The Key October 18, 2019 Editition

October 2019

A newsletter for students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends

From Micro to Macro

UMES senior earns full Ivy League graduate school scholarship Getting accepted to an Ivy League school is a dream come true for most college students; being pursued by one is difficult to imagine.

But that’s the position Ayobami Ogunmolasuyi, a UMES senior from Nigeria, was fortunate to find himself in heading into his final semester.

When Ogunmolasuyi graduates with honors in December with an engineering degree (mechanical specialization), he’ll head immediately to Hanover, N.H. to enter graduate school on full scholarship at Dartmouth College. He’ll be a doctoral student in engineering science in the renowned Thayer School of Engineering.

The Ivy League school “discovered” Ogunmolasuyi a year ago when he presented his research findings on the role microfluidics and microchannels play in drug development during the Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students. His undergraduate research has been OGUNMOLASUYI / continued on page 2

“School saved my life”

National education policy advocate visits UMES, Somerset public schools

INSIDE

John B. King Jr., who served as the Obama administration’s second secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, told everyone he met during a whirlwind tour of Somerset County earlier this month that schools saved and shaped - his life.

The president / chief executive officer of The Education Trust, a national nonprofit working “to close opportunity gaps that disproportionately affect students of color and from low-income families,” spent much of his day, however, listening to people share their personal stories about education in rural Maryland.

King’s visit was his second this year to Somerset County; he delivered the 2019 spring

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King visit Ivy League bound

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Summer intern Lynching law author

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Senior (L-R) Ahleesha Bryant, Imani Payne, Lashaye Battle and Stephanie Edmunds had a private lunch in the SSC with Dr. John King Jr., former U.S. Secretary of Education.

Alum eyes NASCAR career

Page 6 Royal court coronation

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UMES artists showcased at Tubman center

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Faculty news UMES alums at the bar

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commencement address at the alma mater of his grandmother, who graduated from UMES in 1894 when it was known as Princess Anne Academy.

King has been traveling about Maryland, encouraging residents to weigh findings of the Kirwan Commission on Innovation and Excellence, an evaluation of K-12 public schools’ strengths and weaknesses. He lives in Montgomery County (Md.) and is the father of two teen-age daughters who attend public school.

King said he worries the voluminous report has not attracted the attention it deserves, other than from elected

Fighting childhood cancer UMES has a new (John) Deere

KING / continued on page 2

Page 11 Senior VB star leaving her mark

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Veterans’ Day banquet Black Box Theater

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Circling the Oval

KING / continued from cover

officials who will confront the challenge of guiding implementation of recommendations and finding money to pay for them.

In a Washington Post guest column published online the same day he visited Somerset County, King wrote that “we need more creative thinking about revenue (such as reforming the state’s broken juvenile justice system, closing unnecessary tax loopholes and penalizing polluters, not just raising taxes) and a plan for how to implement that investment in a way that … closes gaps for students in poverty, English learners, and black and Latino students.”

King grew up in New York City, the son of two educators. His mother died when he was eight and his father, he said, suffered from what he believes was undiagnosed Alzheimer’s disease.

An orphan by age 12, he shared how public schools became a safe haven where teachers nurtured him through those difficult years and made a difference in his life. The experience set him on a path to becoming a teacher, then an administrator and now a public policy advocate, a role on a national stage he said he envisions being his life’s work.

King met with UMES students, faculty in the

university’s Department of Education and President Heidi M. Anderson.

He also traveled to Westover, where Superintendent John Gaddis led a VIP tour of the new Somerset County Technical High school that opened in September. King said he was impressed by school leaders’ creativity in designing practical instructional space and a curriculum that gives students in a rural setting options when they graduate.

OGUNMOLASUYI / continued from cover

conducted under the tutelage of Dr. Kausiksankar Das, associate physics professor.

“It was a good feeling,” the Henson honors program student said.

“God is at work.”

