Tag Archives: events

History Class Hosts Sixth Annual “Knowledge At Work” Alumni Event

October 17, 2018Uncategorizedalumni, eventsNicole Hudgins

Sergeant Marcus Jackson (History ’10), Sherketta Carter (History ’11 and LEST ’14), Marshall Odell (History ’15) and Kaya Abukasis (History ’18) were welcomed back to UB by students, faculty, and Dean Spencer on Wednesday to talk about their professional paths following graduation. Students in Dr. Nix’s “Historian’s Toolkit” (HIST 295) class enjoyed getting to know these terrific alumni over pizza, and asking lots of their own questions.

Sherketta, Marcus, and Marshall shared work and school stories over pizza with HIST 295 students. Alumni in the Legal, Ethical and Historical Studies division return to UB every year for the Knowledge At Work program.

Jackson developed his career with the Army National Guard after graduation, and he told students that the reading, writing, and research skills he acquired in the history program applied directly to his work as a human resources manager in the Maryland Guard. Reading critically, he said, and learning lessons from leaders in the past, helps him develop his own leadership skills. Since graduating from UB, Jackson has also gotten married and now has two adorable daughters.

Carter graduated from two UB programs, History (B.A.) and Legal and Ethical Studies (M.A.). She parleyed her legal history knowledge and networking skills into a satisfying career as a legal assistant. For her, internships helped her make the transition from a student to legal professional. She works for the City of Baltimore Law Department – and no law school degree was required!

Odell came to the UB History program after an early career in banking and finance. After graduating in 2015 with experience working at our Langsdale Library, he got a job as a librarian at the U.S. Naval Academy Library in Annapolis. Odell works with artifacts of military history in the library, as well as budget issues.

The panel was also joined by Kaya Abukasis, who began UB Law School directly after her graduation in the History program this year. She is still acclimating to the massive reading demands in 1-L, but assured students that the source analysis and writing assignments she completed in the History program prepared her well for the LSAT and the workload in law school. In her copious spare time, she is also working on her mother’s Congressional election campaign in Pennsylvania.

A history degree opens up all sorts of careers to college graduates. Aside from our guests today, UB students will remember that our university president and college dean were both history majors in college.

4th Annual “Knowledge At Work” Event Brings LEHS Alumni to Campus

November 1, 2017Uncategorizedalumni, eventsNicole Hudgins

The annual LEHS “Knowledge At Work” alumni event took place on October 23, 2017 in Dr. Nix’s HIST 295 evening class. This year, we had three alumni from the division come back to UB to talk to history program majors about their work experiences since graduation.

Mr. Michael Bealefeld (History ’13) talked about his master’s program experience at UMBC, which was funded by a Madison Foundation Fellowship that he won as a UB student. Since finishing the UMBC program, he became a history teacher at the Cambridge School in Baltimore County.

Ms. Lyndsay Bates was our representative from the Legal and Ethical Studies master’s program here in the Division of Legal, Ethical and Historical Studies (LEST ’13). She is currently earning her doctorate in Public Administration at UB, and she has already presented her research on structural inequality in Baltimore to a professional audience of scholars.

Our third panelist was Sgt. Audrey McCoy, who graduated from the UB History program as Audrey Hayes in 2015. A recipient of the Keith L. Ware Military Print Journalist of the Year Award (2017), Audrey works as a photojournalist for the United States Army Reserve. Her article, “Remembering Rosie,” based in part on her History program research, was featured on the U.S. Army Web site homepage. Read her article here.

All three of our panelists talked about how their LEHS degree prepared them for their next steps, and how the research, writing, and communication skills they developed here gave them a competitive advantage. The history majors in the audience had the opportunity to ask Mike, Lyndsay, and Audrey their own questions about parleying their degrees into a variety of careers.

Special thanks to Dean Spencer, the History program faculty, and Cindy Meyers for helping make the event a fun night of useful insights and lots of laughs.

The 2017 Phi Alpha Theta Mid-Atlantic Conference at the University of Baltimore

October 29, 2016UncategorizedeventsNicole Hudgins

Information about the regional conference, taking place at UB on Saturday, April 22, 2017

Click to download the Conference Program!

