TERP Spring 2020

CORONAVIRUS UMD RESPONDS TO T H E G LO B A L PA N D E M I C 6

S P R I N G 2 0 2 0 / CO N N EC T I N G T H E U N I V E R S I T Y O F M A RY L A N D CO M M U N I T Y

STICKING TOGETHER

F ROM GOI NG BIG TO BU I LDI NG A GR E AT ER C O L L E G E PA R K , WA L L A C E D. L O H L E AV E S A S T R O N G E R , T R A N S F O R M E D U N I V E R S I T Y 20

NO POMP, STRANGE CIRCUMSTANCES

Five UMD seniors, all international students, pose at least 6 feet apart in their red graduation stoles at the ODK Fountain for photos. The COVID-19 pandemic forced the

cancellation of an in-person commencement ceremony this spring, and the women wanted to commemorate their achievement together before parting ways.

PHOTO BY STEPHANIE S. CORDLE

ON THE MALL

ALUMNI NEWS

6

UMD Fights Pandemic With Historic Changes

CAMPUS LIFE

8 9 10 12

(Re)Introducing Darryll Pines Millions Gone, But Not Forgotten “You Had a Feeling That You Could Change the World” Building Champions

EXPLORATIONS

14 15 18 17

17 18 19

Disposable Knowledge Forecasts of the Future Art and Craft In Race With Virus, Engineers Speed Development of Medical Equipment Breaking Out of a Web of Censorship Reconstructing Stolen Lives The Big Question

ALUMNI

40 42 43 44 45 46

Alumni Association Former Olympic Gymnast Takes the Next Leap Class Notes The Role of a Lifetime More Than a Meal From the Archives

CONTENTS 2

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

D A R R Y L L P I N E S P H O T O B Y M I K E M O R G A N ; “ S L AV E H O U S E , R O C K H A L L , M A R Y L A N D , 1 9 3 6 ” S L AV E R Y I M A G E S . O R G / S / S L AV E R Y I M A G E S / I T E M / 1 4 0 5 ; D O M I N I Q U E D A W E S P H O T O B Y S T E P H A N I E S . C O R D L E

FEATURES

ONLINE

Digital Maps Show Pandemic’s Spread Geography researchers show COVID-19’s progression county by county and over time.

—

Staying Fit During Seclusion Feeling fitness-challenged while working from your kitchen? A UMD health and fitness expert suggests simple exercises to keep in shape.

—

Uncovering a Mystery

20

Sticking Together From going BIG to building a Greater College Park, President Wallace D. Loh will retire in June—and leave a stronger, transformed UMD.

BY TERP STAFF

36

Secrets, Satellites and Howard Stern From Cold War derring-do to Sirius radio, Robert Briskman M.S. ’61 helped build the foundations of technologies that define modern life.

An anthropology professor working in an abandoned gravesite discovers the perfectly preserved body of a woman buried 80 years ago, then sets out to identify her.

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

BY CHRIS CARROLL

T U R N I M A G I N AT I O N I N T O I N N O VAT I O N

Fearless Ideas Every issue of Terp features examples of how UMD turns imagination into innovation. In this issue, we further highlight those efforts with a “ .” We’ll do the same in future issues on how UMD discovers new knowledge, inspires Maryland pride and transforms the student experience.

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

SPRING 2020

3

FROM THE EDITOR

MY HUSBAND ASKED ME this morning what day it is. It’s Mmpthsday, again. They all look alike now. He roams with his laptop between the kitchen, basement and living room. I park in the den with mine. We hope our teenage boys aren’t wiping out all the snacks in the pantry.

But we are still healthy, we are together, and I haven’t had to wear makeup or use an iron for weeks.

The campus, meanwhile, is eerily quiet. The Stamp Food Court, normally loud and lively in the heart of the semester, is empty. So are the sidewalks crisscrossing McKeldin Mall, and the classrooms, playing fields and performance stages.

The coronavirus pandemic has upended all of our lives, scattering us back to our homes, wherever they are, to hide from this threat until it passes and we can safely return to UMD. There was no big farewell this semester for President Wallace D. Loh, who will officially retire on June 30 after 10 years of running the university.

In some sense, that’s fitting: He never sought the spotlight in the best of times, and now he’s focused on members of the Terp community taking care of each other in these most challenging of times.

Our cover story in this issue of Terp celebrates Dr. Loh’s legacy at Maryland, such as the transformation of College Park, our entry into the Big Ten Conference and the success of the Do Good Initiative.

Some of this is easy to see, like the crop of new campus buildings or how the M Circle is scooching across the street to make way for the light-rail Purple Line. Other advances here in recent years in, say, quantum research or entrepreneurship training, promise to have far-reaching impact too.

This issue features more stories that show how Maryland is shaping the world. You’ll meet engineers designing 3D-printable protective masks for health care workers, and the arts administration expert who’s helping to save museums and performing groups worldwide on the brink of collapse.

And if you’ve ever listened to satellite radio, thank Rob Briskman M.S. ’61, not only a tech pioneer still innovating today, but also a Cold War spy. We uncover his story of inventiveness and intrigue on page 36.

Thanks for reading. Here’s to a return to normalcy, and the next 10 years.

Lauren Brown University Editor

Publisher JACKIE LEWIS Vice President, University Relations

Advisers 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 JASON A. KEISLING RYUMI SUNG Designers STEPHANIE S. CORDLE Photographer GAIL RUPERT M.L.S. ’10 Photography Archivist EMMA HOWELLS Photography Assistant JAGU CORNISH Production Manager DAN NOVAK M.JOUR ’20 MAYA POTTIGER ’17, M.JOUR ‘20 Graduate Assistants KOLIN BEHRENS ’20 LINDSEY COLLINS ’20 Interns

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 Photo by John T. Consoli

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

INTERPLAY Diamondback to End Century-plus Print Run

It was with great sadness that I read about the discontinuation of the printed copy of The Diamondback.

When my husband and I were students at Maryland, the newspaper was published daily, except maybe on weekends. I remember cutting out pictures and articles to send home or display on my dorm room wall or door. I recall pics of Vietnam War protests, articles with never-ending complaints about dining hall food, coverage of concerts and political rallies, photos of our sports teams, no-holds-barred letters to the editor, clever cartoons, quirky personal ads and ads for the stores and restaurants in the College Park area. One of our favorite ads was the frequently-run “Buck Off ” coupons

for Emersons restaurant.

I understand that today’s students are living in a digital world, and it has become necessary to make changes. However, in 1972, the photo I’ve attached (below, left) was a fold-out from an issue of The Diamondback, and it could be seen on the doors of many dorm rooms and in windows and bulletin boards throughout the campus. The power of the printed word—and photo —can never be replaced.

—VICKIE MARTIN LAYTON ’75, WILLIAMSPORT, MD.

I read with sadness and understanding in the latest edition of Terp magazine the decision of The Diamondback to end its print edition.

As a member of The Diamondback’s sports staff in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I remember being told that we had a circulation of 35,000 and published five days a week. I have forgotten names but remember so many of the faces of my co-workers.

I also remember the drives from campus in the evenings to the print shop in Silver Spring to put out the paper.

The Diamondback taught me well. I used its lessons in my 37-year

career as a sports journalist. At the end, I consider The Diamondback the best newspaper I worked for.

I know The Diamondback will be online, but there is something to be said for holding a newspaper in your hands.

—STEVE SIGAFOOSE ’72, COUNCIL BLUFFS, IOWA

Growing Beyond Meat

I’m not sure I need a lab-grown alternative to meat, but I know the sustainability of meat production is not sustainable: myhomefarm.co.uk/sustainability-ofeating-meat.

It takes 7,000 liters of water and 3kg of feed to produce a 500g steak. That’s just crazy. We’ve largely removed meat from our diets, and things like beans and lentils act as great taste and texture replacements for meat and mince.

—MARS MLODZINSKI VIA TERP ONLINE

Oh, The Places You’ll Sniff

Terps Raising Pups—what a wonderful program. Didn’t know it has been in existence for a while. I loved Terp’s diary. He is a pretty good writer.

—BARB CRISCOULI VIA TERP ONLINE

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

SPRING 2020

5

ON THE MALL

NEWS

UMD Fights Pandemic With Historic Changes Campus Closed, Courses Taught Online, Sports Stopped to Prevent COVID-19 Spread

or the first time since after the Civil War, a national crisis this semester shuttered most of the University of Maryland’s physical campus. But this is no longer a fledgling college schooling a few dozen cadets. The COVID-19 pandemic upended life for a community of more than 50,000 students, faculty and staff.

As part of a society-wide attempt to head off the virus’ spread, UMD students were sent home to take all classes online. Staff and faculty turned kitchens and dens into offices.

Researchers pivoted to producing desperately needed supplies.

The NCAA basketball tournaments—in which both Terp teams would have competed—were canceled. Then spring sports

F

nationwide followed suit.

The same social distancing rules also pushed the May 22 Commencement ceremony into a virtual event with a call to graduates to walk across the stage in December.

“This global emergency will demand much from us all, but our community is up to the challenge,” said UMD President Wallace D. Loh. As the virus crept closer to the campus, university leaders took a series of unprecedented steps to keep Terps safe.

Unusual scenes from this spring included, from left, the empty intersection of Regents Drive and Stadium Drive on what should have been a busy weekday; a darkly humorous accessory on the statue of Jim Henson ’60 and Kermit outside the Stamp Student Union; three students—one wearing a surgical mask—practicing social distancing via bicycle; and a donation of sought-after sanitizer produced by A. James Clark School of Engineering researchers and students.

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

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

ACADEMICS

Maryland—along with universities nationwide—had to redefine what it means to provide an education.

UMD began suspending study abroad programs in January, before the worsening threat prompted orders for all students to return to the U.S. “out of deep and growing concern for the health and safety of our students,” said Mary Ann Rankin, senior vice president and provost.

On March 12, the day the first community-spread case of COVID-19 was reported in the state of Maryland, the university announced the campus would close and canceled classes for a week after spring break to give faculty time to prepare to conduct classes remotely. Soon afterward, UMD

shifted the remainder of the semester online, and offered a pass/fail grading option.

Faculty scrambled to adapt in-person teaching to a digital format, which presented unique challenges for laboratory, studio or other hands-on classes, while students adjusted to the new format, and altered structure (or lack of it) at home.

a flurry of projects designed to, among other things: hack together cheap but functional respirators to address the national shortage of machines to help sick patients breathe; construct a model to predict where the next outbreaks could occur; and concoct hand sanitizer for local first responders and other health-care workers.

CAMPUS LIFE

ATHLETICS

As the first blush of spring turned the campus landscape pink and green, few were there to see it. Maryland was nearly deserted.

A few hundred students with no other options continued living on campus, while essential employees stayed on to feed them, maintain facilities and protect public safety.

The vast majority of students had left for spring break unaware that they were saying goodbye for the semester—or for seniors, potentially forever. As of press time, residence hall check-outs were postponed indefinitely, and the university planned to issue prorated refunds for room and board.

To ease the jarring shift from communal living to potential isolation in teenage bedrooms, the Division of Student Affairs sought to keep students connected through a palette of virtual programs.

