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President: Tuajuanda C. Jordan, PhD
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Habitat for Humanity: a Favorite Spring Break Activity April 2018 Many students from St. Mary’s College of Maryland use their spring break to put down their laptops and books and pick up a hammer and nails. Coordinated through Habitat for Humanity’s Collegiate Challenge, an alternative spring break volunteer opportunity for high school and college students, SMCM has had student groups head south to Greenville, Ga. for a week each spring to build homes with the Meriweather County Habitat organization. The SMCM chapter of Habitat for Humanity has been participating in this spring break project for 11 years and in that time has built as many homes. Each year the group stays in renovated grain silos on a family pine farm in the area and all their meals are provided by local churches and veteran organizations.
Students work on the roof of the home they built from the ground up.
“When we arrive at the worksite at 8 a.m. on the Monday of break, all that stands on site is the cinderblock foundation and a pile of wood cut to different lengths. We spend the five workdays literally building a house from the foundation all the way through the roof,” said Kate Cumberpatch ’17, who spent the past four years as a student volunteer and this spring as a co-mentor with Scott Mirabile, assoc. prof. of psychology. Cumberpatch said the purpose is to spend a week doing as much as possible to build a house for a citizen of Greenville through Habitat for Humanity, and also to do everything possible as a group to bring the St. Mary’s Way to that small rural Georgia town, ”effectively working to make a positive impact on the community as a whole through relationship-building and a strong commitment to serving their citizens.” This year, 15 of the 17 SMCM community members on the trip were female. Cumberpatch and
A newsletter for the community, faculty, staff and students.
Students stay in renovated silos on a family farm near the work site in Greenville, Ga.
Mirabile said there were some in the area that did not think a group of females could build a house. “We proved those voices wrong, and the students never lost their positive attitudes or respect for others throughout the whole process,” Cumberpatch said. Mirabile said this year’s group of students was inspiring to work with. “They were eager to learn, to work hard, to work as a team, to support each other ... Basically, everything you could want from a group of students: they were it.” Cumberpatch said the amount of work the group gets done in just five days is tremendous and “a testament to what can happen when people work together to achieve a common good.”
Agencies Align on Education for STEM Growth The Naval Surface Warfare Center Indian Head Explosive Ordnance Disposal Technology Division, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, and The Patuxent Partnership formalized an educational partnership agreement that will provide educational and research experiences for SMCM students and faculty using expertise, unique facilities, equipment and technology. Furthermore, the agreement will facilitate student internships, particularly in fields relating to the real-world technical applications required by the U.S. Navy. Representatives from the three organizations signed the educational partnership agreement on Friday, March 23. Left to right: Bonnie Green’74 (executive director of The Patuxent Partnership; Ashley Johnson (NSWC IHEODTD technical director); Scott Kraft (NSWC IHEODTD commanding officer);Tuajuanda C. Jordan (president of SMCM).
The group poses with the homeowner (front center in blue shirt), who helped build the house.
She said what students often get out of the experience is resiliency, how to connect with a community different than their own and adaptability.
Phi Beta Kappa Inducts 19 Students to Zeta Chapter
Mirabile said some benefits are a little harder to explain. “The feeling of accomplishment at the end of the day knowing that we built something that a family will get to call their own, something that will give a child her first bedroom ... that’s indescribable.”
Want More? News, Student and Faculty accomplishments: www.smcm.edu/news Campus Events Calendar: www.smcm.edu/events/calendar 240.895.2000 | www.smcm.edu
Nineteen students were elected to the Zeta Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa on March 30. Phi Beta Kappa is the nation’s oldest academic honor society. For more than 200 years, election to Phi Beta Kappa has signified outstanding achievement in the attainment of an education in the liberal arts and sciences. St. Mary’s College is one of eight institutions in Maryland with a chapter. Sitting, left to right: Rebecca Ritter, Abigail Messaris, Hannah Murphy, Caroline Goyco, Benjamin Ertman, Ziyue Dong, Sydney Cunniff, Allison Barrett. Standing, left to right: Anna Vagnoni, Marilyn Steyert, Caitlin Schoen, Samuel Rosenblatt, Charlotte Torrence, Halcyon Ruskin, Megan Root, Brendan Rollins, Caroline Robertson, Sally McFadden. (missing from photo: Alexander Hafey)
Q&A: Aileen Bailey on Neuroscience Aileen Bailey is professor of psychology and neuroscience and the Aldom-Plansoen Honors College Professor. She joined the faculty in 1999.
What do you enjoy most about SMCM students? SMCM students work hard. They are invested in their education and interested in understanding certain issues/questions.
How would you describe the neurosciences taught at SMCM? Neuroscience is an interdisciplinary field. We expose students to the issues of neuroscience from the cellular/molecular questions, neural circuit questions, to brain based behavioral outcomes. What makes the neuroscience major at SMCM unique compared to other colleges?
What keeps you inspired as a professor? I love working with students! I love having them in my laboratory and seeing them discover how we learn about and understand the connection between brain and behavior. I love working on new ways to explain concepts or engage students in the applications of basic research in the neurosciences.
We have outstanding facilities for work in the neurosciences. Our students get early hands-on experience with faculty members on research in the neurosciences. Students graduate with impressive technical skills that are rare for undergraduate students in neuroscience. Our students also leave with a strong understanding of the research process from idea conception to data analysis, interpretation, and presentation.
