The Stavros Niarchos Foundation today announced a significant new grant to the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth for the creation of the first center in Greece to provide academically gifted students with the opportunity to attend advanced educational programs. The establishment and operation of CTY Greece is part of the foundation’s effort to help relieve some of the dire consequences stemming from the financial crisis in Greece.

The foundation’s $130,000 grant will allow the Center for Talented Youth in collaboration with Anatolia American College to start the CTY in Thessaloniki. The center, which will offer programs for bright students throughout Greece and Southeastern Europe, will welcome its first students in the summer of 2014.

“Education is a central axis of the foundation’s actions and initiatives, which recognizes that supporting this area responds to people’s constant need for development and, therefore, promotes social development,” said John Zervakis, co-chief operating officer of the Stavros Niarchos Foundation. “In view of the above, the operation of CTY Greece, through the foundation’s grant, recognizes the particular learning needs of the country’s talented students and provides them with innovate teaching infrastructures, new possibilities for personal and intellectual development, and hope for a better future.”

Panos Vlachos, president of the Anatolia American College, echoed that sentiment. “The benefits of this strategic collaboration for society are multiple, Vlachos said. “Through the creation of CTY Greece at the Anatolia College we will now be able to identify talented youth from all over Greece and provide them with the opportunity, through this program, to cultivate their talents, while also giving them the chance to join a wider network of other like-minded young people.”

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation’s grant guarantees both the immediate and comprehensive operation of CTY Greece, providing students needing financial help the opportunity to attend classes through a number of scholarships. The Center for Talented Youth in Greece will identify and offer academically advanced students, ages 7 to 18, comprehensive summer, online, and weekend programs. The center’s programs feature challenging coursework, innovative teaching methods, and new academic experiences designed to foster intellectual development and a love of learning.

CTY’s fundamental mission is to become a global voice, supporting and encouraging the academic ability of talented youth in Greece, while contributing actively towards their education and intellectual development,” said Simeon Brodsky, director of CTY International.

In order to provide an introductory look at CTY, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation is also offering full scholarships to 10 students ages 13 to 16 years old from Greece to participate in this year’s CTY summer programs held at sites at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, or in Dublin, Ireland from July 14 to August 2. Participating students will be selected by CTY.

The Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth is focused on recognizing academic talent in exceptional pre-university students and supporting their growth by providing them with courses and other services and resources specifically designed to meet their needs. The center, which has reached more than 500,000 students since its founding in 1979, is an incubator of ideas and innovation for the United States and beyond.

The center enrolls international students from 120 countries in summer and online programs and partners with countries from around the world whose leaders seek to develop educational strategies to improve the creativity and innovation of their future citizens. Over the last decade, CTY has worked with countries in regions ranging from Central and Southeast Asia to Central and Southern Europe and from the Middle East and North Africa to the Balkans.

About the Stavros Niarchos Foundation

The Stavros Niarchos Foundation (www.SNF.org) is one of the world’s leading international philanthropic organizations, making grants in the areas of arts and culture, education, health and medicine, and social welfare. The foundation funds organizations and projects that exhibit strong leadership and sound management and that have the potential to achieve a broad, lasting and positive impact. The foundation also seeks to support projects that facilitate the formation of public-private partnerships as effective means for serving public welfare.

Since 1996, the foundation has approved grant commitments of $1.36 billion through 2,470 grants to nonprofit organizations in 109 nations. Excluding the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC) in Athens, the foundation’s grant funding is equally divided between Greece and other international countries.

In response to the continuing socio-economic crisis in Greece, the foundation announced in January 2012 a grant initiative of $130 million over three years to help ease the adverse effects of the deepening crisis. Since then, and as part of the initiative, the foundation has committed grants totaling $75 million in support of numerous not-for-profit organizations around the country, and is in the process of assessing additional grants.

The foundation’s largest single gift $796 million was to the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center. The foundation firmly believes that the project is of national importance, even more so under the current socio-economic conditions. It remains a testament and a commitment to the country’s future, at a critical historical juncture. It is also an engine of short- to mid-term economic stimulus, which is essential under the current circumstances.

About The Johns Hopkins University Center for Talented Youth

A global leader in gifted education since 1979, CTY (cty.jhu.edu) is focused on recognizing academic talent in exceptional K-12 students and supporting their growth with courses, services, and resources specifically designed to meet their needs. Education Week called CTY “one of a set of remarkable nonpublic institutions dedicated to the discovery and nurture of the most talented young people for the highest levels of accomplishment.”

About the Anatolia College

The Anatolia American College is a not-for-profit organization with a long history and contributions at all educational levels. It was founded in 1886 in Merzifon in Pontus (modern-day Turkey), and relocated to Thessaloniki in 1924. Known for excellence, innovative educational activities, high quality teaching, a liberal spirit and social contribution, the Anatolia College has established itself as a nationally and internationally recognized educational center.

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Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, a renowned neuroscientist and neurosurgeon at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, is the featured speaker at this year’s university-wide commencement ceremony for graduates from all divisions and campuses of The Johns Hopkins University.

The event will take place, rain or shine, from 8:40 a.m. to approximately noon on Thursday, May 23, on Homewood Field, the stadium on the northern end of the university’s Homewood campus at 3400 N. Charles St. in Baltimore. There will be a press section on the playing surface of Homewood Field. Identification is required; prior notification of intention to cover the ceremony is preferred. See above for contact information.

The ceremony will feature remarks from President Ronald J. Daniels and a speech by Quiñones-Hinojosa, the conferring of all degrees, and the bestowing of honorary degrees. In addition, all undergraduate students as well as doctoral students in attendance will have their names announced as they file on stage to have their degrees recognized. The majority of students will receive their diplomas following the event; others will receive them at separate diploma ceremonies at their respective schools.


Prior to the ceremony, the undergraduates from the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, the Whiting School of Engineering, the School of Nursing and the Peabody Institute will gather on the Keyser Quadrangle and walk through campus, passing through the Freshman Quad, where their academic journey started. All other graduates will enter from the Athletic Center. Following the ceremony, the newly minted alumni and their families will be invited to a reception on the Keyser Quadrangle.