A microchannel is a microtechnology term for a conduit with a hydraulic diameter smaller than 1 millimeter and typically is used in fluid control and heat transfer.

Microfluidics, the study of fluid flow and mixing in microchannels, has various applications, Ogunmolasuyi said, the most important of which are the functional organs on a chip.

“These are functional human organs on a microchip, which include the kidney-on-a-chip and lungs-on-achip for testing drugs,” he said.

“The bottleneck that the microfluids industry faces,” he said, “is the inability of fluids to mix perfectly in these channels due to the miniature size of the mixing chamber, which is where our lab has stepped in.”

Ogunmolasuyi said researchers in the field are exploring such analytical methods as “periodic slip” and “no

slip” boundary conditions, and “baker’s transformation” in hopes of deriving an efficient mixing technique for fluids in microchannels.

After the November 2018 conference in Indianapolis, a Dartmouth representative reached out to Das expressing interest in talking to Ogunmolasuyi about an opening in the lab. He visited Dartmouth in August and had a full scholarship offer with a stipend in hand a month later.

“I’ll be working with the senior associate dean of the Thayer School of Engineering on ice mechanics research … (ironically) not the original person who contacted me. He snatched me from him,” Ogunmolasuyi said with a laugh.

What does the future hold for Ogunmolasuyi, who has a 3.8 GPA? His goal is to become a fluid mechanics researcher and starting his own company.

Das, his mentor, couldn’t be prouder.

“Achieving that feat … shows our students have the talent and potential to reach any peak of excellence in their career,” Das said. “I have no doubt … Ayobami will continue to achieve more laurels and make us proud.”

Ayobami is a recipient of a Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation fellowship.

Student Stories I was blessed this past summer with the amazing opportunity to have an internship of a lifetime. Through the Louis Carr Internship Foundation, I was given the chance to live in Chicago and work for Flowers Communications Group, a multicultural public relations firm. This was my first internship experience, so I didn’t know what to expect – all I knew is I wanted to gain real world work experience, and get a taste of what the workforce is like within my fields of study here at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.

I am thankful for my internship because I learned many valuable things about myself and about the world of public relations and marketing. I walked into it knowing very little, but with the help of coworkers and mentors I encountered along the way, I was able to step out of my comfort zone. Working in a culturally diverse environment and seeing a strong black woman being the CEO at the forefront of it all made the experience that much more special.

I was assigned to the agency’s marketing committee. Daily roles I would play within this team included developing meeting outlines, creating blog posts for the agency, editing videos for an ongoing web series, and helping edit and develop social media content.

There were also cool agency-wide events I had the opportunity to experience. June was Black Music Month, and to commemorate it, we held a roundtable event and extended the invitation to Chicago-based media to discuss the cultural impact of hip-hop music throughout the

The Key / October 2019

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decades.

My favorite parts of my internship were capturing social media content, writing blog posts and writing copy.

Capturing social media content and making blog posts allowed me to step outside of the office and go to some amazing events.

I attended the Taste of Chicago, a nationally acclaimed food festival, an exclusive premier of the Lion King that featured Chicago-based millennial black creatives and professionals – and I was able to attend public relations award shows, all to post Instagram stories and curate blog content.

Towards the end of the internship, my co-interns and I, who all worked for different companies, had the opportunity to meet Louis Carr, the internship’s namesake, and have dinner with him. Mr. Carr is president of media sales at BET Networks. It was such a rewarding experience because Ewa outside of Flowers we had the opportunity to ask Communications Group in Chicago. questions and learn from such a successful man.

I am so thankful to Louis Carr for believing in me, and allowing me to experience the summer of a lifetime!

By Ewa Okulate

Summer of a Lifetime Yields Media Experience in the Windy City

Ewa Okulate is a junior majoring in english and marketing. The LCIF program offers paid internships to students of color who are undergraduate freshman, sophomores or juniors at the time of application. The application period is from Nov. 1 to March 31.

