Terp Spring 2018 by University of Maryland

ST U D E N T-AT H L E T E S G E T $ 2 1 . 25 M A S S I ST IN CAREER PREP 06

P R O F E S S O R ’S L E S S O N S O N E D U C AT I N G LO C K E D - U P K I D S 32

RESEARCHERS DOCUMENT A P PA L A C H I A N T R A I L’S PA ST 36

S P R I N G 2 0 1 8 / C O N N E C 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 C O M M U N I T Y

Fearless Faces UMD L AUNCHE S UNPRECEDENTED $ 1 . 5 B C A M PA I G N P G. 2 0

SPRING IN FULL SWING

Nothing beats a good Wi-Fi connection on a sunny day. Each spring, multitasking Terps head out to McKeldin Mall, laptops and hammocks in tow, to bask in the yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first warm weatherâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and finish that pesky paper before class.

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

ON THE MALL

ALUMNI

CAMPUS LIFE

06 Giving an Assist 08 “Triumph” of Collaboration 10 Back on the Market 11 Brother’s Keeper 12 A-listers 14 Gala Honors Black Terps’ Achievements 14 Fight the Fakes EXPLORATIONS

15 16 17 18 19

A New Narrative Core Value Faculty Q&A Celestial Mechanic The Big Question

CONTENTS 2

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

40 Alumni Association 42 iFarm 43 A “Second Chance” Organization 44 A YA Book of His Own 45 Class Notes 47 From the Archives

FEATURES

ONLINE

“It’s Something I Have to Do” Two graduates of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, now umd freshmen, take action to make sure the public remembers the victims of the mass shooting in Parkland, Fla.

Turtle Loves Did you know there are more than 30,000 Terp couples? A few share their charming “how we met” stories, with settings ranging from dorms and tailgates to the Diner and Vous.

Cool Running 20

Fearless Faces The university kicks off Fearless Ideas: The Campaign for Maryland, a $1.5 billion drive to discover new knowledge, inspire Maryland pride, transform the student experience and turn imagination into innovation.

BY TERP STAFF

Locked Up, Not Thrown Away Special education Professor Peter Leone turns around failing schools in juvenile detention centers nationwide, and shows his vision in action.

BY CHRIS CARROLL

Trail Mix umd launches a partnership with the National Park Service to identify and examine historic sites along Maryland’s segment of the Appalachian Trail, an effort that calls for lidar maps and good boots.

BY LIAM FARRELL

P H O T O O F A . J A M E S C L A R K H A L L BY J U S T I N D E R AT O

Charlie Dammeyer ’04, coordinating director for nbc Sports, decides what we see on TV during the network’s National Hockey League broadcasts. Find new stories every week at TERP.UMD.EDU.

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 our efforts to discover new knowledge, inspire Maryland pride and transform the student experience.

SPRING 2018

FROM THE EDITOR

there’s no happier day to be on campus than during commencement. Every spring, I volunteer at an outdoor information booth near the M Circle, and it’s a great gig. Students in their graduation gowns, the girls teetering in sky-high heels, and their family members all pass by as they head for the begonia-ed “M” for photos. Everybody’s buoyant (which may explain the lack of twisted ankles). The smiles that the grads wear reflect their years here at Maryland—the classes that made them think; the internships that changed their paths; the shared experiences, whether at Xfinity Center or the Bagel Place, that created the best memories. The people who the budding Terps met along the way get top billing too: friends, teachers, advisers and other cheerleaders. I recently met two of Maryland’s biggest cheerleaders, though they aren’t much for yelling. Barry Gossett, a student here in the late ’50s, and his wife, Mary, never miss a home basketball or football game. They’ve given millions to athletics, engineering and business, and they’ve mentored countless student-athletes, even years after graduation. Barry’s been active in the Terrapin Club for decades; he was a university foundation trustee and he’s a regent with the University System of Maryland. Now the Gossetts are pledging $21.25m to help student-athletes at Maryland transition to successful careers (pages 6-7). These are humble folks; Barry is quick to volunteer that he was lousy at baseball and enrolled at Maryland 60 years ago because it was what his family could afford. The university will hold its spring commencement ceremonies just days after launching its biggest fundraising campaign. While most of us can’t give all that the Gossetts do to Maryland, maybe we can give something that will help put smiles on the faces of the next generation of Terp graduates.

Lauren Brown University Editor

Publisher JACKIE LEWIS Vice President, University Relations

Advisers JOEL R. SELIGMAN Associate Vice President, Strategic Communications AMY EICHHORST Executive Director, Alumni Association MARGARET HALL Executive Director, Creative Strategies

Magazine Staff LAUREN BROWN University Editor JOHN T. CONSOLI ’86 Creative Director GABRIELA HERNANDEZ Art Director CHRIS CARROLL LIAM FARRELL SALA LEVIN ’10 Writers JASON A. KEISLING HAILEY HWA SHIN Designers STEPHANIE S. CORDLE Photographer GAIL RUPERT M.L.S. ’10 Photography Assistant JAGU CORNISH Production Manager LINDSEY COLLINS ’20 DANIEL OYEFUSI ’19 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 John T. Consoli and Hailey Hwa Shin

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INTERPLAY The Shape of Things to Come

Very good article on 3-D printing in health care (see photo at right), and quite educational, especially for those who like to know about this revolutionary technology, its implications and applications into the medical field and biology. It is intriguing and must be a source of pride to learn how umd is contributing to related research and how it is leading efforts in the experimentation in the concepts, designs and fabrication of related parts. Well done! YOUSEF SULEIMAN ’03, BELTSVILLE, MD., VIA TERP ONLINE

Applause on Paper

Higher education has long been a place of innovation and creativity, and increasingly, of environmental sustainability. Many colleges have made climate commitments, implemented composting programs and boosted recycling participation on campuses. But one area where many schools fall short is using recycled paper in alumni magazines. The environmental effects of virgin (non-recycled) paper production are vast, and we need to reduce wasteful uses of it, prioritize recycled content and incorporate responsibly certified virgin fiber only when necessary. One ton of virgin magazine paper requires up to 18 trees to be cut down, releasing sequestered carbon into our atmosphere. Recycled paper saves trees, requires 26 percent less energy to produce, and emits 40 percent fewer greenhouse gases. I am very glad the University of Maryland has boosted its commitment to sustainability by switching to 10% recycled, Forest Stewardship Council-certified paper for Terp magazine. I hope umd will build on this step and I hope to see more universities and colleges follow umd’s lead. BETH PORTER, PROGRAM DIRECTOR, GREEN AMERICA

Final Anne-swers

2017) that was mounted in what we referred to as the Chemical Engineering Building in 1951. I started studying at the University of Maryland in the fall semester of 1951, just after the new engineering buildings were completed. If I remember correctly, there was one building that was rather long and not built in the Colonial architecture style of the rest of the buildings on campus. This building was anchored with a building that was at least three stories high and housed the pendulum. Again, if my memory serves me correctly, there was a circle at the base of where the pendulum swung. This circle had a series of movable pegs that were knocked down as the pendulum swung back and forth. This was for telling the time of day. It would be interesting to research the operation of the pendulum and determine who was responsible for remounting the pegs at the end of the day. It was fascinating to stand in the building and just watch the pendulum swing back and forth. It was like bugs being attracted to a light during a summer night. It had a hypnotizing effect on the brain.

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

TOM STEINMETZ ’54, HIGHLAND, CALIF.

Terp’s New Look

Just writing to say how much I enjoyed the new format, design and content of the Winter 2018 edition. As a lifetime member of the Alumni Association, and living overseas, I rely on this publication for all of my university news and information. I think you have done a wonderful job in modernizing the publication, and I congratulate everyone for their efforts. RICHARD STEINBERG ’70, KOSHARITSA, BULGARIA

I would like to add my input to the history of the Foucault Pendulum (Ask Anne, Fall

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

SPRING 2018

ON THE MALL

NEWS

Giving an Assist Longtime umd Supporters Pledge $21.25m to Help Student Athletes Transition to Careers

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

hen terps quarterback Jordan Steffy ’08, m.r.e.d. ’10 suffered the concussion that ended his football career, and the agents and media stopped calling, Barry and Mary Gossett didn’t. They encouraged Steffy to think about how the qualities that helped him on the field— competitiveness and a team spirit—could help him beyond it. A few years later, when Steffy was trying to triple the size of his nonprofit after-school program, the Gossetts welcomed him into their home to talk about his vision and how to realize it. “If this was just about football, our relationship

would have ended a long time ago,” says Steffy, who created the Children Deserve a Chance Foundation as a student. “My interactions with Barry and Mary were never about me as a college athlete. They were about me as a person.” Mentorship of student-athletes—from enrolling at Maryland through transitioning to careers—is at the heart of a new initiative funded through a $21.25 million legacy gift from the Gossetts, longtime supporters of the university. The Barry and Mary Gossett Center for Academic and Personal Excellence will significantly enhance and expand programming offered through what’s now called the Academic Support

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

A THREE-POINT PLAN The Barry and Mary Gossett Center for Academic and Personal Excellence will support all student-athletes from their arrival on campus to well after graduation:

THE PATH: FOUR YEARS OF UNDERGRADUATE SUPPORT Develop personal, leadership, career goals Design, implement career plans Compete for Gossett Fellowships Enhance skills through service learning

THE BRIDGE: TRANSITION TO LIFE AFTER GRADUATION Prepare for job interviews, grad school or mission work Complete Gossett Fellowship, receive financial award Participate in educational sessions to help current student-athletes