The university is also once again putting its “green” principles into practice at commencement to create a zero-waste ceremony through several measures, including caps and gowns made from 100 percent recyclable materials, and reusable stage decorations. The commencement program will be printed on paper that has been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. The reception will feature local caterers specializing in green practices, and biodegradable dinnerware and food scraps will be composted.

This year’s honorary degree recipients are Eddie Brown, chairman and chief executive officer and founder of Brown Capital in Glen Arm, Md., and his wife C. Sylvia Brown, community philanthropist and higher education leader; Vernon Mountcastle, professor emeritus of neuroscience at Johns Hopkins; and Nelson Sewankambo, an internationally recognized medical researcher and educator from Kampala, Uganda.

Noteworthy speakers at other Johns Hopkins commencement-related events – at various times and locations from Tuesday, May 21 through Friday, May 24 – include Wes Moore, best-selling author and JHU alumnus, who will speak to the School of Education; Pete Seeger, American folk singer and songwriter, who will speak to graduates of the Peabody Institute; Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent, who will speak to graduates of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies; and Wesley G. Bush, CEO and president, Northrop Grumman, who will speak to graduates of the Carey Business School.
 

About the Graduating Class (as of May 13)

The total number of earned degrees, certificates and diplomas awarded is expected to be about 7,185, including 1,758 bachelor degrees (1,332 of which to be conferred upon seniors graduating from the schools of Arts and Sciences and Engineering at the Homewood campus) and 5,424  graduate degrees from across the university: 1,295 from the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences; 1,076 from the Whiting School of Engineering; 547 from the Carey Business School; 579 from the School of Education; 203 from the Peabody Institute; 107 from the School of Nursing; 479  from the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS); 279 from the School of Medicine; and 859 from the Bloomberg School of Public Health.

About the Ceremonies

The university as a whole and its nine academic divisions will hold the following commencement events, listed by date:

Bloomberg School of Public Health

Tuesday, May 21, 9 a.m., Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, Cathedral and Preston streets

Speaker: Nelson Sewankambo, a Ugandan doctor and medical researcher

Carey Business School

Tuesday, May 21, 4 p.m., Meyerhoff Symphony Hall

Speaker: Wesley G. Bush, CEO and president, Northrop Grumman

Whiting School of Engineering Graduate Ceremony

Wednesday, May 22, 7 p.m., Homewood Field, Homewood campus.

Speaker: Kenneth W. DeFontes Jr., president and CEO, Baltimore Gas and Electric Company

University-wide Commencement Ceremony and Arts and Sciences/Engineering Undergraduate Diploma Ceremony

Thursday, May 23, from 8:40 a.m. to approximately noon, Homewood Field

Speaker: Dr. Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa, a renowned neuroscientist and neurosurgeon at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

School of Medicine Diploma Award Ceremony

Thursday, May 23, 2:30 p.m., Meyerhoff Symphony Hall

Speaker: Jon R. Lorsch, PhD, Professor of Biophysics and Biophysical Chemistry

Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies Diploma Award Ceremony

Thursday, May 23, 3 p.m., DAR Constitution Hall, Constitution Hall, 18th and D Streets, N.W., Washington, D.C.

Speaker: Christiane Amanpour, CNN’s chief international correspondent

School of Nursing Diploma and Award Ceremony

Thursday, May 23, 3 p.m., France Merrick Performing Arts Center (Hippodrome Theatre), 12 North Eutaw St.

Speaker: Martha N. Hill, dean of The Johns Hopkins School of Nursing, who is stepping down at the end of the academic year.

The Peabody Institute Diploma Award Ceremony

Thursday, May 23, 7:30 p.m., Friedberg Concert Hall, Peabody Institute, 1 E. Mount Vernon Place.

Speaker: Pete Seeger, American folk singer and songwriter, who will receive the George Peabody Medal for Outstanding Contributions to Music in America.

School of Education Diploma Award Ceremony

Thursday, May 23, 7:30 p.m., Homewood Field, Homewood campus.

Speaker: Wes Moore, best-selling author and JHU alumnus

Zanvyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences Master’s Diploma Award Ceremony

Friday, May 24, 10 a.m., Homewood Field, Homewood campus.

Speaker: John M. Bridgeland, president and CEO of Civic Enterprises

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Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://releases.jhu.edu/

Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

Johns Hopkins University President Ronald J. Daniels sent the following email message to students, faculty and staff today concerning the decision of Peabody Institute Director Jeffrey Sharkey to step down.  

Dear Members of the Johns Hopkins Community:

Jeffrey Sharkey has informed me of his decision after nearly seven years as director of the Peabody Institute not to seek a second term. Jeff has graciously agreed to remain on until a successor is appointed.

The Peabody and both its conservatory and preparatory divisions are in a stronger position today as a result of Jeff’s leadership, and they are poised to accomplish even more.

He has significantly accelerated the institute’s fundraising, more than doubling what had been the usual annual pace. He initiated a focus on student aid and faculty support that will drive Peabody’s participation in the university’s just-announced Rising to the Challenge campaign, in which the institute has already raised $22 million. Alumni and volunteer support is strong, as exemplified in a re-energized and dedicated National Advisory Council.

Under Jeff, the institute has developed much closer ties with the Homewood campus, including impressive growth of the Peabody at Homewood program and planning for a future B.A. music major. Peabody is also engaged in increasing academic cooperation with the medical campus through the Brain Science Institute and in diverse performing opportunities at the Kimmel Cancer Center and the Outpatient Center as well as at the Carey Business School. 

Jeff’s influence has also greatly amplified Peabody’s impact in the Baltimore community, extending the powerful reach of music and dance beyond the campus through programs like Junior Bach, Tuned In, Creative Connections and the Estelle Dennis/Peabody Dance Training Program for Boys. Additionally, Jeff nurtured important collaborations with the Baltimore Symphony, including Marin Alsop’s work with Peabody students and support for the OrchKids program in Baltimore public schools. All these initiatives typify Jeff ‘s commitment to providing opportunities for students to gain valuable skills necessary for the changing music profession.

The appointment under Jeff of excellent new faculty members and the institute’s continued attraction of outstanding students are the foundation for a bright future.

