Wingspan Fall 2021 Edition

Fall 2021

The UMES School of Education, Social Sciences, and the Arts focuses on the preparation of students who serve humanity

ADMINISTRATION

in a personally and professionally ethical manner to create

Heidi M. Anderson, Ph.D. President

CRIMINAL JUSTICE Lily Tsai, Ph.D.

Nancy Niemi, Ph.D. Provost and Vice President, Academic Affairs

EDUCATION Gretchen Foust, Ed.D.

positive social change.

The academic disciplines represented in the school’s departments are education, criminal justice, English, mathematics, modern languages, fine arts and social sciences. Each of these areas of study develop critical thinking, innovative expression, research skills and creativity to ensure our graduates are prepared to face the challenges of an ever-changing global society.

SESA’s goal is to attract exceptional students from a diverse population who will reflect the academic excellence and heritage of our nation’s historically black institutions. Our faculty and staff model current best practices in teaching, learning, thinking, civic engagement and leadership in order to nurture aspiring teachers, writers, artists and

Marshall F. Stevenson, Jr., Ph.D. Dean, The School of Education, Social Sciences, and the Arts THE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION, SOCIAL SCIENCES, AND THE ARTS DEPARTMENT OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE Chair Robert Brown, Ph.D. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Chair Kimberly Poole-Sykes, Ph.D. DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH AND MODERN LANGUAGES Chair Dean Cooledge, Ph.D. DEPARTMENT OF FINE ARTS Chair Christopher Harrington, M.F.A. DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS Chair Tiara Cornelius, Ph.D.

public servants.

DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SCIENCES Chair Robert Brown, Ph.D.

The University of Maryland Eastern Shore is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education. UMES prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, religion, national origin, disability, marital status, pregnancy, sexual orientation, and 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.

Wingspan is published by the UMES School of Education, Social Sciences, and the Arts with the support of the Division of Institutional Advancement.

Submissions to Wingspan are welcome. Contact our editor at mlbuerkle@umes.edu.

EDITORIAL BOARD

ENGLISH AND MODERN LANGUAGES Marilyn Buerkle, M.A. FINE ARTS Bradley Hudson, M.F.A. SOCIAL SCIENCES Kathryn Barrett-Gaines, Ph.D. Zelma Hayward, B.A. CONTRIBUTORS Kathryn Barrett-Gaines Marilyn Buerkle Tahja Cropper Danielle Edwards Gretchen Foust Susan Holt Bradley Hudson Emmanuel Onyeozili Bill Robinson Richard Warren PHOTOGRAPHY Kathryn Barrett-Gaines Marilyn Buerkle Jim Glovier Amy Hagenrater-Gooding Jocelyn Martin Bill Robinson Richard Ulbricht Mario Williams

Marshall F. Stevenson Jr., Ph.D.

e c ffi O e h T m o r F n a e D of The

Many historic events took place over the course of UMES’ spring semester. Not only on our campus, but also throughout the nation and across the world.

First and foremost, we continued to battle the coronavirus pandemic.

Managing COVID-19 was a challenge for the institution whether in terms of implementing and managing our academic courses or scheduling our cocurricular events. The majority of our classes continued to be offered remotely, as they were in the fall of 2020. Guest speaker lectures were virtual as well (more about those in the pages to follow). Perhaps the highlight, however, was staging an in-person graduation in the William P. Hytche Athletic Center—with masks and social distancing, of course.

Each “Wingspan” is dedicated to highlighting student and faculty achievement during the preceding semester. Because of the monumental events of the last eighteen months, however, I have chosen to use this portion of the magazine over the past two issues as a platform to discuss current events and how they impact all of our lives, and especially the lives of our students as they matriculate through UMES. This issue is no different.

As an HBCU, a large part of our mission goes beyond simply providing skills for the workforce upon graduation.

Teaching our students about the history and heritage of UMES places them at the heart of the struggle for social justice in America. The School of Education, Social Sciences, and the Arts provides course work and a variety of campus events that emphasize these facts.

