2023 - 2025
Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Center (EJ TCTAC)
What is the Environmental Justice Thriving Communities Technical Assistance Centers Program (EJ TCTAC)?
2021 - 2022
Emmitsburg Phase I Stormwater Utility Feasibility Study
The Environmental Finance Center assisted the Town of Emmitsburg, MD in developing a sufficient, sustained, and equitable financing strategy for stormwater management.The Town is required to comply with a Phase II National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit for discharges from small Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems (MS4). As a result of evaluating potential future budget solutions, the Town is considering a stormwater utility as a viable alternative to funding its stormwater management program services.
The SIRJ Lab currently has more than 20 undergraduate and graduate students that conduct research as graduate assistants, teaching assistants or volunteers. Reach out if you are interested in joining our team!
Resilience and Mitigation of Water-related Risks in Vulnerable Communities: Sharing Collaborative Approaches and Experiences
The main goal is to develop a community-driven, spatially informed framework for adaptive flood management that enhances resilience and flood risk adaptation for disadvantaged communities in the U.S. and Brazil by applying spatial analysis and environmental justice principles. Flooding is one of the most frequent hazards occurring globally.
MASS Design’s Alan Ricks Joins UMD as 68th Kea Professor
Alan Ricks, AIA, Int FRIBA, the founding principal and co-executive director of MASS design group, joins the University of Maryland this fall as the Architecture Program’s 2025-26 Kea Professor. A celebrated, socially minded, global designer, Ricks will work alongside Associate Clinical Professors Julie Gabrielli and Brittany Williams, Assistant Professor Deok-Oh Woo and Lecturer Dan Curry to teach the fall Integrated Design Studio.
Beaux Arts Restart
Alums of a certain age look back on the Architecture Building’s Great Space as the setting for countless studio hours, lectures, thesis and even graduations—but also for its wild transformation each spring to a 1920s speakeasy, the streets of New York City or a star-studded Hawaiian luau. Beaux Arts Ball, the beloved annual fete that ran from the mid-’70s until 2007, was part Halloween costume party, part Hollywood movie set and a dash of high school prom, where elaborate décor and dress dominated the building’s Great Space for one epic night.
Take This Class (Summer Edition!): The Secret Life of Buildings
This story originally appeared in Maryland Today. The seven floors of books, offices and resources at the University of Maryland’s McKeldin Library house plenty of facts, but one thing about the building is pure fiction: Step outside, and you’ll count just four stories—an intentional design trick (thanks to oversized windows) that makes the building appear imposing and impressive from a distance, and the people walking by it smaller.
New Exhibit Uncovers a Buried History
In the summer of 2006, University of Maryland Professor Emeritus Lindley Vann and 19 architecture students traveled to the Bay of Naples to explore an ancient city, lost in ash. Over the next 20 years, factions of students returned each summer to participate in a global effort to excavate and document one of the last surviving Italian villas that once catered to the Roman elite.
Graduate Student Awarded Boren Fellowship by the National Security Education Program
A University of Maryland graduate student in information management and community planning is among 102 recipients nationwide to earn the David L. Boren Fellowship to study critical languages overseas. Alanna Leshea Anderson will receive $25,000 to travel to Brazil for a year to take intensive Brazilian Portuguese classes and live with a host family who will give her more practice and a better understanding of life and culture in the country. She plans to become proficient enough to pursue a sustainable development internship at a nonprofit.
Whose ‘Right to Suburbia’?
This article originally appeared in Maryland Today.Ellsworth Avenue in Silver Spring, Md., sizzles on a summer evening: Residents stroll along its tree-lined sidewalks under the neon glow of upscale chain restaurants, retailers and a Whole Foods Market. Beyond the din of downtown is a different kind of sizzle: the intoxicating aroma of sliced meat frying in butter, garlic and onion—called tibs—wafting from one of many Ethiopian restaurants just outside the city center.