In short, Jeff’s tenure at Peabody has contributed in so many uncounted and uncountable ways to the institute’s position and prospects. I am grateful for his dedication to the institute and the university and for his many accomplishments. I know that you join me in wishing him well.

We will announce details of a search for Jeff’s successor in the near future.

Sincerely,

Ronald J. Daniels

]]> http://releases.jhu.edu/2013/05/10/sharkey/feed/ 0 http://releases.jhu.edu/2013/05/09/mellon-foundation-grants-three-awards-totaling-2-5-million-to-johns-hopkins-university/ http://releases.jhu.edu/2013/05/09/mellon-foundation-grants-three-awards-totaling-2-5-million-to-johns-hopkins-university/#comments Thu, 09 May 2013 21:03:11 +0000 phil http://releases.jhu.edu/?p=9067 May 9, 2013
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Kate Pipkin
Office: 410-516-7702
kpipkin@jhu.edu

Mellon Foundation grants Johns Hopkins University grants to create new music, arts and humanities programs

Johns Hopkins University has been awarded three grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation—totaling $2.5  million—to create a new interdisciplinary program in music between the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences and the Peabody Institute, to expand arts programming, and to support postdoctoral fellows in the humanities.

A grant for $1.2 million will be used to engage bridge professors—jointly appointed by the Krieger School and Peabody—who will, in time, form the core of a faculty embedded in humanities and social science departments, with interests in aspects of music. These scholars will create a new music major that will capitalize on the rich resources in performance, music theory, and musicology at Peabody and in the historical, cultural, and scientific study of music at the Krieger School. One of the nation’s oldest and most highly regarded music conservatories, the Peabody Institute became affiliated with Johns Hopkins in 1977.

“We are so grateful to the Mellon Foundation for this generous grant,” said Katherine S. Newman, the James B. Knapp Dean of the Krieger School. “I’m eager to see a music major in place. The creation of this new undergraduate degree program is contingent on the Krieger School building a faculty that is sufficient to the task of partnering with colleagues at Peabody to develop a distinctive, robust curriculum. The Mellon grant allows us to do just that.”

Peabody Director Jeffrey Sharkey said “I am delighted that this generous award from Mellon will provide a platform for deeper engagement between the Peabody and Homewood campuses. It will allow us to create an academic music degree to serve a wider population of students and add another strong arts subject to the undergraduate curriculum.”

Peter Jelavich, a professor of history at the Krieger School who also has taught at the Peabody Institute, and whose academic specialties include the history of popular music and performance, likewise applauded the foundation. “This grant will allow music to gain the place it deserves among the arts and sciences on the Homewood campus. Music – whether it’s classical, popular or world music – plays a vital role in all cultures and societies and is key to understanding human expression, interaction, and behavior.”

A portion of that grant will be also be used to create an Arts Innovation Fund this fall to support visiting artists-in-residence, new courses, student research, and artistic collaborations among the film, drama, Writing Seminars, and visual arts programs. Both faculty and students will be eligible to submit proposals for projects that promote inter-institutional, cross-disciplinary collaboration and research.

A second grant of $500,000 will support the Krieger School’s fast-growing Program in Museums and Society by creating an assistant director position and expanding its museum partnerships. This renewed support from Mellon will enable the creation of new and more multi-faceted initiatives that will build on relationships with Baltimore and Washington, DC museums. Future projects will focus on heritage landscapes, contemporary art, and living collections such as zoos and aquariums.

“Our students are eager to be engaged in more museum-related experiences,” says Elizabeth Rodini, director of the Program in Museums and Society. “The renewal of the Mellon sponsorship will enable us to develop new and more complex collaborations with local museums and cultural institutions. We look forward to drawing in new faculty partners, working more closely with graduate students, and connecting the work of our program to a range of research and exhibition activities.”

A third grant of $800,000 provides renewed support for the Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship Program. Guided by the theme “The Religious Cultures of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and the Arts,” the program will recruit six postdoctoral fellows over the course of four years, whose work addresses the conceptual, philosophical, aesthetic, and practical aspects of artistic endeavor in relation to underlying religious cultures.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation supports five core program areas: higher education and scholarship, scholarly communications and information technology, museums and art conservation, performing arts, and conservation and the environment.
 

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March 11, 2013
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Craig Hankin
(410) 516-6705
chankin@jhu.edu,or
Amy Lunday
Office: 443-287-9960
Cell: 410-804-2551
acl@jhu.edu

Cartoonist and graphic novelist Gilbert Hernandez will present a slide talk on his work on Monday, April 15 at The Johns Hopkins University. Hernandez’ talk, “From Funnybooks to Graphic Novels,” will begin at 5:30 p.m. in Room 101 of the F. Ross Jones Building, Mattin Center, on the Homewood campus at 3400 N. Charles St. in Baltimore. A book-signing will follow.

In 1981, along with his brothers Jaime and Mario, Hernandez created Love and Rockets, a landmark, award-winning comic book series informed by the L.A. hardcore punk rock scene.  The long-running series’ DIY ethic and compelling, multiracial female characters earned it a well-deserved spot in the pantheon of alternative comics.  Love and Rockets also spawned the Palomar stories, Hernandez’ magic realist magnum opus.  Set in a fictional Central American border town, the vivid, diverse characters of “Heartbreak Soup” and “Human Diastrophism” prompted The New York Times to declare Hernandez “one of the great craftsmen of American comics.”

Hernandez’ current graphic novel, Marble Season, is a semi-autobiographical work set in a 1960sCalifornia suburb against the golden age of the American dream and the silver age of comics.  It’s a subtle, deft rumination on the redemptive and timeless power of storytelling and world-building in childhood.

Hernandez, 56, lives in Las Vegas with his wife and daughter.

To download images of Hernandez’ work, go to:  http://www.jhu.edu/~artwork/

“From Funnybooks to Graphic Novels” is co-sponsored by Homewood Art Workshops and Homewood Arts Programs. Visitor parking on campus is available in the South Garage,3101 Wyman Park Drive,Baltimore,Md.21211. Admission is free and open to the public. For more information, call 410-516-6705.

