State’s regional higher education centers growing: Page 4

University research is big business, but ought to be bigger: Page 2

Community colleges are resource for continuing education: Page 5

Maryland cyber technology programs increasingly a private-public partnership: Page 7

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University research is big business, but ought to be bigger

Md. has some competitive advantages but lags other states

By Daniel leaDerman

Dan.Leaderman@TheDailyRecord.com

Between the new chancellor of the University System of Maryland and a legislative proposal to

closely link two of the state’s major universities, using university research is increasingly touted as a way to develop the state’s economy.

Research can give way to new companies, new jobs and new revenue, supporters say.

But are Maryland’s research campuses – including the University of Maryland institutions in College Park, Baltimore and Baltimore County, as well as Johns Hopkins University and Morgan State University — reliable economic drivers for the state?

“The simple answer is yes. It’s big business,” said economist Anirban Basu, CEO of Sage Policy Group, who has studied the economic impact of some of the state’s universities. But that business could be even bigger, he said.

The volume of new companies spun

out of universities is one frequently cited measure of their economic impact, but it’s not the only important factor. Even before they get to the commercialization stage, researchers function as entrepreneurs, Basu said.

“We don’t necessarily think of Johns Hopkins researchers as business people. We think of them as institutional employees,” Basu said. But these people are hiring staff, running their labs, raising capital – doing many things that small business owners do, he said.

That contributes to employment, increases the tax base and increases demand for lab and office space, Basu said.

Research fundingAnd the money spent on research

isn’t small potatoes.For fiscal 2014, external research

funding at Johns Hopkins University – including the medical school and the Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel – totaled $2.8 billion, according to the university. Hopkins has led the nation in total research and development expenditures for the past several years, according to the National Science Foundation.

The University of Maryland, College Park drew about $485 million in research spending in 2014, according to the National Science Foundation, while the University System of Maryland reports that its 12 institutions, collectively, attract

H I G H E R E D U C A T I O N R E P O R T [ 3 ]

about $1 billion in grants and research funding each year.

A measure passed during this year’s General Assembly session and allowed to become law by the governor will strengthen a partnership between the University of Maryland, College Park and the University of Maryland, Baltimore, which was, in part, conceived to allow joint reporting of each campus’s research spending in the hope of raising the federal rankings and boosting research awards.

Basu is skeptical of that last point: Grants are won by researchers, not rankings, he said, adding that he didn’t see why joining the two institutions would make individual grant applicants more successful.

‘Make money’In addition to jobs and research

dollars, Maryland universities contribute human capital to the state’s economy, said Richard Clinch, executive director of the Jacob France Institute at the University of Baltimore, who has also published studies of the economic impact of state universities, including Hopkins and the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

“You educate students, then they go out and make money,” Clinch said.

But both he and Basu say the impact of research spending could be greater, that the pace of commercializing this research in Maryland has been slow compared to some other states.

The Ohio Third Frontier Program, launched in 2002, is a $2.1 billion initiative to help create new companies and support existing industries developing new products in that state; the Maryland Technology Development

Corp., or TEDCO, established in 1998, isn’t quite operating on the same scale, Clinch said.

TEDCO invested a total of $190 million in emerging Maryland companies — some of which were spun out of university research projects — through fiscal 2015.

As home to federal agencies like the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Maryland should be a national leader in innovative manufacturing. But employment numbers suggest the state is lagging behind, Basu said.

Maryland boasts about 107,000 manufacturing jobs, according to the state Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation. Massachusetts, frequently cited as a Maryland rival in innovation, has about 250,000, according to data from that state.

Though Maryland ranks second in the nation for federal research grants and NIH contracts behind California, it ranks 27th in the number of patents awarded; the top two patent-earning states were California

and Massachusetts in 2014, according to data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

While Maryland is still competitive when compared to most other states, it’s probably at a point where it needs to make significant investments in developing and commercializing technology, Clinch said.

The universities are already starting: Johns Hopkins launched its Fast Forward startup accelerator program in 2013, and 94 companies were created to bring Hopkins technology to the market from fiscal 2009 to fiscal 2014. Licensing revenue increased during that time from $13.4 million to $17 million, according to the university.

