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SMCM Southern Maryland Folklife Center Receives Grant from Maryland State Arts Council

The SMCM Southern Maryland Folklife Center received another important grant from the Maryland State Arts Council (MSAC), funding activity and growth of the center in Fiscal Year 2021-22. The Southern Maryland Folklife Center is co-directed by three faculty members at SMCM: Assistant Professor of English, Jerry Gabriel; Director of the Boyden Gallery, Erin Peters; and Associate Librarian, Kent Randell. The $38,540 award will be used primarily for the 2022 version of the center’s signature event: an annual set of folklife summer workshops to be held June 3-5, 2022 on the SMCM campus.

The SMCM Southern Maryland Folklife Center was established in 2021 as part of the statewide Folklife Network. These organizations, in the words of MSAC’s Maryland Traditions Program, “support folklife, or community-based living cultural traditions handed down by example or word of mouth.” In summer 2021, the Southern Maryland Folklife Center offered a set of workshops over three days, including making stuffed ham, running a small farm, painting the Southern Maryland landscape, and making wampum pendants. The Southern Maryland Folklife Center is partnering with the arts associations of St. Mary’s, Calvert, and Charles counties, Historic St. Mary’s City, Trinity Episcopal Church, Southern Maryland Traditional Music and Dance, and the Southern Maryland Heritage Area to host the 2022 summer workshops. Serving as a hub for the region, the SMCM-based team is excited to continue to expand partnerships.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland Receives National Endowment for the Humanities Grant

Long-term sustainable programming and community engagement tied to the Commemorative to Enslaved Peoples of Southern Maryland gained more momentum this fall thanks to monetary support from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

Earlier this week, NEH announced more than $87 million in American Rescue Plan funding to nearly 300 cultural and educational institutions to help them recover from the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, retain and rehire workers, and reopen sites, facilities and programs.

St. Mary’ College of Maryland was awarded just over $144,000 to fund its project, “Extending the History and Voices of Enslaved Peoples of Southern Maryland.” The funds allow the College to create a one-year public humanities position, sustain existing humanities programming and to create a long-term plan for humanities activities and public outreach related to the Commemorative.

The Commemorative to Enslaved Peoples of Southern Maryland is an immersive art experience that honors the story of resilience, persistence and creative problem-solving that defined the lives of the enslaved individuals that lived in St. Mary’s City between 1750 and 1815. Constructed on the College’s campus, the Commemorative provides visitors with the space to acknowledge and learn from the lives of those who once toiled there, while providing a place for reflection and introspection about the nature of slavery and its connections to modern society.

“This grant is not only celebrating the four years of work that went in from finding the slave quarters in 2016, up until the creation of the commemorative and the virtual dedication in 2020 but also the powerful potential of the work to be done,” said Erin Peters, director of the Boyden Gallery and Collection, and lecturer of museum studies, who is project director of the grant.

Julia King, professor of anthropology and member of the grant project team, made the discovery of the slave quarters with her staff and students in 2016. King said she is excited to see the next phase in the Commemorative’s development

“NEH support is a powerful recognition of the importance of the College’s Commemorative to Enslaved People of Southern Maryland. This support will allow the College to develop the Commemorative as an educational tool for all of our stakeholders, including the greater community of which the College is a part.”

Without the ability to have an in-person dedication that had been in planning for two years, Peters said the College didn’t stop working, but rather filtered it, switching to what would become the nationally recognized award-winning virtual dedication, “From Absence to Presence: The Commemorative to Enslaved Peoples of Southern Maryland.”

She said now with the resources and recognition from NEH, the College can continue to activate and “make that presence larger.”

Garrey Dennie, associate professor of history and member of the grant project team, is currently spearheading a committee that has planned a two-part program celebrating the anniversary of the Commemorative, which he said, “captures the core vision that has allowed us to win the NEH grant.” More details will be announced later this month.

To learn more about the Commemorative to Enslaved Peoples of Southern Maryland or to apply for the one-year public humanities fellow position, visit us online.

