Terp Fall 2021

A N A C A-A C C O M P L I S H M E N T 1 3 I T ’S A L L G O O D : 1 0 Y E A R S O F FO O D R EC OV E RY N E T W O R K 2 8 “ EC H O E S O F M E M O RY ” F R O M H O LO C AU ST S U RV I VO R S 3 4

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PRESSING PLAY A S T ER P S COM PET E AT T HE WOR LD’S

HIGHEST LEVELS OF ESPORTS, UMD IS POW ER ING U P SU PPORT FOR GA MER S. P G. 2 2

CAMPUS COLORS

Towering walls of windows meet on the sparkling facade of the E.A. Fernandez IDEA Factory, reflecting part of the university landscape (including, at center, the Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering) in myriad colors that depend on where the viewer stands, thanks to a dichroic coating on the glass. The new building, nearing completion, will house labs for quantum, robotics and rotorcraft research; a studentrun coworking space and business incubator; and a café.

PHOTO BY ERIC KRUSZEWSKI

ON THE MALL

ALUMNI NEWS

6 7 7

Making Rooms for History UMD Creates Incubator for Quantum Startups A New Decade of Diversity

CAMPUS LIFE

8 10 11 12 13 13 14 15

The Postwar Campus Crunch “Inclusion Matters” The “Ripple” Effect A Cooler Way to Help the Hungry An Aca-Accomplishment Cracking a New Code A New Home for Terps Football Two Terps Earn Places on Podium

EXPLORATIONS

16 16 17 18

18 19 20 21

Diagnosis: Rude Sniffing Out Climate Change Vaccine Distrust Gets a Trim How the “Diet Soda Effect” Cuts the Benefit of Climatefriendly Cars Conservation Crime Fighter A World of Language Learning— at Your Fingertipss Harriet Tubman’s “Training Ground” The Big Question

ALUMNI

40 42 44 46 48

Alumni Association Open Secrets An Imagined History Reaching New Heights From the Archives

CONTENTS 2

T E R P. U M D . E D U

C LO C KW I S E F RO M TO P : CO U RT ESY O F U N I V E R S I T Y A RC H I V ES ; P H O T O B Y J O H N T. C O N S O L I ; C O U R T E S Y O F F A U X P A Z

FEATURES

ONLINE

Terp’s Persistence Wins Pulitzer BuzzFeed News correspondent Megha Rajagopalan ’08 and two colleagues won journalism’s highest honor for exposing mass detention camps built in China for Muslims.

—

A Cicada Postmortem Brood X gave scientists a new perspective on the impact of climate change, the effects of social media and more.

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Pressing Play Esports have become an international phenomenon. With Terps already competing at the highest levels, UMD powers up support for gamers.

BY LIAM FARRELL

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Last Words For two decades, a UMD professor has led a writing workshop for Holocaust survivors. Seventy-six years after World War II’s end, their task has an urgency both personal and public.

BY SALA LEVIN ’10

28 It’s All Good Terps cooked up Food Recovery Network 10 years ago and grew it into a nationwide hunger- and waste-fighting force. In their own words, here’s how.

BY ANNIE DANKELSON

— Sculpture to Commemorate Late Professor and Artist An Andrew W. Mellon Foundation grant will fund an abstract artwork memorializing David C. Driskell and expand the archive at the center named for him.

Get the latest on the UMD community by visiting TODAY.UMD.EDU.

C LO C KW I S E F RO M TO P : CO U RT ESY O F U. S. H O LO CAU ST M E M O R I A L M U S E U M ; W I K I M E D I A CO M M O N S ; P H OTO BY B I L L N I N O, U N S P L AS H

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FROM THE EDITOR

i ’ m normally not eager to make my son’s bed.

By the time you read this, my husband and I will have helped our older boy, Henry, move into Denton Hall. After learning virtually last year during the pandemic, our sophomore felt more like a freshman this summer, with a built-up sense of excitement about coming to campus.

We, meanwhile, are bracing for what might be a more difficult transition. We’re dreading the empty chair at the dinner table. We’re going to miss our shaggy-haired teen bopping through the kitchen listening to his AirPods, bantering with his brother about MLB or NBA trades, or grinning when he comes home from work to discover I’ve baked a cake.

I’m hoping that on Aug. 26 he’ll let me help him unpack his clothes, set up his storage, and smooth the comforter over his mattress topper. It will be one of the last things I’ll be able to do for him for a while.

After that, I expect to see him only for the occasional laundry drop-off or free lunch in the Stamp. It’s time to let him begin this exciting chapter of his life at Maryland.

Stories in this issue of Terp are a good reminder to me of all that Henry and other Terps can look forward to as the university plans to fully reopen this fall. Amid a flurry of new buildings going up on campus, Jones-Hill House officially becomes the home to Maryland Football and the beautiful new Pyon-Chen Hall welcomes its first residents. A new faculty diversity hiring program is attracting scholars and scientists from all backgrounds.

And our cover story on esports shows how UMD is working to meet student gamers where they are: on the global competition stage, seeking to win scholarships and cash prizes.

Annie Dankelson’s feature on Food Recovery Network, established 10 years ago this fall by UMD students, highlights Terps’ entrepreneurial spirit and commitment to serving others. She talked to 10 people involved at the nonprofit’s birth, detailing how it’s spread to 172 campuses in 46 states, provided millions of meals to the hungry and saved so much unserved food from ending up in landfills.

A decade ago, I helped arrange the photo shoot for a Terp ad featuring four Food Recovery Network student co-founders and volunteers. It’s amazing to see how they—and it—have grown up.

(Sniff.) I’m unusually sentimental these days.

Lauren Brown University Editor

Publisher BRIAN ULLMANN ’92 Vice President, Marketing and Communications

Advisers BRODIE REMINGTON Vice President, University Relations MARGARET HALL Executive Director, Creative Strategies

Magazine Staff LAUREN BROWN University Editor JOHN T. CONSOLI ’86 Creative Director VALERIE MORGAN Art Director CHRIS CARROLL ANNIE DANKELSON LIAM FARRELL SALA LEVIN ’10 Writers KOLIN BEHRENS JASON A. KEISLING Designers STEPHANIE S. CORDLE Photographer GAIL RUPERT M.L.S. ’10 Photography Archivist EMMA J. HOWELLS Photography Assistant JAGU CORNISH Production Manager

EMAIL terpfeedback@umd.edu ONLINE terp.umd.edu NEWS umdrightnow.umd.edu FACEBOOK.COM/ UnivofMaryland TWITTER.COM /UofMaryland VIMEO.COM /umd YOUTUBE.COM /UMD2101

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 non-discrimination regarding race, color, religion, age, national origin, political affiliation, gender, sexual orientation or disability.

COVER Illustration by Ryan Inzana

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INTERPLAY Facing the Offensive Line

When I first saw the title, I thought, “Oh no, just another football article,” but quickly changed that thought!

What a piece Robert Klemko wrote for all of us to digest and think long and hard about. Even my husband read it!

It’s a sad state of affairs for our country, but “it is what it is.” If we can change that, we should all try to do so, in any small way that we can, individually or collectively.

But what a challenge ahead!

Thank you for including this article in Terp magazine!

—ELIZABETH A. HANLEY ’60, STATE COLLEGE, PA.

I graduated from Maryland more than 60 years ago. At that time, we were trying to overcome racial discrimination. A wise man taught us to judge individuals by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin. I believed in that doctrine and have lived my life accordingly. Why is this no longer a logical and reasonable approach to life?

—RAYMOND DAVID GROFF ’55, M.ED. ’68, HOMOSASSA, FLA.

GIVE THE GIFT OF

EDUCATION The Clark Challenge for the Maryland Promise is building a $100 million endowment that is providing need-based scholarships to undergraduate students from the state of Maryland and the District of Columbia.

For more information, contact Susan Smith in University Development at 301.405.0196 or ssmith86@umd.edu.

SUPPORT THE MARYLAND PROMISE PROGRAM TODAY! 1 With a pledge commitment

of $50,000 or more, you can support the lifetime success of talented students in any school or program of your choice.

2 Establish a named and

WRITE TO US We love to hear from readers.

Send your feedback, insights, compliments—and, yes, complaints—to terpfeedback@umd.edu or Terp magazine Office of Strategic Communications 7736 Baltimore Ave. College Park, MD 20742

FOLLOW THEIR JOURNEY ON INSTAGRAM @MARYLANDPROMISE PROMISE.UMD.EDU

endowed fund or make a gift to the Maryland Promise General Endowment Fund (contact us for program details).

3 Receive a dollar-for-dollar

match from the university and the A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation.

4 See your scholarship awarded, enhancing the success of UMD students—in perpetuity.

ON THE MALL

NEWS

Making Rooms for History

Pyon-Chen Hall Opens, Honoring Pioneering Terps FOUR HUNDRED AND FIFTY students, including student-athletes and

members of living-learning communities, moved this semester into PyonChen Hall, UMD’s newest residence hall, named for two trailblazing alums.

The six-story high-rise overlooking La Plata Beach honors Pyon Su, who became the first Korean student to receive any degree from an American higher education institution when he earned a bachelor’s degree from the then-Maryland Agricultural College in 1891, and Chunjen Constant Chen, the first Chinese student to enroll in the college in 1915.

He received a master’s degree in agriculture in 1920.

and enclosed study spaces on each floor will help students connect with one another and focus on their academic work. Each floor also includes one handicapped-accessible room with a private bathroom; the other rooms are single- and double-occupancy. Twenty-four hour-laundry rooms are located on every floor.

An adjacent residence hall, Johnson-Whittle Hall, and new dining facility will open in 2022. These buildings, together with Pyon-Chen Hall, will make up the Heritage Community, centered around an outdoor plaza outfitted with eco-friendly natural landscaping. —SL

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STORIES

450

131,000 SQUARE FEET

RESIDENTS

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STUDY ROOMS

The roughly 131,000-square-foot building is full of natural light and features occupancy sensors to help reduce energy use. Central lounges

P H O T O S B Y J O H N T. C O N S O L I

UMD Creates Incubator for Quantum Startups

field from the physics lab to the marketplace.

The Quantum Startup Foundry will support new businesses in the quantum technology field, which is poised to disrupt everything from cybersecurity and

UMD Chief Innovation Officer Julie Lenzer is leading the new incubator, which connects researchers with business mentors and forges partnerships with industry. The QSF will host an October investment summit to connect funders

energy to medical discoveries and the financial sector.

with innovators seeking to follow in the path of IonQ, a top

The QSF is backed by a $10 million capital investment

quantum computing firm based in UMD’s Discovery District

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND has

in quantum facilities, and will help cement UMD’s and the

already built one of the world’s most productive quantum

region’s position as “the Capital of Quantum,” featuring the

and built in part on discoveries made at the university.

science research enterprises, and now a new arm of the

Mid-Atlantic Quantum Alliance of universities, firms and

Lenzer says. “We’re going to get more out of it in terms of

university is ready to push discoveries in this revolutionary

government labs, says UMD President Darryll J. Pines.

innovation than ever before.”—CC

“When you work to expand research, there’s a payoff,”

A New Decade of Diversity UMD to Hire 100+ Faculty From Underrepresented Backgrounds THE FIRST PROFESSORS hired in an effort to increase the diversity

mentorship, professional development, and opportunities to engage in

of UMD faculty entered classrooms this semester as part of a 10-year,

collaborative grants, internal and external research presentations, and

$40 million commitment to add more than 100 tenured or tenure-track

Big Ten leadership programs.

faculty from underrepresented backgrounds.

With funding from the Office of the Provost and matching dollars from colleges and schools, the Faculty Advancement at Maryland for

“The FAMILE program is a very intentional way to ensure we’re able to recruit the excellent, diverse faculty we need across campus,” says Senior Vice President and Provost Jennifer King Rice.—LF

Inclusive Learning and Excellence program (FAMILE) has nearly tripled support for faculty recruitment and retention. UMD President Darryll J. Pines announced FAMILE as a priority during his inauguration in April.

“A diverse and equitable multicultural community will drive us to our goal of inclusive excellence in everything we do,” Pines said. “We want our student body to be taught by the highest quality faculty who reflect our values and advance our journey of inclusive excellence.”

As of press time, six new faculty had already been hired as a result.

One of FAMILE’s primary goals is creating a welcoming environment for each recruited faculty member, incorporating them into a collegial academic community and advancing the new hire’s expertise and career.

Individual departments will conduct a “readiness assessment” with campus partners and the Office of Diversity and Inclusion to ensure they can successfully onboard diverse faculty; provide search committee members with implicit bias training; and develop a retention plan that addresses

I L L U S T R AT I O N S : ( T O P ) I S T O C K ; ( R I G H T ) J A S O N A . K E I S L I N G

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ON THE MALL

CAMPUS LIFE

The flurry of students registering for classes in 1948 paid tuition and fees totalling $208 for the academic year.

The Postwar Campus Crunch 75 Years Ago, a GI Bill-Driven Influx Led to Bunks in the Armory, Classrooms in the Gym and Crowds in the Coliseum

ouring another 7,300 students onto UMD’s campus would be a noticeable bump even to today’s enrollment of 40,000-plus. But 75 years ago, that total left the campus positively teeming with Terps.