THE HORIZON: POST- GRADUATION INVOLVEMENT Become mentors to student-athletes Assist in internship placement, support Stay connected through online Terps Career Network Pay it forward through mentoring, financial support

and Career Services Unit in the Department of Intercollegiate Athletics (ica). Highlights will include more paid internships and stipends, workshops on topics such as job interviews and financial literacy, and a major focus on connecting alumni student-athletes with current ones as mentors. “It seems like so many of these youngsters that come in that want to be athletes are not prepared with life skills, and they haven’t had the opportunity to do a lot of things other than play ball,” says Gossett, a University of Maryland System regent and former chair of the Board of Trustees of the University of Maryland College Park Foundation. “So we were drawn to the idea of when they come in as freshmen to have somebody put them under their wing and help them through some of the life experiences of what to expect and how to manage their time.” Sue Sherburne, senior associate athletic director for academics and student development at umd, says research shows that student-athletes delay their career preparation. One reason is that workouts, practices and games limit their free time and prevent them from getting valuable internship experiences. Some may also be laser-focused on going pro, and feel like they can’t take their eyes off that goal, while others are overwhelmed by the prospect of juggling career planning with other responsibilities. “No matter what field you go into—the professional world of sports or another career—you still have to interview and have EQ (emotional intelligence) and self-awareness,” she says. “You have to walk into a room, shake hands and articulate your elevator pitch. And they need more reps on that. They need more practice. The Gossetts’ gift will enhance our ability to provide these types of professional development opportunities to our student-athletes.” Barry and Mary Gossett have seen that firsthand over their decades of involvement with the university. Gossett grew up in Riverdale, a bike ride away from Maryland, where as a Boy Scout he was an usher at the football stadium. He enrolled in 1958—he never considered going anywhere else—and majored in engineering (not very successfully, he says self-effacingly) for two years. But when his father, a bricklayer, died, Gossett withdrew from umd in order to support his mother and two younger brothers. He became a cpa, and was hired in 1969 by A.V. Williams, Class of 1917, who owned a construction

“The Gossetts’ gift will enhance our ability to provide professional development opportunities to our student-athletes.” SUE SHERBURNE, SENIOR ASSOCIATE ATHLETIC DIRECTOR FOR ACADEMICS AND STUDENT DEVELOPMENT

firm that pioneered the use of mobile offices, construction trailers and commercial modular buildings. Gossett, Williams’ right-hand man, worked there until 2002 and ultimately became ceo and chairman of the company, then of Baltimore-based Acton Mobile Industries, from which he’s now retired. Williams, a Terrapin Club member, convinced Gossett to join in 1971. Mary and Barry Gossett have supported ica ever since as season ticket holders in football and basketball; as donors, including a gift to renovate what’s now called the Gossett Football Team House; and as mentors to countless student-athletes. Increasing mentorship for and among this group is central to their new gift, which builds upon ica programs such as the Interpship Academy. The Gossett Center will provide personal, leadership and career development to Maryland’s 500 student-athletes, along with mentorship from alumni. Fifty will be selected as Gossett Fellows to receive paid summer internships and graduate stipends, and the center will track their progress in their careers for the next decade. Steffy, co-founder and ceo of Xylem, a mobile app that enhances and measures the success of mentoring relationships, will create an online networking platform to connect former and current Terp athletes and to encourage alumni—particularly Gossett Fellows— to pay it forward by providing advice, helping to place interns and financially supporting the program. That way, the Gossetts say, the fellows will have some skin in the game. “These kids now have the opportunity and the ability to make something really significant happen,” he says.—lb

SPRING 2018

ON THE MALL

CAMPUS LIFE

“Triumph” of Collaboration

Graduate Students Bring 400-year-old Artwork to Life a little-known fact: The 17th-century Dutch could throw street parties of historic proportions. Their annual ommegang, or walking festival, mashed up elements of a parade, carnival, civic rally, religious procession and social event; the one honoring the Archduchess Isabella in 1615 in Brussels was a spectacle of colorful costumes and banners, musicians, marching craft guilds, live horses and camels, and lavish puppets and floats—1,400 processioners in all. The artist Denys Van Alsloot captured this

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

scene in his six panoramic, extraordinarily detailed oil paintings called “The Triumph of Isabella,” now the focus of a unique yearlong exploration in research, art and performance at the University of Maryland. Three European museums with panels of the artwork have provided high-resolution digital scans to the university—the centerpiece of an exhibition opening June 6—and students in the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies and School of Music and beyond are studying them in order to recreate the sounds, sights and sense of the pageant, 400 years later. “The whole idea is to showcase the unbelievable work our students are doing, give them the training to be leaders in this work and open up new approaches and new ways of thinking,” says Franklin Hildy, theatre history professor and director of the new International Program for Creative Collaboration and Research.

This program, funded through a recent 10-year, $10 million anonymous gift to the performing arts at umd, includes allowing graduate students to travel abroad to study medieval and Renaissance clothing construction, for example, and to consult with experts from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. “Our students are really getting to understand historical performance techniques from the design perspective, and that’s really exciting,” says Heather Jackson m.f.a. ’17, a umd costume designer and adviser in the program. Master’s student Paul Deziel, who specializes in theater projection and multimedia design, is bringing to life the different marching groups for a 360-degree immersive space. “This is the largest animation project I’ve ever done.” Performances in September will feature his projections, a float wagon recreated by set design students, 12- to 15-foot-tall puppets, dancing, and singing and other music, circa 1615. Doctoral student Allison Hedges, who’s assisting Performing Arts Librarian Andrew Barker in curating the exhibit, says that since little iconography exists on medieval performances, the paintings are a bonanza of information. “This painting gives so many research opportunities to so many students in different aspects of theater and performance studies.”—lb For more details on “The Triumph of Isabella” projects, visit tdps.umd.edu.

P H O T O B Y J O H N T. C O N S O L I ; S K E T C H E S C O U R T E S Y O F P R O F E S S O R O F C O S T U M E D E S I G N H E L E N H U A N G ; PA I N T I N G C O U R T E SY O F T H E V I C T O R I A A N D A L B E R T M U S E U M , T H E AT R E A N D P E R F O R M A N C E C O L L E C T I O N

Using 3-D printers, students in the master of fine arts program in scenic design are creating a scale model of the most ornate pageant wagon shown in Denys van Alsloot’s 1616 painting, “The Triumph of Isabella.” In the background is the School of Theatre, Dance, and Performance Studies’ large-format printed image of a high-resolution scan provided by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. SPRING 2018

ON THE MALL

CAMPUS LIFE

“We need to have better cultural understanding between the U.S. and Iraq.”

Back on the Market

Maryland and Iraqi Students Redesign Sites in Each Others’ Countries by the time landmark mall in Alexandria, Va., closed last year, the car-centric shopping hub had long been declining, as one store after another went dark. Across the globe, a market in the Karrada neighborhood of Baghdad suffered a much more sudden and lethal blow in 2016 when isis detonated a massive car bomb there, killing more than 200 people. Could the two abandoned sites of commerce—victims of dramatically different crises—be reinvigorated by those living in the opposite country? That’s the question students at the

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University of Maryland and Baghdad’s Al-Nahrain University teamed up to answer in a joint architecture studio course called “Bridging the Gap,” now in its second semester. Architects from the firms Gensler and Dewberry approached umd’s School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation with the idea to have students from the two countries reimagine each other’s sites. It was born “out of a conviction that we need to have better cultural understanding between the U.S. and Iraq,” says Associate Professor Madlen Simon, who

leads the studio, funded by the university’s Global Classrooms Initiative. For the course, Simon’s graduate students from Maryland and undergraduates from Al-Nahrain University, led by Professor Shaimaa Hussain Alahbabi, communicated with each other over Facebook, video conferencing and a specially built website. The studio centered on the theme of marketplaces “because that’s really about exchange of goods, exchange of ideas, exchange of foods—a kind of cultural exchange,” says Simon. The challenge for the Iraqi students in reviving a dead mall, Simon says, was to “understand what the mall represented in American culture, how that’s changed, and then to participate with us in envisioning a new future for these kind of ubiquitous, suburban landscapes.” The American students faced a similar challenge of learning about the Karrada market’s cultural place in Baghdad, with the added difficulty of understanding what the market looked like without much help from government websites, Google Street View or other online sources. Students appreciated the chance to learn “how we are so different but also so alike at the same time,” says Dalia Raad, an Iraqi student who participated in the studio in its first semester. “It helped us to understand each other’s perspective, to learn from each other, to get to know new design techniques and learn more about architecture styles and interests in a different weather, culture and language.” The students from Raad’s semester got some less lofty lessons in cultural exchange, too. The Al-Nahrain students taught the Americans how to make klecha, a traditional Iraqi cookie, and the Maryland students shared pointers on making an American classic: grilled cheese sandwiches.—sl

P H O T O S C O U R T E S Y O F T H E S C H O O L O F A R C H I T E C T U R E , P L A N N I N G A N D P R E S E R VAT I O N ; CO L L AG E BY GA B R I E L A H E R N A N D E Z

Brother’s Keeper FORMER LACROSSE STAR JESSE BERNHARDT ’13 returned to UMD

this year as defensive coach of a team that includes his youngest brother, Jared, who was a 2017 All-American as a freshman on the NCAA championship team. Jesse was also an All-American and plays professionally for Team USA. Another brother, Jake ’12, plays for Team USA, too, while coaching at Vermont. “Most of the time growing up and being older, I was in college myself or coaching, and I unfortunately missed a lot of Jared playing high school lacrosse. To have the opportunity to interact with him every day is pretty cool,” Jesse says. “I can say comfortably that, where he’s at right now, he has the possibility to be the best out of us. But if we’re going one-on-one on the field, I’d beat the heck out of him.”—DO

SPORTS BRIEFS

Speed Skater Competes at Winter Olympics

Women’s Basketball Goes to the Dance

Coach Makes Hall of Fame

A FINANCE MAJOR at Maryland made his Olym-

THE MARYLAND WOMEN’S BASKETBALL team

to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

pics debut in the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeon-

reached the NCAA tournament for the eighth

In 17 years as head coach, Driesell led the team to

chang. Short-track speed skater Thomas Hong ’20

straight year, advancing to the round of 32. The

eight NCAA tournament appearances and an NIT

competed in four world junior championships

Terps ended the season with a 26–8 record and

championship in 1972. Driesell’s 348 wins at Mary-

before the Olympics in February, where he placed

12–4 conference record, finishing second in the

land rank second in school history, behind only

fifth in the 5,000-meter relay and 23rd in the

Big Ten. This appearance was the 14th in 16 years

Gary Williams ’68. See a photo gallery and what

500-meter race.

under Head Coach Brenda Frese.

Terp greats said about him at go.umd.edu/driesell.