Some students and staff struggled financially as they or family members lost jobs due to businesses closing. Following an alarming spike in pleas for emergency assistance— from about five to hundreds per week—the university launched a fundraising campaign in late March to restore the depleted Student Crisis Fund. From the pandemic’s onset to mid-April, it had disbursed about $570,000 to over 1,200 students.

The men’s and women’s final basketball victories—the former taking a share of the Big Ten title and the latter winning the conference tournament—weren’t supposed to be their last.

But in whirlwind succession, spectators, then the men’s Big Ten tourney, then March Madness, then all NCAA spring sports evaporated.

“Woww. This can’t be real at all,” shocked Terps forward Jalen Smith tweeted on March 12.

The season was lost, but not the careers of seniors competing in spring sports such as lacrosse, track and field and baseball.

The NCAA voted to allow an extra year of eligibility for any student-athlete whose spring sports season was cut off due to the pandemic, adjusting scholarship limits and granting each school discretion on how to allocate financial aid for returning seniors.

RESEARCH

The university’s normal research activities were slowed, then all but halted by severe restrictions to keep people safe. Maintenance operations continued, from caring for animals to safeguarding sensitive equipment.

Not all research was off-limits, however; Maryland scientists and engineers launched

EVENTS

The virus wiped out the UMD calendar this semester, including Maryland Day and Commencement.

Honoring Terps who complete their degree remains an imperative, however, so this spring, the university will offer a virtual celebration on May 22, featuring speeches along with photos, videos and messages crowdsourced from graduates.

They and guests will also be offered free tickets to the Sept. 12 football game, where they will be recognized, and invited to join their summer and fall counterparts at December’s commencement, which will shift to a Sunday afternoon.

SPRING 2020

7

ON THE MALL

CAMPUS LIFE

(Re)Introducing Darryll Pines

UMD’s 34th President a Familiar Face—and an Accomplished Presence—on Campus arryll j. pines is the new guy moving into the University of Maryland president’s office in July, but he’s been part of the campus community for a quarter century.

Pines arrived at UMD in 1995 as an aerospace engineering assistant professor, became a department chair, then served 11 years as dean of the A. James Clark School of Engineering before the University System of Maryland Board of Regents tapped him to succeed Wallace D. Loh. (Read more about Loh’s legacy on page 20.)

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

“I feel an immense obligation based on the incredible career that I’ve had here to give back,” Pines said in an interview after his selection. “To me that means working toward uncompromising commitment to excellence in all that we do—in the arts and athletics and in academics, and also to build better community and to work on the culture of diversity and inclusiveness throughout the university.”

Pines has been praised for increasing diversity among Clark School students and faculty, including doubling the number

of tenured and tenure-track women and underrepresented minority faculty. He has also overseen rising retention and graduation rates that are now among the highest of any engineering school.

Under his watch, A. James Clark Hall, the hub for bioengineering on campus, and the Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering, home of the Maryland Robotics Center, opened, and the E.A. Fernandez IDEA Factory is scheduled to follow in 2021. Other new facilities include the region’s only outdoor drone testing space, the Fearless Flight Facility, along with the UMD Unmanned Aircraft Systems Test Site in St. Mary’s County.

Pines also led the Clark School’s fundraising efforts in the university’s $1.5 billion Fearless Ideas campaign, including a $219.5 million investment from the A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation to fund Clark School operations and scholarships for deserving students all over campus.

The student experience has been a top priority for Pines, who has steadily supported competitions and outside-the-classroom learning opportunities, and sought opportunities to interact with Clark School students, from the classroom to the annual Alumni Cup, a Rube Goldberg machine-building competition between departments.

KerryAnn O’Meara, a professor and associate dean in the College of Education who co-developed the ADVANCE Initiative with Pines to support female faculty at UMD, praised his down-to-earth, “authentic” presence and predicted his success in helping the university reach new heights.“He genuinely cares about people on our campus and wants to make UMD a better place to work and grow,” she said.—cc

P H OTO BY M I K E M O RGA N

Millions Gone, But Not Forgotten Exhibit Focuses on Memorial to Ukrainian Famine Victims t a hectic intersection near Washington, D.C.’s Union Station, a small, triangular patch of land marks a solemn spot. Here, stalks of wheat cast from bronze quietly invite passersby to consider a little-known yet vast tragedy an ocean away.

This memorial to the 1932–33 engineered famine known as the Holodomor—a combination of the Ukrainian words for “hunger” and “extermination”—is the centerpiece of “Making the Holodomor Memorial: Context and Questions,” an online and gallery exhibit at the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation’s Kibel Gallery. The 30-foot-long sculpture, designed by Larysa Kurylas ’80, frames discussions exploring the politics and making of public memorials, and their roles in processing loss and trauma and in elevating or undermining truth. “It has to communicate to viewers. Otherwise, it fails,” Kurylas says of her memorial. “I hope people have an emotional response.”

Joseph Stalin orchestrated the Holodomor to punish Ukrainians for resisting Soviet rule. Beginning in the late 1920s, he seized private land and forced collectivized farming on Ukraine—known for its fertile soil and abundant wheat—to feed the rest of the Soviet Union and to sell on foreign markets to industrialize the country. In 1932,

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P H OTO BY A N I C E H OAC H L A N D E R

unachievable grain quotas were imposed, Ukrainians rebelled, and Soviet authorities began withholding food and confiscating anything edible, even pets. Ultimately, at least 3.9 million people died.

After decades of mobilization by the Ukrainian American community, Congress approved a memorial in 2006, and Kurylas felt “practically duty-bound” to submit a design. Born to Ukrainian parents who immigrated to the U.S. in 1951, she grew up speaking the language at home and going to Ukrainian school on Saturdays, learning from a teacher who survived the Holodomor.

Kurylas’ memorial highlights the wheat, whose stalks start out well-defined and over the length of the wall disappear and recede into the sculpture’s negative space, meant to express loss of life as well as “the artificiality of the famine,” she says.

The exhibit, curated and designed by architecture Professor Ronit Eisenbach and on display through December, aims to “better understand the process by which a piece of public artwork comes into existence in places like D.C.,” says Brian Kelly, professor and director of the architecture program.

For Kurylas, the monument serves as a reminder not only of lives lost but also the danger of misinformation and suppression of facts, a theme that remains relevant today. During Ukraine’s Soviet era, discussion of the Holodomor was banned, and the government altered statistics to hide the famine.

“The effects of this are long-lasting, and so are the effects of disinformation and misinformation,” Kurylas says.— sl

See the exhibit online at arch.umd.edu/mapp/exhibition/makingholodomor-memorial-context-questions.

SPRING 2020

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ON THE MALL

CAMPUS LIFE

“You Had a M Feeling That You Could Change the World” 50 Years After Protests Rocked UMD, Their Legacy Remains

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

ay 1, 1970: Route 1 is packed curb to curb with protesters facing a line of police officers, riot batons at the ready. Eventually, tear gas canisters, bottles, eggs and rocks arc through the air.

President Nixon’s announcement of U.S. troops invading Cambodia had pushed simmering tensions over civil rights injustices, gender inequities and administrative missteps at Maryland to the boiling point.

Though the turmoil of the 1960s had been shaking campuses like the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University for years, demonstrations at UMD were small-scale until now.

By the time the protest era subsided,

Maryland had rounded a turning point with a loosening of cultural norms and lasting changes in policy, as well as experiences that continue to resonate for many alumni.

Back then, physics Distinguished University Professor Jordan Goodman ’73, M.S. ’75, Ph.D. ’78 was an undergraduate documenting rallies and clashes with law enforcement with his camera. “The draft hung over people’s heads,” he says. “It wasn’t that someone else was going to go fight a war—they could call you to go fight this war.

People you knew were going to fight the war.”

In March, 87 people were arrested for staging a sit-in at the Skinner Building to protest two professors being denied tenure. On the first day of May, what started with a rally

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

in front of McKeldin Library led to vandalism at Reckord Armory, home of the ROTC program, and eventually, a rush on Route 1.

The conflict between students, police and National Guard troops lasted on and off for much of the month, a period that included the fatal National Guard shooting at Kent State University.

In the months and years that followed, life on campus took on a different tone— less formal, more radicalized and with an increased role in governance for students.

“In loco parentis, where the administration is acting as a parent, really falls apart at this point,” says Anne Turkos, university archivist emerita.

Anti-establishment principles weak-

ened Greek life, too, which lost much of its prominence in the 1970s. “It was seen as you weren’t an independent thinker if you were part of the Greek system; you were a follower,” says Arlene Gerst ’70, who was a sister in Delta Phi Epsilon.

Female students—previously bound by a restrictive code of conduct—began enjoying greater freedom in the post-protest era.

Emboldened by the cultural shift, Turkos says, “women finally just said, ‘We’re not going to do this anymore.’” Curfews, bed checks and suggestions for how to dress disappeared.

A demand for racial equity was also a high priority. “The connection between the struggle against racism at UMD and the

struggle against the war was very significant for me,” says Greg Dunkel Ph.D. ’67, who was active in Students for a Democratic Society.

Students pushed for higher enrollment of people of color, and increased hiring of faculty and staff of color, says Turkos.

Goodman hopes that today’s students feel the empowerment and urge to rebel that his contemporaries did. “You had a feeling that you could change the world, and maybe by a little bit we did,” he says. “In every generation you have to do that, or it doesn’t stick.”— sl See more photos from this era of campus unrest at terp.umd.edu.

SPRING 2020

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ON THE MALL

SPORTS

‘Building Champions’

Soccer Stadium: A significant upgrade to Ludwig Field, home of the men’s and women’s squads, will accommodate 8,800 fans, including premium seating options, general-admission bleachers and standing room for the “Crew” student section. It will also feature improved player facilities, video and audio systems and LED lighting.

Athletics Kicks Off Effort to Upgrade Seven Facilities MARYLAND ATHLETICS is laying the foundation

for an enhanced athlete—and fan—experience.

Along with ongoing projects to renovate and expand Cole Field House and to build the Basketball Performance Center, the athletic

“Our vision is to provide the best possible environment for our student-athletes so they can succeed academically, athletically and socially,” Athletic Director Damon Evans says.

The seven new projects are stadiums for field

department in January unveiled a sweeping plan

hockey and women’s lacrosse, track and field,

to upgrade seven facilities for 13 Olympic sports.

and soccer; player development centers for

The nine building projects together make up

baseball, softball and golf; and the transforma-

Building Champions: The Maryland Athletics

tion of the football team house into Gossett Hall

Facilities Campaign, the next step in a long-term

for multiple teams’ use.

effort to bolster all 20 UMD varsity programs and benefit their 500-plus student-athletes.

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

Maryland Athletics is investing $25 million in athletic revenue in those facilities; it’s continuing

to fundraise for them as well as part of Fearless Ideas: The Campaign for Maryland.

The first construction work is expected to begin soon and will take an estimated three to five years to complete, although there is no official timetable.

Take a look at the game plan for each facility.—AD

See more about each of these projects at umterps.com/buildingchampions.

I M A G E 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

An Unexpected Final Whistle Golf Player Development Center: Six heated hitting bays and putting labs, located near the University Golf Course, will allow for indoor and outdoor practice for the men’s and women’s teams, and technological enhancements will improve swing analysis.

Field Hockey and Women’s Lacrosse Stadium: The 5,500-square-foot building will grow to 12,000 square feet, including larger locker rooms, an enhanced sports medicine room, a lobby full of memorabilia commemorating the teams’ successes and a relocated fan entrance.

