitely rendered,” according to The New York Times.

Frohardt’s next project, set to debut in 2017, is a puppetry-based satire that audiences will experience in a real New York City storefront. From the outside, the Plastic Bag Store looks like any discount shop, but upon further investigation, patrons will get lost in a maze of aisles that morph into a complex miniature city of waste.

Professor Leigh Wilson Smiley, tdps director, says Frohardt’s work seduces the audience into contemplating societal problems through humor without making it threatening or scary.

“She’s helping students stimulate their imaginations by breathing life into inanimate objects,” Smiley says. “In our everyday life we’ve lost our childlike imaginations, and what her puppets bring back is that magic.”–nk

DUMPSTER MONSTER PHOTO COURTESY OF JEFF FITZGERALD / THE WRITER’S BLOC, UNIVERSIT Y OF MARYLAND

SURVIVOR: MARYLAND

Club Hubbub Students Forming Fun, Flashy and Funky Groups when umd says it takes only eight interested students to form a club, we’re not kidding.

Maryland has more than 800 clubs and organizations, making it easy for students to connect and explore their interests, whether academic, multicultural, religious, social, sports or service. The groups are as diverse as the students who join them, with many chapters of national groups (like our dental advocacy group, part of Students United for America’s ToothFairy) or those that are uniquely Maryland (such as astronomy-focused AstroTerps).

Here are a few you might not know about—and might be sorry you missed out on. –nk

For four seasons, students have played and filmed a Terp version of reality show pioneer “Survivor.” The semester-long game includes puzzles, physical challenges, tests of willpower (Who can keep their hand on McKeldin Mall’s sundial the longest?) and a semiweekly elimination vote from “McKeldin Island” until only the winner remains, taking home a $100 prize.

“Most of them forget it’s for money. It’s all about the pride and the title of Sole Survivor.

There’s a community here now, so people who have won are pretty respected,” says Austin Trupp ’16, club president.

The Spring 2015 season finale netted more than 2,000 views. Watch the episodes at youtube.com/user/austintrupp.

THRILL DESIGN CLUB From design competitions to trips to local amusement parks, this club gives students a first look at theme park engineering. The new club is designing a tabletop model built from Coaster Dynamix for Maryland Day, and is planning a PVC-pipe coaster large enough for a person to ride at next fall’s First Look Fair.

AWKAPELLA UMD’s only singing group for non-singers unites students with a love of music—not necessarily with talent. The club, which began in 2013, puts on karaoke-style sing-alongs every week, with playlists of oldies, songs from musicals and current radio hits.

EXPERIMENTAL FLYING CLUB Whoever said humans can’t fly? Now in its fifth year, this club attracts students interested in designing, building and flying hang gliders. Last year the club built a glider based on one of the Wright brothers’ designs.

Members test and ride their creations off and on campus, including McKeldin Mall.

LUMBERJACKS LANDSCAPERS AND LANDGINEERS What began as a small group renovating the back yard of Maryland Hillel in 2012 has grown to more than 100 members interested in hiking and completing outdoor campus projects.

These include maintaining fire pits and forest trails and repurposing wood from fallen trees to build birdhouses and bookcases.

NERF ACTIVITY SOCIETY It’s exactly what it sounds like. More than 200 Terps come together once a month to blast each other with foam darts (and to duck and run like mad) in competitive games similar to capture the flag and freeze tag. The club battles on McKeldin Mall and in the Stamp, Armory and Cole Field House.

ILLUSTRATION BY KELSEY MAROTTA AND HAILEY HWA SHIN

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PLAYBYPLAY

A

“Baby” Giant

Bannister looks to translate success to college level in the case of alfred j. bannister iii, the superb wrestling nickname of “Baby J” came long before the superb wrestling.

It was simply a way to differentiate him from his father. “(My family) never called me Alfred, even when I was in trouble,” he says.

(In elementary school, he wouldn’t even answer to his real first name.)

Whatever you call Bannister, however, you definitely have to call him a success,

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as the sophomore is the winningest wrestler in Maryland high school history and poised to become the next breakout star for the umd wrestling program.

A compact 141-pounder who turns a cartwheel as effortlessly as he jogs around a room, Bannister began wrestling at age 5 under the tutelage of his father, A.J., a former high school wrestler and football player, and older brother, Andrew, who wrestles for Notre Dame College of Ohio. After winning national tournament victories in middle school, Bannister starred at Bishop McNamara High School in Forestville, Md., finishing with 272 victories and four state titles.

“Every accomplishment is pressure,” says Bannister of his pedigree. “I like it.

I love having it.”

Keeping Bannister in state for college was “huge” for the program, says Coach Kerry McCoy. Maryland has accomplished plenty during his nearly eight-year tenure, including three acc titles and seven Terps earning 11 All-American honors, but the leap to the Big Ten Conference last year led to some growing pains.

“The biggest obstacle we have is tradition,” McCoy says of competing against

storied programs like Iowa and Penn State. “Every match, every week, you’re going to be looking at someone ranked top-25 in the country.”

And becoming one of the best teams in the conference—and the entire ncaa— will depend in part on making sure elite talent like Bannister stays home.

“Our goal has always been to win a national championship,” McCoy says.

“The cherry on top is winning a national championship with a lot of kids from Maryland.”

Behind more experienced collegiate wrestlers as a freshman, Bannister was held out of team competitions for a redshirt year but compiled a 37–4 record as an individual in open tournaments.

As of Dec. 14 this year, his record stood at 7–3.

He says being immersed in a group of Division I wrestlers has helped him acclimate to the challenges of college, from embracing the increased competitiveness to resisting the weight-gaining lure of 3 a.m. pizza.

“This is the big leagues,” he says. “It’s all on you. You lose, it’s on your shoulders.

You win, it’s on your shoulders.”–lf

PHOTO BY JOHN T. CONSOLI; OPPOSITE PAGE PHOTOS BY GREG FIUME

DURKIN LOOKS TO BOOST TERP FOOTBALL after working for some of the best coaches in college football and leading one of the country’s top defenses, the defensive coordinator at the University of Michigan has been named Maryland’s new head football coach.

“I really identify with this program,” D.J. Durkin said during his introductory press conference in December. “We’re going to bring in quality student-athletes that are going to compete for championships.”

During his single year in Ann Arbor, Durkin’s defense shut out three consecutive opponents and finished the regular season ranked No. 4 in the country. The Wolverines limited opponents to just 17 points per contest.

It was the latest stop for a coach known for his relentless approach to the game and recruiting. As an assistant coach at Florida from 2010-14, Durkin led top-15 defenses and was named the Recruiter of the Year by Rivals.com in 2012.

“We’re going to be aggressive in everything we do,” he said.

“I think you can ‘out-effort’ people on the field and off the field.”

He takes over a Terrapin team that finished the 2015 season with a 3-9 record; former head coach Randy Edsall was fired in October. umd Athletic Director Kevin Anderson said the coaching search focused on finding a strong leader with the energy, innovative football mind and pedigree to develop athletes.