SMCM Title IX Office Collaborating with Johns Hopkins University on Sexual Violence Prevention Initiative

Michael Dunn (L), Assistant Vice President of Equity and Inclusion / Title IX Coordinator and Helen Ann Lawless (R), Assistant Director of Title IX Compliance and Training

Michael Dunn and Helen Ann Lawless from SMCM’s Office of Title IX Compliance and Training recently finalized a Memorandum of Understanding to collaborate with Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. The new initiative aims to conduct evaluation research on ‘Hot Spot Mapping’ as an environmental change strategy for sexual violence prevention on college and university campuses. The three-year project is titled: Creating Protective Higher Education Environments for Sexual Violence Prevention: Practice-based Evidence and Evaluation.

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health will lead the initiative, with support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and several college and university partners. Goals of the project include:

  • Development of campus- and program-specific logic models, outlining the inputs, activities, process measures, and outputs of a Hot Spot Mapping intervention to reduce sexual violence
  • Identification of existing survey instruments and evaluation data sources, and conceptualization of new data sources to meet evaluation goals
  • Identification of students and additional stakeholders for further discussion and activities related to logic model development
  • Identification of a diverse set of appropriate initiatives to respond to Hot Spot Mapping findings in order to reduce sexual violence
  • Review and advise on the resulting practice-based monitoring and evaluation guide for campus-based Hot Spot Mapping, as well as related dissemination of project outputs

Subsequent project phases may include:

  • Testing of new measures and evaluation procedures, and
  • Pilot hot spot mapping evaluation

The SMCM Title IX Office has already begun work on the initiative and will receive $15,000 during the three-year project to compensate for the time involved in attending meetings, reviewing documents and coordinating stakeholders for meeting participation.

Southern Maryland Folklife Center Presents Southern Maryland Folklife Summer Workshops at St. Mary’s College of Maryland, June 23-25, 2021

The Southern Maryland Folklife Center will present the first annual Southern Maryland Folklife Summer Workshops at St. Mary’s College of Maryland this June 23-25, 2021. Attendance registration is required by visiting https://www.somdfolklife.org/.

During the three-day event, workshops will be offered celebrating and supporting community-based living cultural traditions of Southern Maryland. The workshops will culminate in a public exhibition and celebration event at the College’s Boyden Gallery. Workshops will take place from 10 a.m.-12 p.m. and from 1:30 – 4:30 p.m. each day. Registration costs are $10 for one workshop, $20 for two workshops and $30 for four workshops. A separate music and dance performance and Historic St. Mary’s City excursion are also available for $10 each.

Choose from an array of folklife workshops:

  • SOMD genealogy
  • History of wampum
  • Contra dance
  • History of bluegrass
  • Small farm entrepreneurship
  • Stuffed ham two-day event
  • Landscape painting
  • African American hair
  • Learn a folksong

This year, the Southern Maryland Folklife Summer Workshops will maintain a hybrid approach with both virtual and in-person offerings. The latter will adhere to the State of Maryland’s guidelines, including face coverings and social distancing. In person workshops will take place at the Jamie L. Roberts Stadium, River Center, Goodpaster Hall and Montgomery Hall on the St. Mary’s College campus, along with Trinity Church Parish Hall.

The summer workshops will be the backbone of the newly formed Southern Maryland Folklife Center, which is part of the Maryland State Arts Council’s (MSAC) Folklife Network. This summer’s event is funded by the MSAC’s “Maryland Traditions” program.

For more information, email somdfolklife@gmail.com.

Associate Professor of Chemistry Kelly Neiles and Team Invited to Join Inclusive Excellence Learning Community

Chair and Associate Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry Kelly Neiles, along with colleagues at SMCM, have accepted an invitation from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) to participate in an Inclusive Excellence Learning Community. The award includes $30,000 to support participation in the Learning Community, which focuses on the evaluation of inclusive teaching and is meant to build capacity for inclusion of all students, especially those who have been historically excluded from science. Neiles stated that she and her team “are excited for the opportunity this will provide the College both in terms of educating ourselves on this important topic, and also in positioning ourselves to gain future support for this work”.

