Student Experience and Success

Big congratulations to Masato Nakamura, whose dissertation on "Sources of argument role insensitivity in verb processing" has received a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement grant (2240434) from the National Science Foundation, with the support of advisor Colin Phillips. Abstract below, along with links to some of the past awards made to our dissertators.

Sources of argument role insensitivity in verb processing

Humans generally understand utterances quickly and accurately, even in noisy or degraded environments for listening or reading. Many researchers have attributed this success to people’s ability to rapidly predict upcoming words. Previous studies have demonstrated various kinds of evidence for prediction mechanisms, e.g., more predictable words are read more quickly. But less is known about the mechanisms by which predictions are generated. This project investigates these mechanisms, by focusing on situations where people appear to make inappropriate predictions. A useful test case is “role reversed” sentence pairs, such as “the customer that the waitress had served” and “the waitress that the customer served”, in which who did what to whom is reversed. Some psycholinguistic measures of prediction, particularly those involving comprehension, suggest that the verb “served” is equally expected in both sentences, despite being inappropriate in the second. This has been taken as evidence that humans ignore the roles of nouns when generating expectations. However, some other measures of prediction suggest that humans generate appropriate expectations in those same sentences, making full use of role information. This project seeks to resolve this discrepancy.

The project combines computational and experimental methods to investigate why different measures indicate a greater or lesser role for semantic roles in moment-by-moment prediction in language. The project will develop a computational model of linguistic prediction that seeks to capture how a shared set of cognitive processes maps onto different experimental measures. The model will be extended based on results from new experiments. In order to understand the time course of predictions and the contributions of different task elements, the experiments will systematically vary whether or not participants are shown anomalous continuations, and what kind of response participants are required to give. The project also develops and refines a scalable pipeline for semi-automatic analysis of spoken language data in psycholinguistic experiments, which can be used by other researchers.

By Shannon Clark M.Jour. ’22

A side of Indigenous Baltimore hidden in plain sight for years will become more visible today, thanks to a University of Maryland graduate’s work that traces the path of important aspects of her own cultural heritage and that of thousands of other area residents.

Artist and folklorist Ashley Minner Ph.D. ’20, a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, has created a walking tour of “The Reservation,” the affectionate nickname of an area of East Baltimore roughly centered around the intersection of South Broadway and East Baltimore streets.

The area was once rich with American Indian businesses owing to thousands of members of various tribes—including many Lumbee—who migrated to the city after World War II for economic opportunity or to escape Jim Crow segregation in the South.

Determined to uplift what’s becoming a forgotten part of Baltimore history, Minner developed the illustrated guide, website and mobile app in partnership with other artists, designers, scholars and culture bearers—to transport users back in time with pictures and text, and to realize that American Indian people are still present. The Guide to Indigenous Baltimore mobile app was developed in partnership with Elizabeth Rule of the Chickasaw Nation, who also developed the Guide to Indigenous DC. These apps are the first two of her greater Guide to Indigenous Lands project.

“In many cases, you can only imagine what was there because it’s not there now,” said Minner. “After you start hearing the stories [from American Indian elders], you start looking for traces of what was in the building. As you start to walk, you get an appreciation for how much was actually there.”

Minner’s tour is also available via baltimorereservation.com, and starts at the South Broadway Baptist Church, which was founded by Lumbee tribal members who needed a safe space to worship together. The church remains, while other stops, like the Hokahey Indian Trading Post, Hartmann’s BBQ Shop and the Volcano Bar and Restaurant, have been gone for decades.

Part of Minner’s mission is scholarly, and part is personal. Growing up in Dundalk, Md., separated geographically from fellow Lumbee in her youth, she sometimes felt the pressure of being perceived as “less Indian” by her peers. At a school where “no one looked like me,” she struggled to find her own identity between two separate communities.

“Nobody expects to meet an Indian in Baltimore,” said Minner. “Growing up, you might have one or two in your whole school, and you have to make an effort to be involved in your community. You’re just always trying to make space for yourself.”

The Lumbee Tribe as a whole has faced struggles for recognition. Although they have enjoyed partial federal recognition since 1956, the passage this year of the Lumbee Recognition Act in the U.S. House of Representatives (it’s currently progressing through the Senate with sponsorship from both of North Carolina’s Republican senators) points to the potential full federal recognition of the tribe of 55,000 enrolled members, a designation the Lumbee have sought since 1888. That would afford them a range of services and benefits available to other federally recognized American Indian tribes, and greater sovereignty as a nation.

As a young person, Minner was constantly encouraged to learn more about her culture by her aunt. For nearly twenty years now, she has worked as a professional artist, often using her art as an expression of her heritage.

“I did the ‘Exquisite Lumbees’ project in collaboration with 29 other people from my generation,” said Minner. “That [project] was just about reminding ourselves that we are beautiful and powerful and part of something bigger than ourselves. Sometimes where we live tries to make us forget that.”