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Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://releases.jhu.edu/
Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

March 8, 2013
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA CONTACT: Brian Shields
410-516-8337
bshields@jhu.edu

The Sheridan Libraries at The Johns Hopkins University announce the opening of For Love or Money: Art, Commerce & Stephen Crane at the George Peabody Library in Baltimore. The exhibition is drawn from the Wertheim-Frary Collection of Stephen Crane, which covers the writer’s entire career and much of his posthumous legacy.

Stephen Crane is perhaps best known for his novel The Red Badge of Courage, and yet his brief career (Crane died of tuberculosis at 28) spanned the literary landscape. He was a journalist who specialized in impressionistic on-the-scene reporting, a writer of stories and sketches, and an avant-garde poet. “Stephen Crane’s writing life was marked by a desire to take risks and create art,” says Gabrielle Dean, curator of literary rare books and manuscripts at the Sheridan Libraries. “But this desire was often tempered or diverted by the exigencies of making ends meet. This exhibition explores Crane’s struggle to realize his artistic ambitions within the confines of the literary marketplace.”

Stephen Crane was born in 1871 in Newark, New Jersey, the fourteenth and youngest child of a clergyman father and a mother active in the temperance movement. Crane’s career began when he was still a teenager, writing up “resort news” from the Jersey shore. After a brief stint at two different colleges (he never graduated), he moved to New York City in order to see and write about the tremendous social upheavals of the late nineteenth century, like immigration, industrialization, and urbanization. But his sketches and stories about the urban poor were too brutally honest for most readers. Looking for a way to write something more popular, he came up with The Red Badge of Courage, a story that conveys a young soldier’s experience on the ground in the Civil War. The novel made Crane an instant celebrity and branded him as a war writer. Notoriety opened up new opportunities for Crane—he was hired by two different newspapers to cover the Spanish-American War and was able to sell his short stories to the English and American magazines. Still, as a professional writer he was always one story away from defaulting on his debts. The pace of work he was required to keep up took a toll on his health, and Crane died broke.

The Wertheim-Frary Collection contains more than 250 rare books, periodicals, letters, photographs, and pieces of ephemera by and about Stephen Crane. The materials’ breadth and attention to detail allows scholars and exhibition attendees access to Crane’s work as contemporary readers would have experienced it. The collection is a gift from Johns Hopkins University alumnus and trustee Richard S. Frary and his wife, Irene, and was built on noted Crane scholar Stanley Wertheim’s collection.

“We are extremely grateful to Richard and Irene for their generous gift of this extraordinary collection,” said Winston Tabb, Sheridan Dean of University Libraries and Museums. “This exhibition and the larger Wertheim-Frary Collection will certainly be of interest to those who wish to know more about Stephen Crane or who are interested in late 19^th-century American literature. Beyond that, it offers a window into a world that, while distinct from our own, remains eminently recognizable, complete with the tensions between writers and publishers, the shifting definitions of art, and the rise of new technologies.”

An opening reception will be held Sunday, March 10, at 4:30 pm, featuring remarks by Professor Michael Fried, J.R. Herbert Boone Chair in the Humanities, Krieger School of Arts & Sciences.

For Love or Money is open to the public through June 14, 2013 at the George Peabody Library, 17 E. Mount Vernon Place, Baltimore, MD 21202. The George Peabody Gallery is open Monday through Friday 9 – 5, Saturdays 9 – 3, and Sundays 12 – 5. Admission is free.

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Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://releases.jhu.edu/
Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

February 27, 2013
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA CONTACT: Amy Lunday
Office: 443-287-9960
Cell: 410-804-2551
acl@jhu.edu

The Johns Hopkins University Theatre Arts and Studies Program will present “Kick the Can,” a play based on a novel by Jim Lehrer, with curtain times at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, March 7, 8 and 9, and at 2 p.m. Sunday, March 10. The four performances will be in the John Astin Theatre in the historic Merrick Barn on the university’s Homewood campus, 3400 N. Charles St. in Baltimore.

Tickets are $15 for the general public, $13 for Senior Citizens (65+) and Johns Hopkins faculty, staff, alumni and retirees, and $5 for students with ID. Cash or check only. For reservations and information, call 410-516-5153 or e-mail JHUT@jhu.edu. The theatre’s Web site is http://krieger.jhu.edu/theatre-arts. Visitor parking on campus is available in the South Garage, 3101 Wyman Park Drive, Baltimore, Md. 21218.

“Kick the Can” is a comic coming-of-age adventure that takes the audience on an unexpected and heartfelt journey. The play begins on an afternoon in 1950, when a teenage boy named Mack is watching some kids play kick-the-can. The can accidentally flies up and hits Mack’s left eye. He loses sight in the eye as a result, and the injury dashes both his dream of following in his father’s footsteps as a state highway patrolman in Kansas, or becoming a cross-country bus driver. With both dreams out of reach, Mack runs away to the Texas coast to become a pirate.

The cast includes 13 undergraduates and one guest artist who is a member of the Actors’ Equity theatrical union. The director is James Glossman, a longtime faculty member of the theatre program who also adapted the novel “Kick the Can.” A Q&A with journalist and novelist Jim Lehrer is planned in the John Astin Theatre, date and time TBA.

The Theatre Arts and Studies Program is celebrating its 11th season, nine of them in the historic Merrick Barn. Renowned actor John Astin, a Johns Hopkins alumnus, leads the theatre company and is director of the university’s Theatre Arts and Studies Program. In December 2011, in recognition of Astin’s 10-year anniversary of teaching, acting and directing at Johns Hopkins, the university named the recently renovated theatre in the Merrick Barn after the noted actor and teacher.

Astin is best known for the role of Gomez Addams on the television show “The Addams Family.” After earning a bachelor’s degree in drama in 1952 from Johns Hopkins, Astin spent a year as a graduate student at the University of Minnesota. He spent the rest of the decade in New York on and off Broadway. His first big break in film came with a part in “West Side Story.” His talent for comedy led him to roles in numerous television sitcoms and motion pictures. He received an Academy Award nomination for “Prelude,” a short film he wrote, produced and directed. Astin returned to Johns Hopkins in 2001 to teach acting and directing and to restore the undergraduate theatre program.