Starting in 1946, a year after World War II’s end, the population here exploded, tripling from the previous year and almost quintupling from two years prior. That was thanks in large part to the 1944 GI Bill, which, among other benefits, covered college tuition for returning veterans. (Of the record 7,300 enrolled Terps in 1946, 4,400 had served.)

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“There’s more of everything: more men, more staff, more classes, more crowds at dances and games, more clubs, more fraternity and sorority members, more dormitories, and more studying,” read a Diamondback article from that year.

With campus a skeleton of what it is now—its heart back then was Morrill Quad, and a primitive McKeldin Mall was still known as the Quadrangle— UMD scrambled to accommodate the influx, getting creative to house, teach and engage its suddenly plentiful population in university life.—ad

A surplus of male students stuffed into makeshift housing in the Armory, also known as the Veterans Barracks Unit.

P H OTOS CO U RT ESY O F U N I V E R S I T Y A RC H I V ES

Before the postwar building boom on campus, the enrollment boom meant long lines to enter LeFrak Hall, the sole campus dining hall.

MAKE-DO DIGS

the intramural side of sports, though,

The wave of vets found no vacancy in

the population boost meant more

UMD’s existing residence halls, which

participants, better teams and more

simply couldn’t fit all those returning

organized leagues.

GIs. The solution? Cram around 700 beds into Reckord Armory. The

VIGOROUS VETS’ CLUB

makeshift housing featured one clothes

The rush of returning servicemen

rack for every four Terps, according to

quickly distinguished the Veterans’ Club

The Diamondback, and a temporary

as UMD’s largest student organization.

post office. Additionally, for returning

With the mission of helping GIs transi-

servicemen residing with their families,

tion into the college routine, the club

the university quickly put up temporary

tackled projects like planning a food

living quarters.

commissary, running a tutoring service and sponsoring a variety show.

ACADEMIC AUGMENTATIONS

Residence halls weren’t the only places

CAMPUS CONSTRUCTION ZONE

on campus experiencing overcrowding.

Seeking a more permanent solution,

The university also had to alleviate

UMD rushed along its government-aided,

cramped academic areas, eventually

multimillion-dollar plan to add a whop-

converting the gym and National Youth

ping 32 buildings, including a dining hall,

Administration shop, where students

men’s and women’s residence halls, a

could earn work experience, into

new stadium and the Glenn L. Martin

classrooms. UMD also added 19 faculty

Wind Tunnel. “And so construction barri-

members and even held some classes

cades, razing buildings brick by brick,

on Saturdays to address the surge.

steam shovels, digging, tool houses and detours on the lanes and walks are all

PACKING THE STADIUM

familiar on the scene of campus life (in)

For diehard Terp fans, the enroll-

1946,” The Diamondback wrote.

ment boom sparked worries of an overcrowded Ritchie Coliseum that might cause them to miss the big basketball game or boxing match. On

See more photos showing how Terps coped with crowding in the late 1940s at terp.umd.edu.

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ON THE MALL

CAMPUS LIFE

“Inclusion Matters”

New Program Enrolls UMD Students With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

ari kannan was a middle schooler when he somberly told his mother the bad news: He has Down syndrome; therefore he would be unable to clean his room.

Kannan and his mother, Vidya Thirumalai, who told the story, still chuckle at the ploy.

Now 19, he has no doubt about his ability to accomplish his goals. That confidence (and a healthy sense of humor) helped the young man from North Potomac, Md., become one of two students in a pilot program this semester giving people with intellectual and developmental disabilities a chance for a University of Maryland education.

TerpsEXCEED, funded by a grant from the Maryland Disabilities Council and College of Education alumni donors, is the first program of its type in the state. Students—plans call for five to 10 per year after the pilot period—will audit carefully selected classes and take new offerings on career readiness and other skills, says Amy Dwyre D’Agati, TerpsEXCEED director and senior faculty specialist at the College of Education’s Center for Transition and Career Innovation.

Faculty, staff and peer mentors from the college provide support, but students independently participate in the campus community, from dorm life to clubs to attending big games.

At the end, they’re expected to graduate with two-year certificates as valuable in some ways as any Maryland degree.

“Research shows that if students get a bit of postsecondary experience, their job prospects and work hours go up,” D’Agati says.

“Things get even better if they go through a full-length program.”

Although new for UMD, it’s a natural continuation of inclusion principles that have permeated public schools in recent years. “My own kids have been in school with kids with disabilities,” she says.

“It’s not unusual to them. What’s stranger is that these students aren’t

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there when you go to college.”

Senior Vice President and Provost Jennifer King Rice, who helped develop the program as College of Education dean, says it puts a new and broadly beneficial spin on the campus’ diversity and inclusion goals.

“If you think about how K-12 schools have adapted, we’ve come to recognize inclusive environments are best for everyone; that’s something we —JENNIFER KING RICE, also hear employers talk about,” SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND PROVOST she says. “These efforts to create more inclusive work and learning environments benefit individuals with disabilities, but they also help us all learn to live and work in diverse communities.”

Families dealing with disability liken the end of high school, and disappearance of familiar education-based structures, to “falling off a cliff.”

Zach McKay, 25, who has autism, built a rich social life in high school in Ellicott City, Md.—he was named homecoming king,

“These efforts to create more inclusive work and learning environments benefit individuals with disabilities, but they also help us all learn to live and work in diverse communities.”

TO P P H OTO BY ST E P H A N I E S. CO R D L E ; TO P R I G H T P H OTO CO U RT ESY O F T E R PS E XC E E D

The “Ripple” Effect Terps to Build Sustainable Structures Near Burning Man Festival Site OUT IN THE NORTHWESTERN Nevada desert, amid the rare

sights of geysers and pools on arid land untouched by roads, electrical grids or even the most tenuous cellular connection, a group of UMD alums, students and staff members will be building the area’s first permanent structures—with a connection to the land as the top priority.

The centerpiece of “Ripple,” as the team’s project is known, is a geodesic dome that collects and purifies water for surrounding rings of sustainable gardens, and also houses Zach McKay (far left) and Hari Kannan, the first students in the new TerpsEXCEED program, get familiar with campus during an orientation session in August.

a seed bank and library to preserve native plant species and allow people to take seeds for free. Solar and wind energy both fuel the project.

It was one of the 10 winning proposals submitted to an international design challenge sponsored by two nonprofits: the Land Art Generator Initiative and the Burning Man Project.

The two organizations own about 3,800 acres called the Fly Ranch, just west of the site of the annual Burning Man festival, known for its focus on self-sustainability, a gifting economy

participated in theater productions and was even voted “most likely to make you smile.”

“Then it ends—everyone else goes off to college and moves on, except he couldn’t,” says his mother, Kim McKay ’90, communications director at the Maryland Department of Disabilities. Now living in a townhouse in nearby Columbia and working in the service department at a local car dealership, Zach McKay still harbored a dream of attending UMD like his parents and sister Alex McKay ’17, M.S. ’18. It had been reinforced in visits to her dorm and by attending celebrations after she played a central role in the Terps women’s lacrosse team’s 2017 national championship.

The whole family is thrilled at his acceptance into TerpsEXCEED— both at completing their Terp circle and helping to build the foundation of a program they hope leads to careers and personal discovery for others, says Dr. Wendell McKay ’88, an Ellicott City pediatrician and former Maryland cornerback.

“It’s a chance for our family to leave a little bit of a legacy,” he says.

“We’re humbled.”

While Zach McKay is leaning toward a career involving athletics, he wants to take a few classes before choosing a focus. Kannan, however, is already set on becoming an advocate for people with disabilities, which he’s preparing for in a first-semester public speaking class.

“Inclusion matters,” he says. “Including people in our community is important for everyone in our community.”—cc

I L L U S T R A T I O N C O U R T E S Y O F F LY R A N C H

and some wild outfits.

The team behind Fly Ranch hopes to create an experimental sustainable community—part art installation, part eco-friendly habitations that both thrive off and replenish the land while building a sense of togetherness among guests.

Jacob Mast ’20 and Matt Lagomarsino ’18, who both studied environmental science at UMD, organized some 30 team members—including UMD students, alums and staff—to design and build it in Nevada this fall. “The best part about this has just been working with so many other talented and passionate people,” says Lagomarsino. “It’s a synergy, and soon it will be a synergy among us and the land and other organisms.”—SL

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ON THE MALL

CAMPUS LIFE

A Cooler Way to Help the Hungry

New, Expanded Campus Pantry Opens With Fridge, Freezer and Food Prep Stations he door to better nutrition for Terps in need might just be attached to a commercial fridge in UMD’s new, larger Campus Pantry.

Open since June in the lower level of the South Campus Dining Hall, the pantry now has more room to store and distribute free food and support the Terps who need it, including one crucial feature: refrigeration and freezer space.

T

The cold storage is “a tremendous ... opportunity for us,” says Allison Tjaden, assistant director of new initiatives in Dining Services. Produce, dairy products and eggs are among the nutrient-rich foods the pantry can now stock for the first time.

The pantry launched in 2014 in a small concession stand in Cole Field House before moving to slightly larger digs in the University Health Center. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the pantry operated

out of a loading dock outside the dining hall, serving pre-packaged bags to clients.

Since 2014, on-campus surveys have found that up to 20% of University of Maryland students are food-insecure, meaning they lack consistent access to nutritious foods.

The COVID-19 pandemic aggravated existing inequities; during the 2019-20 academic year, the pantry saw 8,463 visits—up from 2,422 the previous year, with most visits after the pandemic was declared and many workplaces shut down in March 2020.

This fall, for the first time, the pantry is open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., up from two days a week. Fifteen students staff the facility in positions funded by the Student Government Association. (Other support for the pantry comes from individual donors, the Student Facilities Fee Fund and the Student Technology Fee.) In addition to cold storage, the 2,057square-foot pantry’s new home in a former salad prep room has a private meeting space where staff can consult with pantry users who might need extra help learning to cook with severe dietary restrictions or budgeting amid financial constraints. A demo kitchen and food prep stations host cooking classes led by Dining Services and Campus Pantry staff.

The kitchen is critical to teaching pantry clients how to make delicious meals with available ingredients, says Tjaden. “Having (the ingredients) is an important part of the battle, but learning how to prepare them is also part of what we want to make sure we’re including in our vision.”— sl Left: Campus Pantry employee MiMi Drozdetski loads the fridge shelf with okra from the campus’ learning garden.

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P H OTO BY ST E P H A N I E S. CO R D L E

THE FEARLESS GENERATION

An AcaAccomplishment Terp Group’s Virtual Performance Earns First Place in International A Cappella Competition EVEN AS COVID-19 caused most harmonies to

Faux Paz President Anna Dziki ’21, who earned

fall silent, a group of talented Terps still found a

the choreography nod.

way to give a pitch-perfect performance.

Faux Paz, the University of Maryland’s

To adhere with COVID guidelines, groups created videos from home instead of performing

Then everyone filed their voice memos and videos and made adjustments—“You need to look at the camera for .2 seconds longer,” Dziki might say—to flawlessly blend when edited together.

premier all-gender a cappella group, took

in a theater full of fans. So the entire time Faux

After perfecting the video through the

home the top prize in May’s virtual version of

Paz spent prepping its winning entry, “How Do

quarterfinal, semifinal and wild card rounds,

the International Competition of Collegiate

You Sleep?” originally performed by Sam Smith,

members—all vaccinated—watched the live-

A Cappella—the same contest actress Anna

members didn’t see each other in person, which

streamed awards ceremony together in Dziki’s

Kendrick made famous on the big screen in the

made staying in sync a challenge.

first “Pitch Perfect” movie. The achievement

The process involved mapping out chore-

basement and screamed as their victory was announced. Now Faux Paz holds the No. 3

by the nine-member crew, which also nabbed

ography on Google Slides to show how each

slot in the A Cappella Archive’s all-time ICCA

outstanding soloist and choreography awards,

member’s clip would combine in “Brady Bunch”-

rankings.—AD

was not only its best-ever finish, but also the

style YouTube squares, creating dance demos

first win for a group from the mid-Atlantic.

“It was sheer willpower and commitment to

and holding tutorials over Zoom, and ordering colored lightbulbs to achieve the desired orange

See Faux Paz’s winning performance at terp.umd.edu.

each other that made this come together,” says

and blue scenes.

Cracking a New Code

Department of English and the College of

while applying it to literature. Tasks will include

Information Studies, hopes to keep bridging

using “sentiment analysis” to see how and why

the two through a new class this fall called

algorithms score sentences as either emotionally

“Storytelling With Code.”

positive or negative; comparing word choice

English Class Explores Literature Through Technology FROM MACHINEGENERATED love letters

to digitized author databases,

Kari Kraus, an associate professor in the

of programming in beginner-friendly Python

“I want English majors in particular to feel

and syntax between works published under

that computer programming is fully

an author’s real name versus those under a

compatible with a more traditional

pseudonym (or erroneously claimed as such);

literary study,” Kraus says. “I don’t

and exploring computer-generated poetry and

want it to be a fearful process.”

the interactive fiction of text-based computer

The class is part of the university’s

games.

literature and computer

new “Arts for All” initiative, which

programming aren’t complete

President Darryll J. Pines announced

creatively possible by combining technology and

earlier this year and will broaden arts

literature, Kraus says computing is already a

strangers, with writers solely scribbling their thoughts on paper while engineers code in the glow of the latest technology.

programming and education across campus by integrating with STEM disciplines.