In Photo:

One stop on a new tour of Indigenous Baltimore by alum Ashley Minner Ph.D. '20 (below) is the the East Baltimore Church of God, founded decades ago by members of Baltimore's Lumbee community. Many Lumbee tribal members remain in the city, including local elders who gathered on East Baltimore Street (at bottom) in 2012.

Church photo courtesy Rev. Robert E. Dodson Jr., colorization by Katie Lively; Ashley Minner portrait courtesy of Jill Fannon; Lumbee elders photo courtesy of Sue Hunt Vasquez

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Tune in on YouTube at 6 p.m. today for a virtual launch and community celebration for the Illustrated Guide to East Baltimore’s Historic American Indian “Reservation,” baltimorereservation.com, and the Guide to Indigenous Baltimore mobile app.

By Jessica Weiss ’05

As an Indian American, Joshua John has long sought to know more about other South Asian figures in U.S. history and politics. So John, a rising junior and double major in economics and Politics, Philosophy and Economics (PPE), decided to focus a research project this summer on former U.S. Representative Dalip Singh Saund, the first-ever Indian American in Congress.

John scoured the archives of the Congressional Record to locate a 1957 speech given by Saund on the House floor advocating for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1957. In it, Saund cited his own experience as an immigrant as he underscored the absurdity of denying Black Americans voting rights. 

John is now preparing an entry about that speech to appear on the website of the “Recovering Democracy Archives” (RDA), a project sponsored by the Rosenker Center for Political Communication & Civic Leadership in the Department of Communication that seeks to create a digital archive of lesser-known but important public speeches throughout U.S. history. The entry will include the transcribed and authenticated speech, a heavily researched “contextualization” paper, photos and more. 

John was among the researchers in the seven-week residential Big Ten Academic Alliance Summer Research Opportunities Program (SROP), which seeks to increase the number of underrepresented students who pursue graduate study and research careers through intensive research experiences with faculty mentors and enrichment activities. A total of 10 undergraduates from across the country took part in the SROP at ARHU—three participated in the RDA project, while seven worked on “Enslaved: Peoples of the Historic Slave Trade,” a database containing records on hundreds of thousands of individuals living in the era of the historical slave trade, led in part by UMD researchers. 

“This has been an incredible opportunity,” John said. “Learning to do historical research, making a strong historical argument with clear writing—these are new challenges that I have not approached in my academic experience until now and I can feel myself growing through this experience.” 

After locating Saund’s speech, John accessed dozens of books, archival and historical documents, political records, news stories and more to be able to prepare a comprehensive historical contextualization. John tells of Saund’s immigration story, the trajectory of his political career and the importance of the speech, as well as a number of personal details about Saund’s life. His research is currently being peer-reviewed before publication on the RDA website. 

John’s research mentor Shawn Parry-Giles, professor and chair in the Department of Communication and co-editor of the RDA project, said the three students working on the RDA project “showed great tenacity in deepening their archival research skills.” The two other students focused on speeches delivered by women's rights activist Emma Guffey Miller promoting the Equal Rights Amendment and by American Indian activist Ruth Muskrat Bronson opposing fishing and timber industries exploiting indigenous land in Alaska.  

The students “recovered speeches by people who advanced civil rights for all Americans,” Parry-Giles said. “Most importantly, they experienced the excitement that can come from researching topics they care deeply about.” 

Funded by the Mellon Foundation, the open-access site Enslaved.org is led by faculty at UMD, Michigan State University and the University of California, Riverside. It links data collections drawn from multiple universities, archives, museums and family history centers to reconstruct stories and biographies of the lives of the enslaved and their families and communities.

The seven undergraduates who worked on the project this summer developed a dataset of a "slaves for hire" list belonging to the estate of Thomas Cramphin, a wealthy Maryland planter, judge and relative by marriage to the Calvert family. The document—the original which is on loan at the Riversdale House Museum in Riverdale, Maryland—is a record of 32 enslaved persons believed to have been owned and hired out to other individuals by Cramphin or his estate executors after his death. 

Using a wide range of primary and secondary sources, including census documents, ancestry records, newspaper articles, historical maps and images and more, they sought to tell the untold stories of the lives of the enslaved individuals. 

Ousmane Diop, a Senegalese first-generation American and rising senior at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, double majoring in history and political science with a minor in Africana studies, said the SROP experience underscored the importance of uplifting the stories of the enslaved, who are sometimes forgotten or ignored.  

“Our goal was to decenter the Cramphins and other enslavers while centering the lives of the enslaved individuals in Maryland,” he said. “History is supposed to be diverse and inclusive.” 

A data article outlining the students’ research and methodology has been submitted for peer review and publication in the Journal of Slavery and Data Preservation.

Co-Principal Investigator Kristina Poznan, assistant clinical professor in the Department of History, said the students “worked collaboratively and expanded their skills in historical detective work and in using data and digital tools in the humanities.” 

Diop added that the SROP affirmed his desire to continue doing research post-graduation: “As an undergraduate, to have your name out there in the ‘dataverse’ where people can see you was really unique and gave me and my peers a lot of momentum,” he said. 