Growing entrepreneursFrom 2011 to 2015, the USM

institutions have helped create 388 new startups, exceeding an earlier goal of reaching 325 companies by 2020. The system has established research parks — which provide space for both established and emerging technology companies that want to be

close to university laboratories — in College Park and near the University of Maryland, Baltimore and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Overall, the infrastructure of commercialization in Maryland, including incubators and accelerator programs for new companies, is better developed than it was 10 years ago, Basu said. The next 10 years will bring increased commercialization, more new products and more initial public offerings, he predicted.

At UMBC, faculty members are starting to look at their work with a more entrepreneurial eye.

Efforts like the Maryland Innovation Initiative, a program administered by TEDCO that supports commercialization by funding both new companies and research projects, have helped faculty members start to think differently about their work, said Greg Simmons, UMBC’s vice president for institutional advancement.

“It’s not just flipping a switch,” Simmons said. “This is about culture change.

PHOTO BY MAXIMILIAN FRANZ

Are universities now economic drivers? “‘The simple answer is yes. It’s big business,” says economist Anirban Basu, CEO of Sage Policy Group.

We don’t necessarily think of Johns Hopkins researchers as business people. We think of them as institutional employees.”

AnirbAn bAsu, CEO OF SAGE POLICY GROUP

H I G H E R E D U C A T I O N R E P O R T [ 4 ]

State’s regional higher education centers growing

New graduate-degree programs reflect employers’ needs

By meg Tully

Special to The Daily Record

A fter Jacob Wesley completed his Doctor of Pharmacy degree in 2011, he moved on to a fellowship

near his former campus in Shady Grove.The fellowship at MedImmune,

the global biologics research and development arm of AstraZeneca, creates a pipeline for the development of highly qualified scientists who will be on the forefront of creating new medicines for the treatment of diseases. As a result of that opportunity, Wesley is now a senior clinical scientist at the company and is working on a drug that recently received Orphan Drug Indication by the FDA for the treatment of Neuromyelitis Optica (NMO).

“Now that I have been at MedImmune for five years, the most rewarding part of the job is to work with such an exceptional group of colleagues towards the single goal of improving patient’s lives,” Wesley said.

It is opportunities like this that have led The Universities at Shady Grove, the regional center in Montgomery County that offered Wesley’s University of Maryland School of Pharmacy doctoral program, to invest heavily in graduate opportunities for science, math, engineering and biomedical careers.

Maryland’s regional higher education centers, including Shady Grove and the University System of Maryland at Hagerstown, among others, are seeing strong growth in key graduate programs that provide opportunities and advancement in careers with the highest hiring demand.

The regional centers offer degree programs through partner universities while allowing students the opportunity to live, work and study close to home.

At USG, the school will break ground this fall on a new $145 million Biomedical Sciences and Engineering Education Facility that will meet the needs of the region’s projected workforce. It is expected to open in spring of 2019.

T h o u g h n e w g r a d u a t e opportunities are still in planning stages, USG is working with partner universities to develop new degree programs in the biosciences, cybersecurity, public health and other fields and create internship and career opportunities with local partners like the National Institutes of Health or the National Institutes of Standards and Technology.

Students will be able to tap into collaborative opportunities across disciplines at three research universities — University of Maryland, College Park, University of Maryland, Baltimore and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County – who will be partners at the facility.

“We’re going to link them to the opportunities that companies are providing,” said Stewart Edelstein, executive director of the Universities at Shady Grove. “They (the companies) are hungry for this talent. It’s their future, and I think the region’s future.”

In addition to being a signature building for the region, USG’s programs will also offer expanded opportunities for teaching educators how to teach in those areas, such as a master’s in STEMM education (Science, Technology, Engineering, Medicine and Mathematics), through College Park.

Demands for social work, education

In Washington County, the University System of Maryland at Hagerstown has seen thriving graduate programs for education and social work.