LEGENDARY MARYLAND MEN’S BASKETBALL

coach Charles “Lefty” Driesell was named in March

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SPRING 2018

COLE FIELD HOUSE SEPT. 27 AND 28, 1974

ELVIS PRESLEY COLE FIELD HOUSE FEBRUARY 4, 1977

COLE FIELD HOUSE MARCH 25, 1973

COLE FIELD HOUSE MARCH 7, 1981

QUEEN

STEVIE WONDER

COLE FIELD HOUSE C. OCTOBER 1961

ELLA FITZGERALD THE GRATEFUL DEAD P H O T O S C O U R T E SY O F U N I V E R S I T Y A R C H I V E S ; I L L U S T R AT I O N S BY J A S O N K E I S L I N G

KANYE WEST elvis gyrated. Kanye rhymed. And u2 rocked. Some of the biggest names in music stopped at Maryland on their way up— or down—the Billboard charts. The boom in bookings, according to Terrapin Tales, followed a 1969 letter to the editor of The Diamondback, voicing disappointment in the lack of concerts on campus. Cole Field House, Ritchie Coliseum, McKeldin Mall

RITCHIE COLISEUM APRIL 13, 1992

Share your memories—and photos—and see an expanded list of 30 big-name concerts at terp.umd.edu. Who did we leave out?

and even the Stamp and Tawes Hall began hosting duties. Now, as the campus celebrates the 35th anniversary of Art Attack— whose headliners were Vince Staples and Lil Yachty—Terp looks back at 10 of the top acts to perform at Maryland.—do

BLACK EYED PEAS

ART ATTACK 18 MARYLAND STADIUM MAY 1, 2001

AN UNOFFICIAL LIST OF THE BIGGEST CONCERTS AT UMD

RITCHIE COLISEUM APRIL 25, 1983

ICE-T & PUBLIC ENEMY RITCHIE COLISEUM NOVEMBER 24, 1992

A-LISTERS

STAMP GRAND BALLROOM FEB. 26, 2004

PEARL JAM U

ON THE MALL

CAMPUS LIFE

Gala Honors Black Terps’ Achievements

Gala honoree Craig Thompson ’92 (center) accepts his award from Akiel Pyant ’17. He and Samara Brown ’20 (right) hosted the event.

nearly 400 students, faculty and alumni celebrated academic and professional achievement by black Terps at the third annual Gift of Giving Gala on April 7. The event organized by the Student Success Leadership Council (sslc), a student-run organization that focuses on developing student leaders and strengthening Maryland’s black community, also raised money for its emergency scholarship fund. Alumni honorees were state Del. Jazz Lewis ’11, a first-term Democratic lawmaker from Prince George’s County; Craig Thompson ’92, a partner with the Baltimore law firm Venable llp, a university foundation trustee and co-chair of Fearless Ideas: The Campaign for Maryland; and Jason Nichols ’00, Ph.D. ’12, an artist and African American studies lecturer at umd.

Fight the Fakes

Lecturer Trains on Spotting “Fake News”

Thompson says he was thrilled to learn of the honor and “became even more excited when I stepped into the ballroom and witnessed the energy and enthusiasm generated by the gala. I truly look forward to doing everything I can to help the sslc achieve its goals and make the university even stronger!” Four recent alumni were also honored as “influencers” for their contributions to the Maryland community and beyond: Shahrazad Hired ’17, Alexandra Givan ’16, Jazmyn White ’15 and Wendell Alston Jr. ’14. Darius Williams ’19 and LaRen Morton ’18 were awarded for their leadership and service on and off campus as well as their scholastic achievements. Morton’s involvement included serving as a mentor with America Reads*America Counts, vice president of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority and student liai-

WHAT DO ARTICLES about the flu vaccine causing an

Roosevelt High School in Greenbelt, Burns brought her

outbreak, NFL players burning an American flag in the

presentation in February to about a dozen middle and

locker room and Hershey discontinuing Reese’s Peanut

high school students at College Park Academy. Along

Butter Cups all have in common? Not only are they all

with undergraduate journalism major Lauren Koenig ’19,

untrue, they were also shared millions of times on social

Burns and the students talked about motivations for

media as fact.

posting fake news, from profit to propaganda, and what

That viral content is the basis of presentations

everyone can do to battle misinformation, such as notify

by Alison Burns ’93, a broadcast journalist, doctoral

friends who share dubious media.

student and adjunct lecturer in UMD’s Merrill College of

like senior centers and broaden its purpose into im-

news.” The term gained currency following the 2016

proving relations between the press and general public. “We’re fostering an understanding of the role of jour-

and outright fabulists showed how vulnerable the 21st-

nalism and the importance of journalism in our democ-

century information stream is to pollution.

racy,” she says. “There’s a lot of confusion about how

After running pilot sessions last year at Eleanor

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Burns is hoping to expand the training into places

Journalism, who is training people how to spot “fake presidential election, when social media echo chambers

son with the Police Advisory Review Council. The family science major is a research assistant in the Early Childhood Interaction Laboratory and hopes to earn a doctorate in clinical psychology. Williams, an information science major and aspiring tech analyst, is a resident assistant; member of College Park Scholars, the Black Engineering Society and the Diazporic African dance troupe; and director of programming for the Caribbean Student Association. “This event uplifts the campus and makes students excited about their experiences despite all the trying times we have faced,” says Mia McIntyre ’19, sslc president. “It’s a celebration of our strength, resilience, solidarity and commitment to our professional and academic growth.”—lb

journalists do their jobs and why they do their jobs.”—LF

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 J A S O N K E I S L I N G

E X P L O R AT I O N S

CMNS Dean Named A LONGTIME

ON THE MALL

A New Narrative

Historian Finds Origins of American Slavery in British Monarchy

PROFESSOR of

computer science and director of the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies is the new dean of the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. After a six-month national search, Amitabh Varshney was appointed to lead the biggest college on campus, with more than 9,000 students. He recently completed a one-year term as the university’s interim vice president for research. An expert in computer visualization, Varshney helped launch the Maryland Cybersecurity Center, the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science, the Corporate Partners in Computing program, and the Maryland Center for Women in Computing. With funding from the MPowering the State strategic partnership, Varshney established the Maryland Blended Reality Center with the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. He has also been co-leading an effort to launch an undergraduate major in immersive media design.

it’s the conundrum at the center of American history: How did a country formed around individual liberty and equality simultaneously depend on mass enslavement? Some historians say it’s because colonial elites created a new exploited underclass to obtain the loyalty of disgruntled small planters and freed servants—that the rights of whites relied on blacks being in chains. Others say slavery was inevitable due to racist views embedded in Western society. Holly Brewer, associate professor and umd Burke Chair of American History, thinks neither narrative tells the whole story. After spending a decade combing through tens of thousands of documents in America, Scotland and England, Brewer contends that the British monarchy played a leading role in slavery’s creation and that historians have erroneously believed “the only things that mattered were happening on the ground in America.” “(Slavery) is part of a thought-through and imperial plan for making England wealthy,” she says. Supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship, her book, “Inheritable Blood: Slavery and Sovereignty in Early America and the British Empire,” is scheduled to be published next year, and was excerpted last fall in The American Historical Review. In the article, Brewer discusses how the hereditary power of kings influenced justifications for slavery and the importance of royal “headrights,” which rewarded colonial settlers with land depending on how many slaves or indentured servants they brought with them. From marriage dowries to treaties and

the appointment of colonial governors, Brewer argues that the English monarchy prioritized policies that encouraged the growth of large estates and bound labor in their new world empire, as well as access to the slave trade. It’s no surprise then that Thomas Jefferson’s original draft of the Declaration of Independence blamed the king for “suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce.” “There was a strong imperial hand looking over their shoulder at every turn,” Brewer says. Her work also highlights how slavery was vigorously debated. In her research, Brewer discovered a note by John Locke, an influential political philosopher and official, who scribbled “well done” next to a 1699 report about Virginia’s governor halting the headright system that rewarded planters for buying slaves. American democracy was born within those sorts of challenges, she says— not racist bargains between whites. “It’s harder to come up with solutions (to slavery’s legacy),” she says, “if we don’t acknowledge the complexity of the original debates.”—lf The seal of the Royal African Company (above) and 17th-century coins (below) used imagery and symbols that connected the British monarchy to the slave trade.

R O YA L S E A L C O U R T E S Y O F C O L O N I A L S TAT E P A P E R S , C O 1 / 2 9 , N O . 6 0 ; C O I N S C O U R T E SY O F S C O T T P U R V I S , T H E N AT I O N A L A R C H I V E S , K E W, U K

SPRING 2018

ON THE MALL

E X P L O R AT I O N S

Move Over Metal, Here Comes Super Wood FROM CREATING trans-

lucent window material to using it for solar desalination devices, UMD engineers continue

to do surprising things with wood. In a recent exploit, published in February in Nature, researchers reveal a way to make wood as strong as steel but one-sixth the weight. It could become a structur-

Professor Creates New Apple Variety

al competitor not just for steel, but titanium alloy and carbon fiber, says Lingbiang Hu, associate professor of materials science and engineering and leader of the research team. Researchers extracted lignin, which makes wood both rigid and brown, and compressed the remaining material at 150° F. The result was wood 10 times harder to break, says Teng Li, co-leader of the team and Samuel P. Langley Professor of mechanical engineering. To test it, they fired bullet-like projectiles that blew right through everyday wood, but were stopped by its treated cousin.

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

or nearly 30 years, Christopher Walsh has been jonesing for an apple. That’s how long it’s taken the professor of plant science and landscape architecture to create a new kind of apple tree, the first patented at the University of Maryland. Known as Antietam Blush, the apple is sweet and tart and grows on a tree that reaches only five feet or so—perfect for Maryland, where farmland is expensive and scarce—and is designed to thrive in the state’s relatively warm climate. “I’m hoping this will be relevant to our local growers but also has a chance of going national or international,” Walsh says. He began his fruitful odyssey in 1991, when Walsh realized that the main university apple breeding programs were at Cornell, Washington State and the University of Minnesota—all located in the North. Walsh imagined a new, grower-friendly tree for the mid-Atlantic, one that was precocious (meaning it bears fruit early in its life), small and resistant to a destructive bacterial disease known as fire blight. All that, and it had to produce a delicious apple.

