Vice President and Provost
Dr. Judy Ackerman was a panelist at the Joint Mathematics Meetings in Washington, DC, in January. Her session on “Placement testing: Is it working?” was sponsored by the Mathematics Association of America's Committee on Articulation and Placement.

Athletics
The Athletic Department is in the midst of building the basketball program and preparing for spring sports. Our women’s basketball team defeated the #7 ranked team and our men’s teams are in the midst of a very competitive schedule. Rockville recently survived the big cross town rivalry with Germantown. The match proved to be highly contested and was attended by both Dean Brown of Rockville and Dean Rosenberg of Germantown. We expect a similar crowd here in Rockville on January 26, for our next game against Germantown. The spring teams are in full swing with softball, lacrosse, baseball, golf, and men’s tennis. We look forward to ongoing support from the community! Visit us at: http://www.montgomerycollege.edu/Departments/athletrv/

Arts Institute
“Portraits of Life: Student Experiences,” a project of the MC Arts Institute, will hang in the House of Delegates office building during the 2009 Legislative Session. Delegate Bill Bronrott invited the exhibit to hang near the Montgomery County delegation’s offices.

Art Department
Professor Komelia Okim has been selected as a 2009 NISOD Excellence Award recipient. The National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD), a consortium of over 700 community colleges and universities worldwide, has a 30-year history of recognizing faculty, staff, and administrators for outstanding contributions to teaching, leadership, and learning. The award ceremony will be held during the 31st Annual International Conference of NISOD in Austin, Texas, in May, 2009. Professor Okim organized a group show, "Traces and Trajectories: Current Works of Ten Korean-American Artists at the Academy Art Center of Honolulu Academy of Arts in Honolulu, Hawaii. The show ran from January 6 through 31. In addition, she conducted a three-day metalsmithing workshop at the Academy Art Center of the museum. Professor Sumita Kim showed a new series of paintings in the group show, “Traces and Trajectories,” and offered a three-day workshop entitled “Self-portrait in a Limited Palette” at the Academy Art Center of Honolulu Academy of Arts from January 9- 11. Dr. Percy North was interviewed in New York on November 13 for a film about Max Weber being produced under the auspices of the Gerlad Peters Gallery. She recently submitted an essay to the National Gallery of Art for their forthcoming exhibition of the Shein Collection of modern American Art.

Computer Applications
On January 8, Professor Carol Decker presented at the Association of Faculties for Advancement of Community College Teaching (AFACCT) held at Anne Arundel Community College. The presentation topic was “21st Century Collaboration Skills Using Web 2.0”. Students in MC’s Computer Gaming & Simulation Program have been hard at work creating a game to educate middle school students about the problem of pollution in estuary environments. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) game project, supervised by Prof. Deborah Solomon, is due to be released in early 2009. Due to the success of this project, NOAA has asked the MC Gaming Program to create a sequel game in 2009-2010. The sequel will focus on issues related to fisheries and overfishing. The estuary game has been accepted to be presented at the National Science Teachers Association’s (NSTA) National Education Conference in March, 2009. More info about the game can be found at http://www.studygaming.com/waterlife and http://estuaries.gov/estuaries101/Students/Default.aspx?ID=288.

Science, Engineering and Mathematics
Last fall, Montgomery College was awarded a competitive 4-year grant from the National Science Foundation to provide scholarships and other support services to engineering students from all three campuses. Our funded program, ACCESS Engineering (Achieving Community College Excellence, Scholarship, and Success), will offer a series of enhancements to prepare students to transfer to top engineering programs nationwide. We are pleased to announce the first group of 18 scholarship award recipients selected from among a pool of very capable and promising applicants. This semester’s SEM Exchange lecture series will offer five riveting, must-hear presentations by Rockville faculty and staff. Did you know that the human retina transmits information at roughly the rate of an Ethernet connection? Dr. Kristin Hensley, Biology Department professor, will explore the question, “How much information does the eye tell the brain?” SEM Exchange lectures are open to the public. The first lecture, presented by Dr. Hensley, is on February 12th from 2:30-3:30 PM in room122 Science West