Model United Nations Conference Celebrates 15th Anniversary

Fall 2018

Clad in business suits and high heels, flocks of young men and women hurry down Baltimore’s Pratt Street toward the Renaissance Hotel on a breezy February evening. Soon, all 1,650 or so individuals gather in the hotel’s ballroom for opening ceremonies of the much-anticipated four-day event for which they’ve traversed 14 states and two countries to attend. If not for the barely repressed giggles and high-energy vibe pervading the room, the gathering might be mistaken for a United Nations conference.

It’s close. This congregation of highly motivated, politically astute high school students is here for Johns Hopkins 15th Model United Nations Conference (JHUMUNC). Role-playing as actual UN delegates, each high school participant engages in one of 30 UN committees to discuss and debate complex world affairs, including international security, human rights, and world health. Perhaps the only aspect of this event more impressive than the teen delegates participating in the conference are the 156 Johns Hopkins students who make this well-oiled machine run.

15 successive years of Hopkins students committing themselves to the conference has paid off. Though records prior to 2000 don’t exist, Scott Burkholder ’02, secretary general of the 2000 JHUMUNC, recalls the event’s early days, saying that only about 120 delegates participated in 1999, and the event was held in a few buildings on the Homewood campus. “It was a lot of running around, but we made it work,” Burkholder says.

The conference’s original crisis-oriented theme, which distinguished it from other Model UN conferences in the country, remains a mainstay today. Teen delegates brace themselves for surprise middle-of-the-night emergencies, requiring them to awaken and hash out plans to squelch an international firestorm. Surprise crises aside, the conference seems otherwise unrecognizable from its former days.

“When I heard the staggering size it’s become, I was astounded,” Burkholder says.

The event’s magnitude means a tremendous amount of work for staffers, which hasn’t gone unnoticed by Hopkins administrators. “I’ve watched them work tirelessly all year,” says Susan Boswell, dean of Student Life, commenting at the conference’s opening ceremony. With no formal adviser, this completely student-run event requires large swaths of time and dedication from student staffers.

Consider Daniel Roettger ’13. Although he never participated in model UN conferences as a high school student, the international studies major has fully immersed himself in the inner workings of the event. The second-year JHUMUNC staffer has carved out a niche for himself as special assistant to the secretaries general. Catching up with him about a week before the start of the 2012 conference, he appears calm in the face of the pending onslaught of teenaged delegates to Baltimore’s Renaissance Hotel. Largely responsible for logistics and security, Roettger’s job is a big one.

Like many fellow conference staffers, Roettger has logged at least 20 hours per week since last March in preparation of the event. Roettger’s position involves securing a three-night stay for 1,600 students and their advisers in one of two downtown hotels; arranging for up to 31 simultaneous sessions during the conference; and ensuring each of the teenage attendees abides by the evening curfew, no alcohol and drug policy, and other rules.

“I float around and make sure it happens,” Roettger says somewhat nonchalantly.

But on the event’s opening night, transformed from his college ‘uniform’ of jeans and a sweatshirt to a blue suit, slicked hair, and dangling ear piece denoting security detail, Roettger looks anything but nonchalant. He’s on high alert, moving quickly, and presumably enjoying every minute of it.

Barely out of adolescence, Roettger and the other staffers learn lessons many adults don’t confront in the work place until well into their careers. Erin Reilly ’12, one of two secretary generals overseeing the entire operation, sounds like a veteran manager of the corporate world when she says: “We don’t want to micromanage our under-secretaries.” Anisha Singh ’12, undersecretary-general of school relations, is tasked with sticking to her advertising budget while helping to grow the conference. She credits the conference’s increasing popularity with helping her succeed.

“It has started to get a reputation as a great place for kids to learn,” Singh says.

The Darkroom Goes Dark

Fall 2018

I was unpleasantly surprised to learn of the death of analog (darkroom) photography. Until “The Darkroom Goes Dark” [Fall 2011] appeared in my mailbox, I had—perhaps naively—been enjoying the recent reprieve from the same tedious half-truths about how digital imaging would soon toss traditional analog photography into the dustbin of history.

[But] despite the claims of Howard Ehrenfeld, “Wet film photography is a bygone thing,” the reports of analog photography’s death are greatly exaggerated.

Film and darkroom materials are still available, even in the Baltimore photography store (Service Photo) where Mr. Ehrenfeld denies they are sold. There are traditional as well as online purveyors of these materials committed to analog photography.

Perhaps it is useful to think of analog photography as “slow photography,” akin to the “slow food” movement, both practiced as a countercultural insistence on the deliberate and patient use and enjoyment of real, not virtual, materials.