Stanley Bobb Baseball Player Development Center: The new 8,500-square-foot indoor hitting and pitching facility, which will be located beyond Bob “Turtle” Smith Stadium’s outfield fence, will feature state-of-the-art analytics technology and allow for climate-controlled training year-round.

Softball Player Development Center: This facility, which will be built near Maryland Softball Stadium, will include the same amenities as the baseball player development center.

Gossett Hall: The football team’s move to the upgraded Cole Field House allows for the transformation of the Gossett Football Team House into Gossett Hall, with larger locker, team and meeting rooms; an enhanced sports medicine room; a weight and training area for multiple teams; and an expanded academic support center for all student-athletes.

Track and Field Stadium: The new, dedicated track and field complex will have an eight-lane, 400-meter track surrounding a grass infield, a full hammer cage and multiple throw areas, reversible pole vault and jumping pits, and bleachers for 1,500 fans.

Frese Reflects After Coronavirus Causes Soaring Season’s Sudden End THE MARYLAND women’s basketball team

was overpowering the competition this season, compiling a 17-game winning streak and earning a fifth Big Ten title and fourth conference tournament championship since joining the Big Ten in 2014.

The Terps were expecting a top seed in the NCAA tournament when on March 12—four days before Selection Monday— the NCAA canceled the Division I men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, along with all remaining winter and spring championships, due to the evolving COVID-19 public health threat.

On the Maryland Athletics podcast “Hear the Turtle,” Head Coach Brenda Frese reflected on the season’s abrupt end: This team, gosh, they were red-hot, right? (Then suddenly, we had) four seniors that weren’t going to be able to close their career, and kind of this big question mark and an unknown.

But I do relish in the fact that unlike a lot of coaches that had to inform their team by text or phone calls, we were present (at practice). As hard as it was, we really got to have some closure, because we went back into the lounge and sat down, and players and staff and support staff, even our character coaches were scheduled to be there. So everyone spoke.

I think the words that will always ring true to me, the first words spoken after we shared the news, both Colleen (Sorem, deputy athletic director) and I, to the team were from senior Blair Watson, who said, “I love you guys.”

Listen to the entire podcast at umterps.com/podcasts.

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ON THE MALL

E X P L O R AT I O N S

Disposable Knowledge

New Class Digs Through the What and Why of Trash

THE NEXT TIME you get grossed out by a lump

City, where swine freely roamed, to modern

of leaking garbage bags or a rancid smell from

suburbs where overflowing recycling bins dot

a subway grate, be thankful you don’t have to

the curbs each week.

dodge hungry pigs.

This semester, Associate Professor Thomas

The goal was to show that what we choose to chuck—and its shift over time—reflects

Zeller, a specialist in environmental and

our embrace of consumer culture, rapid

technology history, taught a new class called

industrialization and a growing middle class

“Trashed! Garbage and Recycling in History,”

demanding disposability and cleanliness. Here

which took students on a journey from the

are some of Zeller’s notable moments from

manure-filled streets of 19th-century New York

trash history.—LF

1953 The “Keep America

Beautiful” campaign launches

1820: Everyday habits

generally produce little

in response to the growing

trash: Food scraps are fed

problem of highway litter.

to animals—it’s estimated there’s one hog for every five humans in New York City—worn-out clothing is mended, and anything beyond hope is sold to junk men or burned for fuel.

1943 The United States’

entry into World War II brings a clamor to spend and consume less and to donate to 1893 Dutch immigrant

scrap and rubber drives. The

Harm Huizenga opens an

Brooklyn Dodgers offer $.10

incinerator ash-hauling

admission to anyone bringing

business in Chicago

a half-pound of fat.

that grows into Waste Management, one of the world’s largest disposal operations.

1914 The United States and 1840s Public health

Canada are home to 300

officials advocate for elim-

incinerating plants, the pre-

inating malodorous odors,

ferred method until landfills

called “miasmas,” to protect

take over in the 1930s.

against disease outbreaks.

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

Forecasts of the Future GLANCING OUT THE WINDOW tells you less about the

weather than stepping outside. The same principle might also apply to meteorologists who rely only on computer screens to understand vast quantities of atmospheric data to predict dangerous storms.

Now, UMD researchers are developing a groundbreaking system that lets forecasters don a virtual reality headset and “fly through” the atmosphere. They zoom up next to temperature gradients, keep pace 1968 Spurred by the death of two employees

with differing wind speeds and soak up information on

on a garbage truck, Memphis sanitation workers

moisture content in a way that’s supremely intuitive—

strike for better pay and conditions, drawing the

not to mention cool to look at.

“The current status is you chop up data into

support of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

two-dimensional layers,” says Mason Quick, a meteorologist in the Cooperative Institute for Satellite Earth System Studies (CISESS). “But these are in fact three-dimensional datasets, so we’re now viewing them in their native form.”

Working with computer visualization experts in College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural 1982 Protests over

Sciences Dean Amitabh Varshney’s Maryland Blended

dumping contaminated

Reality Center lab, CISESS researchers have built a

soil in Warren County,

prototype system that incorporates a dozen of the

N.C., draw attention to

more than 100 satellite atmospheric data sources.

the human impact of

As it matures, it’s not going to replace current,

governments adopt recycling

landfills and incinera-

highly refined methods of analyzing weather, says

programs, the Environmental

tors, and help start the

Protection Agency reports

modern-era environmen-

that domestic-waste recovery

tal justice movement.

CISESS meteorologist Patrick Meyers, but it could be a source of new insights, because quite literally, “it’s providing a whole new dimension.”—CC

1995 As more local

climbed from 7.1% in 1970 to 21.7% in 1993.

2018 After taking in 70%

of the world’s plastic trash—7 million tons annually—the Chinese government all but halts the practice, sending recyclers scrambling for alternatives.

SPRING 2020

15

ON THE MALL

E X P L O R AT I O N S

FA C U LT Y Q & A MICHAEL KAISER

Art and Craft

Arts Expert Helps Baltimore Orchestra, Others Chart New Course IT IS GOOD TO BE the Turnaround King, aka

Michael Kaiser, former president of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and chairman of the DeVos Institute of Arts Management at UMD. He’s known internationally for helping finan-

in the arts. A third and a key one is how many

the recovery will be painful. If the crisis lasts

alternative forms of entertainment we now have.

many months, few organizations will recover

cially teetering arts groups, from the Alvin Ailey

fully. It is the midsize groups—those with

What are some of your top-line suggestions to struggling arts organizations?

overheads and payrolls but without reserves or

Opera House, regain their footing. The weight of the crown is delivering blunt, sometimes hard-to-

Your programming has to be remarkable and

hardest recovery. It is likely that many of the

hear recommendations to those organizations.

it has to be exciting and it has to surprise and

100,000 not-for-profit arts institutions in the

engage people. There’s more competition for

United States will shrink or disappear if they do

Symphony Orchestra, Kaiser spoke to Terp

time and attention, and so many other forms

not receive emergency funding.

about the need for eye-catching programming,

of entertainment are free. We have to market

the importance of being willing to evolve and

ourselves in exciting ways that go beyond the

the potential impact of the coronavirus

sort of traditional letters or email blasts. We

How do you see live entertainment evolving in the future?

pandemic.—LF

have to get people interested in who we are and

I think there will be concerts. I think there will be

make them realize how much fun it is going to be

communal experiences of the arts. I think that

to engage with us.

the nature of art may change. Not that there

American Dance Theater Foundation to the Royal

Now consulting for the struggling Baltimore

What is the state of arts organizations nationally?

won’t be symphonies or operas, but there may

There are several challenges. One is the

a traditional donor base. For major arts donors,

How will the delays and cancelations of exhibits and events during the coronavirus pandemic affect the arts?

including in cities like Baltimore and Washington,

If the crisis passes relatively quickly, most

their children in many cases are less interested

organizations will be able to recover, although

reduction in arts education in the public school systems. Second is the aging out or the aging of

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

access to major donors—that will likely have the

also be some kind of amalgam of art form that we don’t even know what it is yet.

See an extended Q&A at terp.umd.edu.

I L L U S T R AT I O N BY R Y U M I S U N G

In Race With Virus, Engineers Speed Development of Medical Equipment

to safely sterilize used N95 masks with gamma radiation for reuse; and simple, cheap manual ventilators. Even more audaciously, the goal was to deliver them in days or weeks, a warp-speed deviation from standard development timelines.

“There is an outpouring

WITH NEW DESIGNS as well as innovative

techniques for reviving old gear, University

of people trying to figure out

of Maryland engineers hustled this spring to

ways to help,” says bioengi-

meet dire needs for medical equipment needed

neering Professor William

by health-care workers fighting the COVID-19

Bentley, director of the

pandemic.

Fischell Institute. “Some of the

instead of trashing it, users can simply wash it

groups have very proactive, near-term response

with soap and fit a new filter. Prototyping and

gered doctors and nurses short of N95 respira-

activities, and others are more far-reaching.”

initial production took place in UMD’s Terrapin

tors, along with urgent requests for ventilators

One group of researchers in the A. James

In response to heartbreaking stories of endan-

Works 3D printing facilities.

to help the sickest patients breathe, researchers

Clark School of Engineering developed a method

in the Robert E. Fischell Institute for Biomedical

to quickly create customized respirators for

develop simple, but functional ventilators amid

Devices zeroed in on several advances to

medical workers. Unlike N95 masks—filtered

fears the United States could need hundreds

fundamentally improve the U.S. response to the

respirators meant to be used once and thrown

of thousands more than the computerized,

virus: semi-permanent alternatives to dispos-

away—their alternative design can use a variety

hospital-grade models it has on hand if COVID-19

able, scarce N95 respirator masks; a method

of replaceable filters. At the end of the day,

spreads catastrophically.—CC/MP

Breaking Out of a Web of Censorship

Clark School bioengineers also worked to

The tool known as Geneva (short for Genetic Evasion) evolves its code through successive attempts,

IN THE BATTLE between governments that shackle

or “generations,” keeping instructions that

citizens’ internet use and people chasing freedom on

best evade censorship and ditching the rest.

the web, regimes have the advantage: By the time users

When the researchers tested Geneva against real-

unravel one scheme, censors can have another one in

world censorship in China, India and Kazakhstan, it found

place.

dozens of ways to defeat government controls.

New work by UMD computer science researchers could

“Ultimately, winning this race means bringing free

shift the balance of power, using artificial intelligence

speech and open communication to millions of users

inspired by the principles of genetic evolution to

around the world who currently don’t have them,” says

automatically exploit gaps in censors’ logic and identify

Dave Levin, a computer science professor with a joint

bugs that would be virtually impossible for programmers

appointment in the University of Maryland Institute for

to find manually.

Advanced Computer Studies.

P H O T O BY S T E P H A N I E S . C O R D L E ; I L L U S T R AT I O N BY M A R G A R E T H A L L

SPRING 2020

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ON THE MALL

E X P L O R AT I O N S

Reconstructing Lives Forgotten Vast Digital Collection Pieces Together History of Slave Trade idnapped from home.

Taken to another world. Sold as chattel. Worked to death. Lost to history. The unimaginable horrors experienced by enslaved Africans and their descendants might suggest that bondage erased victims’ names, identity and personhood.