Kraus will have students learn the basics

T O P P H O T O C O U R T E S Y O F FA U X PA Z ; I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y VA L E R I E M O R G A N

While scholars are still learning what is

central skill. “(It’s) a core competency of literary studies,” she says. “The field has changed so much.”—LF

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ON THE MALL

SPORTS

A New Home for Terps Football Jones-Hill House, Named for Athletics Trailblazers, Features Tech-Filled Training Areas, a Tricked-Out Locker Room and Plenty of Maryland Pride niversity of maryland football has a new home—or, more specifically, a new House.

A Sept. 3 ribbon-cutting ceremony celebrated the official opening of Jones-Hill House, a state-of-the-art facility in Cole Field House named in honor of Billy Jones ’69, who became the first Black basketball player at Maryland and in the ACC in 1965, and Darryl Hill ’65, who broke the same color barrier in football in 1963.

“The determination, courage and strength of these two individuals helped pave the way for thousands of Black student-athletes today, but they also helped break the chains

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of segregation and discrimination for every one of us,” UMD President Darryll J. Pines said during his April inauguration speech, when he announced the new facility’s name. “Jones-Hill House will not only cement the legacy of these two trailblazers, but will serve as an inspiration to our entire university community.”

Among its features are a 24,000square-foot strength and conditioning area with 22 custom weight racks; a locker room with recliners and wireless phone chargers for each player; a sports medicine space with hydrotherapy pools; a 10,000-square-foot dining area; a lounge with a pool table,

theater and even a barbershop; indoor and outdoor practice fields; and wall after wall of inspiring Terp quotes, facts and photos from Maryland football history.

Supported through a leadership gift from Under Armour founder and Executive Chairman Kevin Plank ’96—who passed on the chance to have his own name on the building and instead honored the two Terp pioneers—Jones-Hill House completes the athletic portion of Cole Field House. The project integrates academics, research and innovation, with work on a new site for a campus-wide entrepreneurship center beginning this summer, and planning

P H O T O B Y J O H N T. C O N S O L I

Two Terps Earn Places on Podium Bronze-Medal Winners Highlight Group of Six Alum Athletes at Olympics TWO OF SIX TERPS who headed to Tokyo for the pandemic-

delayed Olympics this summer returned home with new hardware around their necks.

Jones-Hill House, named for ACC pioneers Billy Jones ’69 (far left) and Darryl Hill ’65, features a 24,000-squarefoot strength and conditioning area with 22 custom weight racks, 40 yards of turf, a video wall and refueling station.

Field hockey player GRACE BALSDON , competing in her first Games, won bronze with Team Great Britain. The Terp, who in 2016 established herself as one of the best defenders in UMD history, scored three goals along the way, including the

under way for space to house an interdisciplinary center studying brain and behavior.

“This is a first-class, first-rate facility, and I couldn’t be more proud of the individuals who worked so hard to put this together,” says Athletic Director Damon Evans.

That includes the building’s namesakes themselves. During his time as a Terp, Jones played with a forward-looking “why not?” mentality. Refusing to dwell on the unfair calls, hard hits and racial slurs he too often faced, he averaged double-digit points per game in two of his three seasons at Maryland and served as a team captain his senior year.

“A young Black kid from the east side of Towson could never imagine having his name on a building at the University of Maryland,” he says. “I felt beyond gratitude.”

Though Hill grew up idolizing Jackie Robinson, he told then-assistant coach Lee Corso in 1962 that he wasn’t interested in being a groundbreaker. When Corso asked if he was scared, “that was the button that he pushed that got my attention,” Hill says.

He went on to set the football program’s single-game record at the time, with 10 receptions against Clemson, establish an ACC season record with seven touchdown catches and notch 47 receptions in a season. “(Jones-Hill House) tells a story about what Maryland did in terms of breaking down the barrier of racial segregation in sports,” Hill says. “It should serve as a beacon for our students.”—ad

P H O T O S C O U R T E SY O F M A R Y L A N D AT H L E T I C S

difference-maker in the final victory over India.

“We are extremely happy,” Balsdon told The Mirror.. “We have worked incredibly hard, and you Mirror can see how much we wanted it for each other.”

DIANDRA TCHATCHOUANG , who was named

to the 2009-10 All-ACC freshman women’s basketball team during her first of two seasons with the Terps, appeared in three games with Team France; it also took bronze when it defeated Serbia for the nation’s first Olympic medal in the sport since 2012.

Other Terps at the Games were: ABBY GUSTAITIS ’13 RUGBY, TEAM USA

After taking up rugby on UMD’s club team and earning AllAmerican honors, Gustaitis worked her way up to co-captain of Team USA. The sevens squad placed sixth in Tokyo.

THEA LAFOND ’15 TRIPLE JUMP, TEAM DOMINICA

LaFond, who excelled in multiple field events as a Terp, entered this summer’s Games with a new approach after a disappointing showing in Rio. Now one of the world’s only female double-armed jumpers, she finished 12th in Tokyo.

NIKE LORENZ

FIELD HOCKEY, TEAM GERMANY

Lorenz, who was a key part of UMD’s 2018 Big Ten regular-season and tournament titles, played in her second Games with Germany after earning bronze in 2016. This summer, the team made it to the quarterfinals before falling to Argentina.

CHIOMA ONYEKWERE ’16 DISCUS, TEAM NIGERIA

Between working as an engineer and planning two wedding ceremonies, Onyekwere kept up her training to qualify for Tokyo. She and nine teammates were disqualified, however, because Nigerian athletic officials hadn’t conducted enough drug tests in recent months.

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Diagnosis: Rude

“We’re all subject to what’s known as the anchoring bias, when we latch onto that first bit of information we get,” says Trevor Foulk, assistant professor of

Business Research Finds Everyday Unpleasantries Affect Doctors’ Performance

management and organization in the Robert H. Smith School of Business, and a co-author of a paper on the research published recently in the Journal of Applied Psychology. “But the experience of rudeness reinforces

WHY WOULD A DOCTOR treat you for anaphylactic

the bias, and makes it more difficult to move off that

shock when you’re really bleeding to death?

anchor.”

It might not be ineptitude, or a medical degree

It’s the latest research Foulk has conducted on how

purchased online—the answer could be as simple as

rudeness affects the workplace, including a paper show-

their boss yelling at them, or someone flipping them

ing rudeness transmits like a cold. While no one questions

the bird in traffic.

that abuse and aggression in the workplace are harmful,

A single dose of rudeness can make doctors fixate

he says, there’s an easy assumption that less severe but

on a wrong initial diagnosis, according to new research

far more common experiences like rudeness have only

from a UMD management professor and collaborators.

minor consequences.

At a Florida hospital, they arranged an experiment with

“In reality, it affects performance, it affects cognition, it

resident anesthesiologists, half of whom witnessed a

affects mood state—it affects everything,” he says.

staged encounter where a senior doctor upbraided a colleague just before examining a simulated patient described as having a penicillin reaction.

The result: Those who’d experienced rudeness were less able to recognize clear symptoms of internal bleeding from a botched surgery.

But the research also shows that doctors and others can recover from the perception-altering effects of rudeness by deliberately seeking more information and striving to see the world as others do, Foulk says. “Looking at things through someone else’s eyes expands the world again.”—CC

Sniffing Out Climate Change

climate change by 30%.

New Lab Detects Subtle Differences in Methane to Pinpoint Sources of Pollution

funded in part by a $1.5 million National Science

molecule of methane started out in a wetland or

Foundation grant, allows UMD researchers to

seeped from a landfill.

One big hurdle is figuring out where it’s

PanoLab—souped up with an electromagnetic component that helps segregate atoms of differ-

coming from, and that’s where an advanced

ent masses more effectively, not to mention its

new University of Maryland lab comes into

giant 3.2-ton magnet—typical devices can’t sort

play. The Panorama Lab in the Atlantic Building,

out the minute variations that tell a scientist if a

get a more precise look than ever before at different types, or isotopes, of methane.

“If we’re going to effectively take action on

The device, which became operational in April, should soon be able to analyze sulfur and oxygen as well. That will help the project also

CARBON DIOXIDE AND METHANE both latch

climate change, we need to understand both the

led by geology Professor Jay Kaufman and

onto solar energy and heat the Earth, but CO2

sources and the sinks—natural processes that

atmospheric and oceanic science Professor Russ Dickerson—along with collaborators

is 200 times as prevalent in the air. If that

remove methane—in the atmosphere, regionally

makes methane sound like a gassy afterthought,

and even down to the university level,”

consider that the substance rising from swamps,

says geology Professor James

sewers, cow burps and leaky gas pipes has

Farquhar, one of the project

exponentially more global warming power than

leaders.

equivalent volumes of CO2, and its concentration

Traditional mass spectrome-

from the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, the College of Agricultural and Natural Resources and others—to delve more deeply than ever into what the stew of chemicals in

is skyrocketing. A recent study found that

ters also categorize isotopes by

the atmosphere means for us and the

quickly cutting methane emissions could slow

molecular weight. But unlike the

planet.—CC

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I L L U S T R AT I O N S B Y VA L E R I E M O R G A N

Vaccine Distrust Gets a Trim

Program to Make Barbers and Stylists Ambassadors for Public Health Goes Nationwide

oanne long sat back at the Capitol Heights, Md., salon where she’s been a regular for 15 years and prepared herself—not for a new look, but potentially to save her own life. She’d finally decided to take the advice of Tre Shadez owner Katrina Randolph and accept a COVID-19 vaccination.

“Trina’s kept working on me, so that’s why I’m here,” Long said after a nurse from Luminis Health gave her a shot, along with more than 30 other mainly Black and Latino local residents one afternoon in June.

Randolph is one of three Prince George’s County stylists and barbers partnering with the University of Maryland’s Health Advocates in Reach and Research (HAIR) program. It’s mobilizing these trusted members of communities of color to promote health and bring needed change in places where “business as usual means people live sicker and die younger,” says Stephen Thomas, a professor of health policy and management and director of the Maryland Center for Health Equity who founded HAIR. “We’re not at Six Flags doing vaccinations any longer, we’re now at the hyperlocal, and in some cases, we’re at the ‘hell, no’ wall for people,” Thomas says. Overcoming such resistance requires a relaxed, safe place for

J

P H OTO BY ST E P H A N I E S. CO R D L E

Community Health Nurse Charlotte Wallace of Luminis Health vaccinates Skylar Moses, 15, of Bowie, Md., against COVID-19.

people to discuss their reservations about vaccination.

What started 15 years ago to encourage preventative health care like cancer and blood pressure screenings was quickly re-outfitted early in the pandemic to promote testing, and later, vaccinations. In majority-Black Prince George’s County, vaccine hesitancy—along with real transportation difficulties for some low-income or older residents, Thomas points out—has contributed to a vaccination rate that lags behind Maryland’s.

Now, HAIR is growing nationwide, with President Joe Biden in June announcing “Shots at the Shop,” a program to train 1,000 barbers and stylists from Black, Latino and other communities to dispel myths about COVID-19 vaccination. UMD is sharing not

only the inspiration for the program but also its expertise through the training platform and curriculum. Thomas sees the potential of making inroads in a variety of health issues driven by racial and economic disparities.

Randolph said most adult customers like Long eventually come around—their main reservations stem from how fast a coronavirus vaccine was developed. It’s youngsters who are more of a challenge, she says.

“You hear things like, ‘They want to decrease the Black population,’ ‘They want to put a chip in you to track you’—all kinds of crazy mess,” Randolph says. “They’re just going by what they hear on social media, and I try to encourage them that if they’re going to take any advice—because this is a life-and-death situation—at least get the information from the professionals.”—cc

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FA C U LT Y Q & A MEREDITH GORE

How the “Diet Soda Effect” Cuts the Benefit of ClimateFriendly Cars ZERO-SUGAR SOFT DRINKS and cutting-edge

electric cars have more in common than you might expect.

Whether you’re cutting calories or greenhouse gas emissions, you might be slashing the benefits of your purchases by what you buy next—think an order of fries (you earned it!) or a hulking SUV

Conservation Crime Fighter

Geographical Sciences Researcher Shapes New Way to Understand Offenses Against the Earth

(how do we stuff everything for the campout in a battery-powered hatchback?).

This so-called “diet soda effect” is what James

WHILE A CRIMINOLOGIST might analyze broad

patterns of carjackings or corporate crime, a new,

Archsmith, a UMD professor of agricultural

related research field pioneered by a UMD scientist

and resource economics, and colleagues from

has her tracking the fate of a sluglike animal

Yale University, the Massachusetts Institute of

swimming off Mexico’s coast.

Technology and the University of California, Davis

Meredith Gore, an assistant professor of geo-

found in six years of California Department of

graphical sciences who in 2009 created the concept

Motor Vehicles purchase data.

of “conservation criminology,” worked this summer

The study published in The RAND Journal

on the Yucatan Peninsula for her latest study,

of Economics shows that 57% of the potential

spurred by concerned local fishing communities

fuel savings—and resulting carbon emissions

and funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to

reductions—of climate-friendly car purchases

understand the illegal harvesting of sea cucumbers.

went up in smoke when families bought their

She spoke to Terp about her global work, drawing from sociology,

next cars. On average, they were far less efficient,

biology, anthropology and other disciplines to understand and stop

but presumably provided utility (sporty or not)

crimes, from poaching to illegal mining, that target the natural

lacking in the efficient cars.

world.—CC

Policies designed to promote environmentally friendly cars need to take into account people’s actual decision-making, Archsmith says: “We have a lot of energy policy out there trying to get people to buy more fuel-efficient cars, but we really think of every car as this separate purchase that doesn’t rely on any other things going on in

What are some specific environmental crimes you aim to solve?