Walsh started by planting two McIntosh Wijcik trees in a block of about 100 Gala trees at the Western Maryland Research & Education Center. He let Mother Nature do what she does best, and after some 10 years, the resulting nearly 500 trees that Walsh referred to as compact Gala-Macs began to bear fruit. Of those 500 trees, Walsh selected about 30 that had the attributes he was looking for, and planted those in a block of Cripps Pink trees, again letting them cross-pollinate naturally. After another 10 years or so, Walsh had just one that met his criteria. Antietam Blush, Walsh says, combines the tartness of its parent, Cripps Pink, with the “champagne fizz” of its grandparent, Gala. Meanwhile, Walsh gave budwood to several growers, who have been experimenting with growing more trees. He and his co-inventor, Julia Harshman ’09, M.S. ’12, hope to patent several cousins of Antietam Blush, grow more trees and get them into the hands of nurseries and orchards. “I’m not a breeder,” he says, “but by sticking with it long enough, I’ve found a little scientific niche that wasn’t being filled.”—sl

P H O T O BY E D W I N R E M S B E R G ; P H O T O I L L U S T R AT I O N BY G A B R I E L A H E R N A N D E Z

FA C U LT Y Q & A JOHN B. KING

Closing the Gap Former U.S. Education Secretary Advocates Equity in Schools

JOHN B. KING JR.’S life could have taken a very

different turn, sending him toward prison, or worse. Despite childhood tragedy and expulsion from high school, he graduated from a string of Ivy League universities, became a widely admired educator and in 2016, was appointed U.S. secretary of education by President Barack Obama. He now leads the Education Trust, a nonprofit dedicated to closing racial and socioeconomic achievement gaps, and taught a Fall 2017 class at UMD on education reform. He spoke to Terp about

educators who kept him from falling through the cracks, and how to extend that help to others.—CC school and eventually got kicked out. But I was

made, it is still generally true that those who

How did family influence your career choices?

blessed that family members and educators

need the most get the least.

I grew up in Brooklyn as the son of two New

saw me as more than the mistakes I had made.

York City public school educators. My mother

Today there are many young people struggling

What lured you to teach at UMD?

unexpectedly passed when I was 8. My father

with little or no support. As educators, we must

I loved being back in the classroom. The students’

struggled with undiagnosed Alzheimer’s disease,

ensure that all students—regardless of race, ZIP

energy, enthusiasm and curiosity were profoundly

so home became a scary and unpredictable

code, income, immigration status or language

inspiring. Some of our richest class discussions

place. He passed when I was 12. But school was

they speak at home—have access to a rich,

were about issues of racial and socioeconomic

a safe, nurturing place that was also compelling

well-rounded education.

segregation in schools and the degree to which

and engaging. My NYC public school teachers

the United States continues to fall short of the promise of Brown v. Board of Education. I hope

“Here is an African-American, Latino male with

What was your biggest challenge as U.S. secretary of education?

a family in crisis; what chance does he have?”

President Obama made education equity a

challenge the status quo to make a positive

Instead, they chose to invest in me.

priority, and I was proud to help lead that

difference in their communities and contribute to

work. Too often, students of color, low-income

the future success of our nation.

saved my life. They didn’t look at me and say,

How did that shape you as a leader?

students and English learners have fewer

Like many young people who experience trauma

opportunities to learn than their white and

early in life, I rebelled against authority in high

wealthier peers. Despite the progress we have

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

that they will go on to work on these issues and

For an expanded version of this interview, go to terp.umd.edu.

SPRING 2018

ON THE MALL

E X P L O R AT I O N S

Celestial Mechanic

Astronomer Traces Galaxy Paths Back to the Beginning

Blue lines represent the paths of galaxies 13 billion years into the past. The Milky Way is highlighted in yellow, near the center of the map.

KEY:

Milky Way

Andromeda

Virgo

Fornax

Antlia

Reporting on Reforming STUDENTS IN the Philip Merrill College of Jour-

Virgo W

some of us can’t keep track of where we laid our keys 10 minutes ago. Then there’s Ed Shaya, a University of Maryland associate research scientist, who can pinpoint where our entire galaxy was—along with more than 1,000 others in our corner of the universe—10 billion years ago. He led a group of astronomers hailing from Hawaii, Israel and France in producing the most detailed and dynamic map ever of galaxies within about 100 million light years of Earth, a region known as the Local Supercluster. Created using a new method of celestial mechanics called numerical action, which Shaya recently helped develop, the map shows how gravitational interactions directed galaxies’ collective flow through space stretching back nearly to the Big Bang. The study appeared in the Astrophysical Journal in December, accompanied by a video and interactive model of the supercluster that went viral in science circles with tens of thousands of views online—not new-Beyoncé-video-viral, perhaps, but impressive for an astronomical simulation. Though fascinating, knowing where the Milky Way came from (a vast void now empty of galaxies) or where it’s going over the next few billion years (a stupendous collision with nearby Andromeda, while most neighboring galaxies get pulled into a tight huddle around the Virgo cluster) isn’t the study’s point. Instead, it’s aimed at revealing the distribution of an as-yet unobservable but crucial player in the cosmological game. “The real goal of the project is to understand dark matter,” Shaya says. “The structures of the universe are mainly composed of dark matter. The stars are just the glitter paint that we can see in the dark. We want to know about all the parts that are not painted.”—cc

Studies and Blended Reality Center to build trust

unreliable that it can’t be used to track possible

between police and the public.

racial profiling.

Articles produced in the “Urban Affairs

“Teams of students interviewed people on cam-

nalism published a 10-part investigative report

Reporting” class focused on topics including the

era across the city to gauge residents’ reactions to

detailing widespread problems in the Baltimore

funding and timing challenges preventing the

police practices,” says Sandy Banisky, Abell Profes-

Police Department as it seeks to meet a federal

sweeping changes that a federal consent degree

sor in Baltimore Journalism. “Those video stories

mandate for reforms.

demands of the police department, which is

showed how skeptical many Baltimoreans are that

“Reforming the Force,” funded in part by a

confronting record levels of crime. Baltimore ex-

the department can change and how eager most

grant from the University of Maryland Strategic

perienced its highest homicide rate ever in 2017,

of them are for a police force they can trust.”

Partnership: MPowering the State, includes re-

when 343 people were killed.

porting on efforts in the University of Maryland,

The multimedia package of stories was distrib-

Other highlighted issues included outdated

uted through the college’s Capital News Service

Baltimore’s School of Social Work and UMD’s

technology and the struggles of a civilian adviso-

and picked up across the mid-Atlantic. It is avail-

Department of Sociology, Institute for Computer

ry board. Another story exposed police data so

able at cnsmaryland.org/baltimore-police.—LB

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

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

THE BIG QUESTION

What’s the single most unifying force in American life?

ROBERT FRIEDEL

GEORGE SOLOMON

MEGA SUBRAMANIAN

PSYCHE WILLIAMS-FORSON

PROFESSOR, HISTORY OF TECHNOLOGY AND SCIENCE; AFFILIATE PROFESSOR, ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY

DIRECTOR, SHIRLEY POVICH CENTER FOR SPORTS JOURNALISM, PHILIP MERRILL COLLEGE OF JOURNALISM

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, COLLEGE OF INFORMATION STUDIES; ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, INFORMATION POLICY AND ACCESS CENTER

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR AND CHAIR, DEPARTMENT OF AMERICAN STUDIES

I was astonished as a schoolboy at the Declaration of Independence’s reference to the “pursuit of happiness.” The very idea that a nation’s founding document would not only sanction the pursuit of happiness but would say that governments should encourage it is a marvelous thing, and one could argue that it remains the core unifying idea for Americans. Just what happiness is and just how it should be pursued, of course, is another matter entirely.

If politics is the most divisive aspect in America, sports is the most unifying. Think of the passion and joy in a city whose team wins the Super Bowl, college football title, NBA or college basketball championship, Stanley Cup or World Series. Even in Philadelphia, everyone liked each other in February.

—

Diversity, often represented simply as checkboxes on a survey or a form, is the single unifying force that makes us stronger as a nation. Americans have different backgrounds based on race, ethnicity, gender, ability, literacy, socioeconomic status, language, sexual orientation and age, among other factors, but diversity does more to unite than divide us. It propels us to a deeper understanding and appreciation of others and ourselves.

—

It is often in and around food that we find camaraderie and unity. There are few events where food does not provide physical, spiritual or emotional comfort. Food can also reveal tensions and differences and be used as a tool for healing and wellness.

Share your answer and see more faculty responses at terp.umd.edu/BigQ2 Suggest a future question at terpfeedback.umd.edu I L L U S T R AT I O N BY G A B R I E L A H E R N A N D E Z

SPRING 2018

P A S S I O N

C U R I O S I T Y

I N S P I R A T I O N

F e a r l e s s I d e a s : T h e C a m pa i g n for M a r y l a n d

B O L D N E S S

EDUCATION HAS THE POWER TO IMPROVE T HE LIFE OF E V ERY PERSON ON E A R T H. Com pelled by a m is sion to serv e t he stat e a n d nat ion, t he U n i v er si t y of M a ry l a n d con f ron t s t he most pr e s sing ch a l l enge s of ou r t i m e t h rough a n u n pa r a l l el ed aca dem ic a n d r e se a rch en t er pr ise. W e in t egr at e science a n d t echnol ogy w i t h t he a rt s a n d h u m a n i t ie s to de v el op t he n e x t gen er at ion of gl oba l ci t i z ens w ho w ill do good for ou r com m u n i t ie s. W e v igorously pu r su e t he discov ery of n ew k now ledge a n d a pply i t for t he a dva ncem en t of a ll . T his is not m er ely a ca m pa ign for t he U n i v er si t y of M a ry l a n d, i t’s a ca m pa ign for h u m a n k in d.

THAT IS OUR FEARLESS IDEA.