“We found that person and the right person for our job,” he said.

Durkin, 38, grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, and played football for Bowling Green, earning his bachelor’s in business marketing in 2001 and master’s in educational administration and supervision in 2004. His other coaching stops have included his alma mater, Notre Dame and Stanford.

He and his wife, Sarah, have two children, Abigail and Luke.–lf

Gameday Uniform a group that started

when an undergraduate wanted to wear his suit more often and drum up support for a new coach might not seem destined to live very long. But never underestimate the passion of Terp fans.

This basketball season is the fifth for the “Turgeonites,” the half-dozen or so students who dress in suits and powder their hair for home games

in honor of UMD men’s basketball coach Mark Turgeon.

There’s no initiation process to joining, but the group of friends and acquaintances commit to attend each home game. They wave signs, try to pump up the crowd and once even performed (somewhat successfully) on the court with the Maryland dance team.

They’ve met Turgeon on several occasions, although they aren’t calling each other before games to synchronize wardrobes.

Despite the Jumbotron attention and a road trip to the Big Ten tournament in Chicago last year, wearing a suit is apparently a college student’s best disguise.

“As soon as we take our suits off, no one knows who we are,” says graduate student Nick Riddlesberger ’15, this year’s lead Turgeonite. “We’re just a small part of a huge, awesome fan base.”—LF

INNOVATION

FACULTY Q&A / ROBERT ORR

TURNING DOWN THE HEAT When it’s time to save the world, robert c. orr, dean of the School of Public Policy since 2014, steps into a phone booth and tears away his business suit to reveal… another business suit. (Did you expect tights and a cape at the United Nations?) Orr moonlights as a U.N. under secretarygeneral and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s right-hand man on climate change. As negotiators at the U.N.’s Paris climate conference in December neared a landmark global warming agreement, he took a break to tell Terp about his transition from diplomacy to academia, and plans for May’s international climate summit at the University of Maryland.–cc HOW DID YOU GO FROM U.N. OFFICIAL TO DEAN? I’ve been in a high-level policy

practitioner role for the last decade at the United Nations addressing some of the biggest global challenges: climate change, counterterrorism, energy, poverty and hunger. But I wanted to return to an academic setting to focus on the conceptual breakthroughs that enable long-term solutions. Academia has gotten more specialized and segmented, while the problems are increasingly complex and interconnected. I wanted to go to a public policy school that emphasizes integration and interdisciplinary work.

WHEN IT COMES TO CLIMATE, WHAT ARE THE STAKES? The stakes couldn’t be

bigger. The planet is warming at an increasing and alarming rate, but we have solutions that for the first time could address the issue at scale if we can mobilize them. The technologies for renewable energy sources like solar,

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wind and geothermal, as well as the economics of the situation, are moving in our favor. It’s incumbent that we set the policy framework to address global warming in the timeframe required.

DID THE PARIS CONFERENCE ACCOMPLISH THAT? This was different from any of

the previous 10 climate conferences I’ve attended. Not only did all the governments come ready to strike a deal and were truly seeking a deal, but you saw massive coalitions of mayors, governors, ceos and civil society pushing them and prepared to work with them to implement it. This is brand new.

WHAT’S THE NEXT STEP? Everyone knows that an agreement on paper that does not get applied immediately on the ground is not a deal worth making. The secretary-general of the United Nations has announced seven partners, including the University of Maryland, that will hold the Climate Action 2016 summit

in College Park and Washington, D.C., on May 5 and 6. It will address central climate issues that can be taken on quickly and robustly, including cities, energy, climate-smart land use, financing, resilience and providing analytical tools needed to continuously implement what was agreed to in Paris.

WILL MARYLAND HAVE A ROLE IN THE ANALYSIS PART? In the new climate

regime, governments will need data, information and analysis to constantly refine their policies to reduce greenhouse gasses and improve resilience.

Key universities in capitals around the world can work together to provide this.

Because of our location and strengths in specific research areas, umd is poised to take a central role in a global research network. We’re mobilizing the entire university behind this agenda in a cross-disciplinary way, because we know that working together we can make a unique contribution.

PHOTO COURTESY OF GETT Y IMAGES AND THOMAS IMO; ILLUSTRATION BY KELSEY MAROTTA

Heat Sick Global Warming Likely to Increase Salmonella Infections

GLOBA L CLIM AT E LE A DERS AT UMD On May 5, UMD will host Climate Action 2016, an international summit designed to spur concrete action following the global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and control global warming.

Day two of the two-day summit, which will feature leaders from around the world, will be held in downtown Washington, D.C. Details are available at climateaction.umd.edu.

polar bears bereft of ice and tiny tropical islands slowly being swamped are the standard bellwether images of global warming, but UMD researchers have found a less exotic potential effect right in our back yards—and it’s literally sickening.

The 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, shows that one expected result of climate change—more bouts of extreme weather—should significantly increase future rates of salmonella infection.

Already, as their comparison of state public health data and historical weather records shows, salmonella has a field day when temperatures or rainfall are far above historical norms. The resulting fever, diarrhea and other symptoms are particularly dangerous for the very young and very old. The effect should grow more pronounced as extreme weather increases,

something the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change calls very likely.

“When we have extreme heat or rainfall, it can enhance bacterial growth in the environment, including bodies of water,” says Amy Sapkota. “People can then be exposed to these bacteria through ingestion or other contact.”

What’s novel about the study, she says, is that it’s the first to show that climate change will particularly impact coastal dwellers. For example, extreme rain raises the risk of salmonella 7.1 percent in coastal areas, while inland counties only see a 3.6 percent bump.

Runoff from flooded septic systems and chicken farms, both of which are abundant in coastal Maryland, as well as more water recreation, could explain the difference.

The current study is Maryland-specific and may provide some guidance to state health officials and lawmakers, Amir Sapkota says. He hopes to broaden the investigation to other states, and perhaps overseas, providing a more nuanced view of the infectious impacts of global warming on different areas.

“The risk is not equally distributed,” he says. “Adaptation strategies at local and national levels need to account for differential burdens of infectious disease associated with climate change.”–CC

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Drop Out, Join In Professor Recruits Young People Without Diplomas to Help Study Peers edwin alamo spent more time in prison than in school .

Two decades ago, facing multiple suspensions and a system that didn’t seem to care whether he showed up for class, he dropped out of ninth grade in Lawrence, Mass.

A year later, he was convicted of a gang-related attempted murder, for which he served 12 years in prison. “I was into the streets and gang activity,” says Alamo. “I just wanted to be part of the crowd and who I felt good with.”

His lack of education isn’t unusual in the post-industrial city of 75,000: Half of its students never graduate from high school. Nationally, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that more than 3 million people ages 18 to 24 don’t have a high school diploma or GED. Their prospects are grim: Less than 40 percent are employed, estimates the Bureau of Labor Statistics, with most holding only lowwage, part-time or temporary jobs.