It’s not so much crime solving—I’m interested in crime prevention instead of crime response. When it comes to conservation, once the tree is cut, it’s dead. Once the elephant is shot, it’s gone. Once the sea cucumber is illegally fished, you can’t turn that around. We’re trying to reduce the opportunities that enable crime in the first place.

the household, and that’s just not the case.”—CC

How have you done that?

I recently worked with colleagues on wild meat trafficking in Kinshasa, a megacity in the Democratic Republic of Congo. We adapted a data collection strategy born in Cincinnati and Las Vegas for analyzing homicide and applied it to this problem. It led us to think about places related to crime, including where potential offenders are found when they’re not offending—like churches and soccer stadiums. Now you know where to create an intervention, not necessarily through law enforcement, but perhaps by community organizers or religious personnel.

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T E R P. U M D . E D U

I L L U S T R AT I O N BY J A S O N A . K E I S L I N G

A World of Language Learning—at Your Fingertips New UMD-Developed App Offers 420 Immersive Lessons in Seven Languages SAY HELLO— or hola, bonjour,

привет or 你好—to a new tool that

transports you to cultures across the globe while fitting in your hand, pocket or purse.

Lectica, a free language-learning app created by UMD’s National Foreign Language Center (NFLC), features 420 lessons in seven languages (Spanish, French, Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Persian) with content prepared by native speakers.

Why are people committing crimes like poaching or trafficking wild animals?

There’s a lot of variety in motivation. Sometimes it’s a food security issue. Sometimes it’s a job opportunity. Sometimes people do it for religious reasons, like a life-cycle ritual. They may not even be aware what they’re doing is illegal. I’m using science to help understand what drives all this behavior.

“Learners are drawn in by the real-life materials, things that you’d see if you were immersed in the target language culture,” says Kathy Kilday, NFLC director of product development.

Language apps surged among quarantiners looking to broaden their horizons, and Lectica, available in September in the Apple App Store, offers subscription- and ad-free options. Instead of earning points in games, its users explore text, audio and video clips that native speakers might encounter.

Where have you worked around the world?

Right now I have active projects in Vietnam, Madagascar, Ethiopia, the Congo and Mexico. I’m working with 23 colleges and tribal colleges around the U.S. I’m all over the place, and just trying to think as broadly as I can, and trying to help people think differently about these problems.

In one intermediate lesson, for example, users watch a news report with vendors at a Christmas market in France, then can speed up, slow down or loop video segments to boost understanding.

Comprehension activities about the vendors follow, and then a translation tool, glossary and cultural and linguistic notes are unlocked.

Student marketing group RedBlack Consulting came up with Lectica’s name (which plays on Greek roots relating to “words” and

What have you uncovered with that method?

Some of my recent research looks at the role of women. It’s women who do most of the work in certain parts of the world—like illegally entering a protected area to collect firewood. Women might be disproportionately arrested as a result. No one is really doing work in this space, which is astounding, because we’re half the world’s population, so we’re half of the problem, and half of the solution.

P H O T O C O U R T E S Y O F M E R E D I T H G O R E ; I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y VA L E R I E M O R G A N

“speech”) and promoted its launch through social media outreach. “(We wanted to) show how this app is for people who are really serious about language-learning,” says RedBlack Consulting Account Manager Faith Chisholm ’22.

Lectica will hit the Google Play store in 2022, when NFLC will publish 720 lessons in 12 additional languages and enhance the original seven options.—AD

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ON THE MALL

E X P L O R AT I O N S

Harriet Tubman’s “Training Ground” Professor Helps Discover Site of Eastern Shore Cabin Owned

by Abolitionist’s Father or the archaeologists searching for new evidence of Harriet Tubman’s family life on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, their lucky penny turned out to be a 200-year-old 50-cent piece.

Julie Schablitsky (right), chief of the Cultural Resources Division at the Maryland Department of Transportation and adjunct assistant professor in the UMD Department of Anthropology, and her team dug more than 1,000 holes in the swampy wilderness of Dorchester County for signs of the vanished home of the famed abolitionist’s father.

Finally, guided by 19th-century documents and an old road, they unearthed a crucial clue: a silver alloy coin minted in 1808, the same year that Ben Ross informally married Harriet “Rit” Green, Tubman’s mother.

“Wherever you have transportation, you have life and you have history,” Schablitsky says. “(The coin) gave me some energy to keep on moving and looking.”

The team’s subsequent findings—nails, brick, glass, ceramic fragments and a button all dating to the 1800s—confirmed their belief that they had discovered the site where Ross lived in the 1830s and early 1840s before moving to nearby Caroline County.

Ross was freed from slavery five years after his owner, Anthony Thompson, died in 1836 and bequeathed him 10 acres

F

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T E R P. U M D . E D U

that he used to sell timber to Baltimore shipyards. Despite still being enslaved, Tubman, born Araminta Ross around 1822, lived with him there in her late teens and early 20s, and historians believe Ross passed along a familiarity with the terrain and lessons in navigation that would prove invaluable as she later made treacherous journeys to free dozens of slaves.

The discovery, located on land acquired by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for the Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, will provide new insight into Ross’s everyday life as well as Tubman’s “training ground,” Schablitsky says. Interest in the Underground Railroad conductor has recently skyrocketed due to the Black Lives Matter movement as well as the campaign to put her on the $20 bill. UMD renamed its Department of Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies in Tubman’s honor last year.

Tina Wyatt ’95, Tubman’s great-great-

great-grandniece, said at an April event unveiling the finding that the new artifacts will help fill out her family history, particularly for Ross, who was also involved in the Underground Railroad and escaped Maryland with his daughter’s assistance in 1857.

“At the end of his day, did he have time to go and sit in his cabin and smoke his pipe? Sit down and contemplate what he was going to do next?” she says.

Recovered artifacts will eventually be displayed, and the discovery will be integrated into the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Byway—a 125-mile self-guided drive through Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania. The cabin site, however, will be inaccessible to the general public, principally because of frequent flooding.

Schablitsky says finding and preserving historic sites in the bull’s-eye of climate change will increasingly present challenges like this.

“It’s truly a race against time,” she says.—lf

P H O T O BY T I M P R AT T / M A R Y L A N D D E PA R T M E N T O F T R A N S P O R TAT I O N

THE BIG QUESTION

Where should infrastructure investments in the U.S. start?

ADRIANNE FLYNN SENIOR LECTURER AND INTERNSHIPS AND CAREER DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR, PHILIP MERRILL COLLEGE OF JOURNALISM

— GREGG

VANDERHEIDEN

PROFESSOR AND TRACE RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTER DIRECTOR, COLLEGE OF INFORMATION STUDIES

—

Start with ensuring that everyone can access and use the internet.

That includes not just the final mile (hooking up to their house) but the final foot (an interface that each person can use regardless of age, disability or technical skill).

MARVIN A. TITUS ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF HIGHER EDUCATION, COLLEGE OF EDUCATION

—

More physical capital investment is needed to maintain aging buildings or construct new ones at public higher education institutions, which face extremely high deferred maintenance costs. This is particularly the case at historically Black and other institutions serving underrepresented minority students.

ALBERT “PETE” KYLE CHARLES E. SMITH CHAIR PROFESSOR OF FINANCE, ROBERT H. SMITH SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

—

Infrastructure investment should look forward into the 21st century, including improving roadways for self-driving cars and building bullet-train infrastructure, battery technology for storing solar, wind and nuclear energy, aircraft monitoring technology for managing skies filled with drones, personal aircraft and large airplanes, and super-high-speed internet.

CARMEN CANTEMIR-STONE BIOLOGY LECTURER, COLLEGE OF COMPUTER, MATHEMATICAL, AND NATURAL SCIENCES

—

When I am stuck in traffic to cross the Chesapeake Bay Bridge, I think about the waste of fuel, time and energy. What a sensible solution a ferry/bus line would be: Park on one side, jump on the ferry, grab a bus on the other side connecting to buses that run up and down the coast.

JUNGHO KIM

Healthy people = healthy nation. So let’s include access to health care as “infrastructure”: reduced-cost insurance, medication, mental health care, and child care with art and sports programs, fresh food and veggies in food deserts, and access to clean water and safe housing.

PROFESSOR OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING, A. JAMES CLARK SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING

—

Billions of dollars flow out of windows every year in the form of energy losses.

We can cut these losses by at least half by eliminating the gas between the glass panes and using the resulting vacuum to produce windows whose performance approaches that of the walls around them. We have been developing these windows that are low-cost, reliable and extremely energy-efficient.

Share your answer and see more faculty responses at terp.umd.edu/BigQ12.

Suggest a future question at terpfeedback.umd.edu.

I L L U S T R AT I O N BY K O L I N B E H R E N S

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PRESSING PLAY

ESPORTS HAVE BECOME AN INTERNATIONAL PHENOMENON. WITH TERPS ALREADY COMPETING AT THE HIGHEST LEVELS, UMD POWERS UP SUPPORT FOR GAMERS. B Y L I A M FA R R E L L

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I L L U S T R AT I O N B Y R YA N I N Z A N A

B

RENDAN HEGARTY GRASPED EARLY

in his first semester at the University of Maryland that the lectures, papers and tests of college life weren’t squaring with his constant urge to slip away to an exotic island where he could practice skydiving, bunker construction and cold-blooded sniping of his enemies.

A $30 million prize pool up for grabs didn’t hurt, either.

So in a Fall 2018 departure possible only in the digital age, he temporarily traded in his student ID for a chance to secure a spot in the lucrative championship of a sport that requires those survival skills—albeit only in a world made up of electrons and transistors.

“I figured I should just focus on one,” says Hegarty ’23.

“Fortnite was not gonna wait for me.”

Hegarty’s attempt to go pro in that video game, a global phenomenon created by Tim Sweeney ’93’s Epic Games, is just one point on the scoreboard showing the rise of so-called “esports” from a niche cultural curiosity to a billion-dollar industry that fills arenas, streams to millions of fans and awards huge prizes.

Esports has also leveled up at colleges and universities, graduating from student union arcades and dorm room GoldenEye 007 sessions to full-blown institutional interest. Across the country, higher education has started doling out scholarships and investing in the uniforms, hardware and building space needed to compete, like in traditional sports.

And while UMD is only beginning to dip its toes into the deep end, gaming grassroots have already grown strong in College Park with students like Hegarty. Despite falling just short in Fortnite World Cup qualification and keeping his promise to return to UMD rather than hold on to a full-time pursuit of esports, he hasn’t disconnected his keyboard yet: So far, Hegarty has earned about $35,000 in cash prizes and scholarships from his gaming exploits.

“I stuck to my word,” he says. “I still made a pretty good amount of money.”

COMPETITION ITSELF has always been part of video games, be it chasing the high score on Centipede at the local pizza parlor or the well-documented quest for the world record on Donkey Kong.

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T E R P. U M D . E D U

The first known tournament took place in 1972 at Stanford University’s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

The 20 or so players there squared off in Spacewar!, pounding buttons to pilot triangle spaceships and fire dot missiles at each other. The last player standing amid the pixelated debris took home the grand prize: a year’s subscription to Rolling Stone magazine.

The advent of one-on-one fighting arcade games like Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat supercharged the scene in the 1990s before advances in console, computing and internet technology turned multiplayer gaming competitions into a genuine international powerhouse.

By 2017, the “Bird’s Nest” stadium in Beijing, built for the Summer Olympics, hosted the League of Legends World Championship with as much flair as any other sporting event, opening the final rounds with musical acts, choreographed dancers and even an augmented-reality dragon swooping through the venue before stone-faced competitors in matching corporate-sponsored outfits squared off for millions of dollars.

The COVID-19 pandemic, forcing the cancellation of in-person activities worldwide, was a ready-made pivot point for esports; its audience grew nearly 10% last year to 435.9 million people, according to Newzoo, a gaming analytics firm that has projected a further 9% growth in 2021. The opportunity to fill the suddenly empty hours didn’t go unnoticed by traditional sports media, either; ESPN aired a tournament of 16 NBA players taking on each other in NBA 2K20, and FOX Sports even showed NASCAR drivers competing in virtual races.

Overall, esports is capitalizing on younger millennial and Generation Z consumers whose childhoods were filled with these types of games, says Hank Boyd, clinical professor in the Robert H. Smith School of Business’ marketing department. Competition organizers, he says, have also had the foresight to combine gaming with other forms of entertainment to hold attention spans—for example, a Lil Nas X performance hosted last November by the Roblox platform garnered 33 million views and, a few months earlier, several Fortnite shows by rapper Travis Scott collected 45.8 million views.

In other words, you can feast on not only a gaming version of the Super Bowl, but also its halftime show.

“It’s a game, but it’s really more than a game,” Boyd says. “This is something that’s defining a generation.”

TRADITIONALISTS IN THE ATHLETIC

world have worn trenches in their foreheads from furrowed brows over all this, unable to move beyond the pesky “sports” embedded in “esports.”