Hear how the lynching study panel came to be State Del. Joseline Peña-Melnyk, lead sponsor of legislation that earlier this year created the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission, has accepted an invitation to speak on the subject at UMES Thursday, Nov. 7.

Peña-Melnyk will deliver remarks at the Ella Fitzgerald Center for the Performing Arts at 11 a.m. during University Hour, when the institution traditionally holds no classes.

The law reserves a seat for a historian from each of Maryland’s historically black institutions; Dr. Marshall F. Stevenson Jr., dean of the School of Education, Social Sciences and The Arts, is UMES’ designee.

Stevenson said he came away impressed after meeting Peña-Melnyk at the commission’s organizational meeting and lobbied her to visit Princess Anne, where the state’s last known illegal lynching occurred in 1933.

Stevenson said he’s hoping for a large turnout from the campus to hear the lawmaker from College Park, whom he described as a compelling speaker.

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The Key / October 2019

School Alumn

Drive fast, turn left

“Drivers, start your engines” are four words that motivate Christian Rose to show up for work - sometimes as many as seven days a week.

The UMES alum is hoping to answer that call to action at Daytona International Speedway on the second Sunday in February. By the current trajectory of his fledgling career as a stock car driver, that goal might not be unrealistic.

A side-arm relief pitcher on the university’s baseball team, Rose traded gripping a rosin bag for a 12-inch steering wheel on a race circuit for entry-level drivers just months after graduating with honors in May 2018.

He’s been a NASCAR fan as far back as he can remember growing up in Martinsburg, W.Va. At age 12, Rose mischievously snuck into the garage area at the Daytona track, where a pit crew member of B.J. McLeod’s team encouraged him to pursue his dream of being a driver.

Education came first, however. His mother insisted he go to college.

After earning his bachelor’s degree, that long-ago conversation he had in the Daytona garage gnawed at him - even though he had no competitive driving experience.

Sherman Lambert, a well-connected attorney and car enthusiast in Rose’s hometown, maintains a second home in Daytona Beach and counts NASCAR executives among his professional acquaintances and friends.

When someone suggested Rose reach out to Lambert for advice, it set fastspinning wheels in motion that led to a tryout with McLeod’s team.

It didn’t hurt Lambert is one of UMES’ most distinguished alumni (1974) who relishes helping next-gen graduates from their shared alma mater.

“He’s been so good to me,” Rose said of Lambert.

“Racing is a lot about who you know.”

Rose soon found himself squeezing his 6-foot-4 frame into the driver’s seat of an 800-horsepower stock car - “a beast,” he calls it - testing his skills with veteran driver Matt Tifft.

As Rose tells it, the seasoned pros in the pit that September day at Hickory (N.C.) Motor Speedway were astonished at how skillfully he navigated the “World’s Most Famous Short-Track.”

Team McLeod signed Rose on the spot.

Now, Lambert proudly says “I am a trustee of Christian Rose’s dream.”

Rose says he’s had to learn to rely on spotters radioing advice to him while driving upwards of 140 miles-per-hour. At that speed, decisions are made in microseconds, and can lead to wrecks, which he also has experienced.

NASCAR closely monitors rookie racers to identify drivers with skills to move up to tougher levels of competition. Rose says he’s gotten positive feedback from critiques and is hopeful of making the leap in 2020 to the NASCAR K&N Pro Series and the ARCA (Automobile Racing Club of America) Menard Series.

Drivers looking to move up also need sponsors to help defray the myriad expenses that go into keeping a competitive car on the track.

“People don’t realize how much you have to sell yourself - put yourself out there as a brand,” said Rose, who took hospitality-tourism management courses while UMES. “I am a newcomer beating the odds, because I love to race,” his website says.

“We are doing this the old fashioned way.”

“I’m living the dream,” he said. “It’s been a huge opportunity not a lot of people have. I’m grateful to everyone who has helped me.”

Student Stories

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“This isn’t a job where you can relax”

UMES aviation student Russell Hayman’s middle name is Joseph, but it could just as easily be “vigilant.”

