Wednesday, December 3, 2014

Through strengthening diversity leadership, UMD’s Diversity Plan achieves goals in diversity recruitment, programs and learning

The University of Maryland’s 10 year Strategic Plan for Diversity, Transforming Maryland: Expectations for Excellence in Diversity and Inclusion, continues Maryland on the “path toward realizing our vision of being a “model multiracial, multicultural, and multigenerational academic community.” The plan sets forth goals and strategies in six core areas: Leadership; Climate; Recruitment and Retention (of outstanding faculty, staff and students); Education; Research and Scholarship; and Community Engagement. The first step in the implementation of the Strategic Plan for Diversity was to name a strategic leader of diversity for the campus. After an intensive five month process, University of Maryland (UMD) President Wallace Loh name University alumna Kumea Shorter-Gooden, Ph.D. as the University's first-ever Chief Diversity Officer. She assumed the role in 2012.

As the first Chief Diversity Officer, Dr. Shorter-Gooden plays a vital role in implementing and unifying diversity goals and programs.


In this capacity, Dr. Shorter-Gooden oversees that newly-created Office of Diversity and Inclusion, which assumed the responsibilities of Office of Human Relations Programs with focuses on multicultural and diversity education programs. It is her job “to foster constructive interactions, to help unify the many diversity resources on the campus and to build on them in support of our ambitious strategic plan for diversity.”

Upon her arrival to campus, Dr. Shorter-Gooden spoke at the Lavender Graduation ceremony in 2012. Speaking on behalf of the University, she reaffirmed its focus on diversity and its culture as a key to educating and preparing students to succeed in an exceedingly diverse workforce and community, while recognizing that there is “still work to be done.”  

Two years after her appointment she continues to fill a much-needed role in having “senior leadership to provide voice to diversity issues.” In an article on the University's Diversity Plan in the Profiles in Diversity Journal, Dr. Shorter-Gooden said that “I see my job as helping to pull together the pieces, helping to align the various offices and initiatives so we can really harness the strengths and the capacities that were set out [in the Strategic Diversity Plan]." Since starting in this role, she has done just that through increasing enrollment and retention rates of minority students and faculty, the creation of the Rise Above Campaign, the creation of the Diversity Advisory Council, the merger of the Office of Diversity Education and Compliance (ODEC) with 
the Office of Diversity and Inclusion among many other actions that further unify the diversity initiatives on campus.

Sunday, November 2, 2014

Twitter's New Interactive Map Shows the Most Popular NFL Teams in Each County of the United States

Twitter recently released an interactive map of NFL teams' popularity around the country titled #NFL2014 : Where are you team's followers. The map was created by curating information from Twitter users in each county in the United States and looking at what NFL team accounts they follow. The map gives users a visual look into where Twitter-using fans can be found geographically as well as a visual into watch teams have dominate fan loyalty is certain regions. While interacting with the map, it gives users the three most popular teams by percent in a county. It allows user to explore this data through searching for specific teams by county or on a national scale. It also allows users to compare fan bases of two teams. 

Upon analyzing this article published on USA Today's For the Win section, it can be seen that all four aspects of P-I-C-K are evident, mainly because the article incorporates the Twitter's interactive map and provides discussion of some key findings of the map.



Personalization and Interactivity are provided by this graphic, so each reader can choose their team and compare to others. The author specifically explains to the reader how they can use the map through choosing their personal teams to search. This is exhibiting personalization as the user can alter the map to relate to themselves and their needs; they are thus interacting with the map in the article through personalization and inputing their content of choose of teams. Through personalization, the user is able to adjust the amount of information they receive and ensure the at interactive aspect of the map does not become too much or overwhelming. The explanation of the map by the author allows readers to be able to engage with the information and content of the map. 



Contiguity through the author's explanations and examination provides insight into big trends in the map.  In the beginning of the article the author enacts contiguity by explaining how the map was created through the curation of Twitter data and how users can interact with the map. The visual portion of contiguity following up this explanation is Twitter's NFL fan map, itself. Another way that contiguity is addressed in the article is through the author's discussion of key findings of the map such as "The Cowboys have fans just about everywhere" or "Florida is a melting pot of football allegiances". These sub-headlines are followed up with a short and concise sentence that describes the sub-headlines and then paired with a visual of the map as altered to see the sub headline. 