The following individuals helped Neiles develop the proposal to HHMI:

  • Katy Arnett, Professor of Educational Studies, Faculty Advisor for Accessibility Services, and Coordinator of Transparent Teaching & Assessment
  • Chris Burch, Senior Developer/Architect in the Office of Information Technology
  • Emily Casey, Assistant Professor of Art History
  • Tayo Clyburn, Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion/Chief Diversity Officer
  • Samantha Elliott, Director of the Center for Inclusive Teaching & Learning and Associate Professor of Biology
  • Gili Freedman, Assistant Professor of Psychology
  • Josh Grossman, Professor of Physics
  • Argelia Gonzalez Hurtado, Assistant Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies
  • Shanen Sherrer, Assistant Professor of Biochemistry
  • Christine Wooley, Associate Dean of Curriculum and Associate Professor of English
  • Diego Tibaquira Professor of Computer Science at Miami Dade College

The Inclusive Excellence Learning Community will be organized in two phases. Phase 1 of the Learning Community will:

  • help members apply an inclusive, equitable, and anti-racist lens to their continued self-study,
  • hold one another accountable as members develop inclusive, equitable, and anti-racist approaches to address selected challenges, and
  • help inform HHMI’s development of Phase 2.

Neiles’s team will participate in a learning community cluster with approximately 14 other teams from other institutions, focusing on evaluation of inclusive teaching. Two other clusters will concentrate on content of the introductory science experience, and effective partnerships between 2- and 4-year institutions.

An essential element of an inclusive stance is a commitment to dismantle institutional structural racism. HHMI also promotes moving from a scarcity mindset that emphasizes competition to an abundance mindset that embodies collaboration and community. By the end of Phase 1, HHMI’s goal is for each institution to be ready to develop an inclusive, equitable, and anti-racist approach to address their selected challenge and have a community to rely on as they implement their ideas and strategies. HHMI will host meetings throughout Phase 1 so that the cluster members can convene and process their learning together.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland Receives Scientific Equipment Grant from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation

St. Mary’s College of Maryland announces a SEP Phase XV Scientific Equipment grant from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation to support, improve and broaden the access and impact of undergraduate science education at the College.

This grant will supply the equipment to establish two new laboratory spaces on campus, a fabrication laboratory and an imaging center, as well as the acquisition of observational astronomy and chemical imaging equipment that will support and expand current curricular and research offerings to both science and non-science majors.

Engaging students through experiential learning is a major component of the College’s new Learning through Experiential and Applied Discovery (LEAD) initiative. Through LEAD, faculty work across disciplines to blend together a thoughtful and purposeful academic experience for students with hands-on learning opportunities intertwined with credit-bearing professional skill development courses.

“We are grateful to the Sherman Fairchild Foundation for investing in St. Mary’s College of Maryland as we continue to work toward integrating practical and professional skills for students through our LEAD initiative promoting success beyond college,” said President Tuajuanda C. Jordan.

Scientific equipment like that provided through the grant from the Sherman Fairchild Foundation also enables the College to recruit and retain more talented high school students to the College by increasing and diversifying undergraduate research and hands-on learning opportunities for both science and non-science majors.

The St. Mary’s College of Maryland Foundation is a private, nonprofit organization that supports the College through sound fiscal management of a growing endowment portfolio. It is governed by a board of directors that gives its expertise and time in service to the College without compensation.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland, the National Public Honors College, is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education through 2024-2025. St. Mary’s College is ranked one of the best public liberal arts schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Approximately 1,600 students attend the college, nestled on the St. Mary’s River in Southern Maryland.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland joins the Maryland State Arts Council as a Regional Folklife Center

St. Mary’s College of Maryland was recently awarded a Maryland State Arts Council Folklife Network grant totaling $40,500 to represent Southern Maryland as a Maryland Regional Folklife Center in the Maryland State Arts Council’s Folklife Network. Regional folklife centers serve to continue “programmatic or educational efforts made by an organization to support folklife, or community-based living cultural traditions handed down by example or word of mouth.”

The College will create a Southern Maryland Folklife Summer Institute as the key feature of the Regional Folklife Center. The annual summer institute will be held at St. Mary’s College and will add unique opportunities to the rich and vibrant array of folklife events already operating in the region by celebrating and supporting community-based living cultural traditions of Southern Maryland (St. Mary’s, Calvert and Charles Counties). The institute will achieve this goal by offering a raft of workshops centered around broad folklife activities and their Southern Maryland components. Some proposed workshops will be specific to Southern Maryland (genealogy, cuisines such as stuffed ham and soul food), while others will reflect activities of Marylanders (landscape painting, beekeeping, oral history), while broader workshops will focus on the Mid-Atlantic region (bluegrass folk music, small farm entrepreneurship).

In preparing the grant, the team collaborated with the arts councils and organizations of the tri-county region in a community survey to learn about regional folklife needs and the kind of programming the community would like represented in a folklife institute.