When education Assistant Professor Tara Brown approached Alamo at a construction training program in 2012 to study this issue, he saw it as an opportunity to help a new generation in his majority-Latino town—which includes his own relatives—understand and avoid his mistakes. She recruited two other high school dropouts, Jesus Santos and Newlyn De La Rosa, and together they conducted about 40 interviews and collected about 220 surveys from others like them, aged 18 to 24.

“It’s really challenging to go into a community where I’m an outsider and I have no trust or credibility,” Brown says. “They knew the lay of the land, the rhythms and other young people.”

She found that one of the biggest problems in Lawrence was that

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students didn’t know their rights. For example, students in Massachusetts are entitled to public education until they’re 21 (or 22, if they are special education students), but many of the interviewees believed that after they were 16 and legally permitted to drop out, administrators could remove them at any time.

Administrators were also supposed to give them hearings if they were suspended or expelled, but few did. Though individual teachers occasionally reached out, there was little formal follow-up from the school after the young people stopped attending.

The academic rigors of high school also overwhelmed many of these students. Discouraged and lacking support, many repeated ninth grade—including one who did it four times.

“If that’s not persistence, what is?”

Brown asks. “That’s a motivated person, but repetition is not intervention.

Maybe this person needs to be taught in a different way.”

Brown and the three men are still analyzing the survey data and planning an April educational rights forum in Lawrence.

She hopes to replicate her research in majority-black Baltimore to better understand the role of culture in educational attainment. She also plans to continue working with dropouts like Alamo—who just completed his first semester in community college, studying business.

Brown “wasn’t just a co-researcher or somebody who interviewed me. We got to be friends and she was very helpful and influential to me going back to school,” says Alamo. “This project made me see that there’s people out there who really care.”–KS

ILLUSTRATIONS BY KELSEY MAROTTA

Unreachable Memories Psychology Researchers Study Brain Connections in Early Childhood

t

hink back to your earliest years, before you turned 6. What do you remember?

Odds are, not much. And what you can dredge up are foggy, scattered glimpses of events, without the important when, how and why that would give context.

Why that’s true is the focus of a new study by psychology assistant professors Tracy Riggins and Elizabeth Redcay, who seek to understand how children’s brains create and retain memories.

“It’s not just a matter of forgetting,” Riggins says—it’s that these memories aren’t formed in a way that allow them to be accessed later on.

The key is the hippocampus, a critical gateway in the brain through which information passes to create memories.

It’s been widely studied in adults, but not

in children at such a critical age of brain development, ages 4 to 8.

Riggins and Redcay ask children about recent events like trips to visit relatives or the first day of school and prod them for specific timelines and details. The children also play memory games.

Then, the researchers take ultra-high resolution brain scans of the children using the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fmri) machine at umd’s Maryland Neuroimaging Center. These scans detect changes in blood flow; recently accessed portions of the brain are flooded with oxygenated blood, and areas that commonly work together appear similar.

So far, about halfway through their three-year study, they’ve found

that as children age from 4 to 6, the hippocampus becomes more strongly connected to areas like the lateral temporal regions and prefrontal cortex to form clearer, more complete memories.

While in adults, a larger hippocampus correlates to more robust memory abilities, in children under the age of 6, size doesn’t matter—the organization of the developing hippocampal network might be more important instead.

Being able to identify exactly when the network is mature and its typical appearance in a scan can help doctors discover problems in children at risk for memory impairment before they start school. It could also guide the treatment of those with brain damage or disorders that can lead to memory impairment, like depression or schizophrenia.–ks

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Reopening the File Professor Injects Real Science Into “X-Files” Revival in the back of her lab in the Microbiology Building, Anne Simon chuckles with devilish glee over the fresh horror she’s dreamed up, soon to be unleashed on an unsuspecting public.

She’s mum on the details, but will say it’s no apocalyptic plague; those have been done to death. She promises only, “It’s nothing anyone has seen before.”

Luckily, Simon, an internationally recognized plant virologist and umd biology professor, isn’t plotting our collective demise—she’s just helping “The X-Files” creator Chris Carter nail the science for his iconic show on fox.

The conspiracy-fueled sci-fi drama returns Jan. 24 for a six-episode miniseries 14 years after its cancellation in 2002. Simon is also back, providing science advice as she did during the show’s first run. As for the menacing twist she’s devised—fictional yet within a stone’s throw of feasibility—it punctuates the final episode, earning Simon her first Hollywood story credit.

She was hooked from the show’s beginning in 1993, when she was a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Part of the appeal was the female lead, fbi Agent (and fictional umd alum) Dana Scully, a scientist dedicated to an evidence-based search for truth who conformed to none of the nerdy, sinister stereotypes.

“She was a very smart, very with-it person,” she says. “I saw myself in her.”

After that first episode, when Carter’s name flashed on the screen, Simon wondered if it was the same guy who’d recently married one of her mother’s friends back home in the Los Angeles area. She asked her mother about it, and before long, Carter was on the phone seeking guidance on alien germs.

What would scientists do, he wanted to know, if they found an otherworldly strain of bacteria?

“They’d try to grow more of it so they could study it and not run out,” she responded. The vessel she said they might use—an Erlenmeyer flask—became an episode’s title.

They’d also examine it under a microscope— but not bent over a simple optical scope of the sort found in high school science labs.

Instead they’d use an advanced scanning electron microscope.

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Simon—who cringes at silly errors in the portrayal of science on television—was thrilled when Carter carefully worked her advice into his screenplay.

“All I ever wanted to do was get the microscopes right,” she laughs.

She began reviewing Carter’s scripts to help the Southern California surfer ground his bizarre plots in reality—well, as much as possible on a show about mutant monsters, alien invaders and invisible men.

“He’s willing to make the extra effort to make what he’s showing on-screen correct because it’s just scarier that way,” Simon says.

Simon inherited a taste for sci-fi, and the belief it needn’t be stupid, from her father, screenwriter and playwright Mayo Simon. As a child, she saw him conduct painstaking research before sitting down to pen movies like “Marooned,” which featured Gene Hackman and Richard Crenna as nasa astronauts stuck aloft in a malfunctioning spacecraft.

Simon, who’s pulling for the show to come back on a regular basis, often mulls ideas with her best friend, Dr. Margaret Fearon, microbiology director for Canadian Blood Services.

They met after Fearon emailed to compliment Simon’s 1999 book, “The Real Science Behind ‘The X-Files.’” Soon, Fearon was helping Carter portray medicine more accurately on the show.

Simon is a skilled teacher and a deeply knowledgeable researcher, Fearon says, able to simplify tough concepts for the public and push the boundaries of science fiction.

“The things she has come up with are all based on things that are out there in the science world,” she says. “You look at new technology or new knowledge that comes along, and extrapolate from there into fictional territory.”

Simon loves the fiction. But what makes it worthwhile is the chance to engage people through lectures, Twitter and other forums about concepts like reliance on evidence rather than fear, particularly with heated issues like vaccines and genetic modification of crops (both of which Simon strongly supports).