James DuSel
MA Classics 1981
Co-author with John Dorsey of Look Again in Baltimore, JHU Press, 2005

Hopkins Economist Appointed to the Federal Reserve

Fall 2018

In January, the Federal Reserve Board appointed Professor Jon Faust as special adviser in the Office of Board Members.

Faust is the Louis J. Maccini Professor of Economics in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and the director of the Center for Financial Economics at Johns Hopkins. His appointment is a homecoming of sorts: he served at the Fed before joining the Johns Hopkins faculty in 2006.

Faust will contribute to the monetary policy process and staff the Federal Open Market Committee’s subcommittee on communications.

“Jon has an exceptional breadth of expertise in international economics, monetary economics, finance, and econometrics, along with nearly two decades of prior experience in the Federal Reserve System,” said Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke in the Fed’s news release.

Dean Katherine S. Newman explained that Faust has been granted a two-year “public service” leave of absence, given only to faculty members who have been asked to contribute their expertise to institutions of government. She praised Faust, saying, “This is a wonderful opportunity for Jon as well as for the Center for Financial Economics. The Federal Reserve calls upon the nation’s most prominent economists for public service, and we are honored that they chose a member of our faculty for this important role. Their selection illustrates the remarkable quality of our colleagues. When Jon returns to Johns Hopkins in two years, our students will benefit from his even greater breadth of experience.”

Faust spent nearly 20 years in the Federal Reserve System, rising to the position of assistant director in the Division of International Finance, where he directed research on both international finance and trade. He has held visiting faculty posts at Princeton University, Georgetown University, and the Center for Applied Economics and Policy Research at Indiana University. He earned a PhD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, an MPhil in economics from Oxford University, and a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Iowa. Faust’s research spans a broad array of theoretical and applied topics confronted by macroeconomic policymakers, such as econometric measurement of policy effects, political economy of policy, and understanding macro-financial linkages.

In Faust’s absence from Johns Hopkins, two co-directors have been appointed to the Center for Financial Economics: Robert Barbera and Jonathan Wright. Barbera is the chief economist at Mount Lucas Management in New York and a fellow at Hopkins’ Center for Financial Economics, where he has taught his Art and Science of Economic Forecasting class each spring for the past nine years. A Johns Hopkins alumnus, Barbera earned both his bachelor’s degree and doctorate from the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering in the Whiting School of Engineering in 1974 and 1978, respectively. Wright is a professor in the Department of Economics in the Krieger School who specializes in econometrics, empirical macroeconomics, and finance. Prior to joining the Johns Hopkins faculty in 2008, Wright worked for nine years at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington.

“Jonathan and Bob are an extraordinary team to lead the Center for Financial Economics,” says Joseph Harrington, chair of the Department of Economics. “Since the CFE’s creation, they have been central contributors to its intellectual life and have been instrumental in bringing research and practice to our students. It is that blended scholar-practitioner approach that singularly defines the CFE in the academic landscape, and Jonathan and Bob are sure to be a dynamic duo for developing that vision.”

“We are fortunate to be able to call on Bob Barbera,” Newman said.  “His many years of experience in finance are a boon to our students, and his own research is of great value to the public. I look forward to working with both Jonathan and Bob as we move forward with the Center for Financial Economics.”

Homewood Arts Programs

Fall 2018

When in search of a creative outlet, Johns Hopkins undergraduates need look no further than the Homewood Arts Programs. Whether they have a passion for dance, music, art, or theater, students can pursue their muse in myriad ways. The Homewood Arts Programs offer co-curricular groups where students can train, perform, gain valuable experience, meet new friends, and have fun, all while channeling their creative side. During any given academic year, more than 550 undergraduates participate in one or more of the following arts organizations, resulting in more than 100 public performances.

Homewood Arts Programs By the Numbers

  • 8 a cappella groups
  • 3 choirs
  • 4 bands (wind ensemble, pep band, jazz band, jazz ensemble)
  • 1 symphony orchestra
  • 1 chamber orchestra
  • 15 dance groups (everything from ballet to hip-hop)
  • 4 theater groups
  • 2 sketch comedy groups
  • 1 entertainers club (variety acts)
  • 1 fine arts group

Watch Scenes from the 2011 JHU Arts Festival

A poem lovely as … a smartphone?

Fall 2018

I enjoyed the interview with poet and professor Mary Jo Salter [Fall 2011, “A poem lovely as … a smartphone?”]. Her response regarding the popularity of poetry studies at Johns Hopkins, however, overlooked a vital complement to the university’s traditional offerings: the part-time MA in Writing program, offered through the Krieger School’s Advanced Academic Programs division.