What do neuroscience students do in the minor during their time at SMCM?
How does neuroscience fit into a liberal arts education?
We ask all students to take an introductory neurosciences course to develop the core foundational concepts. From there students participate in our seminar courses in which they explore current scientific work in the neurosciences, meet with external neuroscience scholars that visit campus, and work on professional skills related to employment in the neurosciences. Additionally, students select upperdivision courses in neurosciences that best fit their interests.
Neuroscience is interdisciplinary by its nature. A true understanding of the brain requires asking questions from several disciplines – biology, chemistry, philosophy, psychology. We ask students to use their brain to understand their brain.
How would you characterize your teaching style? As a guide. Content is now easily available to students on the internet. Therefore, to me it is more important to instruct students on how to navigate all of that information, and how to put that information together into a larger more complex puzzle … the brain.
The skills gained in a liberal arts education are global and will fit in any career. I will often point out in class when they are working hard on a particular issue that this issue may not be the one that they are working on in the future but the experience of critically thinking through a problem is something that they will use in the future.
What’s Happening in Sports
Dakota Merritt
Will Spanoghe
Dakota Merritt ‘19 and Will Spanoghe ‘21 were both recognized by the Capital Athletic Conference with weekly awards on March 5 and March 19, respectively. It has been five years since a St. Mary’s baseball player has been honored this way. The Seahawk baseball team holds a 9/8 record after 17 games this season.
Students Exemplify Experiential Learning Sam Rosenblatt ‘18 presented his original research at the annual meeting of the Southern Regional Honors Council in Arlington, Va., on April 5-7. In his talk, titled “Making the Most of the Network Data We Have: The Robustness of Efficacy for Targeted Immunization Strategies,” Rosenblatt presented research that is part of a project from two separate federally-funded REUs (Research Experience for Undergraduates) he participated in during the summers of 2016 and 2017 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He worked there with other researchers on the Minority Health Disparities Initiative. A triple major in sociology, computer science, and mathematics, Rosenblatt
has been accepted to several doctoral programs and plans to pursue graduate work next fall in computational, data, and network science. This summer, Peter Orban ‘20, will conduct an Undergraduate Research Fellowship at the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Physical Measurement Laboratory in Gaithersburg, Md. Orban will work on basic radionuclide metrology, standards for nuclear medicine, the chemistry of (reverse) micellar solutions, and on ionizing radiation. He has a double major in mathematics and physics and plans to pursue a PhD in mathematics, physics, or engineering.
DeSousa-Brent Program Highlighted at Convention F.J. Talley (director of the DeSousaBrent Scholars Program); Devin HoltZimmerman (instit. research analyst I); and Mary F. Dorsey (coord. of advising services), presented during the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators in Philadelphia, Pa., in early March. The presentation, titled “Success for Underrepresented Students: Engaging Students Using Rigor,
Challenge and Leadership,” highlighted the theoretical and practical model for the DeSousaBrent Scholars Program, St. Mary’s College’s curriculum, and impressive data-based outcomes.
Kudos to... Joanna Bartow (prof. of Spanish) published “Herencias del terror de estado y del consenso: hijas perversas en ‘Árbol genealógico’ de Andrea Jeftanovic y ‘Pájaros en la boca’ de Samanta Schweblin,” in the Bulletin of Hispanic Studies (Liverpool, 2018). In English the title is: “Inheritances of State Terrorism and Consensus: Perverse Daughters in ‘Árbol genealógico’ by Andrea Jeftanovic and ‘Pájaros en la boca’ by Samanta Schweblin.” The article examines how two short stories by a new generation of authors reframe and discuss the post-dictatorship society in Argentina and Chile. Charles Adler (prof. of physics) participated in “Chasing Consciousness: Cylons, T2s and the Borg, Oh My!” on March 19 in New York, N.Y. The event was a moderated conversation with Anthony Bowdoin Van Riper, author of many books on science in popular culture. The moderator was Caleb Scharf, director of the Astrobiology Center at Columbia University, and the author of several books on popular science. Christine Adams (prof. of history) had an essay titled “Why President Trump resembles a pre-revolution French monarch,” published in The Washington Post.
Eliza Garth (instructor of music) has received a positive review of her new release “Tour de Force” (March 2018, Albany Records), featuring music by American composers Sheree Clement and Perry Goldstein. Kathodik, an Italian webzine that publishes articles, interviews, and reviews of rock, pop, jazz, ethnic and contemporary music, states, “As the title of this newest release by Albany Records promises, it is a real tour de force to which the bravissima American pianist Eliza Garth is subjected.” Carrie Patterson (prof. of art) is writing 24 lectures for the Great Courses Lecture Series program. Titled “How to See,” Patterson says “the lessons teach you the principles of design as the vocabulary of art – line, shape, space, texture, color, and more – and how to see and evaluate them. You learn also how the arrangement of these principles affect the quality of design and art overall.” The course will be available in summer 2019. Ayse Ikizler (asst. prof. of psychology) was inducted into the Zeta Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa on March 30 as an alumna initiate. She joins the ranks of 16 other alumni who have been inducted in the chapter’s 21 years on campus.