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Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://releases.jhu.edu/
Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

]]> http://releases.jhu.edu/2013/02/27/johns-hopkins-theatre-arts-and-studies-program-presents-kick-the-can/feed/ 0 http://releases.jhu.edu/2013/02/20/horse-meat-scandal/ http://releases.jhu.edu/2013/02/20/horse-meat-scandal/#comments Wed, 20 Feb 2013 16:53:05 +0000 Amy Lunday http://releases.jhu.edu/?p=8584 Two professors at The Johns Hopkins University are available to discuss the horse meat incident. They say a culinary taboo is a distraction from the real issue: inadequate food inspection regulations.

February 20, 2013
MEDIA CONTACT: Amy Lunday
Office: (443) 287-9960
Cell: (410) 804-2551
acl@jhu.edu

In Western culture, the idea of eating horse meat is a stomach-flipper, so much so that it’s clouding the real issue we should be worried about, according to anthropologist Sidney Mintz. Inadequate food inspection regulations? Now that’s a horse of a different color, said Mintz, a research professor in the Department of Anthropology at Johns Hopkins.

“This story is really about inadequate inspection regulations, and short-changing the inspectors, both by governments and companies,” Mintz said. “They eat horses in central Asia and even in Europe; but Americans and most Europeans are like the Britons, for whom horses are like family pets. As for Americans, even as we learn to eat emu and bison, we draw the line at horses. But it is really a distraction from the inspection issue. Our chances of getting sick from American corporate chicken are surely much greater than from horse meat. Our horror about horse meat is a patterned cultural taboo, like our unwillingness to eat grasshoppers — nothing very special about it. Such avoidances are rather like the taboos on swine and shellfish observed by Jews, though of course those rest upon religious sanctions.”

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Adam Sheingate, an associate professor of political science at The Johns Hopkins University, studies the politics of food. He teaches a course that surveys a variety of policy issues associated with food and agriculture, such concerns over food safety, the politics of agricultural subsidies, conflicts over genetically-modified foods, and debates over the health effects of obesity. Sheingate says there is cause for concern about the growing scandal in Europe involving the discovery of horse meat in food items thought to contain beef.

Why is the discovery of horse meat in the human food supply so distressing?
This is a story because we have a taboo against eating horsemeat in the United States. More fundamentally, this is about the lack of knowledge we have about our food. Many of us, frankly, don’t want to know what we eat. However, when the veil is lifted on industrial food production practices we are a bit disgusted and even worried. In this respect, the horsemeat scandal is similar to other food-related scandals we’ve witnessed in recent years. Together, these incidents tend to diminish the trust we have in the food industry and the government regulators responsible for overseeing them.

Can you remind us of some of the other food incidents in the recent past?
Two examples come to mind. The first was the revelation that a meatpacker was using downer cattle (cows unable to walk) and allowed the meat to enter the food supply. This was in violation of safety rules but did not pose an immediate harm. The revelation led to the largest meat recall in U.S. history in 2008, 143 million pounds. The other was the revelation that a type of genetically-modified corn had entered the food supply that was not approved for human consumption. Although some people claimed to have an allergic reaction in general it posed a low risk to human health. However, both cases revealed the gaps in our food system. Of course, there have been multiple outbreaks of food-borne illness each year that have required massive recalls and in many cases have lead to widespread sickness and in some cases death.

Is horse meat safe to eat?
As far as I know, there is no health risk to eating this meat. There are no reports of illness associated with the products either.

This scandal is taking place in Europe, but is it possible we could see something like this happen within the U.S.?
In the U.S., a ban on the consumption of horsemeat expired in 2011, although no producers currently have permits to slaughter horses for meat. The only way to know for sure, however, is through DNA testing which is not done regularly as part of food safety inspections. The only risk likely comes from imported products. To my knowledge, none of the products have found their way to the U.S.

To speak with Mintz or Sheingate, contact Amy Lunday at 443-287-9960 or acl@jhu.edu.

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Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://releases.jhu.edu/
Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

February 7, 2013
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA CONTACT: Amy Lunday
Office: 443-287-9960
Cell: 410-804-2551
acl@jhu.edu

The Program in Museums and Society, Department of Neuroscience, and Sheridan Libraries at The Johns Hopkins University announce the opening of Please Touch: An Interactive Study on the Neurological Mechanisms of Tactile Aesthetics in the quad-level lobby of the Milton S. Eisenhower Library on the Homewood campus. Curated by Hannah Weinberg-Wolf, a senior in the David S. Olton Program in Behavioral Biology, this exhibition introduces visitors to the neuroaesthetics of touch and aims to gather useful data from participants.

Please Touch is a collaborative effort between the research laboratory of Steven Hsiao, a professor of neuroscience in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, and the Program in Museums and Society, an interdisciplinary undergraduate program that teaches students about the history, theory, and practice of the museum world.

“The project was inspired by a 2012 exhibition at the Walters Art Museum,” said Elizabeth Rodini, director of the museums and society program. “That exhibition was funded by the Brain Science Institute and was organized by Hsiao and Joaneath Spicer of the Walters. In the current project, we are exploring how to turn the exhibition format into a forum for gathering data: Can we teach visitors while getting them to contribute directly to the scientific research?  This is a novel task for an exhibition, which is typically a didactic medium, and we are all eager to see what results.”

Visitors to Please Touch are invited to assess two sets of six objects and enter their responses into a digital database. Through scheduled rotations, eight sets of objects will be investigated over the course of the installation. Those interested in participating more extensively in Hsiao’s research are invited to follow up with Juan Huang, a post-doctoral fellow working on this project, by sending her an email at hj.jacee@gmail.com.

The past few decades have seen a rapid rise in scientific studies addressing the cognitive and neural underpinnings of aesthetic judgments in humans. One critical question concerns why some sensory inputs are viewed as pleasing or beautiful and how the brain makes those distinctions. Hsiao’s lab applies these interests to the sense of touch.

“Most studies of the sense of touch have concentrated on understanding pain, however in life we are generally driven by pleasure-seeking rather than pain-avoidance behaviors,” Hsiao said. We are just starting to understand why some objects are more aesthetically pleasing to touch and what are the neural mechanisms that underlie tactile aesthetics.”