Registration Instructions:

To register for the 2017 Mid-Atlantic conference, please send a check for $30 per individual, made out to the University of Baltimore (write in memo note: 2017 Phi Alpha Theta Conference) to the following mailing address:

University of Baltimore
Attn: Edward Allen, Finance Manager
1420 N. Charles St.
Baltimore, MD 21201

Please write your institution name in the return address on your envelope. Once you have mailed your registration payment, email the UB chapter organizer, Dr. Nicole Hudgins, at nhudgins@ubalt.edu, so that she can form an attendee list.

Getting to Campus:

UB is located between the Mt. Vernon and Station North neighborhoods in Baltimore City, between Penn Station (to the north) and the Maryland Institute College of Art (to the west). The campus is split by Mt. Royal Ave., but the conference will take place in just one building, the Business Center (#9 on the Campus Map).

UB Area Map

UB Campus Map

Parking at UB

Make a Weekend of It! A Selection of Tourism Web Guides:

Visit Baltimore

BaltimoreEats: Mt. Vernon

Baltimore Collegetown

The dazzling Walters Museum of Art

The breathtaking Peabody Library

The History faculty in the Division of Legal, Ethical and Historical Studies at UB is looking forward to meeting visiting P.A.T. faculty and students!

History Students Learn about Our Low Gas Prices from the Experts

March 3, 2016UncategorizedeventsNicole Hudgins

Apologies for the length of time since our last blog post! The historians in the Division of Legal, Ethical and Historical Studies and their students have been busy, busy, busy with activity.

Most recently, on March 2^nd, 2016, students in Prof. Yi’s History of U.S. Foreign Relations class took a field trip to the Capitol Hill to witness a hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on “Economic and Geopolitical Implications of Low Oil and Gas Prices.” It was a rewarding time for students to see how Congress set a foreign policy agenda and worked to accomplish it. The trip was made possible by the generous support of Helen T. Helen P. Denit Honors program which encouraged enhanced learning experience for students.

Students in “The History of U.S. Foreign Relations” at the Capitol in Washington, D.C.

Freshmen in HIST 290 Get to Know Their Bay

October 21, 2015UncategorizedeventsElizabeth Nix

In the past few decades Baltimoreans have viewed their harbor as a playground — a backdrop for urban festival spaces, seafood restaurants and multi-million dollar penthouses. But for most of Baltimore’s history, the harbor was primarily a vital working port, the economic engine of the entire region.

This semester freshmen in the Learning Community “Know Your Bay” are tracing the history of Baltimore as a port city and its role in the Chesapeake region. On the first day of class they made the trip down Charles Street to the Inner Harbor to survey the harbor from the top of the World Trade Center. In September, thanks to a generous grant from UB alumna Marie van Deusen, the class spent the day on the water aboard the Lady Maryland, a replica of a pungy schooner. The crew showed us the work that would have been done on this type of cargo boat during the 19th century.

Students in the learning community continue their hands-on experiences in internships throughout the city. Some are working with Blue Water Baltimore on environmental projects; others are training to become eco-tour guides in the Inner Harbor. By the end of the semester they will produce public service campaigns to highlight a solution to an urban problem they have encountered in their studies.

“Knowledge @ Work,” the fourth annual alumni event presented by the Division of Legal, Ethical, and Historical Studies at UB, was a wonderful evening this past Thursday. Every October, UB’s History, Jurisprudence, Legal and Ethical Studies majors, and pre-majors, are invited to visit with program alumni who have parleyed their degrees into exciting careers here in the region.

This year, we had a panelist from each of LEHS’s programs: Luke McCusker (History ’11) is the director of the Irish Railroad Workers Museum in Baltimore. David C. Butler, Jr. (LEST ’09) manages an office in the U.S. Social Security Administration in Woodlawn, MD. And Hannah Dawson (Jurisprudence ’12) is an attorney who works in the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review, also part of the Social Security Administration.

Alumni David Butler, Luke McCusker, and Hannah Dawson turned legal, ethical, and historical skills into great jobs.

These outstanding alumni talked about how their reading, writing, research, and communication skills, honed at UB, helped them find fulfilling positions, and helped them get promoted once on the job. UB students who attended the event took the opportunity to network and pose their own school and career questions. They also got to meet and chat with CAS dean Chris Spencer, a history major herself who went on to have a career in public health and higher education administration.