MILESTONES Campaign starts July 2014

$31M from Brendan Iribe

October 2015

$219.5M from A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation October 2017

$21.25M from Bary and Mary Gossett April 2018

Campaign launch event May 2018

T h e u n i v er si t y on m ay 1 1 k ick ed of f t h e $1 . 5 bi l l ion F e a r l es s Ide a s: T he C a m pa ign for M a ry l a n d to su pp ort t h e fol l ow i ng fouR pr ior i t y a r e a s:

CURIOSITY TO DISCOVER NEW KNOWLEDGE Through bolstered endowed professorships and graduate fellowships and new research frontiers and facilities, we will solve daunting problems facing the nation and world to help people live better lives.

CAMPAIGN LEADERSHIP Alma Gildenhorn ’53

PASSION TO INSPIRE MARYLAND PRIDE Major campus projects with local and national impact, student-athlete scholarships and alumni programs will harness the passion at the core of the university to drive economic prosperity and improve the human condition.

Philanthropist

Barry P. Gossett

Principal, The Gossett Group

William E. “Brit” Kirwan

INSPIRATION TO TRANSFORM THE STUDENT EXPERIENCE Students will find their passion and purpose, thanks to scholarships, new and smarter facilities, unforgettable study abroad programs and other outside-the-classroom experiences.

Chancellor Emeritus, University System of Maryland

Karen Levenson ’76

BOLDNESS TO TURN IMAGINATION INTO INNOVATION We will nurture students’ and faculty’s commitment to create the next game-changing technology, artwork, invention or business through pioneering programs in entrepreneurship, art and design.

T HE WORL D NE E DS A L L OF T HIS : CURIOSIT Y. PA S SION. INSPIR AT ION. BOL DNE S S . T HE WORL D NE E DS F E A RLE SS IDE A S . T HE WORL D NE E DS Y OU.

I L L U S T R AT I O N / P H O T O C R E D I T

Educator

Michelle Smith

President, Robert H. Smith Family Foundation

Craig Thompson ’92

Partner, Venable LLP

SPRING 2018

CURIOSI T Y/ DISCOV ER NE W K NOWLEDGE

FACULT Y SUP P OR T (ENDOWED PROFESSORSHIPS) Cynthia Baur Horowitz Professor and Director, Horowitz Center for Health Literacy

An unexpected diagnosis. A nurse’s instructions for medicine. An elderly relative managing chronic conditions. A government warning on a new infectious disease. All are opportunities for clear communication—or confusion and possibly dangerous misunderstanding. Cynthia Baur, the School of Public Health’s Horowitz Professor and director of the Horowitz Center for Health Literacy, conducts research and educates students and professionals to ensure that information is delivered in a way that helps people understand their options. Endowed professorships are crucial in allowing faculty like Baur to remain at the forefront of innovation and research in their fields. “Having a donor who believes health literacy is important enough to support an endowed professorship and the center automatically raises the issue’s visibility and contributes to progress,” she says.

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

P H O T O S B Y J O H N T. C O N S O L I A N D M I K E M O R G A N

BRENDAN IRIBE CENTER FOR COMPUTER SCIENCE AND INNOVAT ION Brendan Iribe Co-founder, Oculus VR

CYBERSECURITY: RESEARCH, LEADERSHIP AND EDUCATION Rachael Zehrung ’19 Computer Science // Germanic Studies

With a dual major in computer science and Germanic studies, Rachael Zehrung ’19 benefits from the university’s initiative to expand the boundaries of cybersecurity to meet a deepening online threat. This commitment includes the Maryland Cybersecurity Center and Maryland Global Initiative on Cybersecurity, as well as the Advanced Cybersecurity Experience for Students (ACES) , the nation’s first and only undergraduate cyber honors program, all of which benefit from close proximity to the nation’s capital. With foundational funding from Northrop Grumman, and a recent $5 million award from the National Science Foundation for student scholarships, the program helped Zehrung land internships in the Federal Laboratory for Telecommunications Sciences and at the Vanguard Group, a leading investment company. She says, “ACES brings so many resources together for students.”

A visionary in the fields of virtual and augmented reality, Oculus VR co-founder Brendan Iribe is determined to make the campus he once called home a national hub for developing computing technologies to shape the future. He made a $31 million gift to help create the Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Innovation, which in 2019 will house the Department of Computer Science and UMD’s renowned Institute for Advanced Computer Studies. Groundbreaking research in artificial intelligence, robotics and computer vision will unfold in open, collaborative spaces. “I want it to feel like Silicon Valley just hit College Park,” Iribe says.

SPRING 2018

PASSION/INSPIRE MARYLAND PRIDE

NEW COLE FIELD HOUSE Dr. Alan Faden

Elizabeth Quinlan

David S. Brown Professor in Trauma at the University of Maryland School of Medicine

Professor, Biology

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

The site of historic games and national championships, Cole Field House is being reinvented as a next-generation hub of sports science research. The Terrapin Performance Center, with a full-size indoor football field and advanced strength, conditioning and hydrotherapy amenities, will be an unmatched training venue in Division I sports. A new home for the Academy for Innovation and Entrepreneurship will nurture students creating the next big startup. And the Center for Sports

Medicine, Health and Human Performance and adjacent orthopedic facility will translate work from â&#x20AC;&#x153;the bench to the clinic,â&#x20AC;? says University of Maryland, College Park biology Professor Elizabeth Quinlan. She and Dr. Alan Faden, the David S. Brown Professor in Trauma at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, will direct the new center, the latest collaboration through the MPowering the State initiative that leverages the strengths of UMD and the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

INTERCOLLEGIATE ATHLETICS Nick Pulli ’18 Track and field // Kinesiology

Nick Pulli ’18 was in middle school when his working-class parents warned him that while they’d try to help help him pay for college, he’d need to earn scholarships. Pulli decided right then to be the best student and athlete he could be. He started throwing discus and the shot put in seventh grade, and by the time he graduated, he’d earned a 4.0 GPA , All-American honors and

a full athletics scholarship to Maryland. “If I didn’t get that scholarship, I would be at home at a community college and working two or three jobs,” he says. Financial support for studentathletes like Pulli is critical to not only recruiting the nation’s top prospects, but providing them with the foundation to succeed at Maryland and beyond.

SPRING 2018

I N S P I R AT I O N / T R A N S F O R M T H E S T U D E N T E X P E R I E N C E

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

UNDERGRADUATE SCHOLARSHIPS The Clark Challenge for Maryland Promise

The legacy of the late A. James Clark ’50, written in stone and steel throughout the Washington region and in the rising prominence of his namesake engineering school at UMD , will now expand access to education across campus. The Clark Challenge for Maryland Promise will provide hundreds of need-based scholarships to students from any major, and if fully matched by other donors, will establish a $100 million fund to help high-performing students pay for college. Courtney Clark Pastrick, board chair of the A. James Clark & Alice B. Clark foundation, says the gift symbolizes her father’s “profound gratitude and commitment to ensuring the best education is accessible and affordable to all with the will to work hard.”

SPRING 2018

I N S P I R AT I O N / T R A N S F O R M T H E S T U D E N T E X P E R I E N C E

VETERAN SUPPORT Marwin Glenn ’17, M.S. ’19 Former personnel/ administr ative chief, U.S. Marine Corps

Marwin Glenn ’17, M.S. ’19 started taking online college courses soon after enlisting in the Marine Corps. Between wartime deployments, moves between overseas duty stations and life—including marriage and the birth of two daughters—it took nearly two decades to finish his bachelor’s degree in international business. Glenn, who served for 16 years, says the estimated 1,200 veterans pursuing degrees at Maryland have unique needs. Gifts to the university’s Veterans Initiative can fund scholarships like Glenn’s, counseling, career advising, social events, mentoring and other programs that allow them to have a rewarding experience on campus.

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

GRADUATE FELLOWSHIPS Emilia Guevara doctor al Candidate, Anthropolog y

Anthropology doctoral candidate Emilia Guevara studies how female Mexican migrant workers struggle with chronic illnesses such as diabetes, hypertension and depression. The work requires her to follow these women as they pick crabs or harvest produce on the Eastern Shore, and during the short months in their communities back home. The summer research fellowship that Guevara was awarded through the Graduate School gave her the freedom to fully focus on completing her comprehensive exams, then start her field research. “Most migration literature is about men, but women have different needs and social lives, so this isn’t just about a gap in the literature, but a gap in understanding.” SPRING 2018

B O L D N E S S / T U R N I M A G I N AT I O N I N T O I N S P I R AT I O N ( I & E )

THE PERFORMING ARTS Jennifer Barclay Assistant Professor, Theatre

For Jennifer Barclay, assistant professor of theatre, writing plays is a way of asking big sociopolitical questions and exploring unfamiliar worlds. “Theater has an amazing capacity to open our minds to people who are different from us and experiences that are outside of our own,” she says. Support for the performing arts at Maryland enables faculty like Barclay to create complex works that require extensive preparation; a recent university grant gave her both the resources to assemble a team of collaborators and the time to study human trafficking, including interviews with survivors, for a new play. “This grant was a real game-changer,” Barclay says. “I hope to create a play that is powerful and truthful because it is grounded in collaboration and in-depth research.”

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

CREATING A DO GOOD CAMPUS Matthew Hollister ’18 Co-founder and CEO, James Hollister Wellness Foundation

For Matthew Hollister ’18, throwing away boxes of unused prescription pills after his father died of brain cancer felt like another tragedy, because medicine often retains potency long after its expiration date. Hollister went on to win $5,000 in the 2017 Do Good Challenge at the university for his solution to the problem: the James Hollister Wellness Foundation. It collects expired medicines, tests their viability and donates them to charities in developing

nations. The challenge, which encourages students to make the greatest social impact they can for their favorite cause over eight weeks, is just one part of the effort to make UMD the nation’s first Do Good Campus, with courses, programs and research on philanthropy, nonprofit management, public policy and leadership. “If there wasn’t a University of Maryland,” Hollister says, “I would not have a company right now.”

SPRING 2018

LOC KED UP, NOT T H ROWN AWAY

An Education Professor Fights for Good Schools in Youth Detention Centers by Chris Carroll

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

I L L U S T R AT I O N / P H O T O C R E D I T

this place isn’t typical—unfortunately.”

