Renaissance Seed Scholars Announced
May 18, 2009
Contact: University Relations
Phone: 410.837.5739
Six faculty members from the University of Baltimore have won Baltimore Renaissance Scholar Seed funds for their special projects designed to increase the University's involvement with the greater Baltimore community, especially central Baltimore. Every year, the Office of the Provost chooses to provide financial support for a group of projects involving city-oriented research, service learning or other forms of academic engagement.
This year's recipients and their projects are:
James Kelly, assistant professor and director of the Community Development Clinic in the School of Law, for the Central Baltimore Vacant Property Policies and Strategies project. The intent of the project is to assess policies and strategies for handling vacant properties with regard to community development in several central Baltimore neighborhoods, including Barclay, Greenmount West and Charles North. The resulting report will include a history of recent vacant property responses in the central city, through case studies of past dealings with particular vacant houses or lots. The narrative will compile aggregate and parcel-specific data presented in tabular and map forms. The report also will provide analysis and recommendations on how the city and community groups can use vacant building receivership, tax foreclosure and condemnation proceedings, in combination with bargain-and-sale transfers and the forthcoming Land Bank Authority, to fully realize the community development goals of each neighborhood.
Stanley Kemp, lecturer in the Division of Liberal Studies in the Yale Gordon College of Liberal Arts, for the initiative, "An Ecological Assessment of the Lower Jones Falls: Moving Toward Charting a Course for the Restoration of Central Baltimore's Natural Greenway." The Jones Falls, an integral part of the central Baltimore landscape, is uniquely poised to be the main natural greenway in a revitalized urban core. As a starting point, the project seeks to identify challenges in restoring the lower Jones Falls through comparative assessment of biological and physical conditions. Quantitative seasonal monitoring of fish and macroinvertebrate communities, coupled with weekly monitoring of physical conditions and water quality, will be used to address questions related to ecosystem and human health.
J. Howard Kucher, executive director of the Entrepreneurial Opportunity Center in the Merrick School of Business, for the Baltimore Storefront Business Support Program. As proposed, the program will design an integrated series of non-credit courses that will provide technical assistance to storefront and street level businesses in and around the Charles Street corridor. The initiative will develop the entrepreneurial dynamism of the Station North/Charles North neighborhoods by providing growing businesses with the tools needed to thrive and succeed, creating an atmosphere of business success and economic stability. The program will use the existing capacities and relationships of the University of Baltimore, the Entrepreneurial Opportunity Center, and the surrounding neighborhoods to develop a program that will serve the specific and unique needs of small retail businesses located along Charles. The first year of the program, which will coincide with academic year 2009-10, will serve as a pilot for what will become a series of regular courses designed to increase the chances of business success along the Charles Street corridor.
Elizabeth Nix, lecturer and director of the undergraduate program in Community Studies and Civic Engagement in the College of Liberal Arts, for an anthology related to the "Baltimore '68: Riots and Rebirth" project. After UB's April 2008 conference commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Baltimore riots, Temple University Press expressed an interest in publishing an anthology of conference papers and related scholarly works. UB's Special Collections department in the Langsdale Library holds the rights to many vivid images of the events of 1968; the inclusion of funding for image reproduction to accompany the manuscript is expected to bolster the commitment of the university press to the project.
Max Oppenheimer, associate professor in the School of Law, for a project entitled "Preservation and Dissemination of Historical Jazz Performances." The intent of this project is to strengthen Baltimore's arts scene by remembering that the city was home to the Left Bank Jazz Society—an organization that hosted virtually every major figure in jazz in the 1960s and '70s. The society's archives contain recordings of performances spanning those decades, including works of historical and scholarly significance. Unfortunately, the recordings exist only on reel-to-reel tape and broad access is impossible because of the fragility of the medium and because of legal issues involved in the release of recordings from that era. The proposed grant would fund a student-staffed project to help make the collection publicly available.
Paul Sturm, adjunct professor in the Community Studies and Civic Engagement program in the College of Liberal Arts, for the Baltimore Song Project. This initiative will actively engage students from the University of Baltimore and fellow members of the Central Baltimore Higher Education Collaborative in developing visual and performing arts representations of the images in the "Baltimore" song, written and performed by local musicians Saleem Heggins and Caleb Stine. The song's message is one of hope and pride about everyday life in the city. The project’s outcomes will include a traveling exhibit visually representing the song, to be shown in to-be-announced venues and eventually placed on permanent exhibition; a dance/theatre piece performed in central Baltimore; and perhaps a narrative about the UB students who developed visuals to go with the song for a recent learning community at the University.
The Baltimore Renaissance Scholars Seed Fund is based on the belief that for UB, deliberate and purposeful initiatives with the larger community is an appropriate way to pursue faculty scholarship, teaching, and service. These projects work best when an external partner, such as a civic, community, or nonprofit organization; a governmental entity; or a business, actively participates. The funding, distributed by the provost, supports new initiatives or extensions of existing ones. UB encourage projects that have the potential to generate external funding, institute a new policy or program, establish a product desired by the community, or otherwise lead to lasting change and benefits for Baltimore.
The University of Baltimore is a member of the University System of Maryland and comprises the School of Law, the Yale Gordon College of Liberal Arts and the Merrick School of Business.