But for decades, historians and genealogists have been combing hundreds of archives and piecing together millions of documents that trace slave voyages, sales, baptisms, marriages and other events that form histories of lives enslaved. However, much of the research has been compiled in

K

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isolation at separate institutions, making it more challenging to follow threads between individuals and populations.

Daryle Williams, a UMD historian and associate dean in the College of Arts and Humanities, is working to address that shortcoming as one of the leads on a massive new online database that will be the most comprehensive digital accounting of enslavement ever created: “Enslaved: Peoples of the Historic Slave Trade,” at enslaved.org.

“We have lots and lots and lots of different kinds of sources that include named individuals,” says Williams, who researches slavery in 19th-century Brazil. “Our goal in part is to

be able to provide a platform to record and recover those named people.”

Before, researchers might find a property record of a plantation owner, listing names of enslaved people, but be unaware of the same individuals appearing in a separate baptismal record. Enslaved.org will allow researchers to cross-reference those datasets simultaneously and construct biographies of those named, trace familial lineages and see broader trends to gain a better understanding of the repercussions of enslavement.

The database, housed at Michigan State University and supported by a $1.5 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, launched this spring. It will provide educational resources for K–12 classrooms as well as peer-reviewed data sets for researchers.

From the removal of Confederate statues in Southern cities, to presidential candidates’ discussions of reparations, to the successful (and controversial) 1619 Project from The New York Times, the nation is facing a reckoning with slavery and its historic and modern consequences. Enslaved.org may help bring to life the experiences of those most directly impacted.

“People are interested and troubled and compelled and grappling with slavery and its many legacies,” Williams says. “Slavery is really, really important to the foundations of America. And slavery is really, really important to America today.”—dn

“ F U G I T I V E S L AV E S F R O M M A R Y L A N D , 1 8 5 0 S “ , S L AV E R Y I M A G E S . O R G / S / S L AV E R Y I M A G E S / I T E M / 1 2 5 8

THE BIG QUESTION

What’s one fact about your field that’s stranger than fiction?

LILLIAN DOHERTY

NAEEMUL HASSAN

PROFESSOR AND CHAIR, DEPARTMENT OF CLASSICS

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, PHILIP MERRILL COLLEGE OF JOURNALISM AND COLLEGE OF INFORMATION STUDIES

—

The lyre, a stringed instrument used to accompany songs (lyric poetry!) in ancient Greece, has a connection to our campus mascot. The precocious god Hermes made one from the body of a tortoise on the day he was born, as he set out to rustle cattle owned by Apollo. Apollo loved the sound of the lyre and let Hermes keep the cows in exchange for it, and traditional Greek lyres for millennia have been constructed from tortoise shells.

STEVE FETTER

We probably are looking at a future where there will be more news stories written by robots than reporters. For quite a while, robots have been converting data into structured news such as weather updates, sports and financial reports. With recent advancements in natural language processing and deep learning research, barriers to writing less structured, more creative news are slowly falling.

TATIANA LOBODA

ASSOCIATE PROVOST AND DEAN OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL, PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC POLICY

—

—

PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF GEOGRAPHICAL SCIENCES

Polls show that many Americans don’t know key facts about nuclear weapons policy. For example, the U.S. and Russia each keep about 1,000 weapons that are always ready to be launched in five to 10 minutes, and it takes only 30 minutes for a missile warhead to go from launch to target. Each of these weapons can destroy a city.

—

I study wildfires in cold regions like Alaska, Canada and Russia, where spectacularly massive fires burn that we rarely hear about because few people live close by.

In some thankfully rare cases, these fires can “overwinter” under the snow, because the soils in cold regions often contain a lot of partially decomposed

organic material where the fires can continue to smolder for months. They re-emerge next spring after the snow melts.

NEIL JAY SEHGAL ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH POLICY AND MANAGEMENT

—

Health care is much less safe than people think. Our best estimates suggest that more than 250,000 (and up to 400,000, depending on methods of estimation) deaths occur in U.S. hospitals associated with medical errors every year.

Compare this estimate to CDC rankings, and medical error may be the third-most common cause of death in America behind heart disease and cancer.

RYAN SOCHOL ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

—

Most people would be surprised to hear that 3D printing turns 40 this year. People see it as a relatively new or even “futuristic” technology, but it’s been around for longer than I’ve been alive.

Share your answer and see more faculty responses at terp.umd.edu/BigQ8.

Suggest a future question at terpfeedback.umd.edu.

P H O T O 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

SPRING 2020

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STICKING TOGETHER From going BIG to building a Greater College Park, President Wallace D. Loh will retire in June—and leave a stronger, transformed UMD.

BY T E R P S TA F F

There are many measures of leadership in higher education: degrees obtained, programs created, dollars raised, buildings constructed.

In the case of Wallace D. Loh, the number of small, gold turtle pins he enthusiastically handed out to faculty, staff and students works just as well—reminders of how a university president can’t be visible on every corner of the campus every day, but his vision will undoubtedly add up to a substantial collective impact.

After a decade leading the University of Maryland, Loh is retiring on June 30. He will be succeeded by Darryll J. Pines, a professor of engineering who led the A. James Clark School of Engineering as dean for 11 years.

It’s a natural time to reflect, so Terp reached out to people who were in a unique position to help make many of Loh’s priorities a reality: a scientist who propelled the university’s research accomplishments; a coach who made Maryland a pillar of Big Ten sports; a former county executive who pursued a new future for College Park; a philanthropist who gave back so Terps following in her footsteps would have new opportunities; and two alums who jumped at the chance to “Do Good.”

Read on to discover how the decade of Loh’s service became a fearless one.

“Dr. Loh is a transformational leader who is compassionate, visionary and intentional about creating a brighter future for our university and larger society.”

—CRAIG THOMPSON ’92, UNIVERSITY FOUNDATION TRUSTEE

“Dr. Loh has been instrumental to UMD’s success and has worked to ensure UMD is a world-class institution and good neighbor.”

—U.S. HOUSE MAJORITY WHIP STENY HOYER ’63

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

“One of my favorite memories of Dr. Loh was as an orientation adviser. On a tour of the gym, I pointed out Dr. Loh to my students. He stopped his workout, spoke with my students, handed everyone a turtle pin, and took a selfie with us.

For four years, I witnessed Dr. Loh’s commitment to building a campus community and spreading Maryland pride.”

“Wallace transformed the university’s role in the community, from launching the Purple Line and College Park Academy to redeveloping Route 1.”

—STATE SEN. JIM ROSAPEPE, FORMER UNIVERSITY SYSTEM OF MARYLAND REGENT

“As a result of Dr. Loh’s vision and hard work, the University of Maryland continues to be an innovative and diverse campus that is truly an excellent representation of our state as our flagship university.”

—STATE SENATE PRESIDENT EMERITUS THOMAS V. “MIKE” MILLER JR. ‘64

—ADWOA BOATENG ’18

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

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A FA R E W E L L T O D R . L O H

EXPANDING THE RESEARCH ENTERPRISE

E S S AY BY E L L E N W I L L I A M S

EACH YEAR I TEACH a class that brings together public policy, science and engineering students to develop a workable idea for a technology to mitigate climate change. The goal is not only a technically feasible project.

What about the national policy environment would allow this innovation to grow and have an effect? What economic factors

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

would have to be in place? This convergence of science and society symbolizes the last decade for me—both in my own work and at this university.

I’d had a full, exciting career in condensed matter physics at UMD when in 2010, BP offered me the chance to lead a sustainability initiative as the company’s chief scientist.

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

Ever since I was young, the question of the environment—a beautiful, balanced system we seem to be continually trying to force out of kilter—has always engaged me. So, I moved to London. After four years with BP, I had another amazing opportunity, and joined the U.S. Department of Energy as the director of the Advanced Research Projects AgencyEnergy, charged with innovating clean energy technologies.

In 2017, with the change of White House administrations, I returned to the University of Maryland. What a different place it is now, both in how it and the city of College Park look (not to mention how easy it is to find a good restaurant) and in our level of engagement with the world beyond campus. For me, the growing focus on sustainability in the university’s operations that Wallace Loh has made a priority, coupled with our ever-increasing prominence in clean energy and environmental research, are heartening.

There’s a clear sense of a university that is rallying around major research priorities with strong cross-disciplinary collaboration, in areas ranging from quantum science and technology to health equity and the protection of the Chesapeake Bay. The recent combining of our research enterprise with that of the University of Maryland, Baltimore creates opportunities for fruitful research partnerships and raises the prominence of Maryland research.

As I tell my combined technology-policy class, the most challenging problems we confront as a society often start in the world of science. We’ll find the answers when, as UMD increasingly does, we look at them from all angles.

ELLEN WILLIAMS IS A DISTINGUISHED UNIVERSITY PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS.

P O R T R A I T 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

200+

QUANTUM SCIENTISTS AND ENGINEERS

In the past decade, UMD has established

or renewed strategic partnerships for research and innovation with companies including Capital One, Leidos, Lockheed Martin, MITRE and Northrop Grumman.

Research awards rose 21% from $472M in FY11 to $570M in FY19.

SPRING 2020

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A FA R E W E L L T O D R . L O H

STORMING THE BIG TEN CONFERENCE

I WAS SHOCKED and worried when I first heard that Maryland was leaving the Atlantic Coast Conference for the Big Ten. It was November 2012 when I got the phone call from former athletic director Kevin Anderson, and my immediate reaction was, “Oh my gosh, where is this taking us?” Not only was the ACC the premier conference for women’s lacrosse, but the Big Ten didn’t have enough teams for a tournament—something that would have made scheduling and our path to national championships much trickier.

But as the news sunk in (and new teams were added to make a full women’s lacrosse conference), I started being the one who told our alums that everything was going to be OK. Change is hard. Maryland alums and fans grew up with ACC teams like Duke and North Carolina, and now we’re all getting used to playing Michigan State and Iowa. But for our program, we weren’t leaving all that history and success behind—we were taking our then-11 national championships with us.

And there was a formidable new rival waiting in the Midwest as well. Northwestern, our opponent in the 2010 and 2011 national championship games, had won seven titles of their own.

What really sealed the deal in my eyes was the first time one of our games was high-

E S S AY BY C AT H Y R E E S E ’ 9 8

lighted on the Big Ten Network. After getting a great win against Northwestern, I saw that I had received dozens of text messages from alums all across the United States and as far away as Australia who had watched the game from afar, something they and other fans could never do before. I remember thinking, “This is something that’s going to be pretty powerful.”

All of our sports have seen the benefits of the competition and exposure from Big Ten membership, with nearly 400 televised athletic events on the network between 2014 and 2019. It’s a foundation for our new campaign to update and transform sports facilities across all of Maryland Athletics, and provides a powerful voice on the national stage.

New fans are growing up in a new era. Our student-athletes want to compete to be the best they can be, and they know they can do that in the Big Ten Conference.

CATHY REESE ’98 WON FOUR NATIONAL TITLES AS AN ATTACKER FOR THE TERPS AND THREE AS AN ASSISTANT COACH AND HAS LED MARYLAND TO 11 CONSECUTIVE FINAL FOURS AND FIVE CHAMPIONSHIPS AS HEAD COACH SINCE 2007.

