Professor of Art Sue Johnson has been awarded a fully funded summer residency fellowship by the Catwalk Institute, which is a retreat for art making, collaborative projects and scholarly discourse in New York State’s Upper Hudson Valley. Resident fellows are selected through a highly competitive process from among the alumni and faculty of four academic institutions: Columbia University School of the Arts, NYU Tisch, Vassar College, and School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Catwalk was originally the home of Hudson River School painter Charles Herbert Moore. While in residence, Johnson will continue work on an illustrated book project focused on women and consumer culture for which she began background research in summer 2021 at the Winterthur Museum, Garden and Library in Delaware.
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.
Professor King’s Archaeological Work with the Rappahannock Tribe Featured on Podcast
Professor of Anthropology Julia King took part in the pilot episode of “Tribal Truths,” a new podcast series from RadioIQ that aims to debunk myths and legends with facts, teaching about tribal cultures and current issues.
King says in the first episode titled “Ancient cliffs are revealing lost tribal histories” that “there is so much that the land tries to tell us if we just listen to what it has to say.”
Featuring Rappahannock Tribe Chief Anne Richardson and narrated by tribal member Steven Nelson, the episode focuses on Fones Cliffs, a place along the Rappahannock river in eastern Virginia where the Rappahannock Tribe once lived. King and her team of archaeologists, in collaboration with the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, the US Fish and Wildlife Services, and the Federally-recognized Rappahannock Tribe, have been working to trace the history and development of the Rappahannock Tribe in early American history.
“[The archaeologists are] digging for traces of our towns and connecting them to our oral histories. And centuries after the Rappahannock Tribe’s removal from this area, they’re reconstructing our ties to Fones Cliffs, looking for three of our towns once located there. It’s a race against time, development and climate change,” Nelson said on the podcast.
The anthropology department at St. Mary’s College of Maryland first began studying the Rappahannock Tribe’s history in 2016 at the request of the National Park Service’s Chesapeake Bay Office, the Chesapeake Conservancy, and the Rappahannock Tribe. The work was undertaken to provide interpretive support for the Captain John Smith Chesapeake National Historic Trail. Following the NPS-funded project, the Tribe and King and her students have continued their collaboration. The survey of the greater river valley has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Park Service’s Underrepresented Communities Program.
Photo credit: Pamela A. D’Angelo
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 Alumna Awarded Maryland State Arts Council Creativity Grant
SMCM alumna and adjunct instructor Rie Moore ’19 was recently awarded a Creativity Grant from the Maryland State Arts Council (MSAC) for her project titled “Decaying”. The funding will cover expenses associated with creating a prerecorded audio-visual program for piano and violin on the theme of finding beauty in what is decaying. The filmed program will be made available virtually to the public for free via Moore’s YouTube channel as well as embedded on her website.
Inspired by her experience at the Piano Festival by the River at SMCM, Moore began studying with Brian Ganz, a member of the piano faculty at the College, which eventually led to completing a degree in music through SMCM’s second bachelor’s degree program in 2019. She was awarded Alice Fleury Zamanakos and Arthur S. Zamanakos Prize in Music upon graduation. In 2020, she received the Regional Independent Artist Award from Maryland State Arts Council for her program “As if heard from within” and was selected as one of the 48 competitors to perform at the Cliburn International Amateur Piano Competition in 2022. Her latest project “Beyond Darkness”, a prerecorded program sponsored by St. Mary’s County Arts Council, was made available online in March 2021.
In “Decaying”, Moore will explore beauty in what is decaying in a setting that communicates the theme through effective filming to reach audience members in a way that is different from the standard recital experience. Her desire to pursue the theme of finding beauty in what is decaying stems from her Japanese heritage as well as a wish to create a space that invites audience members to appreciate beauty beneath the surface and the process and journey of our living. The 45-minute program consists of pieces for piano and violin and poetry reading, categorized into three sections: Scenery, Thoughts, and Physical Existence. Prior to the premiere of the program, Moore will launch “Project Decaying”, an initiative to invite artwork that expresses beauty in what is decaying from the community to create a space for contemplation on the theme as part of the community engagement.
The following collaborators will participate in essential program components:
- Eliza Garth, a member of the piano faculty at SMCM (piano and poetry reading)
- Beatrice Baker (violin)
- Nick Hughes ‘12 (filming and video editing)
- Sean Mercer (audio engineering, mixing, and editing)
Moore hopes to generate interest for her project during a TED talk titled “More Than Music: A New Approach to Concert Programming” at TEDxGreatMills on September 18, 2021.
Alumna Awarded Research Grant from Phi Chi Honor Society
SMCM alumna Oates (left) and Dr. Howansky
India Oates ’21 was awarded a $509 Mamie Phipps Clark Research Grant from Psi Chi over the summer of 2021. The award “highlights research projects by Psi Chi students and faculty advisors focusing on diverse populations and issues.” Her project, “Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Individuals’ Dehumanizing Beliefs and Experiences” was originally conceived and developed though directed research with Assistant Professor of Psychology Kristina Howansky in the spring 2021 semester. The study aims to identify how transgender and gender non-conforming (GNC) individuals experience dehumanization and examine how their beliefs about stereotypes may mediate the association between dehumanization and harmful mental health effects and the association between dehumanization experiences and self-dehumanization. This study will help fill in gaps in the current psychological body of literature. Limited research has examined the associated effects of dehumanization, nor has past dehumanization work focused on transgender and GNC individuals’ perspectives. Grant funding will be used to compensate a large sample of online survey participants recruited from Academic Prolific.
India is currently studying morality and empathy as a full-time lab manager at Pennsylvania State University – the perfect combination of her double-major in religious studies and psychology.
