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University of Maryland Statement Against Hate and Bias

Contacts:

Statement Against Hate and Bias

Joel Seligman, AVP for Communications and Marketing - November 5, 2017

UMD sincerely regrets the overwhelming misunderstanding resulting in the #UMDNotAHome social media conversation. The statements on social media connected to this hashtag do not reflect the positions of the university or our leaders' mutual commitment to diversity and inclusion on campus and across our nation.

To put it plainly, the UMD administration stands against hate and bias in all of its forms and wants every Terp to feel welcome, safe and at home at the University of Maryland.

In recent months, there have been instances of intentional provocation by hateful, far-right groups spreading targeted messages that the administration finds despicable. These outside agitators want to divide our campus community into factions that are in conflict with one another from within UMD, rather than see our campus stand together in opposition to the broader forces of hate, white supremacy, anti-immigrant xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia and anti-semitism.

It is understandable that some members of our community are also disturbed by remarks by university officials, even when the comments are quoted entirely out of context and in a manner that misrepresents the meaning. UMD has seen an example of one of our longtime colleagues unfairly criticized for her efforts to provide legal advice to the University Senate Campus Affairs Committee literally at the same time she is working to advance the cause of inclusion.

The administration encourages all members of our community to work together—students, faculty, staff, administrators and alumni—to increase respect, inclusiveness, and cohesiveness on our campus. A comprehensive list of efforts underway by UMD administration is available at umd.edu/umdreflects

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UMD Named a 2017 Best College by MONEY Magazine

Contacts:

Jennifer Burroughs, 301-405-4621

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – The University of Maryland ranked No. 11 among public universities according to MONEY Magazine’s 2017 list of Best Colleges. UMD ranked No. 20 overall among U.S. institutions.

To calculate rankings, MONEY assessed more than 700 colleges in the U.S. based on three equally-weighted categories, including educational quality, affordability and alumni success. MONEY measured 27 factors within these categories covering areas such as instructor quality, measuring the study-to-faculty ratio, affordability for low-income students and value-added earnings, which measures if the school is launching students to better paying jobs.

Earlier this year, UMD was also ranked a Best Value College by Forbes, Princeton Review and Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.

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UMD Capitol Hill Forum Addresses Health Disparities Research & Action for Equity

Contacts:

Contacts: Elise Carbonaro, 301-405-6501

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – The University of Maryland, in collaboration with Rep. John P. Sarbanes and the Big Ten Academic Alliance, recently convened more than 100 people for a Research on the Hill forum focused on strategies to achieve health equity at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C. Moderated by Stephen B. Thomas, Ph.D., professor and director of the Maryland Center for Health Equity in the UMD School of Public Health, the panel discussion engaged experts from academia, federal health agencies and the private business sector in a candid conversation about how to eliminate racial and ethnic health disparities among vulnerable populations.

“Our exploratory research holds the solutions to many of the most challenging problems of our day,” said UMD Vice President and Chief Research Officer Patrick G. O’Shea, Ph.D. “As a university, it is our mission to create and understand knowledge to develop better ways to house and heal and fuel and feed our people in advanced societies that are just, secure, and free. Achieving health equity touches on the ‘heal’ aspect of that mission.”

The topics ranged from the progress that has been made in access to medical care as a result of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to challenges that still remain in improving quality of care and in making the medical care system incorporate public health and address the social determinants of health that prevent people from acting health promotion and disease prevention recommendations.

“The state of Maryland has embraced the ACA and there is clear evidence that the new incentives are indeed moving hospital systems away from a fee-for-service business model to one that rewards quality care and positive health outcomes over the volume of procedures,” said Thomas. “While the transition is not perfect, our state is a national leader for what the future of health care will look like.”

Panel members shared examples of effective and innovative community-based health interventions and public-private partnerships that are making a difference through culturally-tailored health promotion and disease prevention services, and highlighted the emergence of social determinants of health such as poverty, discrimination and residential segregation as factors that must be overcome.