“If I just talk to people about ‘The X-Files,’ it’s kind of a waste of time,” she says. “I use this as a tool to talk about science.”– cc

PHOTO BY JOHN T. CONSOLI; ILLUSTRATION BY KELSEY MAROTTA

NEWSDESK UMD faculty share their expertise with the media:

“Most Chinese hackers

involved with hacking American systems are young (many are in their 20s), passionate about their homeland and intensely patriotic.

These politically motivated youths use hacking as a way to protest against foreign policy that they believe is counter to China’s global dominance.

”

TIMOTHY C. SUMMERS, INFORMATION STUDIES, IN AN ESSAY IN MARKETWATCH.COM, OCT. 1.

SIMON SAYS: THE E PERT’S FAVORITE EPISODES SEASON “REDUX,” EPISODE 1 So much wonderful science!

Scully does a complete Southern blot experiment in world record time. I also suggested what Chris should use as the developing alien— a sea urchin pluteus.

“The refugee debate could fuel the bitterness and sense of grievance of young Muslims anywhere and could be used by the isis propaganda machine to enhance anti-u.s. sentiment and boost recruitment.”

ARIE KRUGLANSKI, PSYCHOLOGY, ON HOW ANTI-REFUGEE RHETORIC HELPS ISIS, IN THE DAILY BEAST, NOV. 24.

SEASON “THE POST-MODERN PROMETHEUS,” EPISODE 5 My favorite all-time episode and the favorite of many fans.

It’s the first one Chris wrote based on my science idea: homeotic flies as monsters.

SEASON “MY STRUGGLE II,” EPISODE 6 This is from the new miniseries, and the most I’ve ever contributed to an episode.

Chris gave me (and my friend Margaret Fearon) story credit.

Gore’s role “is limited at this point. There was a moment in time when he was pushing a wave of attention. I never thought of him as a central person in the climate movement.”

DANA FISHER, PROGRAM FOR SOCIETY AND THE ENVIRONMENT, QUOTED IN A COLUMN ARGUING AL GORE HAS DONE MORE HARM THAN GOOD IN THE MOVEMENT, IN THE NEW YORK POST, DEC. 6.

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faced with a deadly new cl ass of drugs, umd center tries to educate the public

by liam farrell

ON 2ND STREET NW BETWEEN D AND E STREETS IN WASHINGTON, D.C., where a drab homeless shelter looms over a neighborhood of office buildings and hotels, they call June 5, 2015, “The Great Fallout.” ¶ Around 10 a.m. that day, calls started pouring into 911 about people overdosing in that area. Police, EMTs and firefighters quickly set up a command center outside the Center for Creative Non-Violence with two ambulances and a fire engine company standing by. All told, 10 people were rushed to the hospital. ¶ “It was almost a conga line of EMTs,” says Donald Page, the center’s administrative director. ¶ Yet that alarming scene was just one component of the havoc wrought that day by a powerful new class of drugs called synthetic cannabinoids. A total of 23 people across D.C. were hospitalized on June 5 after taking them, followed by 15 the next day and another 24 a week later.

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LETTER LETTER AND GUN AND ART GUN BY ART HAILEY

BY HAILEY HWA SHIN

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Sold for just a few dollars on the street or in smoke shops, liquor stores, gas stations and online, the shredded plant material is packaged in colorful pouches with names like “Mr. Nice Guy,” “Spice” and “Scooby Snax,” marketed as incense and winkingly labeled as not for human consumption. Rolled inside cheap cigar wrappings, the drug looks like and is often assumed to act like marijuana, but the chemicals lacing it—and often changing from dose to dose and product to product—can spawn much more dangerous effects, such as delirium, seizures, psychosis and hallucinations.

The New England Journal of Medicine published a list last summer of nearly 50 locations in the United States with clusters of health issues from synthetic cannabinoids between August 2011 and April 2015, from 220 cases in Denver to 41 cases and two deaths in Bryan, Texas. Washington, D.C., appears to be one of the epicenters of the crisis.

Local and federal agencies and public health officials are mobilizing to stamp out the burgeoning industry, but they can’t regulate what they don’t understand: What exactly is in these drugs? How are the substances changing? Where are they being found?

The University of Maryland’s Center for Substance Abuse Research (cesar) is becoming the central resource to answer those urgent questions. From an unremarkable office on the outskirts of campus, it’s ringing the alarm bells perhaps loudest of all as it works with the federal government and studies what Vice media has called “the worst drug in the world.”

LONGT IME EX PERT ISE Eric Wish, the director of cesar, has a career spanning virtually the entire modern history of drugs in America—and that’s why synthetic cannabinoids have him so worried.

Wish fell into drug research in the 1970s while studying for his Ph.D. at Washington University in St. Louis, just as the field was swimming in new funding. He studied under early innovators and helped on a seminal study about how American soldiers serving in Vietnam stopped using narcotics once they returned home.

While working with Narcotic and Drug Research Inc. in New York, Wish was an early proponent of using urinalysis—then a new tool—to gauge drug use, rather than relying on self-reports from users.

It had two major benefits: First, Wish says, it’s much more accurate, and second, the criminal justice system collects plenty of samples for urinalysis— samples from people whose behavior frequently predicts future drug use in the general community.

“An illegal drug oftentimes will be embraced first by people doing other illegal behaviors,” says Wish, noting research showed the heroin outbreak in 1970s D.C. was discovered 12 to 18 months earlier in the criminal population. “They are the tip of the iceberg.”

He has been with cesar since it was founded in 1990, in the aftermath of umd basketball superstar Len Bias’ death from cocaine intoxication four years earlier. State officials began to look for ways to address drug and alcohol abuse, and a state commission, noticing a paucity of reliable information on the problem, recommended the creation of a research center at umd.

The office functions as a central resource for research, training, program evaluation and statistics on drug and alcohol problems, sending out a weekly bulletin with the latest information on substance abuse—the “cesar Fax”— to more than 6,000 subscribers around the world.

So Wish has seen a lot, from heroin to crack to prescription

washington, d.c., emergency responders come to the aid of a man feeling the effects of synthetic cannabinoids in july 2015. those drugs have turned the cit y into an epicenter of a new public health crisis.

painkillers, but nothing like synthetic cannabinoids and their chameleon-like nature.

“It is a whole new generation of drugs,” he says.

FINDING T HE DRUGS ronically, the Dr. Frankenstein in this story is government and higher education research.

In the 1980s and 1990s, scientists created chemical compounds to help them study the brain receptors stimulated by thc, the active ingredient in marijuana. One of those compounds—named jwh-108 after John W. Huffman, a Clemson University chemist whose research was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse—made the leap from academic journals into Europe’s underground drug markets and arrived in the United States in 2008.

That compound is so simple, Huffman once told abc News, that it “can be made by a halfway decent undergraduate chemistry major.”