History, Jurisprudence, and LEST students socialize with Dean Spencer over nachos and buffalo wings at the “Knowledge @ Work” event.

Many thanks to Dr. Yi for taking photos at the event, and Lyndsay Bates for helping make the event this year a success.

UB Students Visit Congress Same Day as Gyrocopter

On Wednesday, April 15, UB students in HIST 420 “America since 1940” took a day-long field trip to Capitol Hill in D.C. to observe Senate floor discussion, and attend a hearing at the Senate Committee on Armed Services, entitled, “National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Plans and Programs.” The conversation that Dr. Yi and her students had with a Senate docent and the subject of the hearing itself were intriguing enough, but the trip became even more memorable due to two incidents that happened during their trip.

This happened to be the day that Congress honored the Doolittle Raiders with the Congressional Gold Medal, and the students were able to take part in the ceremony.

Coincidentally, a gyrocopter landed on the Capitol lawn while they were in the building. But despite the unusual incident, the our UB group was able to return to campus safely and on time!

After the trip, students wrote essays for class analyzing the Senate hearing as a primary source, and proposing an appropriate budget for the Armed Services committee. As an Enhanced course at UB (open to both honors and non-honors students), HIST 420 benefited from the support of the Helen P. Denit Honors program, which funded the group’s transportation.

History of Photography Students Head to UMBC

On April 4, students in Dr. Hudgins’ “History of Photography” course, an Enhanced course in CAS that provides honors credit, took their second trip to Special Collections at UMBC. With a focus on the history and practice of art photography, Special Collections at the Albin O. Kuhn Library is a world-class research center for students and scholars around the world.

Dr. Hudgins and her students are putting together a course Web site, which will feature various aspects of photography in Baltimore – past, present, and future. Their time at UMBC was spent learning about antique photo processes, how to handle fragile artifacts, and studying images that will help them with their assigned Web pages. Cordie Farmer (left) spent her time looking through the papers of the Baltimore Camera Club, established 1884. Travis Allen (below) looked at the collections of photographs taken during the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904.

The members of the “History of Photography” class wish to thank Tom Beck and the staff of Special Collections at UMBC for all their assistance and expertise this semester! Coming soon: our course Web site.

Richard P. Robinson Once Again Goes ‘Unhung’

February 26, 2015UncategorizedeventsElizabeth Nix

"Everyday Lives" Spring 2015 — “Everyday Lives” Spring 2015

On February 25, 2015 prosecutors once again failed to convict Richard P. Robinson for the murder of New York prostitute Helen Jewett. Robinson’s first trial in 1836 also ended in his acquittal. The brutal killing of a beautiful and popular young woman and the trial of 19-year-old clerk Richard Robinson caused a sensation in a changing New York, a city filled with young people who had left rural communities to live unsupervised in the bustling metropolis.

Students in “Everyday Lives,” Dr. Elizabeth Nix’s social history course, researched the historical figures from the 19th century that Patricia Cohen described in The Murder of Helen Jewett, and testified as those people in class. Students had to stay true to the facts in the book, but the legal counsel had leeway to ask new questions and present arguments the historical figures had not made. Our judge for the day, Dr. Darien Ripple, listened to the evidence, and like the rest of the class was surprised when the defense made the bold decision to put the accused himself on the stand. At the end of the day, our judge agreed with his 19th century predecessor that too much doubt existed to convict the “innocent boy.”

Three New Phi Alpha Theta Initiates Celebrate at Kumari

On Tuesday, Feb. 11, Dr. Hudgins celebrated with three new Phi Alpha Theta initiates at Kumari’s delicious lunch buffet. Phi Alpha Theta is the National History Honors Society, whose membership is open both to history and jurisprudence majors at UB. Our chapter at UB has the denomination Tau Mu. The three new initiates were history majors Lester Pollitt III and Stephanie Danesie, and jurisprudence graduate Angelica James.

Dr. Hudgins and the three initiates wish to thank Dean Bryan for supporting Phi Alpha Theta by picking up the check! For more information about Phi Alpha Theta, get in touch with UB’s History Club on OrgSync, email Professor Hudgins, or visit the P.A.T. Web site.

Through the Wire

UB History Program News