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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

32 5 CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIPS

NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS

The benefits of Big Ten membership go beyond the playing field. As part of the Big Ten Academic Alliance, Terps now have access to:

90M books through the UBorrow program 172 distance-learning language courses through CourseShare 70+ locations of shared study abroad programs

SPRING 2020

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A FA R E W E L L T O D R . L O H

BUILDING A GREATER COLLEGE PARK, TOGETHER

E S S AY BY R U S H E R N B A K E R I I I

3 5

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D

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6

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7

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B A LT

DR

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12

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OR

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11

13

14

10

KN OX RD

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

E E AV

9

8

15

1

Terrapin Row (apartments and retail)

2 Edward St. John Learning and Teaching Center 3

New Cole Field House

4 Physical Sciences Complex 5 A. James Clark Hall 6 Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering 7

The Varsity (apartments and retail)

16

WHEN WALLACE LOH came to the University of Maryland in 2010, I was told by my late friend Wayne Curry, one of my predecessors as Prince George’s County executive, that I had to meet him.

“He’s different,” Curry said. “He gets it.”

I was skeptical at first. UMD had often been its own island in the county, a great university that had a lot of talent, but ultimately a place with resources not at your disposal.

Yet after going to dinner with Dr. Loh and County Executive Curry—a meal that lasted more than three hours—I could tell that things really would be different.

First and foremost, Dr. Loh said that he would be buying a home in Prince George’s County. That just spoke volumes, as a statement of belief in the neighborhood and that he wasn’t just passing through. It went a long way with trust.

Then not long afterward, when I approached him to support the concept of the Purple Line, he immediately came aboard.

That set the tone for our relationship: a trustworthy leader who understood that UMD and the surrounding area have to work together in partnership.

The most dramatic example of this is the success of the Greater College Park initiative. I was always frustrated that

we had this major thoroughfare and nothing was happening. I wanted to see people eating outside in Prince George’s County. Now, Route 1 is no longer Route 1—it’s Baltimore Avenue. It looks totally different, and it’s directly tied to Dr. Loh coming here.

And those are just the visible things. I’m a proud graduate of Howard University, but plenty of University of Maryland graduates filled the top posts in my administration. Dr. Loh opened up the talent in terms of the professors and the students, and the amount of jobs created in the area skyrocketed. When I went on economic development trips to China and India, I would always circle the location of UMD for the hosts. I started going to Terps basketball and football games. I felt like a Terp.

I feel very confident the structure is firm now. These commitments are long-term and changes are not going to stop. When I started as county executive, the house was on fire and I needed a bucket of water. Dr. Loh immediately grabbed the bucket.

He’s somebody I will always consider a personal friend.

RUSHERN L. BAKER III IS PRESIDENT AND CEO OF THE BAKER STRATEGY GROUP AND IS CREATING A NATIONAL EXECUTIVE LEADERSHIP TRAINING PROGRAM FOR LOCAL GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS WITH THE UMD SCHOOL OF PUBLIC POLICY. HE SERVED IN THE MARYLAND HOUSE OF DELEGATES (1994-2003) AND AS COUNTY EXECUTIVE OF PRINCE GEORGE’S COUNTY (2010-18).

8 Vigilante Coffee 9 University View (apartments and retail) 10 New City Hall 11 Landmark (apartments), Target Express 12 The Hotel at the University of Maryland 13 WeWork 14 The Hall CP 15 The Alloy (apartments and retail)

If you haven’t been to campus in the last decade, you might be surprised to see all the changes. Here are some of the new and coming campus buildings that have changed the face of UMD:

• Physical Sciences Complex • Edward St. John Learning and Teaching Center • A. James Clark Hall • New Cole Field House

• School of Public Policy Building • E.A. Fernandez IDEA Factory • Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering

16 Lidl (supermarket)

SPRING 2020

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A FA R E W E L L T O D R . L O H

SPURRING STUDENT ACHIEVEMENT

78 countries available to study abroad program participants, up from 62 in 2010

“I did five D.C. internships—three on the Hill, two in the private sector—thanks to UMD’s location and commitment to helping students find opportunities.”

—BHAVJEET BASSON ’19 (ECONOMICS), STAFF ASSISTANT FOR U.S. SEN. BEN CARDIN, D-MD.

Fulbright Scholarship winners: 2000-09: 33 2010-19: 127 UP 384% Internship growth: 84% of Terps had at least one internship (2018 Graduation survey)

265% growth in computer science major since 2010: With 3,188 undergraduates, it’s the biggest program in the U.S.

1 03% I N C R E AS E I N ST E M U N D E R G RA D UAT E D EG R E ES AWA R D E D ; 85% FO R G RA D UAT E ST U D E N TS

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TO P P H OTO BY D I N A B O RZ E KOWS K I ; B OT TO M BY ST E P H A N I E S. CO R D L E

A FA R E W E L L T O D R . L O H

INVESTING IN THE ARTS 2014: The DeVos Institute of Arts Management moves from the Kennedy Center to UMD. Since then, it’s served nearly 1,500 organizations and trained 55 fellows.

2014: The annual NextNOW Fest debuts to celebrate the arts at Maryland. More than 30,000 people have attended.

2015: UMD and D.C.’s world-renowned Phillips Collection forge a partnership to provide new opportunities for education, innovation, research and exploration.

600

PERFORMANCES AND EVENTS AT THE CLARICE PER YEAR The School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies and the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts embarked on a five-year partnership that created a bilingual co-production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” performed at The Clarice and in Beijing in 2012.

P H O T O BY S TA N B A R O U G H

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A FA R E W E L L T O D R . L O H

SPARKING THE DO GOOD SPIRIT

E S S AY BY K A R E N L E V E N S O N ’ 76

DO GOOD INITIATIVE UMD launched the Do Good Initiative in 2016 to become the nation’s first “Do Good” campus.

1,700+ students take Do Good-related courses. 100+ teams participate annually in the Do Good Challenge.

UMD is ranked No. 4 among large colleges and universities on the Peace Corps’ 2020 list of Top Volunteer-Producing Colleges and Universities.

66 Terps currently serve; 1,340+ have since the program’s 1961 inception.

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THE RISE OF THE DO GOOD CAMPUS during the 10 years that Dr. Wallace Loh has been president may well turn out to be his most lasting legacy.

For many years I worked with high school students in a hands-on program that taught them the importance of educated philanthropy. That work led my husband and me to approach my alma mater, the University of Maryland, with an idea that had a twopronged mission.

We wanted to launch a program that would: 1. educate and empower future social innovators and nonprofit leaders through undergraduate and graduate curriculum; and 2. create courses and experiences for the entire campus so that every UMD student graduates informed and motivated to go into their communities and do good.

I’ll never forget our first meeting to present our idea to Dr. Loh. He was immediately all in, saying he wanted this idea of students doing good in addition to doing well to be a key pillar in a University of Maryland education.

From that moment on, Dr. Loh took the lead in pushing for the launch of the Do Good Institute and America’s first Do Good campus.

He’s advocated for significant private funds to pay for staff and endow several professorships, and he joined my husband and me to lobby the state legislature for $20 million for a new building that recently broke ground to house the Do Good Institute.

And, importantly, he played the lead role in encouraging students and faculty across virtually every college on campus, from aspiring engineers to business majors, to get involved. The results have been extraordinary. Thanks to Dr. Loh’s leadership, we have student-led initiatives: packaging millions of meals for the hungry; opening dental clinics in Honduras; reclaiming expired but still perfectly good medicines and providing them to those in need; repurposing thousands of tons of bruised fruit every year that would otherwise go to waste; and hundreds of other student efforts to do good on our campus, in our community and around the world.

I have yet to come across a student who doesn’t say this is transformational. Every year, more courses are being added and more students are graduating and going on to do good in their communities and beyond.

We’ve been lucky to have had Dr. Loh as our partner over these first 10 years, and we look forward to working with Dr. Darryll Pines when he begins his appointment in July!

KAREN LEVENSON ’76 IS AN EDUCATOR, TRUSTEE WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND COLLEGE PARK FOUNDATION AND CO-CHAIR OF FEARLESS IDEAS: THE CAMPAIGN FOR MARYLAND.

P H O T O BY J U S T I N D E R AT O

ENERGIZING ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND INNOVATION MY WHOLE LIFE I WAS INTERESTED in social entrepreneurship—combining business with an impact. I wanted to make as much of a difference as possible.

I also wanted to go to Maryland. My grandmother, parents, and aunts and uncles went to UMD, and I’ve cheered on the Terps since I was a 9-year old watching them win the 2002 NCAA basketball championship.

Everything came together in the 2014 Do Good Challenge. I had already started Hungry Harvest, a delivery service aiming to save “ugly” surplus produce and reduce food waste, in my dorm basement as part of a Social Innovation Fellows program in the Smith School. But being on stage and pitching my idea to an audience of 500 people was a completely new experience.

I remember being aware of how much energy I had. I really wasn’t nervous—the first time in my life I had felt that way during a big presentation. I thought, “This is what I’m built for.”

Since then, I’ve seen both my own business and the idea of doing good as an entrepreneur take off at UMD. Less than a year after we started, the long days and nights selling

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

E S S AY BY E VA N L U T Z ’ 1 4

produce in front of Stamp Student Union and knocking on doors in D.C. led to a $100,000 boost from an investor on ABC’s reality show “Shark Tank.” Today, we have a team of 60 employees spread over nine states who have so far prevented 20 million pounds of food from being wasted.

UMD is putting resources and people into these ideas, with initiatives like the Do Good Institute and Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship. Businesses can engineer themselves so making sales is making impact—one goes up, the other goes up automatically. That’s really compelling.

I love talking to students.

I can relate to what they are going through, and I’m still learning as well. Entrepreneurship should not feel like an exclusive EVAN LUTZ ’14 IS CEO AND FOUNDER OF club. All it takes is BALTIMORE-BASED HUNGRY HARVEST, being resilient and willWHICH DELIVERS BOXES OF PRODUCE ing to learn, and the TO CUSTOMERS University of Maryland AND DONATES TO NONPROFITS is creating an environADDRESSING HUNGER. ment around that.

INNOVATION & ENTREPRENEURSHIP The Academy for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) launched in 2013 to provide experiences that prepare students to tackle the world’s toughest problems 54% of undergraduates now engage in I&E through its activities 220 courses offered 16,760 students have taken at least one course related to I&E

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A FA R E W E L L T O D R . L O H

SERVING THE STATE

E S S AY BY A M I TA B H VA R S H N E Y

WHEN YOU THINK OF COMPUTER SCIENCE, the first things that spring to mind are probably not opioid addiction and trauma care. Yet, about seven years ago, my research veered from visualizing plasma turbulence and molecular surfaces and toward analyzing mild traumatic brain injuries and using virtual and augmented reality to guide ultrasounds in the emergency room and provide non-opioid pain management.

The reason for this shift was simple: the MPowering the State initiative. This strategic partnership was signed in 2012 by University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP) President Wallace D. Loh and former University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) President Jay Perman (now the University System of Maryland chancellor). The powerful idea behind it was to leverage the complementary strengths of our two campuses for the betterment of the entire state.

I’ll be honest. I had been a computer science faculty member at UMCP since 2000 and had never collaborated with anyone at UMB before MPower came along.

During the initiative’s first year, I helped create the Center for Health-Related Informatics and Bioimaging to accelerate advances in personalized medicine in key areas like Parkinson’s disease, cancer, autism and diabetes. The center combines the advanced computing knowledge at UMCP with the clinical expertise in UMB’s School of Medicine.