For instance, Frostburg State University expanded its Master of Education in School Counseling to Hagerstown in fall 2015. This spring, Frostburg at USM-Hagerstown will see its first graduates from the new Doctor of Education – Educational Leadership program. And this coming fall, Frostburg’s Master of Education Curriculum and Instruction will have a new track, the STEM Elementary Teacher Track.

Vickie Mazer, director of graduate services at Frostburg, the institution that offers education programs at USM-Hagerstown, said that the program is responding to needs of local teachers who want to advance their skills and careers and also works with the school system to meet workforce demands.

The new educational leadership program allows working professionals to advance their education at a doctoral level nearby and with a class schedule tailored to their needs.

“It’s really opened an opportunity for students in the Hagerstown and surrounding areas to be able to do that,” Mazer said.

In the social work field, graduates are prepared to work in a variety of roles that include direct practitioners, consultants, and supervisors.

“There’s such a breadth of opportunity available in the social work profession,” said Heidi Moore, USM-Hagerstown site coordinator/clinical faculty for the Salisbury University Department of Social Work. “There is a need for qualified social workers in the local and regional areas, and Salisbury University’s Social Work Programs’ mission is to provide the inspiration and education for competent and culturally sensitive social work professionals”.

The Master of Social Work program educates leaders at agencies throughout the tri-state area.

And since the Master of Social Work Program started in the fall of 2007 with three students enrolled, it has been steadily increasing. Next year, the department expects more than 60 students in the master’s program at USMH.

A real-world example of this success is the Sibling Connection program offered through Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) in Hagerstown, coordinated with the Department of Social Services. Salisbury students at Hagerstown developed the idea as part of a course to facilitate more regular meetings between siblings who are in the foster system and separated.

It now is supported with a $24,000 grant and is the first of its kind in the state. Salisbury Master of Social Work student Becca Jacobs is employed at CASA. She is the co-coordinator of the program, along with Tasha Walls, an alumna, who came up with the idea for it.

“I feel like I am right where I am supposed to be (at Salisbury),” Jacobs said. “My career opportunities are just flourishing.”

COURTESY USG

The Universities at Shady Grove will break ground this fall on the $145 million Biomedical Sciences and Engineering Education Facility building.

H I G H E R E D U C A T I O N R E P O R T [ 5 ]

Community colleges are resource for continuing education

By gina gallucci-WhiTe Special to The Daily Record

Years ago, community colleges were mainly seen as a stepping stone to four-year universities. While

they still provide those resources for students today, these higher education institutions also have become a vital training resource for people looking to upgrade their knowledge and skills.

“I think community colleges have always been a place where students could update skills whether or not they have a college degree, but with the economic recession, more and more people turned to community colleges because they were looking for quality but at an affordable price with the recession,” said Elizabeth S. Homan, Howard Community College’s executive director of communications and marketing.

“I think as the economy has improved, community colleges remain attractive because they offer value so students can find classes that are applicable to what they are doing in the workplace or to advance in the workforce or to change careers but it is going to be at a cost that they can still find affordable.”

Kip Kunsman, Anne Arundel Community College’s assistant dean for workforce development, believes the central mission of any community college, since its infancy, is to provide training to people to be practitioners by giving them skills that are usable and viable in the workplace.

This role has not changed over time but it has evolved into a more complex, higher level of education and training. Cybersecurity classes are an example. “I think many people are surprised to learn that such high-level learning is occurring at our community colleges across the nation,” he said.

The Community College of Baltimore County also has a popular cybersecurity program. “We can’t keep people in the seats,” said college President Dr. Sandra Kurtinitis. “They get hired by the cybersecurity companies from all around the state because the certification, the skills are so important to the work that is being done across our state.”

Health care fields and skill trades such as heating and air conditioning and plumbing are quite popular among community college students. Local colleges offer both credit and non-credit courses.

“People are looking to the college to help them gain new opportunities in what we call middle-income positions,” Kunsman said. “(The jobs) are sustainable. They can sustain a family. They are jobs that have futures. They are, ultimately, careers. They are not just a quick fix in a dead end. We try to create programming that is going to be able to promote lifelong sustainment and/or growth.”

