04-14-2024 Education - Flipbook - Page 2
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The Baltimore Sun | Sunday, April 14, 2024
Towson students work with the Anne Arundel County Board of Elections on poll worker training, and this year, they did a survey to see how they might better serve their voters.
Business experience
Students and businesses work together for shared success
By E. Rose Scarff, Contributing Writer
T
here are many ways in which the work
students do as they are completing their
studies can also be of value to their local
communities. The schools featured here
are a few prime examples.
At Towson University, the Empowering
Secure Elections Research Lab (ESE) looks
at possible cyber, physical and insider risks
that may arise during an election anywhere in
the country. “We've looked at different types
of election equipment, how different counties
either in Maryland or other places train their
poll workers to be able to recognize and mitigate threats,” says Josh Dehlinger, Ph.D., who
co-runs the ESE along with Natalie Scala, Ph.D.
The ESE lab is inter-disciplinary and nonpartisan with students from business, computer science, pre-law, cybersecurity and other
majors. They work as teams on the current
project. Dehlinger advises from the computer
science side and Scala from the business analytics side. In addition to the skills students
are learning in the lab, they also visit a polling
place to see these machines in action and better
understand the voting process.
Due to funding from the Department of
Defense and other places, the ESE has been able
to continue this work for the past six years or so.
Because of the relationship they have built with
Anne Arundel County Board of Elections over
the years with their poll worker training, this
year they were asked to conduct a survey to see
how they might better serve their voters.
The results of that survey have just come
in and students are beginning to analyze the
results. Sadie Barrett, a senior at Towson
University studying business administration
with a concentration in project management,
is one of the team. Although it is primarily
her project, she gets input from marketing students and others on her team. They were very
excited when their work was featured on local
Baltimore TV news.
“This project is going to give me valuable
skills in data analysis, which is something I
know I'm going to use a lot in my career in supply chain management,” says Barrett. She also
cites her work with a team as being valuable for
her future career. She was even able to present
to her honors group some of the work she has
done on the project.
At the University of Maryland, Baltimore
County (UMBC), its entrepreneur in residence
(EiR) program has been providing mentoring
for both students and faculty for many years.
Some EiRs are long term; others participate
for a semester or two. UMBC has recently
expanded the amazing talent of the EiR group
to 12. They all have real world experience in
their field and can guide students and faculty
through the start-up process and beyond.
One of the ways students connect with this
process is through the Maryland New Venture
Program. “A faculty member who's working on
a great idea in their lab is paired with a student,
a UMBC fellow, as well as one of the EiRs or a
mentor,” says Marjorie Cota, director of entrepreneurial services at UMBC. They guide the
entrepreneur and their team through different
exercises to help them identify their story, why
they're so keen and passionate about working
on this project. Is it a great idea? Does it have
commercial viability? Is there a customer base
out there that wants to buy it? The team will
work on a pitch deck that they will use at the
end of the program.
Besides the BW Technology Park on the
UMBC campus, students have access to the
Alex Brown Center for Entrepreneurship and
Innovation and the UMBC career center. With
these opportunities many students are hired as
interns and others are often working on their
own ideas. Some have their own companies.
“The Alex Brown Center is really for the students to hone their skills and education,” says
Cota, “so by the time they come out, they have
a company and join us in the business park and
take advantage of our experienced EiRs, programs and services.”
Many businesses are represented from
cybersecurity to BioLife Sciences, to manufacturers and medical device companies. Students
and fellows are provided with opportunities
to meet with and get involved with CEOs and
entrepreneurs. The more successful the companies at the research park are, the more they
can hire students as either interns or full-time
employees.
At Salisbury University (SU) the Business
Economic and Community Outreach Network
(BEACON) is now in its 35th year of operation
on campus. They provide businesses, non-profits and government entities with research and
data that they need to make informed decisions.
They also serve as an outreach and experiential
opportunity for faculty and students who want
to do applied research.