The nonexistence of kick-outs enables the user to stay engaged with the article and map. This is mainly due to the direct integration of Twitter's NFL fan map into the article and the limited text. This integration allows readers of the article to directly interact the map on the article's webpage instead of having to go elsewhere to use it. In addition, there were no other distractions to the reader of the article. There were no pop-up advertisements or links to other articles and pages on the sides of the site. Instead, other links were found at the bottom of the website after the article. The only thing that could be considered a kick-out would be the links to share the article on social networking sites. These social networking links are also included at the conclusion of the article and thus act a reminder as opposed to a direct kick-out. 
   

Thursday, October 30, 2014

University of Maryland faculty member awarded Packard Fellowship to study Earth's seismic information

In recognition of his efforts to integrate computer science and geological studies, Lekic joined the ranks of 17 other early career U.S. scientists and engineers who were awarded a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering last week.Lekic is now one of five alumni faculty members who have received the award while at this university, and he will be given access to unrestricted funds of $875,000 over a five-year period to support his extensive research on Earth’s inner structure.

The Packard Fellowship gives Lekic needed funding for and flexibility with his research


“If you look at the field of those who get it and try to figure out from their research summaries and letters which are the strongest candidate, it’s a difficult task,” said Franklin Orr, chairman of the Packard Fellowship panel. “We always run out of fellowships before we run out of wonderful people to give them too.”


“The great thing about this fellowship is its flexibility to go chase a really good idea to wherever it leads,” said Orr, a Stanford University professor. “It is an incredibly valuable fund and gives the researchers an opportunity to take off with a good idea instead of waiting a year or more for federal money.”


Now that a large fund has been granted to his work, he hopes to spend more time plotting the seismic information in graphs and models so that he may better understand the Earth, Lekic said.


Lekic's Fellowship-winning studies looks at ground vibration recordings and seismic waves
Lekic’s research is based on ground vibration recordings, which he and his students use to detect the scattering of seismic waves across the North American tectonic plate. In conjunction with the National Science Foundation’s EarthScope Facility network, the data is collected from the 49 states and Puerto Rico and makes up about 3.8 million square miles, Lekic said.


EarthScope is kind of like our Apollo mission, but not as costly,” Lekic said
A map of where EarthScope stations are located 



“What we do is comparable to how an ultrasound let’s us see through our bodies,” Lekic said. “But this lets us see through the Earth.”


Nearly 2 million data lines fill the screen of Vedran Lekic’s computer every day, each representing seismic waves that are detected from of the more than 1,700 seismic stations around the U.S.


From this data, Lekic is creating a map that will not only cover all 48 contiguous states, Alaska and Puerto Rico, but also dive deep into the Earth’s crust and core.


Lekic has already used the seismic information to investigate why and how the crust moves over the Earth’s mantle. As of now, the deepest any machine has been able to dig was about 12 kilometers into the Earth’s crust, a minuscle fracture of the roughly 6,730 kilometers it takes to get to the Earth’s core. Using the seismic information helps geologists see the shapes and sizes of the Earth’s layers.


As a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkley, Lekic formulated higher-resolution images of the Earth’s mantle structure, stemming from his creation of a global seismic velocity model. Not only is the model able to give geologists a better understanding of plate tectonics, but it also helps explain the movement of continental plates and their evolution, Lekic said.

Lekic is also contributing to the new geological field of neutrino geoscience, which is focused on neutral subatomic particle



Other than his seismology research contributions, Lekic is also a forerunner in the new geological field of neutrino geoscience.


Neutrinos are a type of electrically neutral subatomic particle that are created during radioactive decay or some kinds of nuclear reactions. The particle, which was only discovered geologically in 2005 and physically detected for the first time last year, moves through every kind of object, McDonough said.


Lekic and McDonough are attempting to harness that energy to create another way to build a model of the Earth.


“It sounds magical; it’s like a particle that exists but you can’t really see,” Lekic said of neutrinos.

“We are both interested in the energy that moves the tectonic plates and creates the magnetic shield around the planet,” geology professor William McDonough said.

Friday, October 17, 2014

Study Shows Twitter Activity Can Increase Live Broadcast Television Ratings


A Nielsen study found that the volume of tweets can cause significant changes in live TV ratings among 29 percent of the 221 episodes studied through minute-to-minute research and analysis of trends in live TV ratings and tweets. This study also analyzed the impacts of tweets based on genre of the television program and found that significant differences exist based on genre. Tweets had the greatest impact on programs in the competitive reality genre; they influenced ratings increased in nearly half (44%) of episodes studied. Other genres such as  comedy (37%) and sports (28%) also showed significant increased tune-in ratings driven from tweets, while programs in the drama genre were less affected (18%) by tweets during and before episodes. This study therefore suggests and confirms that Twitter is now not only a become a popular destination where fans can talk about their favorite TV shows in real-time, but also an influential platform for live TV ratings.