April 2005

Kudos

Marion Casey, who teaches history online for UMUC Europe, traveled to Vietnam in 1974–1975 to teach history at the University of Saigon as a Fulbright professor. In late April 2005, she will return to Vietnam as part of a delegation from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, based in Washington, D.C., and will visit a landmine removal project the group funds in the Quang Tri Province. The trip is scheduled to begin in Hanoi and end in Ho Chi Minh city on April 30, 2005, the 30th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. Casey has led several seminars on the war.

Elizabeth (Beth) Hawthorne, presented, “Activities of the ACM Two-Year College Education Committee,” at the Association of Computing Machinery special interest group’s computer science education conference in St. Louis, Missouri, February 25, 2005. She will present, “Curricula Projects of the ACM Two-Year College Education Committee” at the 10th annual Conference on Innovation and Technology in Computer Science Education, in Lisbon, Portugal, in June 2005.

Debra Mertz, who teaches in UMUC’s information systems management program, published, “Impact of Plagiarism and Role of the Student: Is Plagiarism on the Rise or just Being Disregarded at Online Universities.” online in the March 1, 2005, issue of WorldWideLearn.

Bob Pomietto, who teaches in UMUC’s information systems management program, spoke at the Software Engineering Processing Group conference, sponsored by the Software Engineering Institute, March 7–10, 2005, in Seattle, Washington. Pomietto discussed implementing the institute’s Capability Maturity Model Integrated (CMMI) for small organizations and projects. Later, he spoke about CMMI requirements for project managers at the NASA Project Management Challenge conference held in UMUC’s Inn and Conference Center March 22–23, 2005.

Jennifer Ross-Nazzal, who teaches history for UMUC, received the History Research Associates’ New Professional Award at the National Council on Public History’s annual conference, held April 14–16, 2005, in Kansas City, Missouri. Ross-Nazzal received a framed certificate and cash prize along with the award.

Mary Ellen Schmider, who teaches history for UMUC, won a one-year Fulbright grant to Skopje, Macedonia, for 2005–2006. In 1997, she served as a Fulbright lecturer to Lanzhou University in China, where she returned as a guest lecturer in 2004. She has also traveled to Japan and Mongolia as a researcher or guest lecturer.

Richard Swartz, who teaches in UMUC’s information systems management program, presented, “The Role of the Chief Information Officer in Managing IT Resources in a Large Statistical Agency,” at Statistics Canada’s annual information technology conference in Ottawa, Canada, April 2005.

Michele A. Washington, who teaches in UMUC’s information systems management program, has been accepted into the 2005–2006 Executive Potential/Leadership Program for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Sylvia Washington, who teaches history for UMUC, was interviewed on air by Steve Edwards, a popular Chicago public radio talk show host, on April 21, 2005. Washington is trained as a historian and environmental scientist and discussed her first environmental history monograph, “Packing Them In: An Archaeology of Environmental Racism in Chicago, 1865–1954” (Lexington Books, 2004). The interview was part of the 35th anniversary commemoration of the first observation of Earth Day.

Pamela Witcher, UMUC’s director of faculty development programs in the Center for Teaching and Learning, attended the 16th Annual International Conference on College Teaching and Learning, March 28, 2005, as an invited pre-conference workshop facilitator and featured conference presenter. There, she shared her experiences and lessons learned in managing a peer mentoring program for UMUC’s global faculty.