Ongoing police brutality, political extremism on the left and right, voter

suppression, culture wars around both the New York Times’ 1619 project and critical race theory, mass shootings and, of course, the debate over whether to be vaccinated against COVID-19 dominate the American landscape. The fanciful plots of science fiction thrillers like Russian cyberattacks penetrating our infrastructure grids, or a president of the United States scheming to remain in office after a legitimate election, are now reallife recent events – not science fiction.

All of these social issues affect our student population and are crucial for our students to understand. Several of the co-curricular programs highlighted in this issue addressed some of these topics. Now more than ever, our students need to learn how to discern truth from misinformation, and how to think and write critically about our current problems.

We want them to be “change makers” and to work to resolve many of these challenges. A prominent elected official recently stated that if you repeat something long enough—either truth or misinformation—people will start to believe it. Accurate and truthful storytelling, void of politicization, will be paramount for those who will write about these historical flashpoints. Our goal is to produce students who just might speak that story, research those issues, write about our current reality, and paint those troubling images.

So, as you turn the pages of this issue and see the amazing work our students and faculty engaged in, know that the students and faculty of SESA continue to safely navigate the pandemic and eagerly anticipate the work ahead in the fall 2021 semester, vaccinated and masked up.

School of Education, Social Sciences, and the Arts

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MAKING MEMORIES After COVID-19 forced the May and December 2020 UMES commencement ceremonies online, the university was determined to craft a workable plan for an “in-person” event this past May. Nearly 300-degree candidates, including 73 from the School of Education, Social Sciences, and the Arts, assembled—socially distanced—in the William P. Hytche Athletic Center on May 14, in front of an audience limited to two guests per graduate.

“Our students have done a remarkable job helping keep our campus safe,” President Heidi Anderson said.

“Holding graduation is one way for us to acknowledge that contribution.”

Students and their guests had to prove through recent test results that they were virus free, and everyone in the Hytche Center was required to wear a mask.

That included a SESA doctoral student whose degree was conferred in the building named after her late father.

Pamelia Hytche-Hunter, at age 66, became the last of Deloris and UMES President William P. Hytche’s three children to join the ranks of UMES alumni.

Hytche-Hunter earned her doctoral degree in organizational leadership.

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THE CREAM OF THE CROP

The annual UMES Honors Convocation was a virtual event this spring, but its purpose remained the same. It celebrated the academic success of the current student body and singled out accomplished students for outstanding achievements.

Each year department chairs award departmental honors to the one student in their discipline whose grades are exceptional, who serves as a role model for peers, and who is willing to expend time and effort outside of the classroom in activities that enrich their educational experience.

Deans of each school, including SESA’s Marshall Stevenson, are responsible for selecting one student per school to receive the Award of Excellence. In addition to scholarly achievement, those students are exemplary on a number of fronts including leadership, integrity and the ability to communicate.

SESA students recognized for departmental honors in 2021 included Aaliyah Douglas (criminal justice), Erica Lewis (education), Ciani Wells (English), Rajan Bethea (fine arts), Nicholas Williams (general studies), Isabel Hughes (mathematics) and Ayotomiwa Fashola (social sciences).

Dean Stevenson selected Ciani Wells to receive the SESA Award of Excellence.

A Philadelphia native, Wells is a member of the UMES Richard A. Henson Honors Program majoring in English. She is a tutor in the university’s writing center, served as the junior class president, will graduate in December a semester early and has maintained a 4.0 grade point average.

A RAVE REVIEW

One of the nation’s premier art publications took note of a talented UMES graduate this spring. A review of Jamaal Peterman’s New York City solo debut was featured in the March/April issue of “Art in America.”

“We are extremely proud of his success,” said Department of Fine Arts Chair Christopher Harrington.

The “Art in America” reviewer, Louis Bury, introduces his readers to Peterman’s eight large canvases in the show by describing their composition and subject matter. “Each uses oil paint, as well as patches of vinyl glitter and painted sand, to depict urban and exurban environs composed of interconnected and embedded geometric shapes.”