As one of the 25 poetry students enrolled in the program, I can attest to its benefits: small classes held on the Baltimore and DC campuses; a rigorous curriculum that combines foundational courses in formal verse, electives such as Technology Tools for Writers, and opportunities for independent study; and a schedule that caters to those who balance full-time jobs or other obligations with their studies. The program attracts a unique mix of students who are passionate about poetry, from attorneys and public health researchers to middle school English teachers.’

Professor Salter is correct: social media and technology expand opportunities for poets. Johns Hopkins’ AAP program does, too.

Ann E. Kolakowski
Timonium, Md.

Great Wall of Waverly

Fall 2018

Thanks for the photo spread on the “Great Wall of Waverly” [Fall 2011]. The mural couldn’t have been completed without help from at least a dozen JHU students. However, none of the painters in this particular photo are Hopkins students.

The woman on the upper plat­form is Anna Paul; the men on the lower level are Daniel Sakemoto-Wengel of Charles Village, myself, and Greg Gannon of Waverly.

Tom Chalkley
Homewood Arts Programs

Learning Chinese Opens Doors to Collaboration

Fall 2018

As China’s economy continues to grow, so does the country’s scientific and technological prowess. Decades ago, the West viewed China largely as a beneficiary of its science, technology, engineering, and medical (STEM) advances. Yet over time, the East has become a hotbed of research and innovation of its own.

“Many of the great STEM breakthroughs are now occurring in China,” explains Kellee Tsai, vice dean for humanities and social sciences at the Krieger School. “It is imperative that English-speaking researchers learn to communicate with their Asian counterparts. Just as important, some Western advances have yet to reach all corners of the East, due in part to technical language barriers.”

With this in mind, the Krieger School launched Johns Hopkins–China STEM, a Chinese language program for Hopkins students, faculty members, and researchers (and similar applicants outside the university). Designed for English-speaking scholars with a strong foundation in Mandarin Chinese and training in engineering or the health sciences, the eight-week summer program will take place almost entirely in China.

Depending on whether they are enrolled in the engineering or the health sciences track, students will learn technical Chinese vocabulary associated with architectural design, transportation infrastructure, energy and the environment, rural health care, health policy and reform, nutrition, prevention and treatment of contagious diseases, and clinical practice.

“Johns Hopkins–China STEM will help to satisfy a growing demand at Hopkins and around the world for Chinese language training in technical fields,” says Tsai, who led the program’s planning process.

With support from the Henry Luce Foundation and spearheaded by faculty in the Krieger School and the Whiting School of Engineering, Johns Hopkins–China STEM aims to prepare students to engage in advanced international collaboration. “College and professional school graduates with first-rate language training in specialized areas will enter today’s transnational job market with a competitive advantage,” says the Department of History’s Tobie Meyer-Fong, one of the program’s planners.

Image Gallery

New Academy Brings Research to Retirement

Fall 2018

A rendering of the renovated Greenhouse, which will house the Academy.

A rendering of the renovated Greenhouse, which will house the Academy.

When esteemed university professors retire, they generally take their expertise and rich knowledge base with them. How can retired profs continue to be fundamental participants in a university’s intellectual community?

Enter The Academy at Johns Hopkins, an institute for advanced study, where retired professors can pursue research opportunities, conduct and attend academic seminars, and explore other opportunities for continued scholarship. University President Ronald J. Daniels and Krieger School Dean Katherine S. Newman announced the launch of the Academy last December, in an effort to underscore the importance of research among retired faculty of the School of Arts and Sciences.

“Dedication to unceasing exploration lies at the core of our university, and the Academy embodies that spirit of lifelong learning to the fullest,” said Daniels. “It recognizes our emeriti’s continued intellectual achievements, ensures the inspiration of future scholars, and fosters Johns Hopkins’ ongoing pursuit of excellence.”

All current tenured faculty members will be eligible, upon their retirement, for membership in the Academy. They can declare their intention to retire and become “Academy Professors,” a new title designated by Johns Hopkins’ Homewood Academic Council. Membership benefits include an annual research allowance of $2,000; office space; support for seminars, lectures, workshops, visiting professors, and speaker series; full library privileges; and occasional classroom teaching opportunities.

“For academics, the Academy is everything retirement should be,” said Newman. “Our retired colleagues remain actively engaged in their scholarly work and remain a vital element of the university community.”