“What I want you to keep in mind, is that

Around a corner, beyond crumbling storage buildings and vacant houses, D.C.’s former Oak Hill correctional center squats at the end of the road. Youths sentenced there endured violence, regressed academically and often left as bigger threats to society and themselves than when they arrived. For years, Leone fought the mechanisms of abandonment that prevailed here. Then he helped create D.C.’s current effort at juvenile rehabilitation on this campus, the New Beginnings Youth Development Center, and its audaciously optimistic school, the Maya Angelou Academy. Over his 37 years at Maryland, he’s become a renowned scholar of the so-called school-to-prison pipeline and the intersection of childhood disability and the criminal justice system. He’s also a longtime activist educator, working to turn around failing schools in juvenile detention centers nationwide. Staffers at New Beginnings, which opened in 2009, share Leone’s vision of lockup as a place troubled youngsters can learn to do better in their schools and communities, not one where they disappear, even if only temporarily. On this November day, Leone steers a van full of undergraduates in his Honors College class on youth incarceration onto the campus to see how the system should work. “What I want you to keep in mind,” he tells the class, “is that this place isn’t typical—unfortunately.”

For much of his career, special education Professor Peter Leone has made regular trips to one of the region’s most foreboding properties, a swath of federal land next to Fort Meade where society’s vulnerable were long shuffled out of sight. He flashes ID at a guard shack flanked by rows of deserted structures, then passes the ruins of the District of Columbia’s notorious Forest Haven home for developmentally disabled people. It closed in 1991 following lawsuits, abuse investigations and a final string of deaths. Down the street is a field of unmarked graves for hundreds of children and adults who died there.

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

EONE WAS AN ADULT before he realized the winning hand he’d

been dealt at birth. Raised in Cleveland by a professor father and social worker mother, he attended good schools and wanted for nothing. When his younger brother spent a night in juvenile detention, the family rallied around the teen. Today the brother is a physician. Later, as a young high school special education teacher in Iowa, Leone was struck by the number of his students on probation. After earning a Ph.D. in special education at the University of Washington, he arrived at Maryland and began researching why that was so. He found that children’s crippling shame is a factor in early troublemaking. “It’s not okay to be seen as ignorant, but being a badass is okay,” he says. “So if you’re called on to read in class and you can’t, just knock over a desk.” His many publications include a series of papers analyzing disparate impacts of policies and practices on marginalized youth. Among them, students with special needs are pulled into the justice system at a rate three to five times higher than the general school population, with the effect particularly acute for children of color. Those like his brother, meanwhile, more often avoided consequences. “If you show up in court, and you’re ‘yes ma’am … no sir,’ and you’re well dressed, with lots of eye contact, and you’ve got your mom and dad right behind you, you’re a lot more likely to be released,” he says. “If you don’t have those skills, and you don’t look people in the eye, and your behavior doesn’t give people confidence that you’ve really learned your lesson, you’re more likely to be detained.”

SPRING 2018

Incarcerated youth relax in a common area at the New Beginnings Youth Development Center (below); Leone and a student at the facility’s Maya Angelou Academy practice sign language (bottom).

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

EONE ONCE CONSIDERED a career in journalism;

today that urge plays out in his effort to expose flaws in dysfunctional systems. In addition to teaching and raising three children, now grown, with his wife, Diane Greig Ph.D. ’94, he’s worked as a courtappointed expert and plaintiff’s witness in places ranging from New York’s Rikers Island to Illinois, California and Hawaii. “I kind of consider myself a muckraker in the tradition of I.F. Stone,” he says, referring to a crusading 20th-century investigative reporter. He began regularly visiting Oak Hill more than 20 years ago when a judge appointed him “special master” to oversee the settlement of education issues in a long-running lawsuit over inadequate conditions and services for special-needs children. He was often flabbergasted by what he saw. “I’d go out there at 10 a.m. on a school day and find youth roaming the grounds unsupervised,” while correctional staff chatted with each other. Once, a science teacher in a vacant classroom told him that students had gone to another class to complete a special dinosaur project. “So I went down to the math class, and they’re showing ‘Jurassic Park 2.’” In 1999, the judge gave Leone and colleague Sheri Meisel, then a umd postdoctoral researcher, control of D.C. Public Schools facilities in correctional centers. A District appeal eventually succeeded, but Leone had a year in the meantime to replace staff, beef up curriculum, policy and procedures and hire a new principal at Oak Hill. He was back in a monitoring role a few years later when the new head of D.C.’s Division of Youth Rehabilitation Services, Vinny Schiraldi, approached Leone with a plan to close 208-bed Oak Hill and replace it with a facility designed for rehabilitation. The new 60-bed center would be limited to those who actually need to be locked up. (After years of falling crime rates and new thinking about juvenile justice, New Beginnings is now half-full.)

New Beginnings residential buildings are designed to look more like college dorms than prison wings.

let me stay here, I think I can graduate. If not, I don’t know.”

“You learn more here than in a regular school. I think if they

“Peter was a godsend, an absolute godsend,” says Schiraldi, who later led New York City’s probation department and now teaches at Columbia University. “I knew the advice I was getting from him about how these young people should be educated was the best advice I could get in the country.” Leone developed specifications for the education program at the new facility. The See Forever Foundation—which had set up several charter schools in D.C. for disadvantaged youth—was chosen to establish the Maya Angelou Academy at Oak Hill in 2006. According to the foundation’s statistics, twice as many residents now return to school or a job after leaving the academy as during its first year of operation. David Domenici, See Forever co-founder and the academy’s first principal, became close friends with Leone during the changeover. Leone has since collaborated on projects nationwide with Domenici’s newer nonprofit, the Center for Educational Excellence in Alternative Settings. “He often goes into these places with a big stick—a court order—but he doesn’t go in screaming,” Domenici says. “Instead he does his Peter thing, which is to be really good with people, really good at understanding what’s happening inside the institution—not an ivory tower attitude, but an attitude that we’re all going to work toward effective solutions.”

EW BEGINNINGS could pass for a modern private school if not for

the security fences peeking out. On the sidewalk outside, in the shadow of one of Forest Haven’s eerie, abandoned hulks, Leone’s class clusters nervously around him. The low-key Midwesterner favors ball caps and comfortable khakis, and in contrast to his students, seems more at home here than on campus. They pass through metal detectors and security doors into the Maya Angelou Academy, a cheerily decorated wing of New Beginnings named for the poet and civil rights activist who visited regularly before her 2014 death. Books and vibrant portraits of African-American leaders and cultural icons line the walls. Incarcerated youth—scholars, as they’re called here—go to and from class wearing polos and tan pants similar to regular public school uniforms. Some may have committed serious crimes, but most are here for nonviolent offenses; at least half have disabilities. Leone’s students split up. Several visit a science class where a young teacher guides scholars through the chemical equation for photosynthesis. Lanky, smiling Taiquan, 17, stops writing and suddenly stands and paces across the classroom. His frequent compulsion to “jump up,” he says later, causes trouble at his home school. It’s less of a problem here, and he says he’s catching up in subjects he was failing on the outside. He was sent to New Beginnings previously—staff wouldn’t let him detail his offenses to outsiders—but didn’t stay long. Surprisingly, he worries this confinement, too, will be short. “You learn more here than in a regular school,” he says. “I think if they let me stay here, I think I can graduate. If not, I don’t know.” Before returning to College Park, Leone huddles with his students. The Maya Angelou scholars had more questions for them than vice versa—what are college parties like, how hard are university classes, what are salaries like in their fields?— but his undergrads did gain some impressions Leone hopes could help nudge society’s needle in a constructive direction. Despite being confined, many of the scholars seem eager to learn and to be nurturing goals in life, a young woman offers. “Tell people about it,” Leone responds. “When you go home for the holidays, I hope you talk with your families and friends about what you saw here; talk about the kids here.” Because—whether they leave lockup more alienated, or prepared to contribute to their communities—the kids are returning to society. terp

SPRING 2018

Photos By Stephanie S. Cordle

Illustrations By Jason Keisling

TRAIL MIX By Liam Farrell

sedate and green February day in central Maryland had turned to powdered-sugar fields and frozen crystalline trees by the time I reached the state’s western side. Just past a vineyard and a farm selling brown eggs, I turned down a tree-lined gravel road and parked my car three miles east of Smithsburg. In the shadow of a steep hill called Buzzard Knob, a Terp photographer and I met up with Dennis Pogue, an adjunct associate professor in umd’s School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and Katie Boyle, a graduate student pursuing a dual master’s degree in applied anthropology and historic preservation. Pogue and Boyle recently started a twoyear project with the National Park Service to identify and examine historic sites along Maryland’s segment of the Appalachian Trail, the 2,190-mile path that snakes through 14 states and serves as a refuge, challenge and inspiration to 3 million hikers a year. Their task is part of a national effort to create a new baseline of information about the trail and help preserve places of archaeological significance. Twenty-seven sites, many with prehistoric origins, were identified on Maryland’s 41-mile stretch of the Appalachian Trail decades ago during power line surveys, Civil War battlefield excavations and dissertation research. Ten are clustered in the Buzzard Knob area, but on this morning, Pogue and Boyle were more interested in unrecorded stone walls.

Putting the natural under the microscope of the technological, Pogue took out an iPad and looked at maps collected from the state government’s lidar surveys, which use laser light to capture elevation data and provide information for projects like flood risk and emergency management. He pointed to small, straight ridges crisscrossing the area and meeting at right angles, reminding him of walls typically found in the English countryside. “This is an opportunity for us to add some new information,” Pogue said as he studied the screen. Reaching this older evidence of humanity’s imprint on nature wasn’t going to be easy, however. Since the nearby Appalachian Trail entrance was flooded, Pogue and Boyle, who have recreationally hiked portions of the Appalachian Trail before, decided that flanking it and rounding a cluster of boulders would be the best route. So, digging my boots sideways into the ice and snow, I grabbed an icy tree branch and hoisted myself up after them.

the appalachian trail was born in the wake of a human tragedy. On April 18, 1921, forester and conservationist Benton MacKaye was buying train tickets to the countryside when his wife, suffragist Jessie Stubbs, ran out of Grand Central Station and threw herself into the East River. Recovering in the company of friends in the planning and architecture worlds that summer, MacKaye began working on a radical proposal that appeared that fall in the Journal of the American Institute of Architects. The Connecticut-born son of a playwright, he had spent his adolescence surrounded by nature, documenting trips into the countryside and hiking with college friends in New Hampshire. As the United States lurched out of the bloodshed of and recession that followed World War I, MacKaye believed the outdoors could provide a safety valve for political, economic and military strife. “A great professor once said that ‘optimism is oxygen,’” MacKaye wrote in his article, “An Appalachian Trail: A Project in Regional Planning.” “Are we getting all the ‘oxygen’ we might for the big tasks before us?” He called for creating a “series of recre-

SPRING 2018

ational communities” linked by a walking trail along the Appalachian Mountains, from New England to Georgia. There would be shelters for hikers, permanent residences for new communities, and food and farm camps to provide jobs and relieve crowded cities. That utopian vision never came to fruition, as the project’s idealism collided with the reality of creating a hiking trail over thousands of miles in the face of natural disasters, highway projects and internal squabbles among trail leaders. While a six-man Civilian Conservation Corps group completed the final link in Maine in August 1937, the exact route of the trail frequently degraded or shifted until the federal government stepped up its protection with the National Trails System Act in 1968 and acquired land more aggressively.