For someone used to viewing competitive actions that have no virtual intermediary—baseball players swinging a real bat that hits a real ball, basketball players jumping and slamming a real ball through a real hoop—the visual disconnect between a stationary row of people clacking computer controls and Jumbotrons streaked with whirling warriors can be jarring. Then there’s navigating the sharp learning curve in understanding the multicolored chaos splashing across those screens, particularly in a game such as League of Legends, wherein teams of otherworldly “champions” with different skills and abilities battle each other to destroy the glowing, crystal “nexus” inside the enemy’s base.

The dialogue on the issue can range from the considered to the stereotyped. In one 2013 roundtable discussion from HBO’s “Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel,” some panelists advocated for a distinction between “sports,” which necessitate substantial physical exertion, and “games,” which require competitive skills but lack any strenuous athletic demands. Other commentators were far more dismissive, however, wondering “How many of those people also go to ‘Star Trek’ conventions?” and the well-known sportswriter Frank Deford labeling esports viewers as “crazier than the ones playing.”

But from a spectacle standpoint, it’s undeniable that sports and esports do share a great deal. Both genres have studio announcers and postgame interviews, ecstatic winners and heartbroken losers, cocky superstars and pantheon achievements (check out “EVO Moment #37,” for one example). Scientifically, there is a relationship as well—a 2016 study from the German Sports University found esports players surpass table tennis in terms of hand-eye coordination demands, produce stress-induced cortisol levels similar to racecar drivers and have heart rates approaching marathon runners’.

So it’s not a surprise that someone like Will Vickers ’21 wound up playing a role in the UMD gaming community.

A varsity athlete at Bishop McNamara High School in Forestville, Md., who played baseball at the College of Southern Maryland before transferring to UMD in 2019, Vickers found a new outlet in College Park for those same

P H O T O B Y J O H A N N E S E I S E L E /A F P V I A G E T T Y I M A G E S

“IT’S A GAME, BUT IT’S R E A L LY M O R E T H A N A G A M E .

THIS IS SOMETHING THAT’S D E F I N I N G A G E N E R AT I O N .”

—HANK BOYD, CLINICAL PROFESSOR OF MARKETING, ROBERT H. SMITH SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

Esports fans cheer during the finals of the 2019 Fortnite World Cup held at New York City’s Arthur Ashe Stadium.

While once a niche attraction, these competitions can now draw tens of thousands for inperson contests.

competitive instincts. This time, however, he traded in a bat, ball and glove for the futuristic weapons, electric charges and bomb-hunting of Valorant.

“I still like traditional sports,” says Vickers. “I put esports on the same level as them.”

He was also social media manager for the UMCP Gaming Club, a student-born and -run group that boasts more than 1,800 members and 50 competitors who take part in tournaments as Terp teams.

“Gaming is not taboo,” Vickers says. “People are like, ‘You play games? What do you play?’”

GIVEN THE DEMOGRAPHICS— a 2018 poll found that 58% of Americans ages 14 to 21 had played video games competitively—higher education was destined to become a fertile field for esports.

Smaller schools were some of the earliest to jump on the bandwagon for various institutional and cultural reasons, seeing them as a way to bolster everything from student enrollment to campus pride. In 2014, Robert

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Terp gamers, including Matthew Eye ’22 (facing page), come together at the 2019 Harvest Moon LAN (local area network) event in the Computer Science Intructional Center hosted by UMCP Gaming. The group is a community of more than 1,800 members and dozens of high-level competitors.

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Morris University Illinois became the first college to promote esports to a varsity competition, launching a League of Legends team with up to 50% tuition and 50% roomand-board scholarships for eligible gamers. Since then, more than 170 schools with varsity esports programs have joined together in the National Association of Collegiate Esports, representing more than 5,000 student-athletes and $16 million in scholarships and aid.

Within a 250-mile radius of College Park, however, the vast majority of these varsity programs are at schools that otherwise compete in Division III, and none has football in the so-called Power Five conferences, the general marker of top-tier collegiate athletics programs. While it’s clear how select student gamers would benefit from the uniforms, equipment, facilities and increased prestige that would come with a varsity designation, it’s less obvious at this nascent stage for a university like UMD, which has legions of fans devoted to traditional athletics programs, an already-large base of STEM students and plenty of existing opportunities for Terps to compete at tournaments.

UMCP Gaming, for example, has put teams into the American Video Game League, North American Competitive Collegiate Series, Collegiate Open League and other competitions for thousands of dollars in prizes.

In the Collegiate Star League, UMD teams were collectively ranked fourth at the end of last year, behind only the University of Ottawa, the University of CaliforniaBerkeley and Northeastern University.

In December, the trio of Hegarty, Erik “Mars” Kelemen ’22 and Mazin “Se7enn” Karjikar ’24 split $15,000 in tuition prize money by taking first place in the PlayVS collegiate Fortnite league affiliated with Epic Games. In March, Hegarty and Kelemen divvied up another $1,000 from topping the AVGL Collegiate

Champions League.

So far, the institutional footprint at UMD has been limited to intramural, one-on-one competitions in franchises like NBA2K, Madden football and FIFA Soccer, in addition to Fortnite and team leagues for Rocket League. But new opportunities are coming—University Recreation and Wellness (RecWell) is hiring its first esports coordinator, for example, to give the same administrative support around facilities, travel and fundraising that club sports like crew, rugby and ultimate Frisbee already enjoy.

Other ideas under consideration include repurposing underused racquetball courts in the Eppley Recreation Center for club esports teams and the general student body, or putting aside space in The Diner after a new north campus dining hall opens.

UMD is also analyzing what peer institutions such as Ohio State, Rutgers and Penn State have furnished for esports, and is identifying approximate space and technology needs, says Jay Gilchrist, director of RecWell.

The pandemic, however, short-circuited early discussions, and an ensuing budget crunch plus an ongoing premium on available campus space will remain considerations. “(Gamers) get an incredible sense of pride representing the university. That’s one of the things any university is looking for in the long run,” Gilchrist says. “It’s just going to have to be an organically grown thing.”

Hegarty, for his part, thinks UMD—and college esports in general—are a sleeping giant. Now the president of UMCP Gaming and a campus ambassador for the Alienware brand of gaming products from Dell, he believes it’s only a matter of time before warring leagues consolidate and push in a unified direction.

“In a few years it will be that way,” he says. “Everyone is fighting for that market share.”

“(GAMERS) GET AN INCREDIBLE SENSE OF PRIDE REPRESENTING T H E U N I V E R S I TY. T H AT ’ S ONE OF THE THINGS ANY UNIVERSITY IS LOOKING F O R I N T H E L O N G R U N .”

—JAY GILCHRIST, DIRECTOR OF UNIVERSITY RECREATION AND WELLNESS

WHILE A DECADE of glowing headlines may suggest

unending progress toward esports domination, some skeptics believe it has already reached its ceiling.

They question whether event viewership numbers have been artificially inflated by seeding live video streams into unrelated websites, and if the dominance of publishers—whose ultimate goal is to sell games and consoles to players rather than attract casual viewers—will limit esports competitions to hardcore gamers instead of appealing to the general public. (The NFL, for example, does not ultimately measure its success by the number of footballs sold.)

And despite its digital lifeblood, esports has faced its share of COVID-19 challenges as well. ESPN eliminated its entire staff of esports writers last year as part of widespread company layoffs, judging the topic still too niche-oriented for the investment and not requiring the attention of a dedicated team of reporters. Organizers for the Dota 2 championships, one of the industry’s most lucrative with a $40 million prize pool, had to scramble in summer 2021 for an alternate location after the Swedish government wouldn’t classify it as an “elite sporting event” and grant visas for traveling participants.

Inside the esports scene itself, some high-profile stars have also burned out on competing professionally and switched to streaming content on platforms such as Twitch. Enver Rahman ’20 is making a go of that latter approach, and the computer science graduate from Rockville, Md., has nearly 8,000 followers for his instructional and coaching streams on League of Legends.

Rahman, who works as a software engineer for Infosys, likens the game to “fast-paced chess,” and found that his intellectual grasp of game strategy outpaced his physical reflexes for controlling the characters. He’s keeping an eye out for potential coaching positions in esports and

hopes to one day be there full-time.

“There’s two teams going at it. It’s the exact same concept (as traditional sports), just virtual,” he says. “I love helping people become better players.”

The size of that player pool likely depends on fixing some notorious systemic cultural issues. Black players often see racial slurs in live comment sections while competing, and women can face debilitating hostility.

“Gamergate,” an internet controversy that originated in 2014 with innuendos about relationships between developers and journalists, metastasized across social media sites into a full-blown culture war of accusations, harassment, and rape and death threats slung at female gamers attempting to diversify the community and its content.

Some issues have occurred in the UMCP Gaming chats on the social network site Discord, says Adeline Wu ’23, vice president of competitive for the group who uses they and them pronouns. While the tenor of the dialogue has improved over time, Wu says slurs and demeaning insults can still pop up, and they have even gotten some criticism for including preferred pronouns in their officer bio.

“When you play video games often, especially competitive ones, people will let the competition show a harsher side of themselves,” they say.

But the collegial environment in College Park has generally lent itself to more friendly and accepting interactions between gamers than in the wider Internet, says Jane Mendez ’24, an officer in UMCP Gaming who coordinates games in Team Fortress 2, a multiplayer first-person shooter title. She believes more consistent opportunities, promotion and support for female esports players at gaming’s top levels would open doors for younger competitors.

“I think we’ll see more female teams and leagues specifically for girls,” Mendez says. “It can be intimidating going on a team of all guys.”

However the larger trends evolve, Vickers is confident that UMD—with its large base of students, successful gamers and vibrant science, technology, engineering and math programs—is positioned to be a force in an industry still finding it way.

“It’s in its infancy stage,” he says. “Give it five to 10 years.” terp

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MAYBE IT’S THAT EXTRA TRAY of chicken fingers that just wasn’t sold

before closing time. Or those hot dogs still warming behind the concession stand counter after the big game. Or who really thought the conference attendees would polish off all those sandwich platters?

Up to 40% of all food in the U.S. goes to waste, according to the Food and Drug Administration, about one pound per person per day, and exceeding 81.4 billion pounds in 2017.

A decade ago this fall, a small group of Terps took notice—and took action. Instead of letting perfectly good but unserved food at the University of Maryland hit the trash can, they rerouted it to those in need at local homeless shelters and kitchens.

The effort required careful coordination, late nights at the dining halls and a few spaghetti-sauce-stained car trunks, but the seemingly simple idea caught on: Food Recovery Network (FRN) has spread to 172 campuses in 46 states and D.C., with almost 5 million pounds of food diverted from dumpsters and more than 4 million meals donated.

As the nationwide nonprofit—arguably UMD’s greatest Do Good success—celebrates its 10th anniversary, the co-founders, supporters and partners who made it possible tell its story.

IT STARTED WITH A PIZZA In 2008, Evan Ponchick ’12 was hosting his brother for a visit when they stopped for dinner at the Stamp Student Union’s Food Court.

EVAN PONCHICK FRN co-founder, now applied analytics manager at Genentech and FRN Board of Advisors member

We went and ordered some pizza, and then it was around closing time. Three pizzas were out. I inquired, like, “Hey, what happens to those? Do you bring them home?” They’re like, “No, we have to throw them away.”

He soon noticed that this wasn’t an isolated issue.

PONCHICK I played on the club Ultimate Fris-

bee team, and after practice, I would sprint up to the South Campus Dining Hall so I could get there before they closed down. One night, I see in the chicken finger display, there were,

I L L U S T R AT I O N S B Y VA L E R I E M O R G A N

COLLEEN WRIGHT-RIVA Director of Dining Services and FRN Board of Advisors member

When he came to me, he was just so enthusiastic and so willing to do whatever it would take to solve the food waste problem. I also remember having to kind of give him—I hate to say this—kind of a dose of reality around the way the food system works.

Wright-Riva had tried a similar food recovery idea at Cornell University, where she’d previously worked.

WRIGHT-RIVA When you’re feeding

somebody in a shelter or in a church, you want enough for everybody. Some of my

like, 25 of them. And they rolled the trash can over and were starting to throw them all out.

And I was like, “No, don’t do that!”

He wanted to do something about it. In Spring 2010, he joined his brothers and sisters in Alpha Phi Omega (APO), a co-ed community service fraternity, serving at So Others Might Eat (SOME), a nonprofit that feeds those in need in D.C. PONCHICK I said, “Wait a second.

This is incredible. What if I was able to retrieve some of those chicken tenders from the dining hall and bring them over here and serve them here?”

He reached out to SOME, whose staff was happy to accept food on Friday nights to serve the next day for breakfast or lunch.

He just needed permission from Dining Services.

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skepticism was, will we be able to recover enough food that students can actually find someone to take it? So that was kind of the obstacle I put in front of them: Go out there and find some organizations that will take this eclectic smorgasbord of food. Then I said, also, we can’t add the labor or the transportation cost to deliver this food, so we’ve got to have a mechanism that will pass muster in food safety rules.

With multiple meetings, SOME’s cooperation and APO members’ agreement to use their own cars, the first food recovery took place on Sept. 17, 2010, then each Friday that semester.

The volunteers packed up pasta, breadsticks, veggies, meat—anything the dining halls couldn’t serve that day.