While the federal government has made more than 20 types of synthetic cannabinoids like jwh108 illegal, outlawing the specific compound in a drug born in a laboratory has proven to be a weak strategy. Suppliers—mostly labs in China—can simply tweak the molecules to avoid breaking the law and create something brand new.

“That’s the scary part. That chemist has no idea what it will do to the human brain,” Wish says. “The person who takes it is playing Russian roulette.”

Since 2012, cesar has been working in cooperation with the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy on the Community Drug Early Warning System (cdews), a project that aims to identify emerging drugs in a quick and cost-efficient manner.

So far, cdews has completed two studies by salvaging urine samples ready to be discarded by criminal justice agencies and testing for a more expansive amount of drugs, including synthetic cannabinoids.

The first study, published in September 2013 based on samples from Prince George’s County, Md., Chesterfield, Va., and Washington, D.C., found that people who had passed the normal criminal justice drug screen—which looks for standard substances from drugs like marijuana, cocaine and methamphetamines—were just as likely to have

DRUG PACKET PHOTO (LEF T) BY JOHN T. CONSOLI; PHOTO (TOP RIGHT) BY RICKY CARIOTI VIA GETT Y IMAGES

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used synthetic cannabinoids as those who had failed. Almost 40 percent of samples taken from D.C. men ages 26 to 30 tested positive for synthetic cannabinoids, and the vast majority of positive tests would have been missed if two newly discovered substances hadn’t been added to the tests at the last minute.

The second study, published in April, used samples from D.C., Denver and Tampa, Fla., and found significant variety in the synthetic cannabinoids being used. While juveniles in Tampa tested positive for only one substance, adults in Denver and juveniles in D.C. did for as many as 10. One synthetic cannabinoid metabolite, pb-22, was found in a remarkable 41 percent of adult D.C. parolees and probationers who had tested positive for them.

Wish and his staffers, who are based in the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, work to stay on top of the changing nature of the problem, and keep in touch with a dozen specialists around the world to find out what new substances have been discovered. Sometimes they even have to wait for the government to figure out what exactly its agents have seized.

“It’s almost impossible for us to test our way out of this,” Wish says.

mystery of the drugs’ contents and unpredictability of their effects.

“It’s a huge public health problem because we don’t know who is going to get hurt,” he says.

In D.C., the number of synthetic cannabinoid cases has skyrocketed. From fall 2012 to spring 2014, the D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department averaged about 17 cases a month that were connected to synthetic cannabinoids. But starting in May 2014, incidents climbed into the dozens, then leaped into the hundreds, reaching a high of 611 in September. Although there were only 173 cases in November, possibly due to colder temperatures, that’s still a tenfold increase from a typical month several years ago.

High-profile incidents of violence have been linked to these drugs. In August, a woman who had been using synthetic drugs mixed with pcp was shot by a D.C. police officer after she refused to drop a knife; in September, a Maryland man was found guilty of involuntary man608 611 slaughter for shooting his stepfather 18 times after 580 smoking synthetic drugs in 2013. Police also suspect that the man accused of fatally stabbing a fellow Metro pas439 senger on July 413 4 was high on synthetic drugs.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser has called

R ESPONDING TO THE PROBLEM ith public opinion cooling toward the war on drugs, Wish, who is heading a third cdews study that branches all the way out to Hawaii, and others have been accused of fear mongering.

But in his interviews with media like The Washington Post and npr, Wish is not saying that everyone who takes synthetic cannabinoids will get sick or die. After all, nearly 6 percent of high school seniors reported using synthetic cannabinoids in 2014 (down from about 8 percent in 2013 and 11 percent in 2012), a number that would have overwhelmed the public health system had they all been hospitalized. Instead, 131 he’s emphasizing the continuing 89

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N U M B E R O F WA S H I N G T O N , D.C . , S Y N T H E T I C C A N N A B I N O I D PA T I E N T C A S E S Source: District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Services Department

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synthetic cannabinoids “a clear and present danger to the public,” and emergency legislation was passed last year in an effort to increase penalties for stores found selling the drugs. As of December, two businesses had been closed for 96 hours under the legislation, which is being considered for permanent implementation. The D.C. attorney general’s office has also proposed a bill to classify synthetic cannabinoids on their chemical class rather than individual compounds, in order to better prosecute the manufacturers who make drugs that are one step ahead of the law.

D.C.’s health department is collecting data from eight hospitals to monitor the trend, and has developed new urine and blood screenings to test patients suspected of using synthetic cannabinoids. As of Dec. 2, 337 specimens had been tested; 108 were positive for synthetic and common drugs, and 102 were positive for only synthetic ones.

Responding to the cdnews findings, D.C.’s pretrial services also purchased new equipment so it can test for these drugs.

“In just an hour’s time on the street last week, I saw three overdoses,” D.C. Police Chief Cathy Lanier said in the summer. ”We don’t want to go back to the crack cocaine days.”

A few months later, D.C. police seized 265 pounds of synthetic cannabinoids—at least $2.3 million worth of “Bizarro”—in a raid on a warehouse in Northwest Washington.

SAV ING LI V ES IN A CIRCUS mild fall morning presents an uneasy mix of people near the Center for Creative Non-Violence, as eager tourists, harried office workers and fresh-faced law students make their way from the Judiciary Square Metro station past shambling loners and huddled smokers. Police cars race by every few minutes; one officer on a bicycle methodically stops and talks to each gathering on stoops and sidewalks.

A park, sandwiched between the shelter and the U.S. Tax Court, is pristine and kept that way with its fences, padlocks and signs listing what is banned on federal property. Outside of it, the curb is littered with cheap cigar wrappers, a telltale sign of synthetic cannabinoid use.

According to Page, most of the people hanging around the neighborhood are homeless but not current shelter residents, some because they failed the organization’s drug test. They are the customer base for the synthetic cannabinoid dealers hawking in broad daylight, attracted by the bargain price of a dollar for a joint and by their effectiveness in

dulling the senses. Plus, an erroneous rumor persists that drug tests can’t pick them up.

The unpredictability of synthetic cannabinoids also doesn’t seem to curb their popularity. In the summer, Page saw a new variant hit the streets, one that caused some users to shake violently.

Sitting in a shelter classroom, Page, a former client, says he is skeptical of D.C.’s tactic of targeting businesses. He thinks the solution lies in going after the users. Cutting off local suppliers, he says, will just make the dealers get drugs from other states or online.

Although it sounds punitive, this prescription comes from a charitable impulse. Page is dealing with a vulnerable population that needs courage just to ask for help, let alone accept it in an area oozing temptation.

“To see the circus around the shelter is just another reason not to go there,” he says.

The shriek of sirens regularly washes over the neighborhood, located just a few blocks from a fire station. But until there is an answer for synthetic cannabinoids—will their popularity fizzle on its own? Is there a limit to how inventive chemists can be? Is there an innovation just waiting to be discovered through legislation?—Page will wonder with each alarm if The Great Fallout has come back, even stronger. TERP

TOP PHOTO BY JOHN T. CONSOLI; BOTTOM PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS; OPPOSITE PAGE CHART AND LETTER ART BY HAILEY HWA SHIN

WINTER 2016 TER P

25

ALUM PUSHES THE BOUNDARIES OF FOOD CRITICISM

BY KAREN SHIH ’09

“Do you taste that bitterness?” asks Todd Kliman ’91.