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

The type of survey that Pogue is conducting is common for national parks, but hasn’t been done before on the Appalachian Trail, which crosses land owned and managed by many stakeholders, says Joel Dukes, a National Park Service archaeologist for the Northeast region. The Maryland section is one of the most impacted by infrastructure projects and tourist wear and tear, and this survey will provide a new framework for taking care of the trail. “We need to think about how we manage it … from a settler hole to a prehistoric campsite,” Dukes says. “(The trail) is something that’s sort of alive and moving.”

in 1948, earl shaffer became the first known hiker to conquer the trail in a single journey, looking for a way “to walk the army out of my system.”“I almost wished that the Trail really was endless,” Shaffer wrote in his travelogue “Walking with Spring,” “that no one could ever hike its length.” As the ground got steeper and trickier, with logs, bushes and fallen trees necessitating a circuitous route up the hillside, I found myself disagreeing with Shaffer’s assessment. Pogue, in high spirits, occasionally reminded me that the grand reward for all this effort was a frozen pile of rocks, albeit ones pragmatically arranged. At this point in the project, Pogue and Boyle are mostly doing indoor work, poring over old data and maps to plan their outings and speculating which ridgeline, valley and river areas may be promising for future study. Out in the field, they will examine the condition of known sites and also map their loca-

tions using gps coordinates to provide more precise directions to future scholars. “A lot of this data is very old. Those folks had different perspectives than we do,” Pogue says. “Methods have changed.” In “A Walk in the Woods,” the bestselling 1998 chronicle of hiking the Appalachian Trail, author Bill Bryson lamented that nature has become an “either/or proposition—either you ruthlessly subjugate it … or you deify it, treat is as something holy and remote, a thing apart, as along the Appalachian Trail.” But it seemed to me, as I clambered over a rock wall and noticed a tree bearing the telltale white blaze of paint signifying the Appalachian Trail, that Bryson’s winner-take-all interpretation needs some room for ongoing tugs of war between what people have built and what nature is trying to take back. The walls, several feet high and intricately constructed, are evidence that this part of the trail was at one point cleared and used for livestock with a “classic enclosure system,” Pogue said. He estimated, based on the size of the trees, that the area has probably been in a more natural state for only about a century. Pogue and Boyle scouted the area, trying to align what they saw on the lidar maps with reality. At one point, they came across a circu-

lar pile of stones that appeared to have been a sort of structure. Was it a home? A shelter? “The question is, how do we interpret these things?” Pogue said. “This is that first level of ‘what’s out there?’” The wintry day meant looking for the exact prehistoric sites would have been futile, but we walked into a field where there was once a quarry of rhyolite, a volcanic cousin of granite.

The area now serves as a clearing for power lines, their low hum passing in and out of audible range as a whipping wind rattled frozen branches like chimes. A few minutes later, we retreated toward our starting point, slipping and sliding toward our cars. At different points, we found confirmation of mid-century human habitation in the form of a pull-tab Budweiser beer can and glass Clorox and Cloverland Milk bottles. But for those moments in the clearing, it was just us, nature and the relationship between—the prehistoric and the modern waiting for discovery along the Appalachian Trail. terp

SPRING 2018

ALUMNI

A S S O C I AT I O N

STAY ACTIVE LETTER FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

Carry Your Terp Pride We connect, cultivate and channel the power of alumni to enrich themselves and advance the university. This isn’t just the mission of the UMD Alumni Association, it’s a guiding principle for how our alumni board leaders and staff operate every day. This mission also leads us to create programming, events and technologies that encourage connections among alumni worldwide. The Alumni Association hosts hundreds of opportunities every year to keep you connected. In-person and online programs include professional networking, forums featuring faculty, career mentorships and social gatherings. Visit alumni.umd.edu/events to find activities in your area to enhance your relationships and professional development. I also want to share that the Alumni Association is now launching a Terps VISA Signature Rewards credit card. Virtually everything you purchase on campus—like

Lifelong Love

Alum Wins “How We Met” Contest

athletic tickets, Terps gear at the bookstore and registration to Alumni Association events—will earn you up

IN FEBRUARY, the Alumni Association asked you to share your #TerpLove4Life stories

to 10 times the rewards points. Redeem your points for

for a chance at winning an exclusive prize package from The Hotel at the University of

VISA

gift cards, exclusive travel and much more through

the premium rewards program. By using the Terps Card, you can demonstrate your Maryland pride while supporting the Alumni Association. The more widespread the card is, the more we can provide mentoring and internship opportunities for students; professional networking and development for alumni; and hundreds of opportunities each year to connect with the university and other Terps in locations around the country. Please join me in making the Terps Card your card of choice. Learn more at terpscard.com. Go Terps!

Amy Eichhorst

Executive Director University of Maryland Alumni Association

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

Maryland. Scores of you stepped forward with your funny, inspiring and sweet how-wemet tales. Congratulations to the contest winner, Sharon Snyder Deutch ’88. Here’s an excerpt from her story:

My husband and I met at a umd football game in the fall of 1986. Jeff was hoping to give away his ticket, but once he saw me, he decided to stay. During the game, I got up to get popcorn, and I tripped over Jeff ’s feet and fell into his lap. We went on our first date on Sept. 27, 1986, dinner and the movie “Children of a Lesser God” (we were both taking a sign language class). After the movie, we walked around the umd chapel and shared our first kiss. When Jeff graduated a year ahead of me and headed to the University of South Carolina to pursue his mba, I have never been so sad.

But we talked every night for hours and after a year, he transferred to American University to be closer to me. We just celebrated our 26th anniversary and are so very proud that our son Adam is a umd freshman. We have come back over the years for football and basketball games and of course Maryland Day. But now it feels so much more wonderful to be back on campus. Our daughter Jenna is a junior in high school and the only school she wants to go to is umd! Without question, we are 100% #TerpLove4Life.

Making the Move

Terp Bound Program Offers Out-of-State Students a Snapshot of the Maryland Community moving more than 2,000 miles across the country is no small feat for an 18-yearold, but a welcoming community of Terps can make it easier. For Marina Kissner ’21, learning about umd from alumni in her home state of California at a Terp Bound gathering helped seal her decision to enroll. “This event showed me that umd really cares,” Kissner says. “I saw the support offered to out-of-state students.” A partnership between the Alumni Association and the Office of Undergraduate Admissions, Terp Bound events connect admitted students like Kissner and their families with alumni in six regions. The

program includes a presentation on student life and university initiatives and offers students a chance to mingle with alumni. Admission to Maryland has become increasingly competitive—the university received more than 33,000 applications for the Fall 2018 class of about 4,075—and the Terp Bound program targets students who have been admitted. In the past year, the Terp Bound program has doubled in size, welcoming 50 to 80 students, family members and alumni in each location, including Big Ten Conference headquarters in Chicago, a terrace overlooking the beach in Ft. Lauderdale and a WeWork space where an alumnus works

in Los Angeles. This year, the series added speed-networking table talks with alumni focused on topics ranging from athletics to redevelopment in College Park. “There is nothing that lights my face up like talking about my student experience,” says Lauren Norris ’11, M.A. ’16, director of student and recent graduate programming for the Alumni Association. “It’s about building a community from the time a student is first admitted to Maryland throughout their lifetime.”

TERPS IN ANNAPOLIS President Wallace Loh, second from right, met Terps Alexa Bleach ’16 (left), Kemari Legg ’14 and Stephen Leung ’15 at Terps in Annapolis on Feb. 21.

MEMBER APPRECIATION - WOMEN’S BASKETBALL GAME David Ross, Debbie Ross ’99, Loretta Carstens and Carleton Jackson ’72 gathered at an Alumni Association members-only event before the women’s basketball team faced Nebraska on Feb. 25.

— Daryl Lee Hale, Alumni Association staff For information about volunteering, contact Daryl Lee Hale, volunteer and marketing coordinator, at dlhale@umd.edu.

STAY CONNECTED

ENTERPRENEURS IN THE CITY A panel of successful entrepreneurs discussed their business endeavors at EnTERPreneurs in the City in New York, N.Y., on Jan. 29.

SPRING 2018

ALUMNI

PROFILES

DOUG HILL ’84

iFarm

CS Grad Goes Back to the Land, With Help From the Web

A “Second Chance” Organization

A HERD OF YOUNG PIGS gallops

in the distance, just visible through the leafless winter forest. Farmer Doug Hill ’84 stands

Alumna Finds Worth in the Waste

at a corn-filled feeder and tries his hog calls. “Soooo-WEE! Hey, pigs!” They ignore him, perhaps rooting for tastier fare: grubs, nuts, even truffles. Just pigs being pigs, he chuckles. Hill is totally in his element tending his organically raised animals—Berkshire hogs, chickens, rabbits, quail—so much so that a visitor to Cabin Creek Heritage Farm, just outside the

together with other area producers to sell products on-

D.C. Beltway in Prince George’s County, might be

line, reaching more potential customers … they hope.

surprised to learn he’s been farming in earnest for only five years. He and his wife and farming partner, Lori Hill,

Kim Rush Lynch, an agriculture marketing specialist for the University of Maryland Extension’s Prince George’s County office, is helping them with

grew up suburbanites in nearby Bowie, and have to

their marketing plans, and has watched the farm

look back several generations for farming forebears.

grow and evolve.