That was the case Independence Day weekend 2019 in Ocean City, when Hayman helped rescue a critically injured teen face down in the water.

“RJ,” as he’s widely known, has been a lifeguard with the Ocean City Beach Patrol for four years and was a crew chief responsible for colleagues who man stands from 35th street to 43rd street.

From his 38th street post, Hayman witnessed 19-year-old Ben Paepcke dive awkwardly into the surf on July 4. He and Matt Egley, a first-year lifeguard who Hayman happened to be supervising at the time, sprang into action Hayman, 21, recalled being uneasy watching Paepcke enter the water head first at the surf’s edge. It was low tide.

Paepcke broke the C5 vertebra in his neck and was in danger of drowning when Hayman carefully pulled him from the water.

“The training we received immediately kicked in,” Hayman said. “You have one-to-seconds to make a judgment call.”

“Our job, from that point,” he said, “was getting his airway exposed so he could breathe and (to) hold his head steady.”

Hayman grew up in Ocean City, the middle child of Russell P. Hayman, a veteran cargo pilot who as a young man also worked as an Ocean City lifeguard.

After RJ graduated from Stephan Decatur High School in 2015, he

enrolled at Towson University thinking his career path was becoming a history teacher.

He realized, however, he also had flying in his genes and transferred to the University of Maryland Eastern Shore to pursue an aviation science degree with a concentration in becoming a pilot.

“At first, I took (what my father did) for granted,” Hayman said. “But as I got older, I found that it’s not such a bad career.”

Hayman describes being aloft as “a whole different feeling.”

Flying, he said, demands intense concentration and attention to detail.

Being a lifeguard requires many of those same skills because one person is responsible for the safety of hundreds of bathers along a two-block stretch of beach and an unpredictable ocean.

“It’s the perfect summer job for me,” he said, “because you have a huge responsibility – just like you do when you are flying.”

He’s qualified to fly single-prop planes and his logged 200 hours of flight time, including 20 as a solo pilot. He has his instrument rating credentials and is now eying certification to fly dual propeller planes before his anticipated graduation in the spring 2020.

Paepcke, the swimmer Hayman rescued, is at a rehabilitation facility in Denver where he’s receiving intense therapy for symptoms of paralysis. His long-term recovery prognosis is unclear.

“This isn’t a job where you can relax for one second,” he said.

“At the end of the day,” he said, “we did everything we were trained to do.”

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The Key / October 2019

Coronation Parents’ Weekend 2019 culminated Saturday (Oct. 12) with the traditional parade of the university’s Royal Court during a ceremony at the Ella Fitzgerald Center for the Performing Arts that culminated in the formal crowning of junior Sarah Adewumi as Miss UMES and senior Hector Cime as Mr. UMES.

School News

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The University of Maryland Eastern Shore is implementing a “test-optional” admissions policy for applicants whose high school transcripts show their grade-point average to be 3.4 or higher.

Applicants with strong academic credentials seeking to enroll at UMES will no longer rely on the submission of college test scores for admissions purposes.

The new policy will be used to screen applicants for the spring 2020 semester and beyond.

“As a historically black, doctoral research institution,” UMES President Heidi M. Anderson said, “the university has long embraced its role as a place that creates greater opportunity and access to a quality college education. This new policy supports not only our students, but reinforces our founding mission.”

UMES’ internal student-performance tracking shows admitted students with a high school GPA of 3.4 or higher demonstrate higher persistence and 6-year graduation rates than their peers.

Hans Cooper, UMES’ vice president for enrollment management and student experience, said the university is embracing an emerging trend in higher education to put greater weight on classroom performance when making admissions decisions.

“We take a comprehensive approach to the review process and allow students to submit materials that best represent them and their potential,” Cooper said. “We believe four years of strong performance in a rigorous high school curriculum is a great measure of their future success.”

More than 1,000 accredited colleges and universities have adopted some form of a test-optional policy, including Hampton (Va.) University, University of Delaware and Salisbury University.