Bury was impressed with what he saw.

“Peterman has already, at the outset of his career, developed a complex, deceptively exuberant vocabulary for depicting some of this country’s darker realities.”

Peterman graduated from UMES with a degree in applied design and a concentration in sequential arts in 2014. He earned a Master of Fine Arts from the prestigious Pratt Institute in New York.

School of Education, Social Sciences, and the Arts

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ONLY IN

AMERICA Eyerusalem Fitta is a UMES success story, but her college career didn’t get off to a great start.

Currently employed as a correctional officer at Eastern Correctional Institution, a medium security men’s prison in Somerset County, Md., Fitta earned UMES bachelor and master’s degrees in criminal justice and led the department’s honor society but, at first, college life was a difficult transition.

“Freshmen year,” she said, “was an epic fail.”

Fitta and her family immigrated to the U. S. from Ethiopia in 2010; she arrived at UMES in 2012. One of six children, she was the first to attend college. “I was the experiment,” she said.

Her father, who had hoped his daughter would pursue a career in business, had to be convinced when, as a sophomore, Fitta wanted to change her major to criminal justice. At the time, he didn’t know she was failing her courses.

She didn’t use her poor grades as an excuse to make the change; she convinced her dad that she wanted to study the American justice system. She says that motivation came from what they saw in Ethiopia.

“Constantly human rights were abused,” she said. “We didn’t have any

4 Wingspan Wingspan//Fall Fall2021 2021

rights at all … I knew here in America things were different.”

Fitta made the switch as a sophomore, and by her junior year, her academics were firmly back on track. She eventually served as the local president and the national vice president of Alpha Phi Sigma, the national criminal justice honor society.

She earned her bachelor’s degree, on time, in May of 2016—the same year she became a U.S. citizen—but she wasn’t finished. Fitta applied to the UMES graduate program in criminology and criminal justice. There was plenty to celebrate that summer. Her acceptance letter to graduate school and her U.S. passport arrived the same day.

Now, having successfully completed her master’s degree in 2019, Fitta has begun to think about a doctoral degree as her next step.

“Dr. Fitta, that sounds good.”

She often uses herself as an example when students ask for advice. She shows them her less-than-stellar GPA from her freshman year, encourages them not to give up and then offers some advice.

“There’s no secret to it,” she tells them.

“You have to do the work.”

What does the father who wanted her to major in business think?

“He is very proud of me.”

C R E AT The Department of Fine Arts’ Mosely Gallery inched slowly towards a new normal during the spring semester.

Socially distanced, mask-wearing visitors were welcomed back to view gallery exhibits up close, but opening receptions for the shows were still a series of small boxes filled with virtual faces via Zoom.

In March, UMES art students participated in a campus exhibition judged by Katie Brown, the gallery manager at the Art League of Ocean City.

There were 31 submissions in a variety of media.

Brown selected as her first-place winner “Octopus Line Art,” an intricate ink-on-paper drawing created by Karina Ramosvega, a freshman majoring in applied design.

“It’s complex, and yet the weight of the lines keeps the subject from getting lost in all the patterns,” Brown said.

“Very impressive.”

Ramosvega’s prize was $200 in art supplies. The prize for second place, $100 in art supplies, went to sophomore Robert Lynch for his self-portrait. The third-place winner, freshman Mikayla Carroll, received $50 in art supplies for “Worried,” a nonobjective relief sculpture created for a class in threedimensional design.

After the student show closed April 22, it moved from the campus gallery to a successful exhibition at the Somerset Arts Council gallery in Crisfield, Md. Many of the students sold their work, and the fine arts faculty plan to continue to exhibit student work there.

As the semester drew to a close, there was a second competition in the Mosley Gallery. This one featured the work of local high school students.

IVE COMPETITIONS There were 20 submissions from students in Somerset, Worcester and Wicomico counties.

“Many of the art teachers are UMES grads, so this is a long-standing collaboration,” gallery director Susan Holt said. “We’ve gotten great responses, and it’s been very successful in recruiting.”