PONCHICK We met up as a group outside

South Campus Dining Hall 15 minutes before closing. One (Dining Services) representative would come by, and they would go and grab the leftover food. We would be responsible for scooping it into the aluminum containers that we brought. We would stack them up, and once it was all loaded, we’d clean everything up, put everything away. And then we’d roll the cart with all the food over to the freight elevator, go down one floor to the loading

dock, and then I would come over there with my car. We would drive in, throw on the little CD mix, go into SOME—they would be there waiting and ready. I’ll never forget the big smiles and their handshakes.

Around the same time, Ben Simon ’14 had started a separate community service club on campus, the Love Movement, and similarly noticed the food waste problem.

BEN SIMON National FRN co-founder and founding executive director, co-founder and former CEO of Imperfect Foods

There was a time when my friends and I would actually eat off of the conveyer belts—it was in my grungier days when I was really broke as a college student, and it served two purposes of (feeding) myself and also preventing food waste. From there, we met with Colleen, and she had mentioned Evan’s thing, the APO food recovery and donation project that she had just, like a week or two before, given permission to start up in South Campus Dining Hall.

The Love Movement joined APO on recoveries in Spring 2011, allowing the effort to expand to multiple nights per week.

MIA ZAVALIJ ’14 National FRN co-founder, former Love Movement member, now co-founder and food recovery consultant at Eatable

It was such a simple and effective process— just packaging everything up and then driving it 15, 20 minutes down the road and seeing that immediate impact.

MAKING IT OFFICIAL That fall, as Ponchick focused as a senior on securing internships, Simon took the reins and established Food Recovery Network as a UMD club in September 2011.

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SIMON There was a First Look Fair

at the start of that 2011 school year, and all the students were sort of on one side of the tables, signing up for clubs. We actually went behind the tables so that we could have more direct, more intimate conversations with the leaders of all the different student groups.

That led to around a dozen clubs— including ROTC, religious organizations and activist group Community Roots—joining the cause, each taking different nights of the week to recover food on campus. After easing some concerns about liability by researching laws like the federal Bill Emerson Good Samaritan Food Donation Act, which protects food donors who give to nonprofits, FRN soon spread to 251 North and the Diner, catered on-campus events, and football and basketball games.

ANDREW BRESEE ’14 National FRN co-founder, now Software engineer at Affirm Inc.

It felt almost like covert ops or like vigilantism or something like that, because as soon as the food gets off of its heating elements, it’s like the (clock) starts ticking, like how much time is left before you can actually donate it. So we were running through the halls and, you know, there are people leaving the game, and it was fun. It was fun and scrappy.

FRN learned to sync the timing and logistics

at each recovery location that semester with the help of a recipient just over a mile from campus.

BEN SLYE Pastor at Christian Life Center in Riverdale, Md., and CEO of Passion and Compassion Outreach Ministry

We talked about cars being “baptized,” because food would just come out of the trays

onto (students’) cars. So we learned how to put plastic down. Then we had to learn at what temperature we need to refrigerate the food.

CAM PASCUAL ’15 National FRN co-founder, Eatable co-founder, now senior program officer at the World Wildlife Fund

It was sometimes discouraging. Like we’d have people sign up for food recovery, and then not show up. Students, they just have so much going on that you can be kind of flaky, especially if you have a test coming up and you were like, “Oh, this sounds great. Let me sign up for it.” And then it’s 8 in the morning and you’re like, “I don’t actually want to do that.”

SLYE Whatever challenge that we came up

with, we just faced, because we knew that this food was going to feed people that were hungry. Bringing this food in, I mean, it was like you were giving the (elderly) a million dollars when they would have a piece of meat,

pasta, rice and vegetables. The reaction was incredible.

TO BROWN, AND BEYOND After growing within UMD’s campus early that Fall 2011 semester, FRN’s co-founders saw a chance to go bigger. Simon reached out to Ben Chesler, a friend at Brown University. Simon had invited him to Love Movement meetings while Chesler was interning in D.C. and mentioned the early food recovery effort.

BEN CHESLER National FRN co-founder, co-founder of Imperfect, now associate director of entrepreneurship at the Roux Institute at Northeastern University

He said, “Hey, this Food Recovery Network has taken off. We’re recovering a lot of food.

You had said you wanted to do something at Brown. Do you want to actually put your money where your mouth is?”

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Brown’s chapter followed a similar story to UMD’s, with confidence from its dining services overcoming some initial skepticism. That set the blueprint for further expansion, with Pomona College and the University of California, Berkeley soon joining.

SIMON We had this toolkit of materials, a

packet of four or five PDFs that we would send to every new chapter as we were coaching them through starting. One of the materials was basically giving Colleen and other directors of dining services as references for Food Recovery Network to say, “Yes, we do this with students at our school. It works with us.

We would 100% recommend you do it.”

challenge students to do as much good as they could.

The competition invited student teams to pitch their social solutions to a panel of judges and an audience of more than 700 in what was described as “a cross between ‘Shark Tank’ and ‘American Idol.’” The winning idea would receive a $5,000 grand prize.

SIMON Andrew and I probably practiced

WRIGHT-RIVA I got calls from other directors

at other schools just saying, “Is it working? Is it a pain in the neck, or are you actually seeing momentum?” And I was able to tell our story, and I think most of the directors that called me ended up having their school run with the program as well.

UP TO THE CHALLENGE When FRN started recruiting additional campus chapters, it entered, among other pitch competitions, UMD’s first Do Good Challenge in Spring 2012.

BOB GRIMM Levenson Family Chair in Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership, Do Good Institute director, professor of the practice and founding chair of FRN’s Board of Directors

(Philanthropists) Bruce and Karen Levenson’s nephew was working with the actor Kevin Bacon, so they asked if we wanted to do something with Kevin. Collectively, a bunch of students and us came up with the idea of the Do Good Challenge, where Kevin would do a video wearing a Fear the Turtle shirt and

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our pitch a hundred different times. We had some humor in there. One of our goals was to “get Loh,” and we used a Lil Jon meme—this was in the early days of memes—and just the whole audience cracked up. (We had gotten President [Wallace] Loh to come along on recovery with us.)

GRIMM They did a nice job of being inspiring, being entertaining and also painting a picture of what their great potential was in the future.

After the challenge, FRN received free office space from the university’s Academy for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Grimm joined as founding chair of its board of directors and was instrumental in securing early funders. The club incorporated into an official nonprofit in Fall 2012, and by the following spring had earned a $150,000 grant from the Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation. Simon, Zavalij and Pascual became full-time FRN employees.

GRIMM I had foundation friends who said,

The prep paid off, and FRN was crowned Maryland’s first Do Good Challenge champion.

SIMON As soon as it was over and they gave

us the award, the audience started to file out, but the press came up, and they were snapping photos of us. We jumped offstage, and it felt like a mob of press just asking us questions.

BRESEE That really helped catapult Food

Recovery Network into the main spotlight.

That was really exciting, because it became a lot easier then to tell universities (about us), to have legitimacy.

“Come back to me in a few years.” I was like, “That isn’t really helping us right now. If we can’t get going in the first few years, it won’t really be helpful if you’re interested in this three years from now.” Sodexo gets a lot of credit for taking a risk.

EXPANDING THE FOOD WASTE FIGHT During the 2013-14 academic year, what ultimately became known as the Do Good Institute funded Evan Lutz ’14 in what’s now called the Impact Interns program with FRN. During his experience, he took the lead on a

new waste-fighting idea: selling local farmers’ surplus produce to college students.

The initiative, called Recovered Food CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture), took off, with Lutz and others packing onions, potatoes and apples—regardless of how they looked—into their cars and selling them outside the Stamp. After competing as a finalist in the 2014 Do Good Challenge, Lutz joined Simon to turn the startup into Hungry Harvest, a Baltimore-based company that has recovered 30 million pounds of produce in seven years.

EVAN LUTZ C o-founder and CEO of Hungry Harvest

I’m not a classroom learner. I am boots on the ground. I have to learn by experience. What Food Recovery Network did was, they gave me a framework as a backbone to really start a business within the business.

Simon eventually sold his stake to start a similar business on the West Coast with Chesler: Imperfect, which sells “quirky” or odd-shaped produce and other groceries through direct deliveries. Last year alone, it served 400,000 customers and saved over 50 million pounds of food.

SIMON It’s really crazy if you think about it,

because Food Recovery Network has continued to grow, and then the ugly produce movement, which has now expanded into the world of grocery and this larger food recovery movement with Imperfect and Hungry Harvest—so much of this was started right at the University of Maryland.

WRIGHT-RIVA I’m just thrilled that we

were the founding school and that I was the director here at the time, that I

was able to say yes. As a department, we’ve done things to launch the Campus Pantry, to partner with others for the Farmers Market and Terp Farm. So to see our own department really gravitate around trying to solve important issues around food just makes me happy.

As FRN continues to expand across the nation, the original co-founders have spread out as well. Some send the occasional text or meet for coffee. Others speak at each other’s weddings.

And some have lost touch or pivoted to other

careers. But they all look back fondly at Food Recovery Network’s growth and impact.

PASCUAL I feel like the best part, even when

we were part of it, was it didn’t feel like it was our thing. It felt like it was a really grassroots movement.

PONCHICK You never know, one Friday night

in your junior year of college could turn into a full-blown national nonprofit organization that’s going for 10 years strong. terp

For two decades, a UMD professor has led a writing workshop for Holocaust survivors. Seventy-six years after World War II’s end, their task has an urgency both personal and public. BY S A L A L E V I N ’ 1 0

n 1964, Peter Gorog and a few friends hitchhiked from the southern border of their native Hungary some 800 miles north to the Baltic Sea. Along the way, they passed through Warsaw, where a monument commemorated the 1943 ghetto uprising. Gorog wanted to stop there. It was the closest thing he could imagine to a gravesite for his father.

Born in Budapest in 1941, Gorog was the son of Olga, a hatmaker, and Arpad, an office manager.

“It wasn’t a good place to be born in a Jewish family,” says Gorog. During Olga’s pregnancy, Arpad was conscripted into forced labor, and was allowed to meet his son only for a short time three months after his birth. In 1942, Arpad was sent to Ukraine. The Hungarian Ministry of Defense declared him dead in January 1943.

Twenty-one years later, Gorog sneaked out early one morning in Warsaw to stand before the 36-foot stone wall depicting the leaders of the

P H OTOS CO U RT ESY O F U. S. H O LO CAU ST M E M O R I A L M U S E U M CO L L ECT I O N

uprising emerging in bronze. There, free from the state-mandated forgetting imposed by formerly German-allied Hungary, he felt a connection to the man he never knew. “That was the first time I related to the Holocaust and to what happened to the Jewish people and personally to my father.”

Yet even after he defected from socialist Hungary to the United States in 1980 and began talking about his wartime experiences—from living in a protected apartment purchased by Swedish architect and humanitarian Raoul Wallenberg to being liberated from the Budapest ghetto in 1945— his memories of that morning in Warsaw remained buried. What shook them loose decades later was a prompt handed out in a writing workshop run by a University of Maryland faculty member.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s bimonthly “Echoes of Memory” program for survivors who volunteer, now marking its 20th year, is many things to many people: a community where those who lived through the

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Peter Gorog and his mother, Olga, posed for a portrait in post-World War II Hungary; today a U.S. citizen/resident, Gorog (far left) reflects on his father’s death in the Holocast for a remembrance project.

Holocaust can connect with others, a space to make meaning of their experiences, and—a writer’s perpetual frenemy—a deadline.

Margaret Polizos Peterson Ph.D. ’14, assistant clinical professor in the College of Education and workshop leader since its start, recalls that in the beginning, most participants were older survivors who had endured ghettos and concentration camps and were determined to ensure that history was written by those who had lived it. Facts, dates, names, who was lost from the family—that’s what they focused on.

Now, as the number of those survivors continues to dwindle and members of a younger generation who were children during the war assume prominence, the urgency of preserving their memories remains, but a more nuanced understanding of their task has emerged: one that recognizes that remembering a traumatic life event is a necessarily subjective project.

“One of the survivors said this great thing which sticks in my mind,” says Peterson. “She said, ‘I don’t write a fact, ever.’ What she meant was, ‘I’m telling my story. I’m telling the experience that I lived.’”

Many survivors still feel the desire to solidify history in writing, says Peterson. But many also feel a more personal mission to tell their grandchildren and great-grandchildren that they were there, and how that felt.

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n a spring afternoon, nine Holocaust survivors and I gathered in a video conference to discuss their writing. My own maternal grandparents were born to Jewish families in 1911 and 1917 in Poland. Each survived ghettos and concentration camps with just one brother apiece; the rest of their families died. They wrote down nothing in their lifetimes, but my mother heard enough to know an outline of their histories—inherited knowledge for which my brother and I will one day be entirely responsible.

The survivors were mostly gray- and whitehaired, some wearing glasses, sitting amid an array of houseplants, bookshelves and framed art. Many had built up a familial ease after years of attending the workshop together; Gorog shared a photo of his newest granddaughter.

One woman summed up her experiences with a disarming nonchalance, one that comes with having shared one’s story many times among a group that can relate: “Nothing terribly special,” she said. “I went to Auschwitz and survived.”