Somewhere in the lightly seared tuna, avocado cream and crunchy coleslaw-like topping, I can almost detect what he’s talking about. But at 10 p.m. on a drizzly Monday, after we’ve spent hours being turned away from one overcrowded D.C. bar after another, it’s easier for me to just chew, nod and be grateful for something delicious in this tiny Filipino restaurant.

And so it goes throughout the meal at Bad Saint in Columbia Heights, as he declares there’s no dried shrimp in a rice noodle dish (prompted by an inquiry for a vegetarian friend) and that the best way to eat the clams with Chinese sausage and black beans is to pluck them from their overstuffed shells and taste them with a spoonful of broth, where all the briny juices have pooled.

At one point, the cheery waitress brings over light pink prawn crackers with homemade XO sauce. “A gift from the chef,” she says.

“That’s probably a sign I’ve been recognized,” says the Washingtonian food critic once she leaves.

A lesser critic might be concerned about a restaurant’s efforts to control his experience. But Kliman’s writing goes beyond just the particulars of each dish (though Chef Michel Richard once told him that with his palate, it was a

shame he wasn’t a chef) or the service he receives. He’s more focused on the tide that’s ushered in this Brooklyn-esque, two-dozen-seat, no-reservations joint and the history—or lack thereof—of authentic Filipino food in the D.C. metro area.

You can’t find that on Twitter, Yelp and blogs, where analysis from restaurantgoers typically goes no deeper than complaints about cold bread, a waiter’s use of “guys” or a salty pork chop.

Kliman prefers to contemplate the big picture. He may ruminate on persistent, silent segregation in the restaurant industry in an Oxford American essay, selected for the “Best Food Writing 2015” anthology; the challenges of opening a restaurant that caters to both old and new residents in a gentrifying neighborhood in his new column, “OtherWise”; or the right or wrong way to eat unfamiliar Ethiopian cuisine, in his weekly online chat with readers.

“Food has changed. Products have changed. People have educated themselves about food, making food a bigger part of their lives,” he says. “If you want to know about the mere existence of a new restaurant or what to get, you don’t need what I do. I would like to think that there are ways to write about food that can help people understand the time they’re living in.”

WRITE OF PASSAGE It’s a little strange to imagine the erudite Kliman, who peppers his conversations with references to Philip Roth and Stanley Whitney, covering youth sports for a modest Prince George’s County paper as a 15-year-old.

But “writing was all I wanted to do,” says Kliman.

After graduating from Eleanor Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, Kliman didn’t go straight to college. He instead wrote for the Washington Weekly (then D.C.’s version of The Village Voice), went on a months-long cross-country road trip and served as a news aide at The Washington Post before enrolling at umd two years after his peers.

“Money was always a struggle,” he says, since his dad was an artist and his mom wrote instruction manuals. So he paid his own way.

Instead of taking a shift at the local Dairy Queen, he parlayed his clips into new assignments for national magazines, penning pieces on topics ranging from bullfighting in the Southwest to the melodrama of senior year in high school (he went back, “21 Jump Street”-style).

In the classroom, English professors Jack Russell, Michael Olmert and Don Kleine taught him to appreciate novels that defied classification, as well as the nuances of language and structure, and to embrace an unorthodox writing style.

“I decided to drift more in that direction,” he says, “not heeding the dictates of an editor.”

THE OUTSIDER “Artists are rarely if ever in the swim of society.

They stand athwart it, the better to penetrate it.

What the best of them produce is fundamentally spiritual, not material—the means to see through the falsehoods and fatuities of the culture.”

—“OtherWise,” Sept. 17, 2015 Though Kliman didn’t write that to describe himself, it helps illuminate why he enrolled in a small, traditionally women’s college for his master’s in English, then turned to teaching at historically black Howard University. What others might find

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uncomfortable, Kliman took as opportunities to better understand worlds not his own.

As one of few white instructors at Howard, he encountered skepticism.

“Why are you here?” Kliman recalls being asked in one of his first classes.

He was devoted to helping them not only understand the power of words, but the city and society that surrounded them.

“He wanted us to branch out and see the world a little differently,” says Frederick Uku, who remembers trekking to the Library of Congress to do research and organizing a symposium on gentrification. “He forced us to get out and see parts of the city we hadn’t seen.”

Kliman, who taught there for seven years, left such an impression on Uku that they’ve remained friends since he graduated.

“It’s unusual for a white Jewish kid that grew up in Maryland to identify with African-American culture,” Uku says. “But you can see it in his writing— it’s soulful.”

A CRITIC APART Kliman isn’t the guy to take down a restaurant.

To some extent, his readership limits his power to do that—Washingtonian’s monthly readership of about 200,000 is certainly not that of The New York Times. What truly interests him is lifting a little place in Beltsville or Fulton, Md., or Falls Church, Va., out of obscurity.

“I really appreciate that he supports mom-and-pop shops and these small businesses,” says Ferhat Yalcin, owner and chef at Fishnet in College Park, which sells his version of Turkish fish sandwiches, and of a newly revamped second seafood restaurant in D.C.’s Shaw neighborhood.

From the start, that’s been Kliman’s goal. “I always wanted to find a place no other reviewer would find,” he says. (An early tactic was to scour immigrant newspapers, because the help-wanted ads were always in English.)

When it became clear that Howard wouldn’t offer him tenure, he started looking for other opportunities—and Washington City Paper was looking for monthly food reviews. It eventually hired him full time, and in less than two years, Kliman won a James Beard Award, the Oscar of the restaurant world.

Washingtonian grabbed him in 2005 to help invigorate the D.C. institution. Kliman launched his weekly chat and expanded his coverage area— a prescient move. Today, some of the area’s best

ILLUSTRATIONS BY KELSEY MAROTTA

EXCERPTS FROM RECENT PIECES BY KLIMAN CODING AND DECODING DINNER,” OXFORD AMERICAN, MARCH 15, 2015

“BAD SAINT” RESTAURANT REVIEW, WASHINGTONIAN, DECEMBER 2015

“40 THOUGHTS ABOUT STANLEY WHITNEY’S NEW SHOW,” “OTHERWISE,” AUG. 11, 2015

We have come to expect and accept black and white in the workplace, on the playing field, in politics, in the military, and we congratulate ourselves on our steady march to racial harmony. But our neighborhoods and our restaurants do not look much different today than they did fifty years ago. That Kingly vision of sitting down at the same table together and breaking bread is as smudgy as it’s ever been.

Even Filipinos can’t agree on what constitutes the core of its dishes: In a country of more than 7,000 islands, unity and coherence simply aren’t possible.