First prize went to Z.J. Cutrara, a senior about to graduate from Wicomico

High School. He received $300 in art supplies, and his high school was awarded $300 to support its art program.

His prize-winning acrylic painting featured brightly-colored, ghoulish creatures gathered around a lengthy table which Cutrara described as a depiction of his childhood experiences in a school cafeteria.

“It’s my interpretation of life around me,” he said. “Everything was overwhelming.”

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PA G E T U R N E R S Two UMES faculty members invited spring webinar audiences to read and discuss thought-provoking books on noteworthy topics.

History professor Kathryn Barrett-Gaines hosted a Black History Month event for the University System of Maryland Women’s Forum. She described the discussion of “White Rage”

by Carol Anderson as an “unfiltered tour of the systemic violence and chronic rage that impedes democracy in our everyday lives.”

That virtual event in February inspired English professor Amy Hagenrater-Gooding when she was asked to create a UMES event for Women’s History Month in March.

“I actually chose the book talk formula after attending Dr. Barrett-Gaines’s talk on ‘White Rage’ for the USM Women’s Forum,” she said. “While she did a lecture format, she was very inclusive in using the chat and it felt like a conversation.”

The book Dr. Hagenrater-Gooding chose for a campus discussion was “Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women a Movement Forgot” by Mikki Kendall. She held the conversation on Hawk Radio, the student managed streaming audio service.

The station’s online delivery system enabled the discussion to reach beyond the geographic limits of campus and provided the opportunity for callers to offer their opinions.

Dr. Barrett-Gaines is also adept at engaging radio audiences.

She regularly provides historical vignettes, analysis, and perspective on race and white supremacy on WHCP, a community radio station in Cambridge, Md.

Tomorrow’s Teachers

Two groups of local high school students earned college credit this summer in a program initiated by the UMES Department of Education. The classes, held in Worcester and Dorchester counties, are part of professor Richard Warren’s mission to encourage more people of color, particularly young men, to become classroom teachers.

“Teaching can become a platform for change,” Warren reminded the teenagers in his class during a lesson on equity in education.

The session that day focused on the Little Rock Nine, the group of nine Black students who, in 1957, integrated allwhite Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Warren invited LeRon McAdoo, a veteran educator in the Little Rock School District, as a virtual guest.

McAdoo offered a unique perspective on career choices.

6 Wingspan / Fall 2021

“Don’t ask kids what they want to be,” he said. “Ask them what they want to change.”

Research shows that simply having one male teacher of color decreases the student dropout rates of Black male students and increases the likelihood that they will enroll in college.

One of Warren’s students this summer, Rip Cornish, an African American who attends Cambridge-South Dorchester High School, says the few Black teachers he’s had have made a difference.

“I feel like they cared more,” he said. “They poured more into us on an emotional level.”

Cornish says the idea of becoming a classroom teacher is something he’ll consider as a result of his interaction with Warren. “He showed us another perspective, the way we can change people’s lives.”

PRESERVING OUR PAST

UMES is in the process of organizing, cataloging, digitizing and preserving its historical archives stored in the Frederick Douglass Library.

Some of the results of the ongoing effort, which the library’s interim dean Sharon Brooks described as “getting our collections in order,” were shared in a virtual presentation in April.

It was clear to the virtual audience this is not just a document project. Items include photographs, news stories, portraits, signs, trophies, videotape, 16-mm film and boxes of other memorabilia from as far back as 1894.

It’s a time-consuming and labor-intensive effort funded by a $50,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, an independent federal agency that supports the nation’s libraries.

Several students were selected to start the process, including senior criminal justice major Whitni Wilson. “I really wanted to learn more about UMES before I left,” she said.

Wilson describes the newspaper articles of student activism as early as the 1950s as unexpected and impressive. She was also surprised by the long list of high-profile visitors to our campus including an African king from the Ashanti Empire. She helped to sort photographs of campus guests that included poet Nikki Giovanni, civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr., Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, sports star Jackie Robinson and former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

“I didn’t realize UMES was this prestigious,” she admits.