Top image: Martenet and Bond's map of Montgomery County, Maryland [1865]. Learn more.

By Christine Zhu

The University of Maryland is debuting an immersive media design major this semester, the first undergraduate program in the country that synthesizes art with computer science.

There are two tracks available in the program: an art track leading to a bachelor’s of arts degree from the college of arts and humanities, and a computer science track leading to a bachelor’s of science degree from the college of computer, mathematical and natural sciences.

The program works with creating virtual and augmented realities, offering a wide variety of courses for whichever track a student wants to take. 

One of the classes, Introduction to Immersive Media, covers history and research in the field. Its projects involve sensors, augmented reality and virtual reality.

Another class, Introduction to Computational Media, teaches students about the computing that’s required for each type of media. For example, imagery deals with computer graphics and sound deals with synthetic audio.

“We’re investigating ways to use modern technology and media to take the place of information that you would perceive with your senses in a natural environment,” said Stevens Miller, an adjunct lecturer in the department of computer science. 

As a result, students can create artificial environments where they control interactions with the senses — sight, sound and even touch and smell in some cases.

Studio arts lecturer Mollye Bendell used the Artechouse, an art center in Washington, D.C., as an example of a virtual reality experience that uses immersive media design. 

“[It’s] a gallery that specializes in the intersection of art and technology,” she said. “[An example is] an augmented reality application where you’re looking through the camera on your phone and … you see a 3D model appear.”

An immersive media design exhibit was held at The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center as a part of NextNOW Fest in mid-September. About 15 students displayed their projects, Bendell said. 

In one student’s project, people were able to play chess remotely with others around the world, Miller said. 

“Instead of being limited to a two-dimensional point and click-with-your-mouse way of interacting with the chessboard, you actually saw a three-dimensional chess set in front of you that you could manipulate even though it doesn’t actually exist,” he added.

While all immersive design students need to have coding ability, the computer science track covers more of the technical components while the art track focuses on the perceptive side, Miller said.

Sophomore Maggie Letvin, a studio art major and hopeful immersive media design major, is planning on the art track. She’s used to approaching projects from the angle of an artist, and said that programming was hard for them.

“[With] programming, you have to know what you want to do ahead of time,” she said. “I approach art from a standpoint of, ‘I have the materials, I’m just gonna work with my hands and figure out what happens,’ but you can’t exactly do that with coding.”

In later years, students from the art track are paired with students from the computer science track. As a result, students are able to work with a partner from a different background and learn more from each other.

The University of Maryland has a new four-year undergraduate program that combines art with computer science to prepare students to design and develop immersive media content and tools.

The immersive media design (IMD) major is co-taught by art and computer science faculty with expertise in virtual and augmented reality, digital art, projected imagery, computer graphics, 3D modeling, and user interfaces spanning audio, visual and tactile platforms.

“The goal is to graduate students who can collaborate effectively across creative and technical boundaries, and will excel in their field, whether that’s in computing, health care, education, advertising, gaming or the visual and performing arts,” said Roger Eastman, a professor of the practice in computer science and inaugural director of the program.

The program kicked off this fall with one introductory course, with two more being offered in Spring 2021. 

IMD features two tracks. Innovative Coders, for students focused on computer science, offers a Bachelor of Science degree. Emerging Creatives, with coursework focused on digital art, offers a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Dani Feng, a sophomore in computer science intending to major in immersive media design, has her career sights set on the animation industry. Feng said that she dreams of designing digital tools for artists to better tell stories in broad styles. 

“I want to have the knowledge from both worlds, and be able to look at my work with both a technical eye and creative eye,” she said. 

The program is designed to be collaborative, with core digital art courses featuring small classes and extensive group project work, said Brandon Morse, an associate professor of art who helped develop the curriculum with Eastman.

Morse, a digital artist whose work has been showcased internationally, said that IMD students won’t need to look far for creative opportunities outside the classroom. The region has seen an explosion of immersive design opportunities in the past few years at venues like ARTECHOUSE and the REACH at the Kennedy Center.

IMD has a dedicated space in the A.V. Williams Building that is undergoing renovation. In addition, IMD faculty and students will use digital art labs and fabrication resources in the Parren J. Mitchell Art-Sociology Building, as well as a high-bay research lab in the Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering.

“Our computing program is strong, interest in digital media is expanding dramatically, and our location next to government agencies and companies excited about new immersive technologies offer unprecedented internship and employment opportunities,” said Amitabh Varshney, professor and dean of the College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences.

Varshney played a key role in establishing the new major, co-chairing a task force in 2016 and teaching the university’s first undergraduate course in virtual reality that same year.

The IMD program also bolsters the university’s standing as an arts-tech integrative campus, said Bonnie Thornton Dill, professor and dean of the College of Arts and Humanities.

“This new program, at the intersection of art and technology, is a tremendous opportunity for students to develop their abilities in innovative ways and to expand their creativity and career opportunities,” she said.

By Maria Herd