In this regard, the cuisine is intensely micro-regional, to use the term beloved by many slow-food devotees. One night, a waitress remarked that she’d never heard of some of the dishes on chef Tom Cunanan’s menu—“and I’ve been eating Filipino food all my life!”

Picasso once said that it was his greatest desire to see the world with the uncorrupted eyes of a child. Much has been made of this remark; what often is left out is that he wished to retain the technical skill of an older man to render this pure, fresh vision.

This is the animating tension in his best work, and it is also part of what makes the Whitney show so engrossing.

new restaurants open at the fringes of the city and beyond, where, he says, “with cheaper rent, you have the ability to make really creative food.”

He eats out nearly every day, sometimes multiple meals a day. He avoids disguises, preferring to have friends arrive first or to make reservations at off-peak times. He typically visits three times before he publishes a formal review, though he offers quick impressions during his chats.

Kliman’s early praise of Fishnet spurred Yalcin, an industry veteran, to cross the unspoken line between restaurateur and critic and seek advice when his second restaurant was struggling.

“The things I want to do, he understands it,” says Yalcin.

FOOD AND FAMILY Kliman approaches his work as a cultural critic who just happens to have a food-writing gig. Nowhere is this more evident than in his weekly online column, where he muses about food but also about the unusual struggles of civil rights activist Rachel Dolezal or the conflicting views of Steve Jobs as an artist and businessman.

He’s also never stopped writing on his own time. His first book, “The Wild Vine,” weaves a tale about a melancholic antebellum doctor, a dot-com transsexual multimillionaire and a forgotten grape

over 200 years of American history. The Richmond Times-Dispatch called it “an outstanding piece of literature.”

The new book he’s working on reflects the emptiness he felt after his father’s death six years ago—he still signs off every chat with “Missing you, tek,” his father’s initials—and serves as a combination memoir and chronicle of Kliman’s search for an author whose book spoke deeply to his father during his final years.

Now a father himself to two young boys with his wife, Ellen M.M. ’00, Kliman often takes them on review visits. Seven-year-old Jesse, he estimates, has visited more than 2,500 restaurants.

Though a sumptuous tasting menu or a great burger can still thrill him, “a lot of the experiences I have that I remember and hold onto are meals with my family,” he says.

That’s part of what he likes at Bad Saint, which features comfort food among photos of the owners’ grandparents. When the flames from the sizzling wok die down and the chatter of the crowd wanes, Kliman and I are the last people there. I’m satisfied but sleepy, worried about conking out on my Metro ride home.

But Kliman’s energized. He sees potential in this fledgling restaurant, aside from one concern: The intimate space could turn off those unable or unwilling to wait for hours. That’s a shame, he says, because more people should taste its no-compromise dishes.

Bad Saint, meet the big picture. TERP

WINTER 2016 TER P

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A UMD RESEARCHER AND HIS STUDENTS STUDY

the golden retriever puppy gazed up at Abel Rosas with adoring eyes, then tried to clamber into his lap.

“Get the f--- off me,” the 26-year-old Marine corporal growled, recoiling.

It was 2008, two wars were boiling in the Middle East, and he belonged over there with his fellow infantrymen hunting terrorists. Not playing with a dog in a California post-traumatic stress disorder (ptsd) treatment center.

Homecomings from war were always bad—bills to pay, the tiresome spit-andpolish of garrison life, demands from his fiancée. His solution was mental retreat from everything, even the love of the woman he relied on for long-distance support during deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.

But now the thing that had given his life meaning, combat, was gone. After a roadside bomb nearly killed him in Iraq, doctors diagnosed brain injuries and declared him unfit for battle. Rosas exploded, savagely attacking an officer in hopes he’d be killed by military police.

Instead of prison, the Marine Corps sent him to the National Center for ptsd to heal. Rosas arrived angry, refusing to participate in rehabilitation.

Commitment in an inpatient psychiatry unit seemed likely when a social worker tried something new.

The puppy, Vegas, was unfazed by Rosas’ rebuff and reared up on his lap, begging for attention. Rosas nearly jerked away again. But looking into the dog’s gentle eyes, he felt an unexpected sense of peace, and the beginnings of an idea: Maybe he could get better.

For the first time since his combat disqualification, the Marine smiled.

WHETHER BONDING WITH DOGS CAN HEAL THE

INVISIBLE SCARS OF

WA R A N D S T R E N G T H E N FA M I L I E S O F M I L I TA R Y VETERANS WITH PTSD

Modern science has confirmed what dog lovers know intuitively: There’s a unique biological bond between our two species. Now, a umd researcher and his students are studying whether that connection can help heal families of military veterans with ptsd.

Norman Epstein, a professor and director of the School of Public Health’s Couple and Family Therapy Program, is spearheading a key part of a sprawling, military-funded four-year study nicknamed “Big Dog.” It will place hundreds of active-duty military members undergoing ptsd treatment at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., and at Fort Belvoir, Va., in a program training service dogs for placement with disabled veterans.

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A large team of researchers—Epstein is the rare civilian among them—will monitor physiological, psychological and behavioral signals to see if dogs can be therapy tools for those suffering the invisible wounds of war, like severe anxiety, disturbing flashbacks and self-imposed isolation. ptsd is widespread after 14 years of war since the 9/11 attacks. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) estimates that up to 20 percent of the 2.7 million Americans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan show symptoms. And while direct correlation is impossible, it’s undeniably played a role in skyrocketing rates of family tragedies during the worst years of fighting, including a military suicide rate that more than doubled and a 42 percent increase in divorces.

“There’s certainly anecdotal evidence that working with training the dogs and having that attachment counteracts ptsd symptoms—it brings people out of their shell and seems to help reduce some of their emotional reactivity symptoms,” Epstein says.

F A M I LY C O N N E C T I O N S The sobering statistics are what make Epstein’s contribution to the study critical to defense leaders.

Military families will come to his center for assessments before and after a six-week dog training session, and continue the visits for a year to see how long the canine effect lasts.

Each visit, they’ll be filmed doing activities with their children and discussing sources of discord with partners. The videos will be turned over to teams of “coders”—undergrads who Epstein trains to spot every subtle and not-so-subtle sign of positive or negative attitudes and communication.

“With couples, they’ll be looking for, for example, validation and invalidation behavior, verbal and nonverbal,” he says. “One person says something and the other responds, ‘Oh, that’s silly.’ Nonverbal would be rolling of the eyes or looking up at the ceiling when the partner is talking.”

Epstein’s doctoral students, Jennifer Young M.S. ’14 and Shawn Kim M.S. ’15, are responsible for interacting with families and carrying out many of the procedures.

He’s been honing the basic protocol for years; his methods to objectively measure domestic dynamics have made him a worldwide leader in couple and family therapy.

The current-events component of the research makes it a bit unusual, Young says, but there’s something else too.

“I want to play with puppies,” she admits.