The painstaking process of going through boxes, file-by-file and folder-by-folder, continues in an effort to make the materials available to scholarly researchers and curious community members.

ANALYZING SUCCESS Malik Malik, an associate professor in the UMES Department of Mathematics, has been named a fellow in the 2021 HBCU STEM-US Research Fellowship Program. He will participate in training through the HBCU STEM-US Research Center, a collaborative effort led by Morehouse College, Spelman College and Virginia State University.

The goal of the center is to understand not only what strategies are most effective in helping HBCU students succeed but also to determine why they work.

The fellowship program provides social science and education research method training to science, technology, engineering and mathematics faculty members at HBCUs to create joint publications that explore successful academic interventions in STEM subjects.

“Dr. Malik will be exposed to data analytical tools that are being used at HBCUs across the country and he will be introduced to co-creative scholarship,” UMES mathematics department chair Tiara Cornelius said. “The expected outcome of participating in this fellowship will be the replication of successful academic interventions at our university.”

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RETHINKING WHAT WORKS For as long as Jocelyn Martin can remember, she wanted to be a teacher.

As a child, she would line up her teddy bears and force her three siblings to join them for class, so it was no surprise she chose special education as her UMES major. It was her minor in sociology that may have foretold the direction her teaching career would take following her 2017 graduation.

Martin, whose students at Washington Academy and High School in Princess Anne were overwhelmingly African American, worked hard to make her instruction culturally sensitive.

“The curriculum needs to be adjusted to reflect the realities of the student,” she said. “We base so much on the subject, we’ve forgotten about the whole person.”

It may have been the influence of all those sociology and psychology courses that led her to a creative way to teach mathematics last spring.

The lesson on angles in her students’ textbook used, for instance, the angle of a plane as it leaves the runway in flight. “They couldn’t relate to that,” she said.

Martin, instead, found an example they could relate to.

“I googled triangle parts.” Up popped a photo of a young Black girl whose hair was being braided in a triangle design. Voila, a perfect equilateral triangle lesson!

Because the 2020-2021 school year was conducted virtually in Somerset County, parents could watch a teacher who had taken the time to fully engage their children in a math class. More than one told Martin they wished they had learned math the same way.

Her creative approach fosters an excitement for learning. She uses that enthusiasm as an opportunity to remind her students they can change the world.

Martin intends to change her corner of the world. She’s taking a chance; she’s leaving the traditional classroom to build a business coaching teachers who need to find a healthy work-life balance and tutoring students who are struggling.

“We need to step away from the familiar into the unknown,” Martin said. “I want to change the world.”

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THE FUTURE IS IN GOOD HANDS

Ayotomiwa “Tommi” Fashola, a junior majoring in sociology with a minor in criminal justice, is one of just over 200 college students in the U.S. and Mexico selected as Newman Civic Fellows for the 2021/2022 academic year.

A member of the UMES Honors Program with a 3.8 GPA, Fashola was recently elected president of the UMES Student Government Association, is a student assistant in the Office of Residence Life, serves as the lone student representative on the university’s Food Committee and is a member of the campus chapter of the NAACP. The Newman program is sponsored by Campus Compact, a Massachusetts nonprofit that nurtures student leaders. It will provide a variety of learning and networking opportunities that emphasize personal, professional and civic growth.

Fashola was nominated to represent UMES

by President Heidi Anderson.

“Ms. Fashola epitomizes excellence by virtue of her academic prowess, leadership, philanthropy and civic engagement,” Anderson wrote in her recommendation letter. “She is a reliable and respectful young woman who is present, punctual and at all times professional.”

ORDER IN THE COURT Md. Gov. Larry Hogan named a UMES graduate to the district court bench this summer. Krystin Richardson, a former Miss UMES who earned her English degree in 2003, will serve as an associate judge of the district court for Baltimore County.

She was one of two women appointed to a 10-year term on June 14.

“The appointment of these qualified individuals to serve across our state’s justice

WELCOME ABOARD!

system is paramount to upholding our responsibilities to the people of Maryland and the rule of law,” Hogan said.

