Graduate Students

A criminal justice professor at Coppin State College denied allegations yesterday that he rejected the thesis topic proposed by one of his graduate students, insisting he "would not censor academic freedom." The allegations emerged amid a dispute last week over Coppin's criminal justice program and whether some master's degree candidates would be permitted to graduate today without meeting what some faculty insist are degree requirements. Four graduate students who wrote research papers deemed unacceptable by department Chairperson Concetta Culliver are expected to receive their master's degrees, but others who failed comprehensive exams will not be allowed to graduate, according to Coppin officials.

When I was a Ph.D. student at Yale, I dreamed of working as a university professor, directing a research laboratory, and training students of my own. I have been a professor for a little over four years now. Of the lessons I have learned in this time, the one I have taken most to heart is that scientists at American universities spend far more time dreaming of research than actually carrying it out. By "dreaming," I mean that university scientists design...

Six Morgan State University graduate students displayed their ideas yesterday for enhancing the Waverly business district on Greenmount Avenue, site of a new "Main Street" effort.While their designs will not definitely be implemented, it was a chance to rethink the "self-image" and identity of the area centered at 33rd Street and Greenmount Avenue, said Frank Jannuzi, president of the Charles Village Community Benefits District. "I found so much that was attractive and provocative."Main Street is a national program that promotes more vibrant downtown areas.

The debate about massively open online courses, or MOOCs, has reached such fevered pitch that we recently got to witness an internecine argument about it at The New York Times. On one side was the technology-optimist columnist Thomas Friedman, who imagines a time when students in a remote village in Egypt could install a couple of computers with high-speed Internet access, hire a local facilitator and study with the best professors in the world. On the other side, the Times' editorial board felt compelled to point out that most online courses are pretty dreadful, with high dropout rates and poor learning outcomes.

Michael likes to give hugs and can be something of a night owl. Jenny bowls and is always up for an outing. Becky delights in music and enjoys shrimp and diet Coke. They are clients whom McDaniel College graduate students Melanie Soper and Ila Bryant care for as part of a two-year program. The students earn a master's in human services management in special education, while gaining practical experience through a simultaneous live-in internship with three developmentally disabled clients.

Dr. Zlatko Tesanovic, a Johns Hopkins University physics professor who advised his visiting academic colleagues where they should eat in Baltimore, died of an apparent heart attack July 26 at the George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C., after collapsing at Reagan National Airport. The Canton resident was 55. Born in Sarajevo in what was then Yugoslavia, he earned his undergraduate degree in physics in 1979 from the University of Sarajevo. He then received a Fulbright Fellowship and attended the University of Minnesota, where he earned a doctorate in physics in 1985.

Graduate-student leaders and labor activists squared off against university administrators yesterday over a bill before the General Assembly to grant teaching assistants and contractual faculty the right to form unions. The debate in a House of Delegates committee centered - as it has in other states - on the question of whether giving graduate-student employees the same collective bargaining rights as other state workers would undermine the educational relationship between professors and students.

About 90 area schoolchildren will go back to school tomorrow -- along with 30 graduate students -- for the six-week Summer Clinic in Reading and Written Expression at Loyola College.The children will be given instruction in basic reading and writing skills, while the graduate students will be working with them -- and working toward a master of education degree at the same time.Held annually, the summer clinic is open to students entering first through 12th grades. Most who take part "have been coming for two or three years now," says Robert Peters, Loyola's coordinator of professional development schools and summer clinic director.

The piece playing today at the Theatre Project took shape like a statue carved out of smoke.Called "The Baltimore Project," it was created by graduate students from Towson State University's theater drama program, rigorously guided by professionals from the much-acclaimed Touchstone Theater Ensemble of Bethlehem, Pa.Seven students working toward master of fine arts degrees fanned out into Baltimore in search of their own vision of the city. They looked for characters and quirks, icons and legends, myths and truths.

Alicia Showalter Reynolds enjoyed her research at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine -- work that she hoped might one day help prevent a tropical parasitic disease.Yet the fourth-year graduate student treasured just as much the prospect of inspiring others to follow her. She wanted, she told friends, to teach women about science.At 25, Reynolds disappeared while driving from Baltimore to Charlottesville, Va., on a Saturday morning to go shopping with her mother. Nearly a year after her body was found, the crime remains unsolved.

Though much remained unknown about the suspect in the shootings near the University of Maryland's College Park campus, a picture emerged Tuesday of a quiet, studious young man who had completed several high-profile summer internships with NASA. Dayvon M. Green, 23, a graduate engineering student, had studied industrial and systems engineering at Morgan State University. He was a 2010 and 2011 summer intern at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, close to the College Park campus, according to NASA.