A building in the heart of campus called the Greenhouse, which is adjacent to the residence of the university president and across from Gilman Hall, will eventually be renovated to be the new home for the Academy.

Richard Conn Henry & Steve Hanke

Fall 2018

“One time throughout the world, one date throughout the world.”

—Richard Conn Henry, professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and Steve Hanke, professor in the Whiting School of Engineering with a joint appointment in the Department of Economics, writing about a new calendar they’ve devised, where each year remains the same as the next one. So, for example, if your birthday is March 27, it will, according to the new calendar, fall on a Tuesday, and from then on, your birthday will always be on Tuesday.

The end of 2011 brought a flurry of media attention around the proposed new calendar, called the Hanke-Henry Permanent Calendar. The professors say such a calendar would result in a huge yearly savings of time and effort that is now spent scheduling and planning for everything from business meetings to school calendars to sporting events to holidays. In addition to proposing a new calendar, Henry and Hanke would like to see the end of world time zones and the adoption of a “universal time” that would synchronize dates and times everywhere in the world. In an article published in Global Asia, they wrote: “Today’s cacophony of time zones, daylight savings times, and calendar fluctuations, year after year, would be over. The economy—that’s all of us—would receive a permanent ‘harmonization’ dividend.”

To learn more about their calendar, see henry.pha.jhu.edu/calendar.html or tinyurl.com/HankHenryCalendar

Rebuilding the Foundation of Science Education

Fall 2018

A new university-wide initiative aims to change the way science is introduced to undergraduates. With the launch of the Gateway Sciences Initiative (GSI), the Provost’s Office and educators from around Johns Hopkins are hard at work improving introductory science courses. By encouraging the use of new teaching technologies and techniques, the GSI ultimately strives to get students more excited about the process of discovery.

“Our institutions spend a lot of time designing, organizing, and publicizing what is taught, but much less time [focusing on] what is learned,” says Provost Lloyd Minor, who is spearheading the GSI. “We hope to put a new emphasis on student learning—active learning, online learning, individualized learning, and engaged learning.”

One example of this new approach is already unfolding in the Department of Biology. Acknowledging that freshmen often have difficulty securing positions in research labs, faculty members in the department have teamed with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science Education Alliance to launch the JHU PHAGES program. Instead of offering young Hopkins scholars lectures on virology and genomic science, faculty in this program guide students through the process of isolating and characterizing unique bacterium-infecting viruses (called phages). Ripe with opportunity for original discovery and hands-on learning, the class culminates with the students coming together to annotate and publish the sequenced genome of one of the student’s phages.

The Gateway Sciences Initiative is supporting such endeavors with 10 inaugural grants, awarded in December 2011. The grants fund pilot projects across JHU that will improve current gateway courses and point the way to potentially larger changes in pedagogy, course and program design, and instructional methodologies. The Department of Biology received a GSI grant to improve on the success of the PHAGES program, and the departments of Physics and Astronomy, Mathematics, and Chemistry, and Krieger’s Advanced Academic Programs, received grants for their own respective projects—ranging from producing online video tutorials for complicated math problems, to a major modernization of the General Physics course.

For information on the GSI, including more on the 10 inaugural grants and video of keynote speakers from a recent JHU symposium on teaching excellence in the sciences, visit: web.jhu.edu/administration/provost/GSI.

At left, bacterium infecting phages collected by freshmen as part of the JHU PHAGES program, which is supported by the GSI. Overlayed on the right, a genome map of one of the phages.

At left, bacterium infecting phages collected by freshmen as part of the JHU PHAGES program, which is supported by the GSI. Overlayed on the right, a genome map of one of the phages.

Photo, left: Will Kirk / Right: Genome Map courtesy of Professor Joel Schildbach

From Graffiti to Hospital Waste

Fall 2018

Growing up in Houston, William McCance ’12 never saw much graffiti. Then he came to Baltimore, where its sweeping strokes are everywhere, from abandoned buildings to community centers. Local graffiti culture encompasses decades of history, he learned, but some of it is also fleeting. “You find [a piece] you like, and you go back a week later and the city has painted over it,” he says.

So McCance, an English and Writing Seminars double major, decided to shoot a documentary about the city’s graffiti culture before it changes once again. He’ll complete the project this year with support from a new program called the Dean’s Undergraduate Research Awards (DURA).

William McCance ’12 received a Dean’s Undergraduate Research Award to film a documentary on Baltimore street art.

Will Kirk / Homewoodphoto.jhu.edu

Created for undergraduate students in the Krieger School, the DURA program provides $500 to $3,000 grants to support research in the humanities, social sciences, and physical sciences, and requires a faculty mentor. Each department has named its award after one of its distinguished late faculty members. (McCance is the recipient of the Elliot Coleman Award in Writing, Speech, and Drama.) In its first semester, the program has had 51 applications.