BEACON’s Eastern Shore Business
Sentiment Survey covers all nine counties of
the Eastern Shore of Maryland, broken down
into three regions. The types of businesses they
are involved with run the gamut from retail
and recreation to agriculture, manufacturing,
professional service firms and others.
Students help edit the survey design, tabulate the data, and draft portions of the reports.
“In every one of the projects we have there
is some student work component,” says John
Hickman, Director of BEACON, “and those are
a mixture of undergraduate and graduate students.” Graduate students are usually working
on their MBA, but undergraduates come from
many different majors, such as data science,
economics, finance, international business or
marketing.
If a project fits into the 15-week semester
format, then students often present their findings to the client as their CAPSTONE project.
When the timing doesn’t work, faculty and
students might take on the project outside of
BEACON.
BEACON tries to recruit MBA students on
a two-year track to work on the Eastern Shore
Business Sentiment Survey. This way a junior
student can shadow the senior one and they
gain history with the project. When working on
the report they have the insight that things were
different a year or two ago.
The results of the survey are sent to general media outlets, but economic developers
and policymakers are those most interested
in understanding what the general conditions
are and where they need to provide resources,
assistance or additional focus.
The most recent Eastern Shore Business
Sentiment Survey resulted in partly optimistic
and partly pessimistic results. This mirrors
the national trend of being optimistic about
local economic prospects, but pessimistic about
national trends.
A healthier world
New programs prepare students to impact community health
University of Maryland helps underrepresented undergraduate students gain access to research opportunities.
By Linda L. Esterson, Contributing Writer
P
reparing students for careers aimed at
improving the health of the general population and communities is the basis of
a new public health bachelor’s degree at
Goucher College.
Public health focuses on prevention, in terms
of chronic and infectious diseases as well as
addiction, violence, injuries, natural disasters,
migration and climate change, says Jennifer Bess,
Ph.D., chair of the public health program at
Goucher College. “All of these things have preventable aspects and public health plays a big
part in that.” The field also applies to surveying,
data collection and understanding of all aspects
of public health. There’s also the promotion of
healthy lifestyles, like healthy eating, not smoking and even wearing a seatbelt, Bess notes.
The field is expanding with the emergence of
infectious diseases, like COVID-19 and before
that malaria, HIV and SARS, spread through
global transportation and human migration.
“Pandemics are nothing new,” she continues.
“But the rapid spread with just how much we
travel and migrate just has accelerated.”
Goucher’s program, which developed organically as an expansion of the public health minor
that launched in 2016, emphasizes epidemiology
and global health. Among the core courses are
epidemiology, methods of social research and
global health, with a variety of multidisciplinary
electives available in biology, environmental sciences, psychology, neuroscience, international
relations and peace studies. All students study
abroad as part of the program, for three-week
intensive courses or full semester experiences.
Existing partnerships include areas in India and
Costa Rica, where students participate in global
or public health projects.
“The primary impetus is how well this major
complements and extends Goucher’s commitment to interdisciplinary learning, global learning and social justice,” Bess adds. “Public health
embodies and enables students to exercise their
minds and their selves in all of those areas.”
Students completing the program are prepared for a variety of public health careers. They
could find a career as a biostatistician, chemical
hygienist, environmental health safety engineer
or environmental protection specialist. They
could also become an epidemiologist or purse
health communications, working for the government, hospitals or clinics, all in the interest of
promoting public health.
To elevate diversity in the biomedical, clinical,
behavioral and social sciences research workforce,
the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National
Institute on Deafness and Communications
Disorders (NIDCD) announced the creation of
training grants in early 2022. The University of
Maryland department of hearing and speech
sciences, already a recipient of many NIH grants,
took the opportunity to break barriers to help
underrepresented undergraduate students gain
access to research opportunities.
The department launched the Research,
Equity and Access in Communications and
Hearing (REACH) program to generate interest in communication sciences fields and access
to research opportunities for students who are
underrepresented on the basis of race, ethnicity,
disability and/or come from low-income backgrounds.