SMCM Physics Professor and Student Conducting Physics Research with NAS Pax River
Dr. Adler (left) and Mr. Marx
Charles (Chuck) Adler, Professor of Physics, and Evan Marx, SMCM undergraduate student, collaborated over the 2021 summer break with researchers from the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWDAD) at Naval Air Station Patuxent River.
Dr. Adler and Mr. Marx worked on a project simulating how orbital angular momentum beams propagate through turbulent and scattering water. These beams, also called “optical vortex beams”, carry a twist (orbital angular momentum), unlike standard laser beams. The Navy is interested in understanding whether these beams are more effective than standard laser beams for various imaging and laser ranging technologies. This work is being done in partnership with the Advanced Lidar Systems Team (A-LiST) at NAWCAD, led by Dr. Linda Mullen, Alan Laux, and Dr. Brandon Cochenour.
Dr. Adler’s summer 2021 work was supported under the Office of Naval Research’s Summer Faculty Research Program (SFRP), and Mr. Marx who worked with the group as a summer student was funded by the Naval Research Enterprise Intern Program (NREIP). Adler and Marx recently received additional funding from NAWCAD to continue their collaborative research in the 2021-22 academic year.
Assistant Professor Argelia González Hurtado Awarded 2021 SSHRC Insight Development Grant
Argelia González Hurtado, assistant professor of Spanish, has been awarded an Insight Development Grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC). González Hurtado received, along with María Soledad Paz-Mackay from St. Francis Xavier University, the IDG grant in the amount of $59, 249 CAD for a two-year period to conduct research about cinematic landscape in Argentinian and Mexican cinema. This collaborative research project between González Hurtado and Paz-Mackay will explore the complex meaning of rural landscape in recent narrative films from Argentina and Mexico that portray new identities shaped by socio-political changes at the turn of the 21st century.
SSHRC is the most important Canadian federal research funding agency in the promotion and support of research and training in the humanities and social sciences. Through its Insight Development Grants program, SSHRC supports research in its initial stages, enabling the development of new research questions as well as experimentation with new and innovative methods or ideas.
The Patuxent Partnership Physics Scholarship Awarded
St. Mary’s College of Maryland, in continued partnership with The Patuxent Partnership (TPP) – a local nonprofit organization that works with government, industry, and academia on initiatives in science and technology – has awarded the inaugural The Patuxent Partnership Physics Scholarship.
First-year student Caitlin Kubina, of Columbia, Maryland, has been selected to receive a $10,000 scholarship award for the 2021-2022 academic year.
Because of TPP’s investment, Kubina is better positioned to be among the more than 50 St. Mary’s College physics students to work with Navy scientists as part of her college experience. Kubina could even convert her physics experiences into a related field within the Navy upon graduation as more than 40 St. Mary’s College physics students have accomplished in recent years.
The Patuxent Partnership Physics Scholarship is the latest of many ways TPP has worked in strong collaboration with St. Mary’s College, its students and faculty over the years.
In 2012, TPP invested $1 million to grow and expand the College’s physics offerings, including applied physics, of particular value to the Navy and STEM careers.
“We are extremely grateful to The Patuxent Partnership for its generous and continued investments in our students,” said St. Mary’s College of Maryland President Tuajuanda C. Jordan. “Each year more and more St. Mary’s College students are making invaluable STEM connections with our community and TPP plays a tremendous role in those connections which support our Honors College Promise and our mission. I truly value the relationship the College has with TPP and look forward to it building even more momentum in the future,” Jordan said.
St. Mary’s College students benefit greatly from the College’s close proximity to NAS Patuxent River — headquarters for Naval Aviation — and other facilities in the region.
The College maintains educational partnership agreements with Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division (NAWCAD), the Naval Surface Warfare Center Indian Head (NSWCIHEODTD) and TPP. Through these relationships, St. Mary’s College students enjoy many opportunities, including internships, scholarships and careers. Opportunities are particularly abundant for students majoring in physics, chemistry, computer science and psychology. Examples include:
Physics
- St. Mary’s College faculty work with Navy scientists and St. Mary’s College students on developing new types of sensors for navigation, imaging, and submarine detection including cutting edge research in quantum sensing.
- In recent years, 30 physics students have done their St. Mary’s Project (SMP) — an eight-credit senior research project — with NAWCAD labs.
- Over 50 physics students have done internships (summertime and academic year) at Navy facilities, with more than 40 converting their St. Mary’s College physics experience into jobs as engineers, physicists, and program managers with the Navy and its contractors.
Chemistry
- St. Mary’s College faculty work with Navy scientists and St. Mary’s College students on developing new types of functional coatings and electronics like sensors and printable solid-state devices.
- Over the past five years, 17 St. Mary’s College students have completed their St. Mary’s Research Projects on Navy related technologies. At least four chemistry students have accepted internships at Navy federal laboratories, seven students have co-authored Navy supported publications or patents, and six have been hired after graduation.
- For students interested in applied materials careers, the chemistry and physics departments also support the materials science program on campus.
Computer Science
- St. Mary’s College faculty Navy projects include augmented reality and data science.
- In the past five years, eight students have been hired directly by the Navy after graduation; one or two students a year in the Navy’s Pathways internship program; and one ongoing SMP with a Navy lab.
- The Navy is heavily recruiting students with degrees in computer science.
Psychology
- St. Mary’s College faculty and students work with Navy scientists on human factors in aviation research including attention, performance, and decision making.
- A number of psychology graduates have transitioned their psychology degrees to employment at NAWCAD in positions such as engineering psychologists, contract specialists, analysts, recruiting managers, and financial managers.
St. Mary’s College of Maryland is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education through 2024-2025. St. Mary’s College, designated the Maryland state honors college in 1992, 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.
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.
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