The key to this unique campus collaboration was Weinberg-Wolf, who found in the project a chance to bridge her interest in biology and in museum curation. “I believe that the museum is one of the most powerful tools scientists have to educate the public,” Weinberg-Wolf said. “This exhibition allowed me to combine my various academic experiences into one project.  The chance to conduct scientific research and teach the public about that science has been extremely rewarding.” Her installation was supported by The Richard Kagan Undergraduate Research Award in Museums and Society, 2012, funded by the Dean’s Undergraduate Research Award.

Please Touch is open to the public through Tuesday, May 28 at the Milton S. Eisenhower Library, 3400 North Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218, from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.

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Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://releases.jhu.edu/
Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

January 9, 2013
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA CONTACT: Amy Lunday
Office: 443-287-9960
Cell: 410-804-2551
acl@jhu.edu

For the working poor, making housing decisions based on the old real estate adage “location, location, location” is complicated: Should a family choose cramped quarters in a safer but more expensive neighborhood, or would it be better to have a bigger apartment where rent is low but crime rates are high?

When faced with difficulties finding affordable housing to accommodate their families, 124 mothers and grandmothers in Baltimore participating in a housing study often opted for a bigger apartment in a less desirable location because extra bedrooms would mean higher rental rates in safer neighborhoods in the city or surrounding counties, according to sociologists at The Johns Hopkins University and Loyola University Chicago.

The women, most of whom were heads of their households, told the researchers that based on past experiences, they were confident they could tolerate higher crime rates and increased drug activity on the street if it meant living in apartments with enough bedrooms to comfortably house the whole family, according to Stefanie DeLuca, an associate professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins and Peter Rosenblatt, an assistant professor of sociology at Loyola and a Baltimore native who earned both his master’s degree and PhD in sociology from Johns Hopkins.

DeLuca and Rosenblatt’s research and survey results are described in the fall 2012 article “‘We Don’t Live Outside, We Live in Here’: Neighborhood and Residential Mobility Decisions Among Low-Income Families,” published in the American Sociological Association’s journal City & Community, Volume 11.

As in past demographic studies, DeLuca and Rosenblatt found that low-income families are met with numerous barriers to staying in better-off suburban areas. Higher rents and fewer larger apartments, combined with landlord discrimination and limited access to public transportation, made it hard for the low-income mothers interviewed in the study to house their families in the kinds of neighborhoods in which most wanted to live. Overwhelmingly, the women told the researchers that they wanted to move due to safety concerns. But in the face of these constraints, the study participants employed multiple strategies based on past experiences to make do with larger dwelling units in unsafe neighborhoods.

“These attitudes and strategies for getting by were shaped by a lifetime of living in high-poverty, dangerous neighborhoods, and remained with families as they thought about other neighborhoods in which it would be possible for them to live,” DeLuca and Rosenblatt said. “Dispositions like ‘it’s not where you live, it’s how you live’ or ‘we don’t live outside, we live in here’ reveal that when participants were forced to choose between the need for dwelling space and the desire for safe neighborhoods, they relied on tried and true methods for moving through dangerous areas, which allowed them to minimize the potential consequences of trading neighborhood quality for housing unit need.”

DeLuca and Rosenblatt wanted to find out why families didn’t settle down for the long-term in low-poverty neighborhoods after having received guidance and financial assistance through Moving to Opportunity, a federally funded assisted-housing voucher program that relocated poor families to neighborhoods with low poverty rates between 1994 and 1998. To do so, they studied patterns of family mobility between 1994 and 2002, and looked at Baltimore’s geography to understand the contexts and constraints weighing on voucher-users. Finally, they analyzed interviews with families conducted in 2003 and 2004.

Moving to Opportunity was a housing-only intervention, although families with housing vouchers to be used in low poverty neighborhoods also received some housing counseling. The housing voucher was a traditional Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher, like the federal government issues, but those in the experimental group had to use their vouchers in a non-poor area. Vouchers only paid for rent, covering the difference between a federally determined fair market rent and 30 percent of the participant’s income. The average participant in the Johns Hopkins-Loyola study was a 37-year-old African American woman with an average household income of $16,290. Seventy percent of the women were employed and 82 percent were renting their homes.

Surprisingly, two factors that didn’t come up in the researchers’ interviews were race and social ties. No one interviewed cited living near family or people of the same race as important factors in choosing where to live. Given the options available in the low-income housing market, families’ confidence in their ability to stay safe in unsafe neighborhoods allowed them to make consequential tradeoffs between neighborhood safety and dwelling unit quality.

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Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://releases.jhu.edu/
Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

December 11, 2012
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA CONTACT: Amy Lunday
Office: 443-287-9960
Cell: 410-804-2551
acl@jhu.edu

Eleanor Gardner

Eleanor Gardner, a senior at The Johns Hopkins University, has been named Bermuda’s Rhodes Scholar for 2013.

The Rhodes Scholarship is considered one of the most prestigious academic honors, offering all-expenses-paid study for two, and possibly three, years at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. It is given to approximately 80 young adults each year in the English-speaking world, including only one scholar each year from Bermuda.

Gardner, a political science and philosophy major from Smith’s Parish, Bermuda, is on track to earn Bachelor of Arts degrees next May from the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins. At Oxford, she plans to pursue a Master of Philosophy in Politics to further the work in political theory, racial politics and global politics that she began at Johns Hopkins.

“I have dedicated my academic career to the field of political science because I am passionate about understanding and helping communities on a local, national and international level,” Gardner wrote while applying for the Rhodes. “My interest in racial politics is one aspect of my overall interest in understanding and analyzing social tensions and their relation to politics. Whether within my locales of Baltimore and Bermuda or in other social and cultural contexts, I believe that the study of politics can be a powerful tool for change.”

Gardner first began to draw parallels between the socioeconomic and racial climates in Bermuda and Baltimore while working on a course project, taking photographs and interviewing people at a skate park in Hampden, a once solely blue-collar neighborhood near Johns Hopkins’ Homewood campus in Baltimore that recently has become increasingly gentrified. At first, Gardner was struck by the rundown physical characteristics of the park, but over time, she began to see that it offered much more: a window into Hampden’s evolving diversity.