They read aloud the writings that they’d prepared on a pre-assigned theme: something untranslatable. They joked about expressions from their native languages: “Don’t trust the goat with your cabbage” from Hungarian, “You can’t dance with one rear end at two

A L L P O RT RA I TS CO U RT ESY O F U. S. H O LO CAU ST M E M O R I A L M U S E U M CO L L ECT I O N ; TO P P H OTO CO U RT ESY O F P E T E R G O RO G

weddings” from Yiddish. Peterson asked frank questions. “How did your mom describe death to you?” she wondered aloud to one survivor.

Peterson describes herself as the ideal kind of person to facilitate these discussions. From her outsider perspective, she can ask for simple details that draw out deeper context in writing.

“I very much try to take the position of a careful reader,” says Peterson. “I’m not their kid, I’m not their contemporary, I’m not Jewish, I’m not a survivor. I’m only a really good reader who wants to know more.”

Twenty years ago, Peterson was a writing instructor at Anne Arundel Community College when her photograph appeared in Annapolis’ Capital Gazette newspaper in a story about a poetry anthology. Soon, an employee of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum called her, asking if she wanted to get involved with a workshop it was launching.

At first, Peterson was unsure, considering herself unqualified. “I knew what a person who has a college degree knows about the Holocaust,” she says. But the Anne Arundel County native knew about writing, having studied poetry as an undergraduate at St. Mary’s College of Maryland and in graduate school at Johns Hopkins.

She also knew that writing could be a means to explore some of life’s most pressing questions. “I wasn’t raised in a religious tradition.

So to me, poetry was my first sacred text,” says Peterson. “I was like, ‘These are people questing around for answers to big questions.’”

Al Munzer’s family gathered for a meal before being torn apart by war (left); two sisters who held him as a baby (above right) died at Auschwitz.

eginning in earnest in the 1990s, survivors were at the center of an intense effort to capture their testimonies, including at the University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation, established in 1994

by Steven Spielberg. It now houses more than 54,000 video recordings. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s collection holds some 25,000 oral testimonies.

Echoes of Memory, inspired by a similar program at Drew University’s Center for Holocaust/ Genocide Study in New Jersey, was another way— in addition to video and audio interviews—to ask Washington, D.C.-area survivors about their experiences, says Diane Saltzman, director of survivor affairs at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

What made a writing workshop unique, she says, was that it asked survivors not only to tell their stories, but also to share them with other survivors as they were being captured. “The feedback and the give-and-take doesn’t happen with other forms of testimony,” she says.

Peterson’s early attempts to lead a workshop about such an immense tragedy sometimes failed.

“I thought I had to focus in on the most terrible memories,” she says. “It was a beginner’s mistake.”

Now, she says, she offers general prompts—on food, holiday traditions, school, family—that allow people to delve deep or go for something lighter. “I put the chicken on the table, they take the piece they want.”

Responses about the untranslatable ran the gamut of emotions. Al Munzer, born in 1941 in the Nazi-occupied Netherlands, recalled the lullaby sung to him by the Indonesian caretaker of the family that sheltered him until he was reunited with his mother after the war. German-born Susan Warsinger mused on the importance of the Yiddish word machatunim, which describes the relationship between a married couple’s two sets of parents.

T H I S PAG E : P H OTO S CO U RT E SY O F U. S . H O LO C AU ST M E M O R I A L M U S E U M CO L L EC T I O N , GIFT OF ALFRED MUNZER AND JOEL WIND

Perhaps imagination is the purview of the young and like other more tangible faculties diminishes as we get older. I cannot pinpoint the time when the undeniable reality of the death of my sisters extinguished the last glimmer of hope of seeing them alive. But for the past 20 years I have been lighting memorial candles on the Hebrew date corresponding to February 11, 1944. ... On rare occasions, I have allowed myself to believe in an afterlife, a time when I might finally embrace my dad and my sisters. But like my mother, I am too anchored in reality to allow such musings for long.

—Al Munzer

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Susan Warsinger, of Bad Kreuznach, Germany, helped her mother, Annie Hilsenrath (left), push her baby brother, Joseph, before the war.

Peterson’s role, as she sees it, is to “get (the piece of writing) to be able to do what it is trying to do,” she says. “I also tell them, ‘You’re the writer—if you don’t like my idea, don’t do it.’” Each year, writings from the workshop are published both online and in print.

The members of the workshop, which has been meeting virtually since the beginning of the pandemic, note that the relationships they’ve built over the years are a critical component of the program. Theirs is a bond forged by commonalities—discrimination, loss, immigration. “It’s not the same as being a family, but it is a sort of family,” says Halina Peabody. (She noted that the widows and divorcees of the group have a single-women’s club.)

“While we were meeting personally, it was just good to hug each other and talk through life a little bit,” says Gorog. “Unfortunately, some of them are not with us anymore.

That’s a tragedy, unfortunately, we have to deal with.”

Peterson has also developed deep attachments with the survivors over the years. Inspired by her work with the group, she wrote her doctoral dissertation on using writing as a way of making meaning of one’s

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life after the Holocaust. As she talked with the survivors for her project, their connection grew—and so did Peterson’s sometimes-consuming fascination with the Holocaust. Her own son, she says, developed a “real fear” of Nazis as a child when conversations about the genocide spilled over into their home.

Knowing survivors so intimately “makes all this evil, all the badness, closer to home in a way that is depressing and frightening,” Peterson says. “You have experience of loving these people, and you can’t believe that the world could have been so bad.”

eventy-six years after the end of World War II, mortality is a constant undertone to any discussion involving Holocaust survivors.

It weighs heavily on those in the workshop. “I’m 88 years old. How long have I got?” asks Peabody. “Everybody’s very, very worried about dying.”

The pressing drive to get everything down on paper before it’s too late feels urgent to many. “Whatever we capture, at a certain point, that’s all that we will have,” says Saltzman.

For survivors like Peabody, telling their

ABOVE LEFT PHOTO: U.S. HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM COLLECTION, CO U RT ESY O F S U SA N WA R S I N G E R

Halina Peabody’s family surrounded her baby carriage for a photo (left), and she later played as a child before the war (below, left) before escaping with her parents and sister.

At bottom, Peter Gorog’s father, Arpad, declared dead in Ukraine in 1943, looks at the son who would retain no memory of him.

story is a calling. In 1942, as a 9-year-old, she, her mother and her baby sister boarded a train in Poland carrying papers her mother had bought identifying them as Catholic. The four-day, fournight journey would, Peabody’s mother thought, bring them to a safer location.

On the train, a man pressured Peabody’s mother into revealing that they were Jewish. He told her that when they arrived at their destination, a town called Jarosław, he’d turn them over to the Gestapo. The family waited tensely for the train ride to be over, and when they arrived in Jarosław, the man escorted them off the train. “I started pulling at my mother, saying, ‘I don’t want to die,’” says Peabody.

Her mother appealed to the man, giving him all of her possessions and money, and asking why he’d

LEFT AND ABOVE: U.S. HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM CO L L ECT I O N , G I F T O F H A L I N A P E A B O DY; R I G H T: CO U RT ESY O F P E T E R G O RO G

want their blood on his conscience.

He stopped, returned a portion of the money to Peabody’s mother, and let them go, warning that they were likely to face a slower, more painful death elsewhere. (In fact, Peabody’s sister and parents survived the war.)

Today, Peabody knows that time is short, and that only she can tell others her story and the messages it carries. “I feel now it’s an obligation.

I need to remind people what happened,” she says. “If I don’t speak up, what does that make me?”

The fear of forgetting is a familiar one to me. I can still see my grandfather in his favorite flat cap, carrying the doughnuts he always brought us, but to my young nephew, he will be only a character from photographs and stories. In the end, whether in writing or in memory, only the story remains. terp

As far back as I can remember, every time I was in a difficult situation, in physical pain or emotional distress, in seemingly hopeless situations, I conjured up an image. It was an image I had never seen, but it was more real than anything you can imagine implemented in a high-definition, 3-D movie. In this scene, I see my father walking in knee-high snow in the endless Ukrainian steppe, in his worn-out civilian shoes, wearing clothes that were not meant for the brutal Russian winter, hungry and fearful that he would be shot if he stopped for a little rest. At that moment, all of my pains dissipate, my hopelessness turns into vision, and my disappointments become negligible. I realize the sad truth—that he never had a chance to pursue his dreams, that he was half my age when he was robbed of the opportunity to see me growing up and to have fun with his grandchildren.

This imaginary scene gives me hope and strength when all else fails. In spite of the tragedy that robbed me of a normal childhood and took my father away, I am thankful for the memory of my father’s unfinished life.

—Peter Gorog

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A S S O C I AT I O N

Letter From the Executive Director

Meet the New Members Spanning the nation, our newest at-large members of the Alumni Association Board of Governors bring diverse and seasoned expertise to their roles while shining a light on the university’s vast and varied academic roster.

MARINA H. COOPER ’03

FALL IS ALWAYS an exciting time at the

university, this year more than ever before.

Thousands of Terps have returned to campus,

Assistant Vice President, Integrated Marketing and Brand Management, Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, Maryland

reuniting with friends and colleagues they haven’t seen in person for nearly a year and a half.

I invite Terps of all ages to do the same! Join us back on campus Oct. 30 for our annual Homecoming tailgate. The Samuel Riggs IV Alumni Center is conveniently located right next to Maryland Stadium—

PATRICIA G. COUSINS ’87

Vice President and Assistant General Counsel, Marriott International Inc. Rockville, Maryland

you can’t get much closer to the gameday action.

We were busy this summer too: In July, we welcomed our new president of the Board of Governors, Jeffrey Rivest ’75, in addition to eight new at-large members who will each serve a two-year term. These alums will help guide the strategic direction of the Alumni Association and bring the Terp alumni network to even greater heights.

From marketing to finance, grassroots advocacy to entrepreneurship, our newest leaders bring a wealth of experience and accomplishments to the association and the university. I am proud to have them represent

JAZZ M. LEWIS ’11, MPP ’14

Delegate, District 24, Maryland House of Delegates Glenarden, Maryland CATHERINE LUZIO ’97

Founder and CEO, Luminary New York, New York

the Terp community, ensuring the voice of our alums is heard and will make an impact on the future of the UMD community.

The entire board is already hard at work on a variety of strategic initiatives for the year ahead, including:

WILSON WANG ’03

Vice President, CFO and Treasurer, MITRE

Vienna, Virginia • Producing our new Terp Referral Exchange business directory; • Returning to in-person events and continuing virtual programs that connect Terps across the country; • Expanding our career programs to support alums with job

SUSAN A. WOOD ’84

President and Chief Executive Officer, VIDA Diagnostics Palo Alto, California

opportunities, professional growth and personal enrichment; • Creating a new strategic plan that will position the Alumni Association as a leading force in moving the university and our students forward.

We have a great year ahead, and I look forward to seeing as many of

DERRIN A. WOODHOUSE ’95

Head of Influencer, PR and Consumer Engagement at Coach Tenafly, New Jersey

you as possible in the coming months.

SHAYAN G. ZADEH M.S. ’02

Go Terps!

CEO, Leap Rail

Houston, Texas

Amy Eichhorst

Executive Director University of Maryland Alumni Association Assistant Vice President, Alumni Relations

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Learn more about our full roster, including representatives from each school and college, at alumni.umd.edu/board.

Six Tips for Getting Involved ADVICE FROM THE NEW PRESIDENT OF THE BOARD OF GOVERNORS JEFFREY “JEFF” RIVEST ’75 says that everything good in his life

1

has some connection to the University of Maryland.

and the return on investment is quickly made

He met his wife of 45 years, Michelle “Mickie” Rivest, while they were freshmen. He made friends for life through his

BECOME A MEMBER

“It’s inexpensive,

up with access to a variety of benefits, including free programming,” he says.

fraternity, Phi Delta Theta. And he earned the biological sciences degree that helped launch his career as a health care executive.

2

BOOST YOUR PRIDE Rivest will be working with the association to

share more stories about star students, faculty and alums to make you proud of your alma mater, like those in Terp magazine and on the

He’s stayed connected to UMD, serving on the

Alumni Blog.

College Park Foundation Board of Trustees for six

3

years, establishing the Jeffrey and Michelle Rivest-

GO NATIONAL “Terps have common shared values and common

memories,” he says. Look for one of the many active affinity groups

Dean’s Council Maryland Promise Scholarship

and networks spread across the country that you can join.

in the School of Public Health with his wife and chairing the Fearless Ideas campaign cabinet for

4

the school, among many other contributions.

tual programs when the pandemic struck, dramatically increasing

He is excited to work with new university

GET DIGITAL The Alumni Association quickly pivoted to vir-

alums’ involvement. This format will stick around, making it easy

President Darryll J. Pines to elevate its national profile by

to network and get career development assistance.

promoting successful alums across the country. Over his

5

two-year term, he is determined to help as many Terps as possible hold on to, and grow, their Maryland roots.

Read on for Rivest’s tips for getting involved with the Alumni Association and learn more about his vision and priorities for the association at go.umd.edu/rivest.

KEEP TRADITIONS ALIVE When you’re in the area, wave the

Maryland flag and cheer along with the Mighty Sound of Maryland at games, or just give Testudo a nose rub for good luck.

6

GIVE BACK Whether you join, volunteer, advocate or give, you can

make a huge difference for students.