‘Squarely into good jobs’Many job fields do not require a

bachelor’s degree for full engagement in the occupation. “A bachelor’s degree is always a nice credential for people to have, but we have so many programs where the associate degree credential will put people squarely into good jobs with good benefits,” Kurtinitis said.

There are a variety of reasons people return to school, according to local college officials. Some realized their current job can’t support their family and they want to get a better skill set for a higher paying job. Others need a certification so they may move up in

their current field. Retirees have come looking to break

into new areas, and veterans are looking to gain skills for civilian employment.

The average age of a community college student is between 27 to 29. “Working professionals entering our classrooms will find students who look like them and also find other students who are working to upgrade their skills or to change careers,” Homan said.

Flexible optionsMany returning students are balancing

full-time jobs, child care and other commitments, so community colleges have a variety of different ways to aid their academic endeavors.

Many have multiple locations throughout their area to serve a larger population. Some offer child care facilities or summer camps so parents may go learn while their kids are having fun.

Credit for prior learning either through a job or military experience may also lead to credit toward an associate degree or certification.

Community colleges in Maryland

attract the bulk of the state’s part-time students. Some 67 percent of the state’s 127,150 college students attended community colleges in the fall of 2015, compared to 31 percent who attended four-year public institutions, according to data from the Maryland Higher Education Commission.

“We have as many people here at night taking classes as we do during the high

point of 8 (a.m.) to (noon) in the early part of the day,” Kurtinitis said. “We have classes on the weekends. We have some that start at 6 a.m. for the late shift that go to class before they go home to sleep. We have over 1,000 courses online and that number is growing exponentially each year. ... We are really looking for ways to directly serve the populations that we know we must serve.”

These photos, provided by Howard County Community College, reflect the variety of training programs offered at the college.

H I G H E R E D U C A T I O N R E P O R T [ 6 ]

EnrollmentDegrees Awarded

UMUC pioneering use of open educational resources

By gina gallucci-WhiTe

Special to The Daily Record

Remember having to buy those expensive college textbooks? Not only were they heavy to lug

around, you had to spend hours poring over them with highlighters to find data that may appear on final exams.

In an effort to help students’ backs and wallets, the University of Maryland University College is in the process of implementing open educational resources (OERs) into its curriculum and getting rid of textbooks.

Plus — here are some words that you don’t normally hear when it comes to higher education — they are doing this initiative at no cost to students.

Undergraduate programs, totaling around 700 offerings, began using OERs in the fall 2015 semester with graduate level courses set to begin in fall 2016.

“Just in our undergrad school in 2015, we estimate the savings were well over $15 million, meaning students didn’t have to pay $15 million that two years ago they would have had to pay

to come to school with us,” said Kara Van Dam, UMUC vice provost of The Learner and Faculty Experience.

There were several reasons for the switch. A college student will likely spend around $1,300 for textbooks for one year of school. On top of tuition, many cannot afford the additional cost, so they don’t buy the books.

“Students were coming into classes, seeing if they could get away with not buying the book because they are expensive, and when they realized they couldn’t, it was often too late and they fell behind and that leads to failure and having to retake courses which increases costs yet again,” she said.

UMUC also has a large number of students involved in the military with some on active duty throughout the world. Educators discovered that textbooks were not getting to those students in a timely manner.

“So even students who wanted to buy the books ... it might be two or three weeks into the term before they got the books,” Van Dam said. “We operate on an accelerated pace. Our

undergrad courses last eight weeks. Our graduate courses last 11 weeks, so if you are a week or two into the term and you don’t have your book yet, you are already really behind the 8 ball.”

Primacy of technologyYears ago, when people wanted to

learn something new, they turned to the local community college and bought a textbook. Today, people turn to the Internet. Van Dam said the university understands that technology dominates students’ lives in many areas so having them use a textbook may not aid them. If they continued to use the textbooks, “increasingly over time, we are going to become more and more detached from our students, and the college or graduate school experience is going to less and less reflect how they problem solve and learn in every other area of their life,” she said.