Test scores will still be required for consideration for acceptance into the university’s Henson honors program, selected majors in the business department as well as for student-athletes who play on NCAA sports teams.

UMES tweaks admissions’ test scores policy

UMES Artists’ creations on display through spring 2020 at National Park The Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Visitor Center in Church Creek, Md. has new artwork along its walls for visitors to enjoy. There are 15 pieces created by fine arts students at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and one created by department chairman Christopher Harrington. Among the paintings is “Peace, Freedom, and Power” by senior Mariah Terry. The artwork was installed at the National Park site earlier this year and will remain on display until April 2020.

“Creating art tends to be a very solitary activity,” Harrington

(Left) K’Leah Bennett.

(Top) Imari Sydnor, left, and Mariah Terry

said. “When we took a class trip to see the work installed at the Harriet Tubman Underground Visitor Center, I could see how proud the students were.”

“They knew their work was honoring one of America’s true heroes, and would be seen by tens of thousands of people in the coming year,” he said.

“Knowing your work will be seen, and in such an important location, was a dream come true for me and the students.”

The Tubman center opened in 2017 in honor of the contributions of the abolitionist born into slavery in Dorchester County, Md.

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School News

The Key / October 2019

Members of Maryland State College’s class of 1969 returned to their alma mater Oct. 11-13 to

celebrate their 50th reunion with a weekend of festivities culminating in a dinner-dance where classmates displayed a check representing the money the Class of 1969 has raised since starting its Empowerment Fund. HawkPride personified.

Eleanor Turner, left, and Jennie and Melvin Aden

Ava Baker, left, Dr. Heidi M. Anderson, Barbara Harding, Herman Eure and Chenita Reddick.

FACULTY NEWS UMES is the recipient of a 2019-20 Wilson H. Elkins Professorship Award from the University System of Maryland to support the work of Dr. Paulinus Chigbu, a marine environmental science professor in the Department of Natural Sciences. The $70,000 will underwrite Chigbu’s research into the influence of environmental factors on fish recruitment and trophic dynamics in lagoons and ocean off Maryland’s Atlantic coast as well as expand the Summer Geoscience Bridge Program for rising freshmen.

Dr. Byungrok Min, an assistant professor in UMES’ Department of Agriculture, Food and Resource Sciences, is conducting research into the compound phosvitin, which may yield “value-added products” that can “increase the use and value of egg yolk and improve the sustainability of the U.S. egg industry.” Min’s collaboration with Dr. Dong U. Ahn of Iowa State University is being funded by a two-year, $200,000 grant from the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Foundational and Applied Science Program of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Dr. Naveen Kumar Dixit, an assistant horticulture professor / extension specialist, has gotten encouraging preliminary results utilizing combinations of crimson clover, oats, rye and hairy vetch – winter cover crops – to inhibit weeds like marestail and Palmer amaranth. The local Maryland Soybean Board awarded him a $17,000 grant to underwrite preliminary research and he hopes to continue experimenting with different mixes of cover crops to reduce reliance on herbicide-resistant weeds common on Delmarva.

A familiar face rejoined the UMES faculty this month; Dr. Derrek Dunn is dean of the School of Business and Technology. Dunn was technology department chairman from August 2012 until January 2017 before accepting a position at Alabama A&M University, where he was associate vice president of academic administration and dean of its graduate school. He also has been a member of faculties at Savannah (Ga.) State and North Carolina A&T State in Greensboro, his undergraduate alma mater where he earned an engineering degree in 1991.

School News

Hawks at law share impact of UMES & Fannie Angelos Program

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Herman Franklin Paraprofessional (HFPP) of the Month

Clifford B. Glover III

(UMES ’12) is an associate attorney at McNamee, Hosea, Jernigan, Kim, Greenan & Lynch, P.A. in Greenbelt, Md., where he focuses on business litigation and employment law. Glover earned a bachelor’s degree in history from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and a juris doctorate from University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law in 2015.