That’s part of the appeal for Epstein, a dog lover himself. Although the low-key professor’s boisterous Chihuahua and terrier duo bear little resemblance to the large, calm retrievers frequently used as service dogs, he was drawn to the research by curiosity about how canines affect the human psyche.

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“When I’m with my dogs, it’s a good feeling, it’s calming, and there’s a strong feeling of connection,” he says.

Clinical studies back up the power of the human-dog connection. A 2015 report by researchers at Azabu University in Japan, for instance, shows that—like new mothers and babies—dogs and humans experience a release of oxytocin, known as the “bonding hormone,” when they gaze into each other’s eyes.

How does bonding with a dog actually help military families experiencing ptsd?

The key to the new study is that the service members won’t just be hanging out with dogs, but actively training them as service dogs, says Dr. Paul Pasquina, a retired Army colonel and the primary investigator for the Big Dog study.

“In the process of learning how to train a dog, they’re engaged in tasks that require concentration, attention, communication skills, picking up on the sensitivities and the difficulty of training a dog,” says Pasquina, chair of the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at the federal Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda.

Those same skills may also heal families, Epstein says.

“When you have a person who’s startled easily, who’s easily irritated and becomes angry and lashes out frequently—it’s stressful to be around them,” he says. “But working to train a dog, they have to develop empathy and understanding of the dog’s frame of reference. And we think that might generalize to developing empathy and understanding for their children and spouse.”

It had dramatic results for retired Coast Guard Lt. Thomas Faulkenberry, a special operations member who arrived at Walter Reed in 2013 with a battered body and bottled-up emotions after 15 years in the service.

He’d returned from post-Hurricane Katrina rescue operations in New Orleans wracked with anxiety, says his wife, Mary Faulkenberry.

“He was always the life of the party, someone who could make friends with anyone,” she says. “But he came back with a dark cloud over him—cynical, hypervigilant, just changed.”

He began drinking heavily and relying on pain pills for injuries and other physical ailments. His relationship with his wife and four sons was tattered, and suicide was on his mind.

Service dog training was part of his rehabilitation at Walter Reed. When he carried home the methods of positive reinforcement he was instructed to use training dogs, his distant, heavy-handed manner toward his family changed.

“It was almost immediate, and it was a positive impact,” Faulkenberry says. “The training is focused on positive reinforcement… it was ‘fake it until you become it.’ Until you can actually feel that enthusiasm and happiness, that’s how you act.”

OPENING -SPREAD AND VEGAS PHOTOS BY JAMIE PFLUGHOEF T; IRAQ PHOTO COURTESY OF ABEL ROSAS; RESEARCHER PHOTO BY JOHN T. CONSOLI

Professor Norman Epstein (center) discusses service dog training for wounded warriors with Warrior Canine Connection Director Rick Yount (right) at the organization’s Brookeville, Md., headquarters.

“ I T WA S R E A L LY H A R D AT F I R S T BEC AUSE OF OU R CU LTU R E. F RO M TH E FIR ST DAY OF B A SIC TR AINING TO TH E L A ST DAY YOU’R E O N ACTIV E DU TY, TH E CU LTU R E F ORCES US A S M A L E M A RIN ES TO BE TH ESE

TOUGH, RESILIENT IN DIVIDUA LS W HO SHO W

N O E M O T I O N .”

— A BEL ROSA S

Troops with PTSD will help train a Labrador puppy (below) as a service dog for a wounded veteran. Rosas (right, at center) walks with his son Nico and Vegas near his home in California.

SAY I N G Y E S Abel Rosas was sure he knew a few things about training. As a sergeant, he’d commanded squads of junior Marines through the worst battles of the Iraq occupation. But he’d been demoted to corporal for driving drunk and fighting after coming home.

Rosas grew up in a harsh and broken home. Training his men, he used the tools he knew: terse commands followed by screaming and threats until they got it right.

His attitude spilled into his relationship with Claudia, his wife since 2009. “More than anyone else, my wife has borne the brunt of my transition.”

Screaming wouldn’t work with Vegas or other service dog trainees, says Rick Yount, the social worker who’d slyly sicced the affectionate 8-month-old puppy on Rosas, then watched the reaction from the corner of his eye. Not only had the Marine emerged from his selfimposed isolation, he’d agreed to try training dogs.

The dogs are warm and gentle, so Rosas would have to be gentle himself, Yount told him. When they do something right, he told Rosas, praise must be immediate—and crucially, it must be high-pitched for a puppy to grasp it as positive feedback.

“It’s ‘Yesss!’” the burly Yount squeaked in a voice two octaves higher. “Channel your inner Richard Simmons.”

Yount founded Warrior Canine Connection, a nonprofit that trains service dogs for disabled veterans. For several years, the Brookeville, Md.-based organization has involved troops with ptsd in the multiyear training process as a form of therapy. Now its dogs and staff instructors are part of the Big Dog study.

Rosas in 2008 was the first “warrior trainer” Yount worked with, and like many since, he struggled to soften his demeanor toward the dogs. Reminding troops of the

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objective of the program—the mission—breaks down their resistance, Yount says.

“You say, ‘Let’s not talk about your problems—let’s talk about the veteran that needs help from this dog you’re training,’” he says. “Maybe they feel they don’t deserve to get better. [Service dog training] is a way of flanking that resistance with this mission-based program to help another veteran.”

Rosas worked to develop his suppressed empathy so he could connect with Vegas and be a better trainer. But after Rosas completed his rehabilitation program and medically retired from the military, he again spiraled into anxiety and depression.

Then in 2009, his janitorial business went bankrupt.

He went to a Texas oilfield to kill himself, but his gun misfired. In a moment of clarity, Rosas realized he needed help. As he resumed ptsd treatment through the VA, Yount called to offer him Vegas permanently. They were reunited in February 2010.

“I started to do all the old training things I’d done with him,” he says. “Vegas saved me. I’d be dead now without him.”

Rosas’ son, Nico, was born the following year. The stress of new fatherhood set him on edge, he says, but the emotional self-control he’d learned working with Vegas helped him avoid recreating the abusive environment he’d grown up in.

This year, Rosas received a master’s degree in social work from California State University San Marcos and now assists veterans in crisis through the San Diego nonprofit Courage to Call.

“A few years ago, I didn’t think I’d ever be helping people in the same situation I was in,” Rosas says. “I take Vegas with me a lot—it just helps when he’s there.” TERP

DOG PHOTO BY JOHN T. CONSOLI; ROSAS PHOTO BY JAMIE PFLUGHOEF T; LOGO COURTESY OF WARRIOR CANINE CONNECTION

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LEARNING IN DEPTH Hovering above a spacecraft fuselage, aerospace engineering graduate students Kate McBryan (left) and Chris Carlsen work with euclid, a free-flying underwater robot, in umd’s Neutral Buoyancy Research Facility. Along with nasa’s, it’s one of only two operating neutral buoyancy tanks in the United States.

It was originally built for orbital operations studies, but faculty and students today also use it to simulate robotic operations in lunar and Mars gravity.

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