As participants in the first cohort, McCance and 10 other undergraduate students are working on diverse projects, from an intense study of a 15th-century sculpture by Italian artist Agostino di Duccio, to a review of the money supply in countries with currency boards.

“Research is the defining cultural tradition of Johns Hopkins,” says Krieger School Dean Katherine Newman, who instituted the new grants. “We wanted to extend that experience all the way down to the youngest members of our community, our undergraduates.” As such, the DURA program joins the Woodrow Wilson Undergraduate Research Fellowship Program and the Provost’s Undergraduate Research Awards, two other scholarship programs that support undergraduate research at Johns Hopkins.

Senior Lily Newman received the Owen Hannaway Award and is researching the history of hospital medical waste in the 19th and 20th centuries and comparing historical and current practices. Three other students received the Bianca Thiesen Award and are working with Research Professor Bernadette Wegenstein to create a documentary on breast cancer and how it is connected to cultural perceptions of beauty and femininity. In January, Wenchi Wei ’12, a double-degree student in international studies and East Asian studies, spent nearly three weeks in Taiwan researching the positive shift in the country’s relations with China. Because her trip coincided with Taiwan’s election season, she also talked to supporters of re-elected president Ma Ying-jeou, as well as members of the opposing party.

“I’ve been thinking about this project for a while,” says Wei, recipient of the Milton Cummings Award. “This has implications for how to change such arrangements in other areas that are filled with conflict. The DURA funding [was] crucial for me being able to complete my research.”

Steven David, vice dean for undergraduate education, says the opportunity to work collaboratively with faculty is an important part of the program. “At a research university, sometimes it’s hard to get to know a faculty member,” he says. “This will give students a chance to get to know someone who can write recommendations and serve as a mentor. It’s a good way to establish that kind of relationship.”

Newman notes that the benefits for students go far beyond developing research skills. “The great pleasure and intrinsic value of discovery are by far the most important things that come out of this,” she says. “This is the opportunity to contribute new knowledge.”

Can You Wrap Your Head Around M2-Branes?

Fall 2018

Michael Beard, the aging wunderkind physicist, was worried. “He liked to think he was an old hand and knew his way around string theory and its major variants. But these days there were simply too many add-ons and modifications… Frowning for hours at a stretch, he read up on the latest, on Bagger, Lambert, and Gustavsson—and their Lagrangian description of coincident M2-branes. God may or not have played dice, but surely He was nowhere near this clever, or such a show-off.”

Bagger, Lambert and Gustavsson? Readers of Ian McEwen’s latest novel, Solar, may have assumed that these three “show-offs” and their “M2-branes” are as imaginary as the befuddled fictional character Michael Beard.

Jonathan Bagger

Not so! claims the Krieger School’s Jonathan Bagger, who holds professorships in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Department of Mathematics. Early in his career, Bagger made some big contributions to supersymmetry—a theory-of-almost-everything in the realm of fundamental particles and forces—and more recently has turned to a related subject known as M-theory.

M-theory is an offshoot of string theory, which was once (back in the 1970s and ’80s) the new thing in theoretical physics. While string theory posits that fundamental particles are one-dimensional strings, M-theory sees them as two-dimensional membranes, fluttering about in an 11-dimensional space. “The M in M-theory might stand for membranes, or it might stand for mysterious,” Bagger says with a laugh. “Nobody’s quite sure what the M stands for, and nobody knows much about M-theory.”

One day in 2006, Neil Lambert, a young theoretical physicist then at the University of London, turned up in Bagger’s office at Hopkins. Lambert’s wife, a World Bank employee, had just been posted to Washington, and Lambert wondered whether he and Bagger could collaborate on something. The result was a set of papers describing what interacting M-theory 2-branes might look like, mathematically anyway. “We were lucky to be at the right place at the right time with the right tools, and it sparked a lot of interest in M-theory within the string theory community,” says Bagger. (Swedish physicist Andreas Gustavsson was hot on their heels with a similar description.)

Somehow word of “Bagger-Lambert-Gustavsson” reached the ear of Ian McEwen, and the bestselling novelist seized upon it as a perfect example of the sort of esoteric stuff that young hotshots would produce to mystify the graying Michael Beards of the physics world. “Alas, I sometimes feel like I’m in Beard’s shoes—a 50-something physicist running hard to keep up with the young folks,” Bagger says. “I feel for him.”