After a few weeks, the skate park “no longer seemed a decrepit and isolated place. Instead, I experienced it thriving with the life of the skateboarders: black and white, young and old, poor and middle class,” Gardner wrote. “The young skateboarders I photographed were bridging the deep-rooted racial gaps that plague Hampden’s history.” The class project led Gardner to look at how race has been institutionalized throughout Bermuda’s history and how that concept has evolved during periods of rupture in racial politics. Her senior thesis will explore the history of racial politics in Bermuda, with the goal of formulating a better understanding of how the issue of race-based inequalities is framed in society today.

“Immersing myself in the racially charged city of Baltimore heightened my awareness of social issues in the community where I grew up,” Gardner wrote. “Examining the politics of race in Hampden through the academic lens of political science enabled me to reflect on related issues that I had grappled with as a youth in Bermuda. I am also motivated by the desire to reinvest my academic experiences in Bermuda, the community that has inspired my studies.”

Outside her studies, Gardner served first as an associate director and then an executive director of the Johns Hopkins University Foreign Affairs Symposium, an annual lecture series run by undergraduates that brings prominent speakers to campus each spring. During the summer of 2011, she studied in Geneva, Switzerland, where she conducted an independent study project analyzing European migration from countries affected by the Arab Spring.

Gardner has been a member of the national swimming and sailing teams in Bermuda, and as such has been able to compete in meets and regattas around the world. In August 2008, she was selected by the Bermuda Olympic Association to be Bermuda’s Female Ambassador for the Olympic Youth Camp Cultural Exchange Program in Beijing, China. Gardner is a captain of the women’s varsity swimming team at Johns Hopkins.

Gardner is the first Johns Hopkins Rhodes winner since Wen Shi in 2003 and Wes Moore, now a bestselling author, in 2000.

The Rhodes Scholarship was established in 1902 by the will of Cecil John Rhodes, a British financier and statesman who wanted to bring English-speaking students to Oxford University from around the world to increase understanding and tolerance among nations. He anticipated that young students would return to their home countries and, with the benefit of their education at Oxford, would be valuable and contributing participants.

Photos of Gardner are available by emailing Amy Lunday at acl@jhu.edu.

Related websites:
http://www.rhodes.bm/
http://www.rhodesscholarshiptrust.com/rhodes-scholars-elect-class-of-2013

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Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://releases.jhu.edu/
Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

October 12, 2012
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA CONTACT: Amy Lunday
443-287-9960 office
410-804-2551 cell
acl@jhu.edu, or
Rachel Cylus
410-732-6400, ext. 215
rcylus@jewishmuseummd.org

Undergraduates from The Johns Hopkins University, in collaboration with the Jewish Museum of Maryland, will present the results of their hands-on work as the curators of the traveling panel exhibit “Jews on the Move: Baltimore and the Suburban Exodus, 1945-1968,” a display of historic images and local stories in Hodson Hall on the university’s Homewood campus, 3400 N. Charles St. in Baltimore.

The public is invited to attend the exhibition’s opening night at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, Oct. 17., in the second-floor lobby where the exhibit is being displayed. Visitors will be able to tour the exhibit and join discussions with museum staff members and student curators. Remarks from Katherine S. Newman, James B. Knapp Dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, will be at 7 p.m. Refreshments will be served. The event is free, but RSVPs are requested by emailing rcylus@jewishmuseummd.org or by calling 410-732-6400 ext. 215.

“Jews on the Move” explores the postwar relocation of Baltimore’s Jewish community from the city to the northwest suburbs of Baltimore County. In the years following World War II, Baltimore Jews, like so many other Americans, left behind close-knit urban neighborhoods in pursuit of the American dream. Within the span of a single generation, the Jewish community swiftly reconfigured itself and experienced a fascinating social, economic and cultural transformation. “Jews on the Move” explores the local angle on a national story of suburbanization through the eyes of developers, real estate agents, community institutions and organizations, synagogues, and of course the families who helped establish the suburbs of Northwest Baltimore.

With generous support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Johns Hopkins University Program in Museums and Society partners with local museums to take undergraduate students out of the classroom and give them hands-on museum experience. In spring 2012, staff and consultants from the Jewish Museum of Maryland taught a course at Johns Hopkins on the Homewood campus that involved students in the creation of the exhibition, conducting historical research on the museum collections, studying oral histories and mining the archives.

“One of the most rewarding opportunities for students in the Museums and Society Program is the chance to get off campus and work in real-life situations—with professionals in the field and on projects with a public face,” said Elizabeth Rodini, the program’s director. “Working alongside the JMM staff, our students learned what it takes to put together a history exhibition, from archival research to effective writing to meaningful exhibition design. The lessons learned in the museum are unlike anything we can provide in the classroom.”

“As a newcomer to Baltimore I am just beginning to understand the context of the complex, vibrant Jewish community I have joined,” said Marvin Pinkert, director of the Jewish Museum of Maryland, located at 15 Lloyd Street in Baltimore. “I think the social history this exhibit captures is something that nearly everyone can relate to. The students at Johns Hopkins really got engaged in this, and I hope that this is just the beginning of their long careers in the museum field.”

“Jews on the Move’ will be exhibited in Hodson Hall until Monday, Dec. 17. Visit http://www.jewishmuseummd.org/jewsonthemove for more information and to see the schedule of upcoming venues in and around Baltimore hosting this traveling exhibit.

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Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://releases.jhu.edu/
Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

September 12, 2012
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: Craig Hankin
(410) 516-6705
chankin@jhu.edu,or
Amy Lunday
(443) 287-9960
acl@jhu.edu

Lennart Anderson. Self Portrait at easel, oil on board, 12 x 9, 1965

Painter Lennart Anderson will present a slide talk on his work on Wednesday, Oct. 10 at The Johns Hopkins University. Anderson’s talk, “On Painting,” will begin at 5:30 p.m. in the Arellano Theatre, Levering Hall, on the Homewood campus at 3400 N. Charles St. in Baltimore.