Richardson graduated from UMES summa cum laude and went on to earn a law degree from the University of Maryland’s Francis King Carey School of Law. Most recently, she was an administrative law judge with the state Office of Administrative Hearings; she earlier served as a prosecutor in Baltimore County.

The School of Education, Social Sciences, and the Arts welcomes Robert Brown to our campus community. He will serve as chair of the Department of Criminal Justice and the Department of Social Sciences.

“I see it as an opportunity,” Brown said. “There are obvious synergies between the two departments.” The academic foundation for students in either department is, as he describes it, “at the intersection of history, criminology and sociology.”

Brown is experienced at multi-tasking. He comes to UMES from North Carolina Central University in Durham, N. C., where he was interim executive director of the Institute for Homeland Security and Workforce Development and chair of the school’s Department of Criminal Justice.

SESA’s newest department chair earned a B.A. in political science from Hampton University in 1991; a M.S. in criminology, with a concentration in corrections, from Indiana State University in 1994; and a Ph.D. in criminal justice, with a specialization in policing, from the University of Cincinnati in 2003. “Exploring the Use of Formal Authority in Police-Citizen Encounters” was his doctoral dissertation.

In addition to his study of the interactions between law enforcement and the public, Brown also has a special interest in prisons. “As the child of an incarcerated parent, I spent a lot of time as a young boy visiting prisons,” he said. “It made criminal justice important to me.”

He sees the nearby Eastern Correctional Institution, a medium security state prison, as a source of important scholarly research. “Are we studying the impact of incarceration on children? Are we using our resources to support those who work in the facility? What are the management challenges?”

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If COVID-19 delivers lemons, the Department of English and Modern Languages will find a way to make lemonade.

Because rehearsals and a final production staged in the small theater space in Wilson Hall would have been strictly limited by the need to socially distance, the department opted to try something new, different and—most importantly—safe. Two students agreed to collaborate on a dramatic monologue

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presented live on YouTube.

Senior English majors Christian Ferguson and Augustus Roberts teamed up to present “Soul Searching” on Friday, May 7, from the Engineering and Aviation Sciences Complex. The change in location enabled the program to live stream from the department’s television studio, which provided important technological connections while maintaining the high production values of prior UMES theater events.

The presentation was written and directed by Ferguson. Roberts was the sole actor. He delivered a moving address outlining his regrets to a virtual audience from inside his fictional prison cell.

Because the audience that evening was looking through the lens of a camera, the studio was easily transformed with the addition of just six metal rods and a portable cot.

DESTINATION: JAPAN The UMES Foreign Language Instructional Center, part of the Department of English and Modern Languages, is celebrating an important milestone. Earlier this year, one of its students received a grant from the federal government’s highly competitive Boren Fellowship program.

Nylah McClain has been awarded a $25,000 stipend to spend an academic year in “language immersion” in Japan. The Fort Washington, Md. native is among 124 American college students awarded a Boren Fellowship for the 2021-22 academic year. It’s a first for the University of Maryland Eastern Shore.

“I’m super excited,” she said. “I’m excited to learn about Japan and Japanese culture from a primary stance.”

However, McClain will have to wait a few more months before that study begins.

COVID-19 restrictions have delayed the start of her trip.

FLIC Director Phillip Broussard sees the move from fall semester 2021 to spring semester 2022 as an opportunity. “That semester delay will enable Nylah to hit the ground running when she arrives,” he said. “Continued study here will increase her language proficiency there.”

FLIC added Japanese as a UMES foreign language option in 2018.

This summer, the center hosted its first 5-day Japanese language immersion camp for local high school students. Nine students enrolled in the program, and while none arrived knowing how to speak or write Japanese, by week’s end, all managed the basics of reading, writing and speaking the language.