Twenty-seven Tufts men's lacrosse players will be suspended for two games this season after "unacceptable behavior," including racist and sexist insults, at a women's volleyball game against Smith College last semester, the Tufts Daily student newspaper has reported. An external investigation was launched by the school's Office of Equal Opportunity after a student accused the players of "calling out sexist and racist insults that disparagingly referenced the Smith players by name and threatened them during the game" Sept.

Christi Noll Ciampaglione has been named by McDaniel College as the recipient of its 2012 Joseph R. Bailer Award. The award is presented each year to a McDaniel College master's degree recipient who has made a significant contribution to the field of education. Christi Noll Ciampaglione graduated with a bachelor's degree in psychology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1996. She earned a master's degree in human services management from McDaniel in 1999 and served as a Target Scholar completing a two-year live-in internship with Target Community & Educational Services, Inc. She started Target's first family support services program in Montgomery County, Md., which has served dozens of families of children with special needs.

Based on estimates by the Federal Reserve, for the first time in U.S. history, student-loan debt ($867 billion) has surpassed credit card debt ($704 billion). These debt levels have real implications for productivity and lifetime earnings for this current generation of graduates. Much has been written about college students dealing with rising tuition, but there's been much less examination of how substantial student-loan debt, coupled with a slumping economy, affects new graduates. According to a June report by Drexel University's Center for Labor Markets and Policy, even as the overall job market has rebounded in the last two years, employment prospects for college graduates have declined.

Dr. Zlatko Tesanovic, a Johns Hopkins University physics professor who advised his visiting academic colleagues where they should eat in Baltimore, died of an apparent heart attack July 26 at the George Washington University Hospital in Washington, D.C., after collapsing at Reagan National Airport. The Canton resident was 55. Born in Sarajevo in what was then Yugoslavia, he earned his undergraduate degree in physics in 1979 from the University of Sarajevo. He then received a Fulbright Fellowship and attended the University of Minnesota, where he earned a doctorate in physics in 1985.

Twenty years after opening its first large residence for students, the Maryland Institute College of Art plans to build a $16.5 million addition that will increase the number of undergraduates living on campus and help revitalize Baltimore's North Avenue corridor and northern Bolton Hill. College officials intend to break ground this fall on Commons II, a five-story building with 62 apartments that can accommodate about 240 students. When it opens in the fall of 2013, MICA will have on-campus housing for more than 1,000 students, up from practically none in 1991 and enough for more than half of its undergraduates.

WITH SO MUCH of Baltimore in decline, what can be learned from those neighborhoods that are bucking the trend? In papers presented in the spring, graduate-student researchers at two universities sought to address that question -- with intriguing results. In one paper, George R. Wagner studied gentrification in Federal Hill, Fells Point and Canton for his doctoral dissertation in policy sciences at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. A late-blooming academic at age 58 who moved from Catonsville to South Baltimore in 1980, Wagner uses census data to demonstrate that these neighborhoods began to decline in the 1940s, as the city was growing, and did not begin to be reborn until development of the Inner Harbor in 1980.

Digging in the dirt and searching the woods for turtles sounds like child's play, not research. But six students at Towson University have a different view after taking part in a field study that could help them prepare for graduate school.The project -- a study of eastern box turtles headed by Donald Forester, a biology professor -- gives the students a chance to earn independent study credits while assisting researchers from the university and the Baltimore Zoo."It's great for undergraduates to be able to put field experience on their resume," said Forester.

Elizabeth Klingaman, formerly of Catonsville, earned a doctoral degree in counseling psychology from the University of Maryland in May. She achieved a 3.9 grade point average. Klingaman completed a one-year internship at the Denver Veterans Administration Medical Center, where she provided assessment, intervention and consultation to veterans and their families. . An alumna of South Carroll High School, where she was co-valedictorian, she graduated magna cum laude from Mary Washington College with a Bachelor of Arts degree in historic preservation and psychology.

The University of Maryland, College Park will use a $1.1 million grant from defense contractor Northrop Grumman Corp. to establish a new honors concentration in cybersecurity, school officials announced Monday. With the program, which will accept its first students for fall 2013, the university is attempting to gain a foothold in a growing discipline already taught at the U.S. Naval Academy and the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Maryland is considered rich ground for cybersecurity training because of the presence of the National Security Agency headquarters at Fort Meade and the plethora of government and private technology offices in the region.