More recently, I helped launch the Maryland Blended Reality Center with physicians from the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center in Baltimore. We are developing immersive training modules for medical professionals, law enforcement, the performing arts and more. In addition to funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, we recently received a philanthropic gift from the Edward St. John

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Foundation to use immersive visualization technology to train emergency medical professionals to quickly and safely perform a limb-saving procedure called a fasciotomy.

In the future, medical personnel—first in Maryland and then elsewhere—will be able to save more limbs and more lives.

From where I stand, MPower has been a rousing success. On a personal level, this initiative has allowed me to have a greater impact on the state, and even the world, through my research. On a campus level, our universities had only one joint research proposal awarded before this initiative. Since then, 600 joint proposals have yielded $204 million in research grants.

MPower is one example of an ethic of service to the state of Maryland that has been on the rise at our university. This ethic calls us to educate the future workforce, conduct research to benefit society, strengthen the economy and boost the quality of life for residents. The following are just a few of the threads in that broad tapestry of service: Partnering with farmers, businesses and communities around Maryland to develop new sources of income, fight rural opioid addiction and protect our natural resources.

Fighting human trafficking in our region and caring for survivors through the University of Maryland SAFE (Support, Advocacy, Freedom, and Empowerment) Center.

Supporting entrepreneurs and connecting them with funding and technical expertise to build the region’s innovation economy.

Our Discovery District is a growing hub for innovative companies and research-based government agencies alike, with positive impacts across the campus and far beyond.

Graduating highly skilled students in disciplines ranging from computer science

to the arts and from bioengineering to education. We are ensuring that businesses, from startup to well-established, continue to plant roots in our region.

If we had all day (and the entire magazine), I could tell you about many more examples.

I’m proud to contribute to this effort, and I can’t wait to see what this growing, collaborative spirit of service accomplishes next.

AMITABH VARSHNEY IS DEAN OF THE COLLEGE OF COMPUTER, MATHEMATICAL, AND NATURAL SCIENCES AND A PROFESSOR OF COMPUTER SCIENCE.

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

The MPowering the State strategic partnership formed in 2012 with the University of Maryland, Baltimore helps to grow the economy, expand educational opportunities, advance research and address the state’s critical issues.

Highlights:

$204M

in joint research grants secured

103

startups launched

25

The University of Maryland Extension in 2019 engaged over

420,000

Marylanders with 5,000+ volunteers and 5,000+ partnerships

Nearly

3,700

entrepreneurs served by UMD’s Small Business Development Center in 2019

$166M

in annual tax revenue generated through UMD’s Maryland Industrial Partnerships program

joint centers and programs, including the MLaw Undergraduate Program in Law, the Center for Brain Health and Human Performance, the Maryland Blended Reality Center, the SAFE Center for Human Trafficking Survivors and the Opioid Use Disorders Research Collaboration

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A FA R E W E L L T O D R . L O H

REACHING NEW HEIGHTS IN FUNDRAISING E S S AY BY A L M A G . G I L D E N H O R N ’ 5 3

EVERY ONCE IN A LIFETIME, you receive a gift that changes your life.

My gift was a scholarship to the University of Maryland. Arriving at College Park, I felt a whole new world had opened for me. The gratitude that I felt on that day has never left me.

At Maryland, I thrived and grew in so many ways.

I was absorbed in my studies, made new friends and became involved in campus activities. My intellect was challenged, and my ability to function on my own in a diverse environment helped me to mature.

Appreciation, gratitude, opportunities—these were Regent Scholarships, the Gildenhorn Recital Hall, and the Gildmore than just words to me. They were positive motienhorn Institute for Israel Studies are examples of our commitment vators. I worked hard to excel and graduated first in to our alma mater. my class from the College of Education. I was elected I have had the honor and privilege of co-chairing three president of the Association of Women Students and campaigns. Presently, we are striving to complete the $1.5 served on the board of the Student Government billion Fearless Ideas: The Campaign for Maryland. Through Association. Most importantly, I met my wonderALMA G. GILDENHORN ’53 this ambitious effort, we’ve seen the fruits of Dr. Wallace ful husband, Joe, a lifelong Terp!

IS A PHILANTHROPIST Loh’s vision come to life. In addition to attracting great Life skills, learned and honed during my time AND CO-CHAIR OF UMD’S CURRENT FEARLESS faculty, creating state-of-the-art facilities and funding at Maryland, prepared me to express gratitude IDEAS AND PREVIOUS GREAT EXPECTATIONS scholarships, he has understood the importance of revitalizthrough service and philanthropy in my comFUNDRAISING CAMPAIGNS. SHE ALSO CHAIRED THE ing and reintegrating the Greater College Park community to munity. The University of Maryland was my first CAMPAIGN TO BUILD THE benefit generations to come. priority.

CLARICE SMITH PERFORMING ARTS CENTER. I can say with certainty that Dr. Loh wholeheartedly Supporting Maryland has brought my husband believes in the upward trajectory of our great research uniand me great joy. Together, we both believe versity. At every opportunity, he has represented Maryland that to whom much is given, much is expected. with dignity, civility and humanity, and he has inspired others to We give back to “give forward.” The future of our great university support the university’s Fearless Ideas. Dr. Loh has expanded and depends on leadership, innovation, intellectual pursuit, creativity strengthened our philanthropic enterprise, a tremendous legacy that and philanthropic support. “Giving forward” guarantees our future will live on at Maryland. Go Terps! endeavors and enables us to attract our greatest asset, our students.

In 2012, completed the $1B Great Expectations fundraising campaign, and is on track to meet the $1.5B goal for Fearless Ideas: The Campaign for Maryland

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# OF STUDENT SCHOLARSHIPS: 1,312 IN 2010, AND 2,473 IN 2020 Secured a $219.5M investment from the A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation, the sixthlargest private gift to any public university.

INCREASED ANNUAL FUNDRAISING FROM $102M IN 2010 TO $202M IN 2019 P H O T O B Y J O H N T. C O N S O L I

A FA R E W E L L T O D R . L O H

CREATING A DIVERSE, INCLUSIVE MARYLAND

6-YEAR UNDERGRADUATE GRADUATION RATES African Americans: Up from 70.8% to 81.3% Hispanics/Latinos: Up from 72% to 81.5% All students: 81.8% to 87.1%

WOMEN IN STEM DISCIPLINES A. James Clark School of Engineering: 627 to 1,107 College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences: 1,895 to 2,554

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

133% INCREASE IN INTERNATIONAL UNDERGRADUATES

The Office of Diversity and Inclusion, which opened in its current iteration in 2012, works to foster a stronger community at Maryland.

2,335 students have participated in the Words of Engagement Intergroup Dialogue program in the past decade.

Bias Incident Support Services, launched

in 2018, provides support, guidance and advocacy to Terps affected by acts of bias.

UMD has been named a “Best of the Best” campus for LGBTQ students by Campus Pride every year since 2012.

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In 1956,Rob Briskman sat

in a University of Maryland classroom fretting over “a really bad problem.”

The Army signal intelligence officer, back from Cold War clashes with Soviet and other spies in Europe, was in fact struggling with the United States’ really bad problem—one buried in the still-undisclosed arcana of radio frequencies.

While taking graduate classes in electrical engineering at UMD, Briskman was quietly juggling classified work with government agencies developing surveillance and satellite technologies.

And now, as the whiz-kid engineer from Princeton listened to Professor Henry Reed discuss UHF wave propagation, his own antenna locked onto something important.

“He was talking about something he had done, and it hit me all of a sudden—you know, I bet I could do that elsewhere,” Briskman says, before adding with a cryptic smile, “And I did.”

Over the broad sweep of Briskman’s lengthy career, he’s taken on many identities: spy, space race pioneer, inventor, businessman. One apt description flows through every phase: innovator.

That classified project sparked at UMD wasn’t his first innovation, but Briskman calls it the key one, an ongoing national secret that paradoxically made him famous in locked rooms where it mattered.

After the military, he was involved in the founding of NASA and the world’s first commercial satellite company COMSAT, and in his next act, oversaw the development of then unheard-of technologies, like tiny satellite receivers in cars as co-founder of Sirius Satellite

Radio. (It’s a feat many users simply experience as their daily, uncensored dose of Howard Stern.)

“Rob has been there for the whole history of satellites,” says Briskman’s friend, business collaborator and technical paper co-author, Joe Foust, vice president of program management for MAXAR, which builds satellites for the company, now known as SiriusXM. “He’s sharp technically, and knows what satellites can and can’t do, but he also knows people. He took something free— radio—that people just took for granted, and improved it, and now people are willing to pay for it. It changed the entertainment industry.”

Now 87, and with the sky above increasingly full of satellites (more than 2,000 at last count, with many more planned), Briskman is on to his fifth act; he’s developing a kind of traffic safety system for increasingly crowded orbits.

“With his accomplishments in satellite communications and space systems, Rob Briskman’s work is woven into the fabric of daily life,” says Darryll J. Pines, who will become president of the university after more than a decade as dean of the A. James Clark School of Engineering. “The great thing is, nearly six decades after graduating from the Clark School, he’s still turning new ideas into innovation.”

Today, Briskman is supporting innovation at Maryland as a founding donor to the E.A. Fernandez IDEA Factory, now under construction to encourage student creativity and invention. Here are some snapshots—the ones we’re allowed to see, anyway—from a 65-yearand-counting career.

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1954-59 “A Bright Young American Engineer” As Briskman, an engineering major and ROTC member, neared graduation from Princeton in 1954, he says, “I felt like I was being followed.” He was right. He later learned he was being sized up for a classified assignment as a young lieutenant leading an army signals intelligence unit spying mainly on the Soviet missile program. He took command, then transitioned after a few years into a civilian job doing much the same work with the Army Security Agency.

It was more spy-vs.-spy than slide rules and equations. “We were killing people. They were killing us if they could,” he says bluntly.

He can talk, vaguely, about a single declassified mission from that time, when his unit participated in an audacious mission to dig a tunnel beneath the Berlin Wall and tap into a communication line. Until its discovery almost a year later, the U.S. and allies could eavesdrop on Eastern bloc communications.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union, part of the tunnel has been restored and turned into a museum. “Apparently there’s a cute little plaque that reads, ‘A bright young American engineer realized you could put sensors on the cables and pick up the transmissions,’” says Lenore Briskman, married to Robert Briskman for more than 60 years. “That was him.”

the American space program, Wernher von Braun. Briskman had already been working on spacecraft antennae, a forest of them for different radio bands on the Gemini capsule.

For a new project von Braun told him it would have to be different. “He said, ‘Rob, have you ever looked at the antennae you put all over Gemini? For Apollo, you’ve got to find a way to use one antenna.”

In response, he developed the Unified S-band System, which combines all the communications, telemetry, command, tracking and video functions into one radio frequency band using one antenna. The military still uses it today.

1964-85 Early Bird and Beyond Briskman’s next job, starting in 1964, was with the newly established COMSAT, the first commercial satellite company, which operated communications satellites that served the entire world. He was in charge of launching the pioneering INTELSAT 1, or “Early Bird,” in 1965, but what he considers his greatest breakthrough came in the 1970s, as he worked to create the first domestic communications satellite program. Although it’s a persistent issue, radio frequency bandwidth was especially limiting in those days. Briskman, however, developed a new technique known as “satellite transmission cross-polar-

ization”—which allowed a near doubling of transmission capacity, essentially cutting the cost of satellite communication by half.