NEWS & EVENTS We’re back in action, in person. Here are a few ways we’re here to help you connect and stay involved with the Terp community and campus.

HOMECOMING 2021

JEWISH TERPS ALUMNI NETWORK

BLACK ALUMNI WEEKEND

Maryland pride

Our newest affinity group

The inaugural Black Alumni

is back on display with a collection of fun

is off to a running start

Weekend is coming in Spring 2022. Can’t

events to celebrate all week long, including

with a growing membership and robust

wait a whole year? Not to worry, we have

a 50th reunion for the classes of ’70, ’71

calendar of events. Read more about

several virtual and hybrid preview events

and ’72 and the can’t-miss annual alumni

JTAN’s launch and volunteer opportunities

scheduled over the next year.

tailgate. Start planning your week now.

on the Alumni Blog.

blackalumniweekend.umd.edu

alumni.umd.edu

go.umd.edu/jtan

APRIL 2022

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ALUMNI

PROFILES

V I N C E H O U G H T O N M . A . ’ 0 9, P H . D . ’ 1 3

Open Secrets

Alum Leads Renovation of NSA Museum— and Shares Some of its Treasures ince houghton m.a. ’09, ph.d. ’13 got an early introduction to the stakes of national security when he watched the 1983 TV movie “The Day After” as a wideeyed 7-year-old. While the nuclear holocaust premise of that film has thankfully not come to pass, for Houghton it sparked an interest in intelligence work that has led him to a career researching how government agencies have kept tabs on adversaries and revealing that history—the declassified bits, anyway—to the general public.

Now the director of the National Cryptologic Museum at the National Security Agency, Houghton is leading a deep dive into its archives in order to reimagine it for a planned reopening next spring and its eventual move to a new state-of-the-art building.

“We’re going crate by crate … It’s just a fantastic, almost scavenger hunt environment,” he says. “Anything that was captured in any of the wars that we fought in that was cryptologic comes here. Anything that was

V

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made on our end to break codes comes here.”

Houghton, the author of “Nuking the Moon: And Other Intelligence Schemes and Military Plots Left on the Drawing Board” and “The Nuclear Spies: America’s Atomic Intelligence Operation Against Hitler and Stalin,” came to the NSA last fall after spending six years as a historian and curator at the International Spy Museum in Washington, D.C. A former U.S. Army soldier who served in the Balkans, he was part of the team that moved the Spy Museum into new L’Enfant Plaza digs with revised exhibits and presentations.

Houghton is particularly proud of how he’s been able to use the human stories of scientists and engineers to translate complicated subjects like cryptography.

“That’s kind of the holy grail,” he says.

While it will be a more few months before the general public can once again walk through the museum’s doors just outside of Fort Meade, Md., Houghton highlighted for Terp a few NSA artifacts, some of which are currently on loan to the Spy Museum.—lf

This 200-year-old wooden cypher device, discovered near Thomas Jefferson’s home, used wheels to set up codes and corresponding letters.

This device, recovered by the NSA during the investigation into the 1986 Challenger explosion, ensured secure communications between space shuttle astronauts and ground control.

I L L U S T R AT I O N S BY M A R G A R E T H A L L

CLASS NOTES Professional lacrosse player, fitness instructor and entrepreneur ALEX AUST ’13 , who competed with the Terps, became the first woman from the sport ever to appear in Sports Illustrated’s annual swimsuit issue.

The Enigma machine was one of the most important tools of secret Nazi

SCOTT SHEWFELT M.JOUR. ’07 competed on

“Jeopardy!” in April, winning twice and taking

communication, and the

home $48,800 on episodes hosted by Dr. Mehmet

Allies’ success in cracking

Oz and NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers.

it is credited with shaving years off of World War

EVANDRO VALENTE ’03, M.S. ’06 , co-founder

II. The German top brass

and chief technology officer at unmanned aircraft

relied on this version,

systems company Agility in UMD’s Discovery

which had modifications to increase security.

District, was selected among Forbes magazine’s “Next 1,000 Upstart Entrepreneurs Redefining the American Dream.”

Four books by JASON REYNOLDS ’05 simultaneously appeared in June on The New York Times’ bestsellers list in four categories, including two versions of “Stamped,” with co-author Ibram X. Kendi, in the No. 1 spot (Young Adult Hardcovers) and “Stamped (for Kids)” (Middle Grade Hardcovers). He also was awarded the Carnegie Medal, the UK’s most prestigious prize for children’s books, for “Look Both Ways.”

The U.S. Senate confirmed NELLIE LIANG M.A. ’84, PH.D. ’86 as the Treasury Department’s undersec-

retary for domestic finance. Liang, who joined the Federal Reserve as a research economist in 1986, was the founding director of its division of financial stability. She served most recently as a senior fellow Following the Cuban Missle

at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

Crisis, the U.S. created new voice-encryption devices with

J. THOMAS MANGER III ’76 was named chief of

transistor technology. The

the U.S. Capitol Police in July, following the Jan. 6

K4-3 system was unwieldy

storming of the Capitol building by supporters of

for field use, but helpful to

President Trump. He most recently served for 15

government, military and

years as chief in Montgomery County, Md.,

intelligence officials.

and previously led the Fairfax, Va., police department and the Major Cities Chiefs Association.

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

C L A S S N O T E S I L L U S T R AT I O N S B Y VA L E R I E M O R G A N

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PROFILES

ERIC NGUYEN ’09

An Imagined History Alum Finds Success With Debut Novel on Vietnamese Family Immigrating to U.S. child of vietnamese refugees, Eric Nguyen ’09 knew that his parents never wanted to talk about what they had endured in their home country and amid the jarring displacement of their early days in the United States.

But in the humidity of Louisiana, which reminded Nguyen of his visits to Vietnam, he found a new world of Vietnamese immigrants who could fill in some gaps in his knowledge, and inspire his acclaimed debut novel about a family finding their place in the grocery stores, churches and apartment buildings of New Orleans.

“Things We Lost to the Water” follows a Vietnamese mother and her children, beginning in the late 1970s, as they navigate a separation from their husband and father, a longing for the familiarity of home, and the immense difficulties of life as refugees in the U.S. Nguyen had tried to ask his parents about their lives in southern Vietnam and their journey to the U.S., including for one assignment in an Asian American studies

A

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class at UMD. “They were suspicious about it,” Nguyen says. “Like, why would a school want to know about their story?” (Nguyen’s parents, who don’t read English, know he’s written a book about Vietnamese people but have not read it.)

But during Nguyen’s time as a creative writing graduate student at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, La., he visited barbershops, restaurants and other spots frequented by Vietnamese Americans, learning their own stories.

Water—central to life in both Vietnam and New Orleans—flows throughout his novel, published in May. (In Vietnamese, nuoc means both “nation” and “water.”)

After Huong, the mother, travels by boat to Louisiana, she longs to tell her host family “about the way the water moved, how you never got used to it, about the men on the boat and their constant fighting, about the uneasy sense of knowing only water, knowing that it connected the entire world—one shore to another—yet not knowing when you might see land.”

In The New York Times, reviewer Bryan

Washington wrote that the novel “strikes a very elusive balance: vast in scale and ambition, while luscious and inviting— enchanting, really—in its intimacy.” The book also made the summer reading list of an influential tastemaker: former President Barack Obama.

Christopher Lowe, who sat on Nguyen’s thesis committee at McNeese State, knew from early drafts that the novel was a display of exceptional talent. It “creates for readers a really immersive experience where they can inhabit these lives for a while … and really see something of themselves, of humanity, of the experience of loss, all of those universal things, within this very precise experience,” he says.

For Nguyen, who is working on his second book, the experience of writing a heralded debut has been surreal. “It’s kind of a dream to have this impact on people, that it meant something to them.”— sl

P H OTOS CO U RT ESY O F E R I C N G U Y E N

Connect with Terps who can help you get hired.

Take a giant leap toward your future.

Become the professional you’re meant to be.

Search from thousands of mid- and senior level job opportunities or post one available at your company for a fellow Terp through the new Terrapins Connect Job Board, the University of Maryland Alumni Association’s online community for alumni networking and mentorships.

Find your next job at TERRAPINSCONNECT.UMD.EDU

ALUMNI

PROFILES

J E R E M I E B A C O N M . P. S . ’ 1 6

Reaching New Heights Entrepreneur Creates Taste of Mountain Adventure in Midwest

nce buried in a century’s worth of trash and debris, a former abandoned quarry 30 miles outside Chicago today looks more like a home custom-built for Spider-Man. Eight towers stick up like the masts of wrecked pirate ships, with miles of crisscrossing climbing ropes and zip lines offering visitors the chance to unleash their inner action star 120-feet in the air. If a spot on “American Ninja Warrior” doesn’t top your list of aspirations, then pick up a kayak paddle or hit the mountain bike trails.

Billed as the nation’s largest aerial adventure park, The Forge at Lemont Quarries is the invention of Jeremie Bacon M.P.S. ’16, a serial entrepreneur who wanted to elevate the adrenaline of the mostly mountainless Midwest.

“We built something very,

O

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very unique,” Bacon says. “You are the engine. You are the machine. You are the thing that’s going to drive the excitement.”

The idea for The Forge was born about two decades ago, not long after Bacon, who has founded and led several software and investment companies, moved to Illinois and wondered if it would be possible to recreate the outdoor activities available in his native Colorado.

“You didn’t have a lot of the same opportunities,” he says. “Could we build the Walt Disney World of outdoor recreation?”

Bacon pitched the idea to the Village of Lemont in 2014 and got enough support to move forward with co-founders Chris Gladwin and Bart Loethen. A planned Memorial Day 2020 opening date was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but ample outside and social

distancing opportunities helped the park attract 100,000 guests between last July and December. Now they’re talking with cities across the country about building new full-size parks, as well “micro” versions that give people just a taste of adventure.

In addition to expanding food, event and live music offerings this summer, The Forge also opened a new “Drop-In Bike Park” that has more than 7 miles of trails for beginning, intermediate and experienced mountain bikers to test and expand their jumping skills.

The Forge serves an environmental purpose. It’s located on old yellow dolomite mines that helped supply the rebuilding of Chicago after its legendary 1871 fire, and Bacon and his team are working to restore abandoned land once filled with refuse and invasive plants.

“We became the stewards of this place,” Bacon says.—lf

P H O T O S C O U R T E SY O F T H E F O R G E AT L E M O N T Q U A R R I E S

Cracking the code FOR BLACK STUDENTS IN COMPUTER SCIENCE _2 SAMARA WONDIMU ’23 AND JESSY-MANUELLA TIENTCHEU ’23 / COMPUTER SCIENCE

Samara and Jessy-Manuella of UMD’s Code:Black student group hope to expand the pipeline of Black teens majoring in computer science with a mentoring program at local high schools—the kind of “input” that can lead to high-paying careers.

ALUMNI

FROM THE ARCHIVES

“Freedom House” at 50

Nyumburu Celebrates Milestone Anniversary as Center for Black Culture on Campus

hrough discussions and dance, poetry and pageants, classes and camaraderie, the Nyumburu Cultural Center has for half a century served as a campus hub for Black social and intellectual interaction.

Nyumburu, meaning “freedom house” in Swahili, opened in 1971 in a World War II-era Army surplus building in the old “gulch” area of campus, yet “was like an instant oasis” for Black Terps, former director James Otis Williams recalled in a 1996 Black Explosion article.

After moving to the South Campus Dining Hall in 1977, Nyumburu settled into its current, more central Campus Drive home in 1996. Over the years, the center, led by Ronald Zeigler Ph.D. ’83 since 2000, has presented lectures and seminars, hosted art exhibits, scholarship pageants and musical performances, and offered academic courses on blues, jazz, creative writing and more.

This fall, staff, alums and student ambassadors are holding a series of reflections, conversations and tours dubbed “Nyumburu at 50: A Legacy of Nurturing and Empowering Students Through Black Cultural Awareness.” It will conclude Oct. 23 with a commemoration program at the center.—ad

T

Clockwise from top right: Students in 1972 gather in the newly established Nyumburu Cultural Center; Nyumburu sponsors the Miss Black Unity pageant, won in 1986 by Paula Gwynn; Terps perform at Nyumburu’s Homecoming staple, Juke Joint, in 2019 at the Stamp Student Union; Nyumburu Cultural Center Director James Otis Williams and university President Brit Kirwan join other UMD administrators in breaking ground on the center’s Campus Drive location in 1994.

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Students congregate at the Nyumburu Cultural Center Amphitheater after a Black Terps Matter protest in June 2020.

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MARYLAND VS. INDIANA OCT. 30 • NOON

IT’S A TERP FAMILY REUNION! COME BACK TO CAMPUS THIS FALL AND RELIVE EVERYTHING YOU LOVE ABOUT MARYLAND—CONNECTING WITH FRIENDS, FLAUNTING YOUR TERP GEAR, CHEERING ON THE HOME TEAM—AND MAKE NEW MEMORIES. PREPARE TO LAUGH UNTIL YOUR FACE HURTS, WATCH FIREWORKS FROM MCKELDIN MALL, INSPIRE OUR FEARLESS GENERATION OF STUDENTS AND MEET OTHER PROUD ALUMS!

EXPERIENCE UMD’S HOMECOMING THIS OCTOBER. HOMECOMING.UMD.EDU

#UMDHOMECOMING