“I’m convinced that if you address racial and ethnic disparities with respect to the delivery of health care and health care coverage in this country, you will build the best health care system we can possibly have because diversity is our country’s hallmark,” said Congressman Sarbanes, who, as a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has been a tireless advocate for improving healthcare quality and addressing health disparities.

To achieve health equity, researchers, policymakers, and industry leaders must address broader issues beyond the traditional biomedical model and build trust between those who control health care delivery system and those who have lost hope in the system, said members of the panel.

The panelists recommended that health equity be incorporated into all public policies, not just those related to health care, to reduce and ultimately eliminate health disparities.

Panel members included:

Margo Edmunds, Ph.D., Vice President, Evidence Generation and Translation at Academy Health;

J. Nadine Gracia, M.D., M.S.C.E., Deputy Assistant Secretary for Minority Health and Director of the Office of Minority Health within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services;

Julia Huggins, President of Cigna Mid-Atlantic;

Kolawole Okuyemi, M.D., MPH, Professor of the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, Director of the Program in Health Disparities Research and Inaugural Endowed Chair for Health Equity at the University of Minnesota; and

Eliseo Pérez-Stable, M.D., Director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities at the National Institutes of Health.

House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer, who represents Maryland’s 5th Congressional District and is a distinguished UMD alumnus, also joined the event and emphasized that as an interconnected community, we should all care about health disparities.

“It is unacceptable that in the United States, where all are created equal in the words of our Declaration of Independence, that one’s access to healthcare may be higher or lower as a result of race, gender, or income,” said Congressman Hoyer. “Everybody being healthy is of concern to each and every one of us.”

He discussed how we must continue to defend the patient protections that Americans are benefiting from thanks to the ACA, such as the no-cost access to preventive services like mammograms and immunizations, as well as remind people of the dramatic increase in the number of people, particularly people of color, who now have health coverage as a result.

The event was held as part of the University of Maryland’s Research on the Hill series, which is aimed at raising awareness of research with great societal significance.

View the conversation at: https://youtu.be/HPedKr0jZLQ

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UMD Study Finds Connecting Uninsured Patients to Primary Care Could Reduce ER Use

Contacts:

Kelly Blake 301-405-9418
Hillery Tsumba 301-628-3425

Montgomery County, Md. Initiative Could Improve Health, Reduce Costs

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – An intervention to connect low-income uninsured and Medicaid patients to a reliable source of primary health care shows promise for reducing avoidable use of hospital emergency departments in Maryland. A University of Maryland School of Public Health study evaluating the results of the intervention was published this week in the May issue of the journal Health Affairs.

For twenty years, use of hospital emergency departments has been on the rise in the United States, particularly among low-income patients who face barriers to accessing health care outside of hospitals, including not having an identifiable primary health care provider. Almost half of emergency room visits are considered “avoidable.” The Emergency Department-Primary Care Connect Initiative of the Primary Care Coalition, which ran from 2009 through 2011, linked low-income uninsured and Medicaid patients to safety-net health clinics.

“Our study found that uninsured patients with chronic health issues – such as those suffering from hypertension, diabetes, asthma, COPD, congestive heart failure, depression or anxiety – relied less on the emergency department after they were linked to a local health clinic for ongoing care,” says Dr. Karoline Mortensen, assistant professor of health services administration at the University of Maryland School of Public Health and senior researcher. “Connecting patients to primary care and expanding the availability of these safety-net clinics could reduce emergency department visits and provide better continuity of care for vulnerable populations.”

Funded by a grant from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the initiative engaged all five of the hospitals operating in Montgomery County, Maryland at the time, and four safety-net clinics serving low-income patients. Using “patient navigators,” individuals trained to help patients find the care they need and can afford, these hospitals referred more than 10,000 low-income, uninsured and Medicaid patients who visited emergency departments to four local primary care clinics, with the goal of encouraging them to establish an ongoing relationship with the clinic and reduce their reliance on costly emergency department care.

