UMBC COHORT

Dr. Lisa Cella

Professor of Music, Flute
Department Chair, Director of Certificate Programs

A champion of contemporary music, Lisa Cella has performed throughout the United States and abroad. She is a founding member of NOISE, the resident ensemble of San Diego New Music. With NOISE she has performed the works of young composers around the world.  NOISE also presents a three-day festival of modern music entitled soundON. Lisa performs with Jane Rigler and Carrie Rose in the flute collective inHALE, a group dedicated to developing challenging and experimental repertoire for two or three flutes. She is a faculty member of the Soundscape Festival of Contemporary Music in Blonay, Switzerland and Nief-Norf in Knoxville, TN. She has studied with John Fonville, Robert Willoughby and John Oberbrunner.  She is a Professor of Music at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and current chair of the department.

You can learn more about Dr. Cella here:
https://music.umbc.edu/directory/cella/

 

Dr. Loren Henderson

Associate Professor of Public Policy

Dr. Loren Henderson is an accomplished sociologist with a research program spanning multiple sub-disciplines of sociology, focusing on racial inequalities in wealth and health, and the challenges of promoting diversity and inclusion. Dr. Henderson’s key contribution to the field of sociology is her co-authored book, Diversity in Organizations: A Critical Examination. Dr. Henderson is also co-editor of “Race, Ethnicity, and the COVID-19 Pandemic.” Dr. Henderson is an Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy, Vice President of the Faculty Senate at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, and the Executive Officer of the Association of Black Sociologists

You can learn more about Dr. Henderson here: https://publicpolicy.umbc.edu/loren-henderson/

Prof. Brian Kaufman

Associate Professor of Music Education
Tuba, Euphonium, Wind Ensemble

As a conductor, tubist, educator, social entrepreneur, and publicly-engaged scholar, Brian Kaufman has shared the stage as a performer and speaker alongside the likes of Pulitzer-Prize winning composer Gunther Schuller, Emmy-nominated composer and genre-bending violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain (DBR), the Liz Lerman Dance Exchange, the cult pop-rock band Tally Hall, The American Brass Quintet, and Her Royal Highness Princess Dr. Nisreen El-Hashemite. His commitment to social justice and civic engagement has shaped his contributions to the schools, communities, and organizations in which he has been fortunate to serve. He is a co-founder, artistic director, and conductor of The Sounding Board, an organization that creates productions that integrate music, multimedia, spoken word, and commentary from noted public figures to inspire new perspectives and cultivate dialogue on today’s most pressing social issues.

You can learn more about Prof. Kaufman here: https://music.umbc.edu/directory/kaufman/

Dr. Jennifer Maher

Associate Professor of English
Affiliate Faculty: Language, Literacy & Communication PhD Program

Jennifer Maher is an Associate Professor in the English department’s Communication & Technology Track and an affiliate faculty member in the Language, Literacy, and Culture Ph.D. program. Her research interests include rhetorics of technology, the discipline of Rhetoric and Composition, and the city of Baltimore. She is the author of Software Evangelism and the Rhetoric of Morality (2015), which analyzes the politics of good code in software development. Her most recent work includes an exploration of the rhetoric of health and medicine as social justice in “Challenging Racial Disparities in and through Public Health Campaigns,” and she is currently working on a book on infrastructure rhetorics, which developed out of her class on Baltimore. In addition to serving on the editorial board for Technical Communication Quarterly, she is a co-developer of the open-access Miami Writing Institute.

You can learn more about Dr. Maher here:  https://english.umbc.edu/core-faculty/jennifer-maher

Prof. Gary Rozanc

Associate Professor
Graphic Design

Professor Gary Rozanc is a designer, developer, educator and AIGA Baltimore’s Education Director. Gary’s research interests lie in determining the necessary core competencies required to innovate communications in screen-based learning environments so that an effective pedagogy can be developed. Gary’s specifically interested in determining the skill sets required of entry-level interaction and user experience designers. Gary’s objective is to develop a supporting curriculum for these design disciplines that use inquiry and problem based learning methods applied through an observation and analysis of human-made systems to guide the identification of problems and create a culture of innovation that supports and enhances our lives.

You can learn more about Prof. Rozanc here: https://art.umbc.edu/visual-arts-at-umbc/faculty-staff/gary-rozanc/

Dr. Tanya L. Saunders

Associate Professor
Language Literacy & Culture Doctoral Program

Dr. Tanya L. Saunders is a sociologist and cultural studies scholar who is interested in the ways in which the African Diaspora throughout the Americas uses the arts as a tool for social change, specifically through decolonizing systems of thinking and knowing in the Americas. Dr. Saunders was a Mark Claster Mamolen Fellow (2022) at Harvard University’s Hutchins Center for African & American Research, where they began working on their book tentatively entitled Estéticas do Bapho: Queering Black Brazilian Artivism and Politics of Liberation.

You can learn more about Dr. Saunders here: https://llc.umbc.edu/dr-tanya-saunders/

Dr. Fan Yang

Associate Professor
Media and Communication Studies

Fan Yang (杨帆) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communication Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). An interdisciplinary scholar, Yang works at the intersection of cultural studies, transnational media studies, globalization, postcolonialism/postsocialism, and contemporary China. She is a faculty affiliate in the Asian Studies program and the Ph.D. program in Language, Literacy, and Culture, and serves on the Global Studies Coordinating Committee.

Yang is the author of Faked in China: Nation Branding, Counterfeit Culture, and Globalization (2016). She has published on topics such as food and visual culture, urban communication, and media and environment. Her new book, Disorienting Politics:  Chimerican Media and Transpacific Entanglements, is forthcoming in 2024.

You can learn more about Dr. Yang here: https://mcs.umbc.edu/fan-yang/