The institute will pilot in June of 2021 with two days of exciting workshops and will close with a public exhibition and celebration event in the SMCM Boyden Gallery (pandemic permitting). The gallery event will allow participants to display their work and efforts learned in the workshops and may include such elements as short readings of oral histories, displays of family genealogies, landscape paintings, live folk music, and samples of culinary dishes. Campus residential housing will be available to participants. The institute will dovetail with the widely popular, community-centered Southern Maryland River Concert Series that draws thousands of people from the region for weekly outdoor summer concerts and the prestigious Chesapeake Writers’ Conference, therefore providing additional visibility and extra-curricular activities for participants.

In addition to the College’s Boyden Gallery, the SlackWater Center will also be a key participant in the folklife center as the institute’s activities will be featured in, and may also produce content for, the SlackWater journal. In addition to the journal, the SlackWater Center also provides students and community members with opportunities to conduct oral histories, hundreds of which are transcribed and available online on the Archive’s website as the SlackWater Oral History Collection. The activities of the institute may produce writing features, images (art and photography), oral history interviews, genealogies, and recordings of lectures that will then be added to the SMCM Archive.

Over the coming years, the College aims to incrementally build upon annual institute offerings and community engagement, by soliciting candid assessment and suggestions from all participants of the pilot and subsequent institutes.

SMCM Hosts Third Annual Research Excellence Workshop on January 17, 2020

Provost Michael Wick Provides Opening Remarks at the 2020 REW

St. Mary’s College of Maryland held the third annual Research Excellence Workshop (REW) on January 17th, 2020 in Daugherty-Palmer-Commons. The REW provides broad research development opportunities (beyond grants), and institutional support for and recognition of faculty research, scholarship and creative activities. The specific goals of the 2020 REW workshop were to: present and discuss internal support for research at SMCM, present relevant funding and research opportunities, formally recognize the efforts of faculty and staff in seeking external funding to support their endeavors, and provide a forum for networking with external guests and colleagues across campus.

The day’s events included:

Panel on Internal Support for Research at SMCM

  • Part 1 – Provost Michael Wick, Associate Dean Katie Gantz, former and current department chairs Drs. Adriana Brodsky and Aileen Bailey presented ways to support faculty and undergraduate research from a College and departmental perspective.
  • Part 2 – Drs. Bailey and James Mantell presented an innovative workload model that allows for improved scholarly, creative, and research experiences of students while appropriately compensating faculty mentoring.

Session on External Funding and Networking Opportunities

This was one 2-hour session with three informal, sequential presentations (~30 minutes each) followed by ~30 minutes for questions from the audience.

  • Fulbright Scholars Program: Dr. Carleen Velez, IIE Fulbright Outreach Specialist, provided an overview of Fulbright programs popular with SMCM faculty, and offered tips for writing successful fellowship applications.
  • Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit (CESU)- and National Park Service (NPS)-facilitated research for faculty and students: Mr. Danny Filer, CESU Research Coordinator provided an overview of research and funding opportunities afforded to SMCM through our partnership with the Chesapeake Watershed CESU Network. In addition, Dr. Joshua Torres discussed research collaborations with NPS, specifically opportunities for SMCM undergraduate students to conduct archival research with NPS in the National Capital Region.
  • MD State Arts Council (MSAC) Funding and SMCM as MSAC Folklife Network Hub: Dr. Chad Buterbaugh, MSAC Director of the MD Traditions program provided an overview of MSAC funding and the MD Traditions Program. He also discussed SMCM’s new role as the southern MD hub for the MD Folklife Network, a new collaboration to which faculty can contribute. To discuss this new initiative with SMCM stakeholders, the executive directors and some board members of the Arts Councils for Charles, Calvert and St. Mary’s County were also in attendance.