“Before, satellites were seen as this exotic thing that you would use to communicate across the ocean or around the world,” he says. “But after this, they were practical to use for domestic communications.”

1977 “A Problem With Your Reservation” While he worked at COMSAT, Briskman’s previous life in military intelligence resurfaced strangely during a 1977 trip to an electronics engineering convention in Moscow.

When the rest of his group checked into the Rossiya, the standard Moscow hotel for Americans, he was told there was a problem with his reservation and sent to a dingy, suspect-looking hotel bugged with microphones.

The next morning, a crew-cut Russian firmly escorted him to the airport. Without explanation, he was flown to Siberia, where he was driven to a satellite ground station.

“They handed me a bunch of keys and said, ‘Would you please go through, thoroughly, everything in the station? If there’s a door that doesn’t open, come back to the car, and I’ll take care of it immediately.’”

He did as asked, and was soon delivered back to his conference. He later learned that

1959-63 Pingpong With Von Braun Proud as she was of his service to the country, Lenore worried about the gunplay and cloak-and-dagger aspects, and convinced him to move to a newly created government agency: NASA. Not yet 30 years old, Briskman became the chief of program support for NASA’s Office of Tracking and Data Acquisition.

His next challenge came from an unlikely table tennis partner during work breaks: former Nazi rocket scientist and father of

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Briskman (center) oversees the launch of “Early Bird,” the world’s first commercial satellite, in 1965 in Washington, D.C.

the United States suspected Russia of violating treaty agreements regarding the station, mistaking it for a missile control facility. “I guess they thought that if I said it was just used for communications, I’d be believed.”

1989-today “Technically Impossible” In his Rockville, Md., townhouse (which he and Lenore are selling in preparation for a move to Princeton, N.J.) Briskman fishes out his Android phone and pulls up the SiriusXM app.

Although the station’s signature content is Stern’s show, Briskman’s phone is soon pumping out the mid-century strains of the Glenn Miller Orchestra. He credits co-founder David Margolese with the savvy move of lassoing the shock jock for the platform and ensuring listeners would follow.

(Another well-known UMD figure, former student and pharmaceutical development CEO Martine Rothblatt, was involved in getting Sirius’s predecessor company rolling.)

Briskman’s role was the technical implementation and operation of the Sirius system.

That meant breaking through a number of barriers, from a lack of satellite receivers small enough to work in a car to signals being blocked by structures, terrain and overpasses. From the start, he was told it was impossible. “That’s fighting words for me. It took me seven years to figure it out, but I did it,” he says, gesturing to a wall of patents to his left.

2016-today Space Jam An ironic outcome of Briskman’s success: The sky is brimming with satellites, creating new risks. As private space firms make

reaching orbit ever cheaper, thousands of new low-orbiting spacecraft could be just a few hundred miles overhead in coming years.

The advantage: Compared to traditional communications satellites (which perch in geostationary orbit tens of thousands of miles away), they’re cheaper and exchange signals far more quickly with the ground, enabling new technologies; their rising numbers, however, create an increased likelihood of collision, which could lead to a debris cloud that creates even more risk.

Briskman might just solve the issue with his latest venture, a system that would give satellites the ability to sense and swerve out of the way of space junk.

Seeing the problem clearly and moving decisively to solve it is pure Briskman, says his friend Denis Curtin, a physicist and engineer who worked under Briskman at COMSTAR. “He’s someone who sees things coming before they get here,” says Curtin, “and then he gets in the middle of it in a big way.” TERP

Awards for a Life of Innovation In May, Robert Briskman is being named an honorary fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Among his many other honors and awards: Member of the National Academy of Engineering; University of Maryland Innovation Hall of Fame, Distinguished Alumni Award and Technology Business Leadership Award; Society of Satellite Professionals International Hall of Fame; International Astronautical Federation Hall of Fame and Fellow; Consumer Electronics Association Hall of Fame; IEEE Life Fellow, Pioneer and Resnick Awards and Centennial Medal; NASA Apollo Achievement Award, Army Commendation Medal.

O P P O S I T E PAG E : P H OTO CO U RT E SY O F R O B E RT B R I S K M A N ; A B O V E P H O T O B Y J O H N T. C O N S O L I

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ALUMNI

A S S O C I AT I O N

Letter From the Executive Director THE NEW coronavirus changed the lives of all of us this

spring, including the Terp family here at the Alumni Association. We had to cancel events, shift operations from the office to our dining room tables and rethink what it means to work, network and stay connected.

Even in these challenging times, your Alumni Association remains uniquely positioned to connect you with fellow Terps, prepare you for new opportunities and strengthen your legacy and alma mater.

While we may not be together in person, we’ve expanded our already robust virtual programs, including: • Webinars: Sharpen your skills in the kitchen, in the boardroom or on the yoga

Career Resources Your Alumni Association is here to support your personal and professional advancement. We can connect you with others in your industry, provide career development and help you discover your passion. Get started with these programs and offerings: TERRAPINS CONNECT As a Terp, you have exclusive access to our digital networking and mentorship platform: Terrapins Connect. You can mentor the next generation of Terp leaders, get invaluable career advice or connect with Terps who can help you get hired. terrapinsconnect.umd.edu

mat with webinars designed to help you advance personally and professionally.

• Virtual Book Club: Connect with fellow Terp readers on business, communi-

TIPS FOR TERPS

cations, leadership, productivity, fiction, leisure and more.

Sign up for a new monthly e-news-

• Coursera: Learn something new by taking a free UMD class online.

letter that will share key resources

• Online Directory: Find and connect with former classmates and friends.

that UMD provides to alumni and will

• Alumni Blog: Read inspiring stories, professional advice and exciting updates

keep you up-to-date on career trends.

from your fellow fearless alumni.

To start receiving this newsletter, email Ellie

• Social Media: Find virtual throwback game watches, meet up with fellow

Geraghty at ellieg@umd.edu.

Terps or just connect via Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. MARYLAND MASTER CLASS You can find these programs and more at alumni.umd.edu.

The Alumni Association’s Maryland

When we are able to gather again, trust that we will be ready with a diverse

Master Class webinar series, a mem-

array of programs to appeal to our vibrant alumni community. For example, the

bers-only benefit, can kick-start your

Alumni Association outreach team is creating female-focused programming

career and professional development

on topics such as leadership and career advancement. The upcoming initiative

while broadening your network of Terp profes-

TerpsThrive will enable meaningful, virtual mentoring and support for alumnae.

sionals—all from the comfort of your home. Learn

I’m also excited to announce the new Jewish Alumni Network will be coming

more about the series and our bimonthly webinar

online soon, in partnership with Maryland Hillel. We foster the engagement

program featuring noteable Terp alumni speakers.

of alums who share a race, religion and/or sexual orientation through other

alumni.umd.edu/webinars

affinity networks including Asian Pacific American Alumni, Latinx Alumni, Muslim Alumni of Maryland, Black Alumni and Lambda Pride. You can expand

CAREERS FOR TERPS

your social circle—and boost your professional path—through their hundreds of

A partnership with the University

annual networking and celebratory events.

of Maryland Career Center,

However you join us, we look forward to seeing you soon.

Careers4Terps is the primary online career management tool for students and alumni. Whether you’re looking for a job or to

Amy Eichhorst

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

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hire a Terp, Careers4Terps is a one-stop shop. careers.umd.edu/careers4terps

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

New Conference Gives Startups 100 TEN Percent Terp Entrepreneur Network Hosts Hundreds of Savvy Startup Terps ore than 225 enterprising alumni, students and faculty gathered in March for the first EnTERPreneur Conference, co-hosted by the Terp Entrepreneur Network (TEN) and the Alumni Association.

During the daylong event, company founders mingled with successful business owners, advisers and potential investors to build connections and a deeper understanding of the ups and downs of startup life.

“We were able to offer this incredibly galvanizing experience for alumni who consider themselves innovative or enterprising with no regard to which college they graduated from,” says Sammy Popat ’02, campus connector and Discovery District manager for the university’s Office of Innovation and Economic Development.

“We’re finding there’s great excitement and interest in sharing resources and strategies.”

The conference offered panels on female entrepreneurs, technology ventures and social responsibility, which drew overwhelming interest and complemented the university’s role as the nation’s first Do Good campus.

Future TEN events may incorporate additional content about female founders, paths to financial and investment success and how to build successful partnerships.

For Shyon Parsadoust ’19, the conference offered a new opportunity to meet like-minded creatives and

M

P H OTOS BY L I SA H E L F E RT

business owners. The founder of ToucanFamily (toucanfamily.com)—a web platform enabling college students to find freelance jobs in graphic design, photography and videography—donned a tropical Toucan shirt and went in hoping to pick up some new strategies.

He walked out with several prospective clients.

“There are so many incredible people who have graduated from Maryland,” Parsadoust said.

The conference also featured a TEN Resource Center, an Apple Genius Bar-style experience that allowed students and alumni to share their needs and desires with the TEN board.

As an undergraduate, Nikhil Balakumar ’14 struggled to find the support he craved to foster his innovator’s spirit. After seeing a university vision take shape, Balakumar, now principal at climate solutions company Greentel Group, has returned to lead TEN’s board.

“We really want Terp entrepreneurs to feel heard and that we’re actively working with each and every one of them to discover and unleash their entrepreneurial goals,” he says. —KIMBERLY MARSELAS ’00

Top: The Resource Fair featured UMD offices and programs that support entrepreneurs.

Above: UMD Chief Innovation Officer Julie Lenzer moderates a panel of distinguished Terps discussing successes and failures in entrepreneurship.

Learn more and get involved at alumni.umd.edu/ten.

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ALUMNI

PROFILES

D O M I N I Q U E D AW E S ’ 0 2

Former Olympic D Gymnast Takes the Next Leap Medal-Winning Alum’s New Academy Aims to Build Kids’ Confidence, Self-Esteem

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ominique dawes ’02 flipped, twisted and tumbled her way to four Olympic medals, but the former high-flying gymnast known as “Awesome Dawesome” remembers the low points, too. Judges deducted points for her slightly bowed legs, and she was “constantly” criticized for having flat feet.

“How does that help a kid’s self-esteem at all?” she says.

Now, Dawes is helping to combat that harshly judgmental culture in the sport with her own training facility. The Dominique Dawes Gymnastics Academy, located in Clarksburg, Md., aims to provide a safe, uplifting environment for kids, fostering friendships and confidence while teaching the sport’s fundamentals. Due to uncertainty caused by

the COVID-19 outbreak, the gym will open once it is safe to do so.

“The purpose of the sport in my academy is not creating Olympic champions,” Dawes says.

“The focus is on creating happy, healthy, whole kids—developing the whole person.”

Dawes, who started gymnastics as a 6-year old, worked her way up to the 1992 Olympics by age 15, earning bronze with Team USA. She enrolled at UMD in 1995, bouncing back and forth between her New Leonardtown residence hall and Hill’s Gymnastics Training Center in Gaithersburg to train 36–40 hours a week. After taking time off to compete in the 1996 and 2000 Games, racking up gold and bronze team medals and an individual bronze for her floor routine, she retired from the sport and graduated with a communications degree in 2002.