Robert Ludwig, UMUC assistant vice president of media relations, said OERs are not just taking a textbook and making it an e-book. They include digital resources such as videos, text,

and multimedia materials. “It’s a customization of the material,”

he said. “A lot times you may buy a textbook and the textbook has 37 chapters and you only do 12. Here, what is happening, they are basically customizing the course to embed the materials at the time they are needed” to learn certain concepts from the materials.

OERs are curated from a variety of different sources by a team the university has put together including faculty, program chairs, assistant deans, instructional designers and additional researchers. They mine through content to evaluate everything for quality and currency. “It’s quite an effort to curate this material to make sure there is quality there,” Ludwig said.

Feedback from undergraduate students has been very positive thus far, Van Dam said. Some veteran faculty members who enjoy the written word in book form were initially apprehensive of the switch yet “once everybody dove in and it wasn’t so scary, the anxieties really dissipated,” she said.

359,983

133,707

171,502

51,388

3,386

Community Colleges

4-Year Public Institutions

State-Aided Indpendent Institutions

Other Private Institutions

14%

37%

48%

1% 3% 5% 4% 7% 7%

27%

47%

White

Black

Hispanic / Latino

Asian

Native Hawaiian orPacific Islander

American Indian orAlaska Native

44% 56%

Male

Female

Enrollment By Gender

3% 4% 6% 6% 7%

21%

53%

White

Black / African American

Asian

Foreign / Non-Resident Alien

Hispanic / Latino

Unknown

Two or More Races

Native Hawaiian / PacificIslander

Degrees by Race

5,691

16,378

32,923

18,244

2,982

Certificate

Associates

Bachelors

Masters

Doctorate

Degrees Awarded

Higher education in Maryland

By the numbers

Somewhere in the package, either at the top or the bottom….

H I G H E R E D U C A T I O N I N M A R Y L A N D

Source: Maryland Higher Education Commission

H I G H E R E D U C A T I O N R E P O R T [ 7 ]

Maryland cyber technology programs increasingly a a private-public partnershipTechnology companies working closely with colleges

By margie hyslop Special to the Daily Record

Maryland universities and colleges are working closely with employers to advance cyber

technology and meet the growing, evolving demand for workers and leaders who can provide effective cybersecurity.

At Johns Hopkins University’s Information Security Institute — part of the Whiting School of Engineering — scientists are emphasizing cloud security and data analytics, said Anton Dahbura, the institute’s director.

“Engineers are being inundated with security-related information” and need to identify the information that is most critical, Dahbura said.

Cybersecurity master’s degree students at Hopkins have focused their capstone projects on the “Internet of things” and on physical systems, including the power grid, dams and household appliances, Dahbura said

Students and faculty from the institute lecture at Hagerstown Community College about their work, and some students in HCC’s cybersecurity program assist JHU researchers.

The institute also collaborates with JHU’s Applied Physics Laboratory to advance cyber technology.

Through the new Malone Center for Engineering in Healthcare, JHU engineers are working with clinicians to apply computer technology to improve health care.

Because computers and electronic devices can introduce risks as well as advance projects, Johns Hopkins and other Maryland schools have augmented cybersecurity technical and research graduate tracks.

Many Maryland colleges and universities now offer programs in cybersecurity policy, operations and management to prepare leaders and consultants to understand and weigh the potential and risks of cyber technology.

Cybersecurity is a broad field with needs for “policy wonks” as well as “hard-core geeks” and those who combine that knowledge, said Rick Forno, assistant director of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Center for Cybersecurity.

“Hard skills are pretty common — what’s harder to get are soft skills” and employees who understand the context of their work, Forno said.

“We’re well-positioned to make, not just experts, but employable” experts who build careers, said Forno who directs UMBC’s cybersecurity graduate program.

At UMBC 190 students, including many who are already working in the field, are enrolled in graduate cybersecurity courses held at campuses in Catonsville and at the Universities at Shady Grove in Rockville.

Undergraduates admitted to UMBC’s Cyber Scholars program live together on the Catonsville campus and, in

addition to their computer science and technology coursework, learn in weekly practicums.