“I was able to find my identity at UMES. The university allowed me to thrive in my own skin and be proud of who I am today,” Glover said. “I took advantage of many opportunities at UMES, including writing op-eds in the local newspaper and serving in various leadership roles.”

Glover participated in the University of Baltimiore’s Fannie Angelos Scholar program in 2011. He credits the program and his time at UMES with showing him he had the ability to thrive in the legal field. Persistence is a major part of having a career in law.

“The key to pursuing a career in law is to keep at it,” Glover said. “You must treat the pursuit as a full-time job. Pursuing this career is hard, but rewarding in the end.”

Adam Shareef (UMES ’11) is an

associate attorney at Franklin and Prokopik, a civil defense firm in Baltimore. Shareef earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and a juris doctorate from the University of Baltimore School of Law in 2017.

My time at UMES was rich in culture and provided lifelong friends and colleagues that have assisted me in the practice of law,” Shareef said. “UMES prepared me for the successes and failures that have ultimately afforded me the opportunity to thrive in private practice.”

He was a Fannie Angelos’ LSAT Awardee in 2010. The New Jersey native describes the program as “one of the greatest tools at UMES.” As an LSAT Awardee, he enrolled in the program and received free LSAT preparation. It helped him navigate the rigors of the legal profession while at the University of Baltimore School of Law. “I was able to graduate and pass the bar,” Shareef said. “In many ways, none of this would have been possible but for UMES and the Fannie Angelos Program.”

“For those who strive to become attorneys, I encourage you to work hard, network, and always strive to put your best foot forward in all that you do. Despite the odds, anything is possible,” he said.

The Fannie Angelos Program for Academic Excellence prepares students from Maryland’s four historically black universities and other select colleges for admission to law school, and continues to work with them so they may excel and thrive throughout their legal careers. Deadline to apply for the LSAT Award Program is Nov. 1, 2019.

Junior Amir Talton is a Student Director in the Student Residential Complex. Amir is dependable and shows his eagerness to work as he is always the first to lend assistance no matter how big or small the task.

Q: Hometown?

A: Largo, Md. Q: Major?

A: Exercise Science with a clinical concentration.

Q: What three living people would you invite to dinner?

A: My mom, sister and cousin because I am very family oriented.

Q: What are your favorite sneakers?

A: Nike Air Max 95 … shoe because there are multiple colorways, so there is always a pair to match an outfit.

Q: Describe the impact of your time at UMES and being a part of the HFPP? A: I have grown as a student and as a person. I have been involved with HFPP since my sophomore year.

Since I have become a part of the program, I have realized that it is not a bad thing to be a resident assistant / student director. I have tried to get other students on campus to realize the same thing as I did, and get them to become a part of residence life.

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The Key / October 2019

School News

Maroon & gray goes gold for Childhood Cancer Awareness

(L –R) Quiana Tilghman, MiySharie Pritchett, Serena Studivant, President Heidi M. Anderson, Janayne Johnson, Ayodele Clark-Shaw, Matthew Taylor, and Jim Mathias.

Quiana Tilghman led the “Cuddle for a Cure” campaign on campus during Childhood Cancer Awareness Month in September. UMES students and staff stuffed bears for children on the oncology floor of the Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C. Tilghman was motivated to organize the event after losing a sibling to cancer when she was 13. Her sister, Mia, died at age 12 four years after being diagnosed.

“A cure starts with awareness. The participation of the Hawk family is monumental,” Tilghman said. “It shows we care about our current students and the future of our potential students.”

Residence Life, Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drug Prevention Center, Campus Life and multiple student organizations participated in turning maroon and gray into gold for the cause.

A $466,942 grant from the

U.S. Department of Agriculture / National Institute of Food and Agriculture enabled the School of Agriculture and Natural Sciences to add a new John Deere harvester to its experiment station fleet. Equipped with GPS and separate head attachments to make reaping corn and grain more precise for research purposes, the S-760 model is the first new major equipment purchase in the past 15 years.