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

CLASS NOTES SOPHIA HADJIPANTELI ’18 , founder

“The focus is on creating happy, healthy, whole kids— developing the whole person.”

—DOMINIQUE DAWES ‘02

of the #UnibrowMovement on social media, was featured on a cover of the digital February issue of Glamour UK, celebrating self-love and showing the changing faces of beauty.

Former Vikings linebacker E.J. HENDERSON ’02 will be inducted into

From there, Dawes became involved in broadcasting, providing gymnastics commentary and analysis for outlets including CBS Sports and Fox Sports. She served as president of the Women’s Sports Foundation from 2005–06 and was named a co-chair of the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition in 2010. Along the way, she shared her story as a motivational speaker, got married and had four children.

That time away from the grind of competing helped give Dawes a new perspective on gymnastics. People outside the sport, from her husband to attendees at her speaking engagements, opened her eyes to problems with the culture she had trained in, like the intense scrutiny and focus on perfecting flaws in routine.

“People in the audience would ask me, ‘Well, is this something you would put your kids in?’ And I would always say no,” Dawes says. “Yelling or ignoring a kid’s tears, or demeaning or kicking a kid out, or having an enormous amount of control over a kid where their parent can’t even step in—that type of environment is extremely unhealthy.”

Those feelings only intensified in 2016, when gymnasts came forward with

P H OTO BY M I C H A E L ST E E L E / E M P I CS V I A G E T T Y I M AG ES ; I L L U S T R AT I O N S BY J A S O N A . K E I S L I N G

allegations of sexual abuse against the now-convicted former Team USA doctor Larry Nassar, a “monster,” Dawes says, whom she had previously worked with and trusted.

Dawes set out to create a new kind of gym—one that she’d be comfortable having her own kids attend. Cameras in the performance space allow parents to check on their children’s sessions online at any time. Staff members earn positions not due to their gymnastics background, but rather their experience working with kids. And all abilities and body types are welcome, with a focus on “building a positive sense of self,” Dawes says, “and not looking at yourself and comparing yourself to someone else.”

The gym includes space for co-ed participants ages 9 months to 6 years and a room for “ninja,” an obstacle course-style activity similar to what’s on the TV show “American Ninja Warrior Junior.” It also features recreational, developmental and competitive space for girls in first grade and up, and Dawes hopes to later expand to more locations throughout Maryland.

“The degrading yelling I have witnessed on some of my kids’ sports teams over the years, as well as the pressure to specialize in one sport at the highest level year-round, is so frustrating and heartbreaking as a parent,” says Emily Lederer ’98, a friend of Dawes who helped organize meet and greets to introduce the gym to other Clarksburg moms. “I am so impressed with Dominique’s positive and empowering mission for her academy. It’s so refreshing.”—ad

the College Football Hall of Fame in December. A first-team All-American as a junior and a senior for the Terps, Henderson received the 2002 Bednarik Award as the nation’s best defensive player. He played his entire NFL career for Minnesota, retiring after the 2011 season.

ESPN “Sportscenter” host SCOTT VAN PELT ’88 is moving his show from

the network’s headquarters in Bristol, Conn., to D.C. in August to be closer to family. “It’s home,” he said. “It’s my friends. It’s the Terps. It’s just where I’m from.”

DENNIS ANDRUCYK ’82 was promoted

to director of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. He previously served as the deputy associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate

and has held many positions at Goddard; he also worked at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory, National Security Agency and more.

PETER MEHLMAN ’77 , a former writer

and executive producer for “Seinfeld,” has a new novel out, “#MeAsWell,” about a veteran sportswriter whose non-PC joke puts him at the center of a media firestorm and the #MeToo conversation.

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

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ALUMNI

PROFILES

RHEA FEIKIN ’56

The Role of a Lifetime “First Lady” of MPT Signs Off After 50-Year Career

R

hea feikin ’56 grew up wanting to be an actress, but it turned out the role she was always meant for was just being herself.

After nearly 50 years at Maryland Public Television, the first lady of MPT retired in March after a career that saw her go from hosting a game show for the Maryland Lottery and appearing in the 1988 film “Hairspray” to being the face of MPT pledge drives.

“I sort of had a talent for begging,” she says.

The Baltimore native turned her UMD degree in speech pathology and theater experience at Maryland into a gateway to TV. Working as a speech therapist, she volunteered for an educational program at WBAL, hosting “Betty Better Speech” and then writing, producing and starring in the local children’s show “Miss Rhea and Sunshine.” That collaboration with puppeteer Cal Schumann led to their pairing for evening weather reports.

After the station fired them—prompting a mischievous Feikin and Schumann to walk off set midway through their last show—Feikin began freelancing and started at MPT with the 1970s staple “Consumer Survival Kit.” She had to fight for her place as a female

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host in that era, particularly as an on-camera presenter for corporate videos, and when someone told her women weren’t authoritative enough for those roles, she’d retort, “Your mother wasn’t authoritative?”

Over the following decades, her responsibilities at MPT grew, including hosting the series “Artworks” and “Chesapeake Collectibles,” interviewing celebrities and remaining a singular presence for on-air pledge drives.

She eventually became comfortable bucking the convention of maintaining relentless cheer on air. On one occasion, she told viewers that she didn’t particularly like “Doctor Who” or care if the program went off the air, so fans had better make the pledge phones ring.

She’s always been an open book, says Linda Taggart, who began working with her as a producer in the 1980s and is now vice president of development for MPT. The pair made sure pledge segments were a show within the

show, and Feikin’s welcoming presence put guests at ease.

“You can feel her sincerity,” Taggart says.

“She has taught us well.”

Feikin’s last on-air appearance was for a March 1 pledge drive, fitting for the true believer in the mission of public television.

While she has always been active in the arts world, helping found Baltimore Center Stage in 1963, Feikin says MPT is one of the best avenues for people of all ages, races and socioeconomic backgrounds to see everything from opera to museum exhibits without leaving home.

There are some things Feikin won’t miss, such as arranging and packing 13 outfits for two days of shooting a season of “Chesapeake Collectibles.” And a well-earned retirement will give her a chance to catch up on—what else?—binging television shows.

“I’m not a bit guilty about spending hours doing that,” she says.—lf

P H OTO CO U RT ESY O F M A RY L A N D P U B L I C T E L EV I S I O N

K H A R I PA R K E R ’ 0 4

More Than a Meal

Alum Sees Positive Power in Family Food Business he chicken and waffles come with a side of optimism at Connie’s, be it through a warm welcome from staff or a happy face scribbled on a take-out box.

Named for the mother of owners Khari Parker ’04 and his brother, Shawn, the burgeoning business aims to not only serve crispy, savory and sweet meals but also to help build a positive community.

“Food is the draw, but there is so much more to get,” Parker says.

Those qualities have served him and Connie’s well before, as the operation expanded in three years from a stall in Baltimore’s Lexington Market to locations across the city and in Delaware. And they will be needed now, as the family business faces the economic fallout of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

“The biggest thing,” Parker says, “is remaining hopeful and optimistic.”

Parker grew up in Baltimore and graduated from UMD with a degree in electrical engineering. He was an engineer and manager for Sprint and Verizon but was always interested in becoming an entrepreneur. When the federal government contract he was working on shifted to North Carolina, he took the leap.

Inspired by the family gatherings of their youth (“Everybody’s welcome,” Connie says.

“We always have enough food.”), Parker and Shawn, a 2009 graduate of Coppin State University, opened the first Connie’s Chicken and Waffles location in 2016.

It took time to understand the ebb and

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

flow of inventory and get used to the “fulltime weight lifting” sometimes required, but they loved being part of a market with dozens of vendors committed to a city often overwhelmed by negative news. Their most ambitious project is still to come, and being worked on while the coronavirus closed their locations in public markets: managing an entire food hall in the new Walbrook Mill development near Coppin State.

“We’re hoping it’s a transformative project,” Parker says. “It’s a really big opportunity to help people.”

The brothers are figuring out ways to do that by dipping their toes into consulting, making sure they are accessible to their

employees and training them to start their own business.

“They are going out and finding folks who really need those opportunities,” says Allie Busching, who works in business development for the Baltimore nonprofit Civic Works. “Having basic respect and dignity in the workplace makes a big difference. It has ripple effects.”

Parker says it’s part of his duty as someone who grew up in the city and has gotten a lot back from it—a responsibility reinforced by the society-wide challenges of coronavirus.

“It’s a hard time for a lot of folks right now,” he says. “But we’re in this as a community.”—lf

Khari Parker ’04, center, touts not just the food but the charm at Connie’s Chicken and Waffles, the restaurant chain he owns with his brother, Shawn, at right, and named for his mom, Connie.

SPRING 2020

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ALUMNI

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Maryland’s Leading Lady

A Century Ago, an Outgoing Entomology Major Became UMD’s First Four-Year Female Grad ne hundRed YeaRs aGo, when women in the United States were granted the right to vote, a female Terp was also blazing a trail.

In 1920, entomology major Elizabeth Hook became the first woman to earn a degree for four years of study at Maryland State College, renamed that year the University of Maryland.

Between “madly chasing bugs” during her studies, as her senior page in the yearbook read, she reported for the

O

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student paper, Maryland State Review, served as class secretary and helped form the institution’s first sorority chapter.

More women soon followed “Lisbeth,” as her peers fondly called her, and by her senior year, 21 other women were enrolled at Maryland.

“It is due to her courage and rare personality,” the yearbook reads, “that Maryland State is co-educational.”—ad

Above: Elizabeth Hook stands out in the class of 1920’s sophomore class photo.

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

IT HAPPENS HERE

Co ck ta i l s w i t h you r be st colleg e f r i en ds A w e e k e n d e s c a p e w i t h o u t t h e k i ds A di v ine e v ening of dining A n inspir ing e v ent or confer ence It all happens right here in the heart of downtown College Park.

EVENTS & CONFERENCES

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SPRING 2020

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SPRING HOPES ETERNAL

Despite lacking a full audience of admirers on campus this semester, the university’s cherry trees put on a spectacular show.

Redbuds, dogwoods and magnolias joined them in bursting into blossom, a reminder that in the midst of hardship, beauty can remain.

PHOTO BY JOHN T. CONSOLI

Make your mark at Maryland, permanently.

With a lifetime membership in the University of Maryland Alumni Association, your name will be engraved on the Frann G. and Eric S. Francis Lifetime Member Wall— signifying your continued commitment to your alma mater.

Cement your Maryland legacy by becoming a lifetime member and passing your Terp pride on to future generations.

alumni.umd.edu/LifetimeMember

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“I’ve lost all my income.

This is the only money that I know is coming in to meet my basic expenses.”

–UMD STUDENT

TERPS ARE IN CRISIS. YOU CAN HELP. The COVID-19 pandemic has created extreme financial hardships for many of our students: Lost jobs. Food insecurity. Lack of housing.

The UMD Student Crisis Fund has been answering these students’ requests for help. Now it’s struggling to accommodate all the urgent needs.

You can make an immediate impact on students’ lives by giving today at go.umd.edu/crisisfund.

“To the people who supported this: Thank you so much. I hope this will continue to be available for other students, because it has been such a help to me.”

- UMD STUDENT