At the University of Maryland, College Park, students in the selective Honors College can enroll in the Advanced Cybersecurity Experience for Students (ACES), which began in the Fall of 2013.

Most ACES students are engineering or computer science majors (and calculus is required of all), but some are mathematics, psychology, criminology, business and government and politics majors.

The program applies the philosophy that “cybersecurity should be a multidisciplinary (discipline),” ACES Director Michel Cukier said.

“We want students who have the technical background to learn economics and psychology,” he (Cukier) said.

No cybersecurity major is offered at the College Park campus.

But ACES students, who learn cybersecurity from different angles, can earn a cybersecurity certificate and can graduate with a cybersecurity minor.

Computer science majors in the ACES program take cybersecurity classes early and that makes them more competitive for internships, Cukier said.

Private companies’ roleCompanies such as Mitre and Leidos

and agencies such as the National Security Agency, National Institute of Standards and Technology and the Department of Defense have helped develop courses and provided mentors and internships.

Practicum instructors at UMBC’s Cyber Scholars programs include employees of Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and T. Rowe Price, among others, according to Cindy Greenwood, assistant director of the UMBC’s Cyber Scholars program.

Northrop Grumman, which supports the program’s scholarships with millions of dollars in grants, has hired

many Cyber Scholars, Greenwood said.Millions of dollars in grants

from Northrop Grumman started and continue to support the ACES program, which includes a residential study component for freshmen and sophomores.

And, Cukier notes, the number and range of employers looking for cybersecurity savvy graduates in the Baltimore-Washington region makes it an “amazing location” to learn and look for work.

Students already working and looking to move up or onto another career path find that the University of Maryland University College offers courses similar to those available to full-time university students.

UMUC makes its cyber technology and cybersecurity classes convenient for working students by conducting most coursework through its online learning management system.

Using that system, all activities that take place in a physical classroom are replicated in a virtual environment, said Emma Garrison-Alexander, vice dean of cybersecurity and information assurance in UMUC’s graduate school.

Students in UMUC’s graduate and undergraduate programs may choose technical, investigative and forensics studies or a track that focuses on management and policy.

“Cybersecurity is a wide field — it touches everybody from law enforcement to mom-and-pop shops,” said Jeff Tjipta, program chair in cybersecurity and information assurance in UMUC’s undergraduate school.

Community colleges’ roleReaching small businesses and

connecting them to Allegany College of Maryland cybersecurity students and graduates is part of Kristi Smith’s goal as division chair and assistant professor of computer science and communication arts technology at the two-year school. Allegany has its main campus in Cumberland and satellite campuses in Everett and Somerset,

Pennsylvania.“A lot of businesses don’t realize

the threats that are out there and how valuable our students with cybersecurity skills are,” Smith said.

Enrollees in cybersecurity courses at Allegany include recent high school graduates training for technical careers, computer professionals seeking key certifications, students preparing to transfer to four-year colleges and career changers, including military veterans.

Cybersecurity training at Allegany has drawn “a lot of interest” from former coal miners and military veterans, Smith said.

Many Allegany cybersecurity students have held internships at IBM’s Rocket Center, an IBM-managed data site on secured Department of Defense-owned land in West Virginia, about 10 minute-drive from the Cumberland campus.

Allegany is among 14 Maryland community colleges that formed the Cyber Technology Pathways Across Maryland Consortium in 2014.

Those community colleges, located across the state, share a $15 million U.S. Department of Labor grant to develop programs that prepare students for cyber technology jobs that need to be filled.

The schools are collaborating with major employers to assess and train low-income workers for better-paying cyber technology and cybersecurity jobs.

About 300 of 1,000 students in the program are enrolled at Montgomery College, which leads development of the program, said Steve Greenfield, dean of business technology and safety in Montgomery College’s workforce and continuing education division.

A virtual skill profiler is under development that will enable employers to search online for students with knowledge and skills that match jobs they need to fill.

Greenfield said he expects that online skill profiler to be available to students and employers by summer (2016).

[ 8 ]

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