The Maryland Higher Education Commission sponsored Jimmy Paylor’s mid-September visit to the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, where he shared his compelling story with student-athletes and their peers about overcoming addictions to medication and alcohol following a career-ending sports injury in college.

Athletics

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Hoping to go out in a Blaze(vic) of glory

By Will DeBoer When Ivana Blazevic was 6 years old growing up in Zagreb, Croatia, she took up swimming. A natural athlete, she excelled in the pool.

Six years later, her mother nudged her to switch to volleyball, but some of Ivana’s new coaches were concerned it was too late for a 12-year-old to start in a sport often the first choice for many Croatian girls. Turns out Ivana was just as effective on land as she was in the water. ”After the first practice, they said, ’Oh, we need to have more people like her,’” Blazevic said. “So I remember that first day, I’ll never forget it.”

A decade later, Blazevic has more exceptional volleyball memories to stack next to that first one. A senior captain and the lone four-year player on UMES’ roster, the 6-foot-1-inch setter has built on her role as an “X-factor” in every aspect of the game. Blazevic holds the Hawks’ career record for assists and ranks in the Top 10 in the NCAA in service aces per set.

“Ivana … brings a complete package as far as a 5-1 setter goes,” Hawks coach Trevor Callarman said. ”She can block, she can play defense, she can serve well.”

Once Blazevic realized how far the sport could take her, word started getting around. When former Hawk coach Toby Rens visited Blazevic in Croatia, he offered her a scholarship after observing one of her practices.

With fellow countrywomen Lucia Babic and Marta Klafuric already thriving at UMES, Blazevic followed in their footsteps.

It helped having such a strong eastern European presence among her Hawk teammates. The UMES squad of Blazevic’s freshman year featured three Croatians, one from Montenegro and one from the Czech Republic. ”At first … it was so hard to speak another language,” Blazevic said.

“So you have other people who can understand you and help you, they can come to you and talk to you speaking your language, and it’s so much

easier.”

She didn’t allow the inherent challenges of being 4,400 miles from home and adjusting to life as a college student in America affect her play on the court, however.

“Ivana has been a starter since her freshman year, and so in that role you inherently become a leader,” Callarman said. ”She was really one of those players (who) … knew she had to embrace the change.”

Blazevic has been a key contributor to a Hawk program that became an upper-tier team in the MEAC over her first two seasons, going undefeated in the regular season in 2017 and making a postseason tournament. Last year, the first season under Callarman, the Hawks also finished near the top of the MEAC standings and Blazevic repeated as an All-MEAC second team honoree. ”The great thing about her is that she’s continued to develop during her entire career,” Callarman said. ”It kind of solidifies her in that leadership role because we like her to show people that even though she’s been here … and starting for four years, she’s going to continue to grow. That’s one of the things we build our program around.” ”I’m glad Coach and the girls can see me as a leader, that they trust me, because I trust them, too,” Blazevic said.

Blazevic’s hard work culminated with her record-breaking 2,594th career assist in a mid-September match against Robert Morris, surpassing alumna Jessie Vicic.

For Blazevic, the goal for this season remains the same as it was when she arrived in Princess Anne: winning a MEAC championship and making the NCAA tournament. Even with such a distinguished career already in the books, this former swimmer knows there’s still plenty more to achieve in this final lap.

The Key / October 2019

The University of Maryland Eastern Shore prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, religion, national origin, disability, marital status, pregnancy, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression. Inquiries regarding the application of Federal laws and non-discrimination policies to University programs and activities may be referred to the Office of Equity & Compliance/Title IX Coordinator by telephone (410) 651-7848 or e-mail (titleix@umes.edu).

The Key is published by the Office of Public Relations umesnews@umes.edu, 410-651-7580 An archive is available at www.umes.edu/TheKey

Submissions to The KEY are preferred via email. All copy is subject to editing.

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