INNOVATION & COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT INNOVATION IN THE ARTS & HUMANITIES raig Kier, director of the School of Music’s C Maryland Opera Studio, is leading a collaboration with the Maryland Blended Reality Center to explore the artistic and medical applications of the combined power of musical performance and virtual reality. Professor of English Matthew Kirschenbaum received funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for a new project, “Books.Files,” examining the role of digital tools and processes in commercial book publishing. Many tornado-warning communication strategies do not account for the realworld, on-the-job conditions of forecasters. Associate Professor Brooke Liu and Assistant Professor Anita Atwell Seate, both in the communication department, will address this knowledge gap through a two-year project funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT & SERVICE TO THE STATE Students, faculty and staff from UMD and Bowie State University came together during the 2017 NextNOW Fest at The Clarice to paint the “Unity Mural” symbolizing Positivity and hope amid hatred and injustice. The mural was on exhibit at the Maryland State House in Annapolis during the 2018 legislative season while delegates considered legislation on hate bias incidents. As part of their second-year practicum, students in the Graduate Studies in Interpreting and Translation Program have been working with the People’s Law Library of Maryland to provide jargon-free legal and selfhelp materials in a variety of languages. Graduate students in the School of Music (SOM) collaborated with Washington, D.C. hip-hop artist Konshens the MC to create “Classically Dope,” a fusion of hip-hop and classical music performed on the Kennedy Center Millenium Stage and at Washington, D.C.’s Emancipation Day Celebration. The collaboration began with the 2015-17 SOM fellowship woodwind quintet, Daraja Ensemble (right), and continues now with the current fellowship woodwind quintet, Wavelength Winds. To inform decision-makers and help them address concerns about equity and access to highly-coveted spots in public bilingual education programs in Washington, D.C., the National Foreign Language Center is partnering with the D.C. Language Immersion Project on data-driven research to understand how the demographics of dual-language schools compare with other schools in Washington, D.C.
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