HIGH TECH HARMONY THE STAR - U.S. NAVY HBCU SPANGLED NATIONAL BAND BANNER CHOIR

The “Star-Spangled Banner” became the U.S. national anthem on March 3, 1931. Two UMES music majors were invited to celebrate the 90th anniversary of the song’s official status with other vocalists from historically Black institutions in a unique online performance.

Senior Julia DeHuarte and junior Dana Majors, under the direction of UMES choral director Christy Taylor, were part of 105 Voices of History, an all-star chorus accompanied by the U.S. Navy Band.

Dozens of singers recorded their individual portions which were then assembled into an impressive virtual performance. DeHuarte and Majors recorded separate solos in the Ella Fitzgerald Center for the Performing Arts in January using special audio software that “syncs up” with iPhone video, which they submitted to the all-star chorus producer for presentation in March.

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PICTURE PERFECT

The Department of Fine Arts’ photography facilities got a significant technology upgrade thanks to COVID-19. It may be one of the few positive results of living with virus-related restrictions on campus. $103,000 in federal funding was used to avoid issues of poor ventilation and limited space in the existing darkrooms used to process film. It enabled the department to complete an upgrade to digital photography which, because work is completed at a computer, does not require a group of students to squeeze into a tiny darkroom.

The shift from film to digital was always desirable but, until the COVID funding became available, it had been too expensive.

“It was pretty much a miracle,” photography professor Jesse Halpern said.

The changes include the addition of a photo studio, with an appropriate variety of modern lighting equipment, which will be

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used to capture still life and portraiture subjects. It’s designed to mimic a typical studio used in commercial photography.

Students will also get outside to practice location shooting with new digital cameras and portable light kits. Halpern was able to stretch the original federal dollars by securing cameras through a lending agreement with Sony.

In lieu of a darkroom to create images from film, students will print and retouch their work in a computer space that includes multiple printers.

“It’s going to be great to see what the students can do with this technology,” Halpern said. “I can create curriculum around our technological capabilities.”

He believes the modern, digital equipment will improve the job prospects of his students. “When they graduate, they’ll be competitive.”

SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT

The UMES Social Justice and Civic Engagement Committee, led by SESA Dean Marshall Stevenson, continues its mission to engage the campus in the frank discussion of difficult topics. A variety of speakers offer the opportunity to learn more about where we’ve been and where we’re headed.

A series of virtual forums during the spring semester explored painful topics including the historic roots of the Black Lives Matter movement and the tragic reality of the Tulsa Massacre. Audiences were also offered hope by a poet who inspires social change and a historian who documents the political clout of Black athletes. The final speaker was an elected official who reminded us the future of democracy depends on us.

Yohuru Williams, a scholar of the Black Power movement and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at the University of St. Thomas, began the lecture series in February.

His remarks were titled “Simply Because People Refuse to See Me: The Black Lives Matter Movement in Historical Context.”

Joy Harjo, the nation’s poet laureate and the only Native American to serve in that post, read a portion of her work “This Morning I Pray For My Enemies” to her virtual audience in April. It described some of the indignities suffered by her family, members of Muscogee Creek Nation.

“We’re all part of the story,” she said.

Charles Chaviz, an assistant professor at George Mason University and vice chair of the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission, described himself as a “scholar of racial terror.” His discussion of the Tulsa Massacre, the destruction of an entire Black community by a white mob 100 years ago, coincided with the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis police officer convicted of murdering George Floyd.

“We can draw a direct line from Tulsa to the events we witness today,” he said.“From Emmett Till to Trayvon Martin, it’s the same thing.”

Terry Anne Scott, director of African American studies at Hood College, repeated the theme of historical connections, from past to present, in an address titled “Revolt of the Black Athlete: Then and Now.” The final lecture of the semester was delivered by the only speaker who appeared in person, Md. Lt. Gov. Boyd Rutherford. He urged UMES students to become active participants in their government, reminding them “the future of our democracy is in all of our hands.”

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To support SESA programs, please visit www.umes.edu and click on Give to UMES. Select Annual Fund from the menu, then Click Here to Donate under the heading School of Education, Social Sciences, and the Arts.

Thank you in advance for your generous support of our students.