“We also include first-generation students
who are here at college, who are often supporting their education by working outside of their
classes,” says Matt Goupell, Ph.D., professor in
the department of hearing and speech sciences at
the University of Maryland College Park and codirector of the UMD-REACH training program.
As research positions often were unpaid,
many students in these populations could not
participate due to family and work commitments. As a result, Goupell estimates that only
about half of undergraduates in the field participate in research projects.
Myriad opportunities exists for students, with
25 professors and labs a part of the initiative. The
grant enables the students to be paid for their
part-time work during the semester as well as
full-time employment over the summer. They
also attend a weekly professional development
seminar that provides guidance about academia,
continuing on to masters and Ph.D. programs
and the application process with “the goal of
helping them have the best foot forward and have
the best chance at being successful joining the
research world… There are more jobs in scientific research, helping us generate new knowledge
that helps humankind,” Goupell explains.
Seven students in the first cohort, who are
majoring in hearing and speech, psychology, neuroscience and linguistics, are working in a variety
of areas related to sound perception, speech
processing, language production and language
learning. One student is researching how older
individuals understand speech through bionic
auditory prostheses (cochlear implants). Another
student is using brain imaging to measure blood/
oxygen flow through the brain and its effect on
processing speech and sound.
Dana Walker, a junior hearing and speech
sciences major, is conducting language assessments in elementary school children in bilingual
environments to determine the effect of the
immersive program on their oral and reading
comprehension in both languages. Data was collected over a month-long period at two different
schools in Washington, D.C.
“This is a critical program, especially for
African American women like me,” says Walker,
noting the predominance of white women in
the field. “This program allows me to gain the
experience I need in order to in order to excel in
my future career.” Walker, a first-generation college student who otherwise would have needed
to work full-time outside of classroom hours,
anticipates continuing with the REACH program through her senior year following full-time
research work during the summer. She hopes to
combine technology and speech therapy in her
future research and ultimately open her own
clinic to make speech services more available to
those with communication disorders, she says.
Veronica Kandro, who was born in Colombia,
South America, and raised in a small town in
Connecticut, chose the University of Maryland
for its research opportunities. A junior neuroscience major, Kandro relished in the opportunity
to combine her passion for science and love of
music – she played trombone, cello and bass
guitar in high school – at the language and music
cognition lab on campus.
Kandro is comparing short-term memory
processes in musicians and non-musicians, part
of a larger study involving many other university research programs. Kandro is recruiting
participants and administering cognitive testing,
which will be completed by semester’s end. She’s
also involved in two other research programs
through UMD-REACH. One, which may evolve
to her thesis project, involves investigating the
character of tones, and the other uses electroencephalography to evaluate brain activity while
the subject performs memory-related tasks.
While these experiences are proving to
Kandro that she enjoys research, she’s unsure
about her future goals. She remains interested
in the medical field and aims to tie that into
research either as a medical doctor or doctor of
philosophy.
While research flourishes in the area, cybersecurity and protecting professional and personal
data continues to be a concern. A new undergraduate program at Coppin State University
aims to prepare students to ensure protection
beginning with the architecture of physical systems and includes a specialization in medical
cybersecurity-physical systems.
The highly technical Bachelor of Science
in cybersecurity engineering program aims to
develop skills that support a proactive approach
to engineering systems with cybersecurity incorporated at the outset of systems development.
“Cybersecurity in the past was always viewed
in the design portion of the development of
systems, but things have changed,” says Clarence
Williams, Ph.D., cybersecurity engineering program coordinator at Coppin State University.
The program, which welcomed its first cohort
of 12 students this semester, prepares students to
achieve the same level of expertise as an electrical
or mechanical engineering major to gain skills
for the development of cyber resilient systems
that include the protection of human users, hardware and accompanying computing devices as
well as the network that connects them.
With more stringent requirements than tra-
Healthier world,
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