Fearless Faces

Fearless Ideas: The Campaign for Maryland Launches

By Maryland Today Staff May 15, 2018

Education has the power to improve the life of every person on Earth. Compelled by a mission to serve the state and nation, the University of Maryland confronts the most pressing challenges of our time through an unparalleled academic and research enterprise. We integrate science and technology with the arts and humanities to develop the next generation of global citizens who will do good for our communities. We vigorously pursue the discovery of new knowledge and apply it for the advancement of all. This is not merely a campaign for the University of Maryland, it’s a campaign for humankind. That is our Fearless Idea.

The university on May 11 kicked off the $1.5 billion Fearless Ideas: The Campaign for Maryland to support the following four priority areas:

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.

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.

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.

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.

Click on the slides to meet a selection of Terps who are living fearlessly as they represent the ideals of this campaign. Photos by John T. Consoli and Mike Morgan.

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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.”

Faculty Support (Endowed professorships) Cynthia Baur, 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.

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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.”

Graduate Fellowships Emilia Guevara, Doctoral Candidate, Anthropology 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.”

New Cole Field House Dr. Alan Faden, David S. Brown Professor in Trauma at the University of Maryland School of Medicine Elizabeth Quinlan, Professor, Biology 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 “the bench to the clinic,” 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.

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Veteran Support Marwin Glenn ’17, M.S. ’19, Former personnel/administrative 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.

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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.”

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Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Innovation Brendan Iribe, Co-founder, Oculus VR 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.

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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 student-athletes 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.

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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.”