Clockwise from left: Dr. Gili Freedman, Dr. Shanen Sherrer, and Nick D’Antona ’19 (on behalf of Dr. Troy Townsend) receive 2020 REW Awards

Office of Research and Sponsored Programs (ORSP) Award Presentations and Networking Lunch

In addition to providing networking opportunities with external speakers and campus colleagues, this annual REW lunch celebrates and recognizes all SMCM faculty and staff who submitted proposals for external funding during the previous year, and we present the annual ORSP awards. As the Most Successful Grant Seeker in FY19, Dr. Troy Townsend, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, received the ORSP River Hawk Award; and Dr. Shanen Sherrer, Assistant Professor of Biochemistry, and Dr. Gili Freedman, Assistant Professor of Psychology, were recognized as ‘Go-Getters’. To celebrate all grant seeking efforts, we held a drawing where the number of free raffle tickets per individual faculty or staff member was equal to the number of proposals they submitted for external funding in FY19. Dr. Holly Blumner’s ticket was selected from the random drawing, earning her a note of congratulations and $25 gift card to the campus bookstore.

NEH Funding Opportunities and Grant Writing Tips

  • Jeff Hardwick, Deputy Director of the NEH Division of Public Programs led this 2.5-hour afternoon NEH workshop that introduced popular NEH funding opportunities and tips on how to write a successful NEH grant proposal.

Sincere thanks to all the attendees and congratulations again to our sponsored research awardees! The Office of Research and Sponsored Programs plans to hold annual research-focused workshops in support of faculty and staff scholarship. If you have ideas about future topics of interest or networking partners, please contact Sabine Dillingham at x4192, sldillingham@smcm.edu.

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Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies Barry Muchnick Awarded $30,000 for Kate Chandler Campus Community Farm

Barry Muchnick, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, has been awarded $30,000 from The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, one of the oldest and largest community foundations in the United States. The funds will support research, development, and implementation of new programming at the Kate Chandler Campus Community Farm through enhanced partnerships between St. Mary’s College and Historic St. Mary’s City. “The ‘Kate Farm’ is a special place to grow food and community,” said Muchnick. “The Community Foundation funding will allow us to deepen and expand the ways the farm serves all St. Mary’s students as well as the surrounding community.”

First founded as a student garden on campus, and then relocating in 2009 to a parcel leased from Historic St. Mary’s City near the corner of Point Lookout Road and Rosecroft Road, the Kate Chandler Campus Community Farm educates students about sustainable agriculture and empowers people to become engaged environmental stewards. The farm is one of the many unique living laboratories at St. Mary’s College that provides fertile ground for experiential learning. “The ‘Kate Farm’ is about much more than growing food,” said Muchnick, who coordinates the effort along with student farm managers and a Farm Advisory Board. “In addition to growing delicious produce, the Farm offers co-benefits including improved well-being through healthy eating, increased contact with nature, and a strengthened connection to our rural landscape and history.” Muchnick sees the farm as “a place to roll up your sleeves, solve real problems, build relationships, and practice caring for each other and the planet.”

As part of an effort to reach and engage all St. Mary’s students – not just environmental studies majors – Muchnick plans to use The Community Foundation award to help improve infrastructure, to launch a new mini-grant program to support farm-based scholarly and creative projects, and to develop new course offerings and a strategic plan for the Farm’s future.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland Gives Invited Plenary at Council on Undergraduate Research Transformations Project Yearly Meeting

The Council on Undergraduate Research Transformations Project (CUR-TP) held its third yearly meeting this past weekend, October 4-6, 2019, at which meeting participants continued their work on integrating undergraduate research experiences throughout the curriculum. Attending the meeting on behalf of St. Mary’s College of Maryland this year was director of the Center for Inclusive Teaching and Learning (CITL), Samantha Elliot, and members of the two departments involved in the CUR-TP Project including Psychology: Aileen Bailey (co-lead), James Mantell (co-lead), Torry Dennis, Gina Fernandez and Chemistry/Biochemistry: Kelly Neiles (co-lead), Geoffrey Bowers, and Daniel Chase.

At this year’s meeting Bailey, Mantell, Neiles and Bowers gave an invited plenary in the session titled “So what are we learning: Research agenda of the CUR Transformations Project” which was well received by project leaders and participants. The team also continued its work in collaborating with the CUR-TP administration team and other institutional participants to further develop its undergraduate research curriculum. These fruitful discussions include plans to disseminate what the two departments have learned both on-campus, with help from CITL, and off-campus through national conference proceedings.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland is one of only 12 institutions selected by CUR for its Transformations Project, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF-DUE award #1625354). Through this project, participants from institutions around the country have been engaged in novel research to understand the student, faculty, departmental, and disciplinary influences on the process of integrating and scaffolding undergraduate research experiences throughout the curriculum.