Anderson, 84, along with Philip Pearlstein and William Bailey, is widely regarded as one of the elder statesmen of American representational painting. His luminous still lifes, elegant figure compositions and atmospheric landscapes can be found in the permanent collections of the Hirshhorn Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Whitney Museum, Cleveland Museum of Art and the Brooklyn Museum.

A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and an associate of the American Academy of Design, Anderson has received the Guggenheim Fellowship, grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Tiffany Foundation, and the Rome Prize, among numerous other awards.

He has taught at Yale, Columbia and Princeton University, the Pratt Institute, the Art Students League, the New York Studio School and Brooklyn College, where he is a distinguished professor emeritus.

Anderson lives and works in New York City. He is represented by Leigh Morse Fine Art, where his work was exhibited earlier this year.

To download images of Anderson’s work, go to:  http://jhu.edu/artwork/galleries/Lennart%20Anderson/index.htm

To see more of Anderson’s work, go to: http://www.lennartanderson.com/index.html

“Lennart Anderson: On Painting” is co-sponsored by Homewood Art Workshops and Homewood Arts Programs. Visitor parking on campus is available in the South Garage, 3101 Wyman Park Drive, Baltimore, Md. 21211. Admission is free and open to the public. For more information, call 410-516-6705.

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Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://releases.jhu.edu/
Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

July 26, 2012
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Heather Egan Stalfort
410-516-0341, ext. 17
hestalfort@jhu.edu, or
Amy Lunday
443-287-9960
acl@jhu.edu

The Johns Hopkins University’s Evergreen Museum & Library, a fine arts museum and contemporary art center housed in a Gilded Age mansion on 26 landscaped acres in North Baltimore, seeks volunteers to be trained as museum guides.

Docent training classes will be held at the museum from 6 to 7:30 p.m. on Mondays, Sept. 10, 17, 24 and Oct. 1. Volunteers who successfully complete the training will be expected to commit to working a minimum of four hours a month. To reserve a space or for additional information, contact Nancy Powers at (410) 516-0341. For information about the museum, visit online at http://www.museums.jhu.edu.

Owned by Baltimore’s philanthropic Garrett family from 1878 until 1942, Evergreen is filled with more than 50,000 of the family’s belongings. The museum also conducts contemporary art exhibitions, special events, artists’ residencies, lectures, and performances, all of which are open to the public.

Prospective docents should have an interest in art, history, and/or architecture and a desire to share that interest with others. Training includes lectures and readings on the history of Evergreen, the Garrett family, and the museum’s extensive collections, including post-Impressionist paintings, Chinese porcelain, Japanese lacquerware, the Garrett Library of rare books, and one of the largest private collections of Tiffany glass. New guides will also learn about museum practices and will be taught techniques for presenting Evergreen in ways that satisfy visitor expectations.

Volunteers for Evergreen join the intellectual life of The Johns Hopkins University. They are invited to participate in special social events, openings, lectures, and monthly trips to historic sites and exhibitions. Museum volunteers also receive a 10 percent discount at the Evergreen Museum & Library and Homewood Museum gift shops, and are eligible for the staff membership rate at the O’Connor Recreation Center and partial borrowing privileges at the Sheridan Libraries.

Evergreen Museum & Library, Johns Hopkins University
4545 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21210
Tel: 410-516-0341
E-mail: evergreenmuseum@jhu.edu
Web site: www.museums.jhu.edu
Hours: Open by guided tour offered hourly on the hour, Tuesday–Friday: 11 a.m.–4 p.m., Saturday–Sunday: noon–4 p.m. Last tour at 3 p.m. Closed Monday, as well as major holidays. Free on-site parking.
Admission: $8 adults; $7 seniors (65+) and AAA members; $5 students (with ID), youth (6–18) and Johns Hopkins alumni and retirees; Free for members, Johns Hopkins faculty, staff and students (with valid ID) and children (5 and under).

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Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://releases.jhu.edu. Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.

Website: Hopkins in Egypt Today, http://www.jhu.edu/egypttoday/index.html

June 7, 2012
MEDIA CONTACT: Amy Lunday
Office: (443) 287-9960;
Cell: (410) 804-2551
acl@jhu.edu

Sheri Leonard, a junior majoring in archaeology in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences at Johns Hopkins, drawing walls in Square 8. Photo by Betsy Bryan.

An unofficial summer school course in archaeology is just a hyperlink away at “Hopkins in Egypt Today,” a free educational website showing a dig in progress throughout June.

Armchair scholars won’t earn any college credits following this blog about an ongoing excavation at the Temple of Mut precinct in Luxor, written by renowned Johns Hopkins University Egyptologist Betsy Bryan. But clicking through this daily photo journal will give virtual visitors a taste of what life is like for the graduate students, undergraduates, artists, conservators and photographers working on a site that is rich in finds from ancient Egypt’s New Kingdom.

Those who stop by “Hopkins in Egypt Today” will see Bryan and her team members taking measurements to prepare new dirt squares for excavation, and then watch as they work their way down through the layers of soil to find and study what lies beneath. A myriad of discoveries have been showcased via Hopkins in Egypt Today over the past decade, including a major find in 2006: a 3,400-year-old nearly intact statue of Queen Tiy, one of the queens of the powerful king Amenhotep III. Bryan has said that the statue is “one of the true masterpieces of Egyptian art.” In June 2011, the team uncovered the skeleton of a man killed in the position of a bound and trussed captive, a find that will be the subject of further investigation this summer.

The website has the ability to bring ancient Egypt to any smartphone, iPad or Internet-ready device around the world. Beyond the discoveries, there is a rich educational experience on display in the teamwork among Bryan, her colleagues, students and their “gufti,” the local crew members who are trained in archaeology. That teamwork is essential to a successful dig, Bryan has said. Bryan is the Alexander Badawy Professor in Egyptian Art and Archaeology at Johns Hopkins.

“Hopkins in Egypt Today” will be updated daily through June, and the posts will remain online as part of the archives of digs dating back to 2001.

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Johns Hopkins University news releases can be found on the World Wide Web at http://releases.jhu.edu/
Information on automatic E-mail delivery of science and medical news releases is available at the same address.