So, particularly when they started, if animals got

“Doug and Lori are fun pioneers—they like to try

sick or feeding issues arose—not to mention when

a lot of things, and they’re good at evaluating pretty

castration time came around for that first litter of

quickly what works and what doesn’t,” Rush Lynch

piglets—they couldn’t draw on a reservoir of family

says. “Lori is intuitive and likes to go with her gut,

know-how.

while Doug is very analytical. They’re a great team.”

But Doug, a computer science graduate who, in

Before starting their commercial farm, the initial

addition to farming, co-owns a health data integra-

idea was to raise their three children in a natural

tion firm, says they weren’t helpless.

setting while growing their own food, Lori Hill says.

“It’s called the internet, dude. It’s got all kinds of useful information,” he says. “And I’m an IT guy.” Massive, continent-spanning agribusinesses supplying eaters thousands of miles away don’t feel quite natural to the Hills. Instead, they sell their

“There’s lessons you learn in everyday life on a farm you can’t learn anywhere else,” she says. “You have the strict responsibility of chores, and you also have freedom to shoot a bow and arrow in your back yard.” While he hasn’t picked up a bow, the couple’s

drug- and hormone-free meat and dairy products on

3-year-old grandson, who lives nearby, clamors to

the farm or at local farmer’s markets.

help tend the animals whenever he can. Just maybe,

While their farming is traditional, they’re moving their distribution into the digital age, seeking to band

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

after a multigenerational interlude, farming might be back in this family’s bloodstream for good.—CC

N A N CY M EY E R ’ 87

at community forklift, a reuse warehouse selling home and construction supplies at below market prices, the haystack is a vast former coal gasification plant stuffed with everything from toilets and hardware to chair legs, and the needles are antique mantles, salvaged oil paintings and beautifully weathered barn doors. Nancy Meyer ’87, ceo of the nonprofit located three miles from the University of

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

Maryland, has some simple advice for anyone undertaking that proverbial search. “If you see something you want, you should just buy it,” she says. “You won’t find it for cheaper, and you won’t see it again.” Meyer, who has led Community Forklift since 2007, has an eclectic background uniquely suited to running such an organization. A native of Teaneck, N.J., she originally came to the Maryland area to learn how to

make musical instruments, then carved out a trailblazing career, from breaking into the virtually all-male construction industry in the 1970s to running women’s shelters. For her, Community Forklift is about more than diverting housing material from landfills— it’s about changing how we live. “We’re dealing with an economy of excess,” Meyer says. “How do we re-appropriate the value and redistribute it equitably?” The donated raw material for this mission comes in every day, unloaded from the cars, trucks and vans of homeowners, contractors and building companies. Valuable items like a desk from a railroad station or a vintage Jimi Hendrix poster attract eagle-eyed shoppers and Hollywood production companies. (Community Forklift furnished Jessica Jones’ bathroom in the eponymous Netflix series). The nonprofit has salvaged an estimated $30 million in materials since its 2005 founding. In 2016 alone, Community Forklift took in more than 12,000 square feet of tile, 29,000 cubic feet of cabinets, 500 toilets and 13 miles of lumber. And while higher-end vintage items and antique furniture can sell for thousands of dollars (and help keep the lights on), Community Forklift has also donated more than $300,000 in everyday building materials to local organizations and residents. Although the nonprofit financially teetered in its early years, Meyer helped build it into a company that now has a $2 million budget and 40 full-time employees earning above minimum wage and extensive benefits. Besides not requiring a college degree of her hires, Meyer also makes a point of bringing on people who have had trouble getting employment due to drug histories or health reasons. “We’re a second chance kind of organization,” she says.—lf

SPRING 2018

ALUMNI

PROFILES

A YA Book of His Own Alum Writes the Stories He Didn’t See as a Youth

jason reynolds ’05 has written 11 books, but he’d never even finished reading one until his freshman year at the University of Maryland, when he found himself gripped by the urgency of Richard Wright’s “Black Boy.” Nowhere on bookshelves had he recognized himself or the events that shaped his life as a young man of color growing up in Oxon Hill, Md.: the crack epidemic, the advent of hiv/aids or the emergence of hip-hop. “There are very few books that I know of written during that time that talk directly about those things,” Reynolds says.

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

That’s why The New York Times-bestselling author, who released both “Sunny” and “For Every One” last month, has built a career telling nuanced and complex tales about black children in true-to-life detail. His characters observe the racial dynamics at the local pizza place. They get gentle lectures from their pastors. Their parents explain the importance of obeying police officers’ orders. And throughout, they speak in the vernacular of black teenagers. Reynolds’ novels could be set in his hometown, where he and his older brother were raised by a

mother he calls the hardest-working woman he’s ever known. The high school near his house was “the worst in that whole area,” and there were blocks he was advised not to walk down. “But at the same time you could see people who worked government jobs and lower-middle-class people trying to make ends meet,” he says. After graduating from Bishop McNamara High School, Reynolds enrolled at umd, where he felt underprepared academically but discovered open mics, poetry readings and a black literary community. “Maryland gave me an outlet to express myself,” he says—

JASO N R EY N O L DS ’ 0 5

CLASS NOTES REYNOLDS' NEWEST RELEASES

“For Every One,” first read at the unveiling of the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial, is a long poem that Reynolds describes as “my own manifesto of what it means to have a dream.”

“Sunny” is the third of his best-selling series about four different middle schoolers on an elite track team.

and its proximity to the thriving black arts scene in Washington, D.C., centered at the intersection of 14th and U streets, was a perk. English Professor Michael Olmert, who taught Reynolds in an 18th-century poetry and satire class, later wrote the foreword to one of Reynolds’ poetry collections. He describes Reynolds as quiet, funny and smart, and says, “Sometimes it seems there are more people who want to be poets than people who want to read poetry. Not Jason.” After graduation, Reynolds and his college roommate Jason Griffin moved to Brooklyn and

“I try to get [young students] to understand that stories are not reserved for special people or people outside of their communities. They have stories. They can own their own stories.” JASON REYNOLDS ’05

self-published a coffee table book called “Self.” That landed in front of a friend’s agent and led to a contract with HarperCollins, but his next book flopped. Dejected, Reynolds thought he might be more successful focusing on his day job selling clothes at a Rag & Bone store in Manhattan. A friend, writer Christopher Myers, encouraged Reynolds to keep trying. “I scribbled down as honestly as possible the story of my older brother and his friends,” Reynolds says. That book, 2014’s “When I Was the Greatest,” was a personal and professional success. “Once I got that novel done, it was like I had permission to be myself on the page,” Reynolds says. Since then, Reynolds has written unflinchingly about police brutality, gun violence and domestic abuse. “It is perhaps too easy to call this worthy book timely and thought-provoking,” Kekla Magoon wrote in The New York Times of 2015’s “All-American Boys,” Reynolds’ novel co-written with Brendan Kiely in which a black teenager is beaten by a white police officer. “Let us reach beyond simple praise and treat it instead as a book to be grappled with, challenged by, and discussed.” Reynolds, whose books have been nominated for the National Book Award, often visits schools and talks to young people who are much like he once was. “I try to get them to understand that stories are not reserved for special people or people outside of their communities,” he says. “They have stories. They can own their own stories.”—sl

P H O T O B Y J AT I L I N D S AY ; B O O K C O V E R A R T W O R K C O U R T E S Y O F S I M O N A N D S C H U S T E R

RANIA A. AL-MASHAT M.A. ’98, PH.D. ’02 was appoint-

ed tourism minister of Egypt; she is the first woman in that role. Al-Mashat previously served as a senior economic adviser to the International Monetary Fund and as deputy governor of the Central Bank of Egypt. Cava, a chain of fast-casual Mediterranean restaurants helmed by CEO BRETT SCHULMAN ’95, was ranked

No. 37 on Fast Company’s 2018 list of the world’s most innovative companies. There are now 45 Cava outlets in major cities nationwide. FRANK REICH ’84 , offensive

coordinator of the Super Bowl-winning Philadelphia Eagles, was hired as the Indianapolis Colts’ head coach. Before his two years with the Eagles, Reich served on the coaching staffs of the San Diego Chargers, Arizona Cardinals and the Colts. As a quarterback, he’s best known for orchestrating the biggest comeback in NFL playoff history, the Buffalo Bills’ 41-38 overtime victory over the Houston Oilers in January 1993. JOSEPHINE OLSEN PH.D. ’79,

a Peace Corps veteran and director of the Center for Global Education Initiatives at the University of Maryland, Baltimore’s School of Social Work, was nominated to lead the organization of volunteers around the world. She served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Tunisia in the 1960s and has held high-level administrative posts in the organization in the past three presidential administrations.

SPRING 2018

GIVES

ATHLETES A HAND

As a Terps tight end, I noticed my receiving gloves quickly lost their stickiness. Working with UMD chemical engineering students, I developed a gel to bring old gloves back to life. Today, our products help athletes in sports ranging from baseball to golf get a firm grip on their game. MATT FURSTENBURG â&#x20AC;&#x2122;12 / FAMILY SCIENCE CO-FOUNDER AND CEO / GRIP BOOST

FROM THE ARCHIVES

Number of Possibilities

ALUMNI

THE “MILLIONAIRE CALCULATOR” in Hornbake Library

doesn’t exactly fit in your pocket. This 50-pound Swiss machine, built in the 1890s, was the first contraption able to multiply numbers—a significant leap in innovation. One of 4,665 manufactured, it used a system of cranks, keys and slides to process eight-digit figures. The calculator was found in the Institute for Physical Science and Technology building during renovations and donated last year to University Archives.

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

SPRING 2018

PUTT IN PERSPECTIVE

How many engineers does it take to hit a golf ball? Plenty, if you are at UMD â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Alumni Cup. This yearly competition, sponsored by the Engineering Alumni Network, charges teams from each of the A. James Clark School of Engineeringâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s departments with completing a mundane task with the most complicated machine possible. Here, an expectant squad from the Department of Fire Protection Engineering watches its second place-winning entry sink a one-meter putt in February.

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

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