Two hospitals in Montgomery County who participated in the intervention continued the program after the initial grant period concluded because of the benefits they saw for patients and for reducing emergency department visits and associated costs. These hospitals are currently testing a new version of the intervention specifically deigned to link emergency department patients with behavioral health conditions to appropriate community-based services.

While hospital administrators and health policy experts throughout the country are recognizing that access to primary care improves continuity of care for patients and reduces avoidable use of emergency departments, the implications of this project are particularly important for hospitals in Maryland, which are now operating under a unique all-payer model for hospital payments. Within this new payment structure, Maryland hospitals will have to meet ambitious spending, quality of care, and population health goals. Reducing avoidable use of emergency departments can help in reaching these goals.

The project provides promise not only for hospitals in Maryland but throughout the nation to improve health care experiences and outcomes for their patients. Shared learning systems were an integral component of the project so participants were learning from each other and sharing best practices throughout the project and that learning has now been documented and can be replicated in other communities.

“This was an incredibly rewarding project to work on,” says Barbara H. Eldridge, Manager of Quality Improvement at the Primary Care Coalition. “We created a learning system that permits us to sustain improved communication between patients and their providers, between hospital discharge planners and community based clinics, and across five hospitals operating in Montgomery County.” The initiative has proven successful in Montgomery County, Maryland and is being replicated in communities in other parts of the country.

“Linking Uninsured Patients Treated In The Emergency Department To Primary Care Shows Some Promise In Maryland” was written by Theresa Y. Kim, Karoline Mortensen, and Barbara Eldridge and published in the journal Health Affairs.

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University Launches Dynamic, Interactive Information Website UMD Right Now

Contacts:

Crystal Brown 301-405-4618 crystalb@umd.edu

College Park, Md. – Today, the University of Maryland launched a brand-new multimedia news and information portal, UMD Right Now, which provides members of the media and the public with real-time information on the university and its extended community.

UMD Right Now replaces Newsdesk, which previously served as the university’s news hub and central resource for members of the media. The new site is aimed at reaching broader audiences and allows visitors to keep up with the latest Maryland news and events, view photos and videos and connect with the university across all of its social media platforms.

“We designed UMD Right Now to be a comprehensive, vibrant site where visitors can find new and exciting things happening at Maryland,” said Linda Martin, executive director, Web and New Media Strategies. “Through social media, video, photos and news information, we hope to engage visitors and compel the community to explore all that Maryland has to offer.”

The new website, umdrightnow.umd.edu, contains up-to-date news releases and announcements, facts and figures about the university, a searchable database of faculty and staff experts, information highlighting innovation and entrepreneurship at UMD, additional resources for news media and other campus and athletics news.

“UMD RightNow is the place to go to find out all the things happening on and around campus on any given day,” said Crystal Brown, chief communications officer. “This website brings real-time news, events and information right to your fingertips.”

For more information and contact information for the Office of University Communications, please visit umdrightnow.umd.edu.

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Maryland SAFE Center for Human Trafficking Survivors Joins School of Public Health

Contacts:

Kelly Blake 301-405-9418

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – The University of Maryland is pleased to announce that the Support Advocacy, Freedom, and Empowerment (SAFE) Center for Human Trafficking Survivors will become part of the School of Public Health beginning this month.

The SAFE Center is an initiative of the University of Maryland, College Park and University of Maryland, Baltimore, through their formal partnership for innovation, University of Maryland Strategic Partnership: MPowering the State. The SAFE Center draws on the wide range of disciplines of both universities to address human trafficking. It provides comprehensive legal, case management, mental health, primary medical and economic empowerment services to U.S. and foreign-born adult and child survivors of sex and labor trafficking. The center also engages in research and advocacy to help prevent trafficking and improve survivor services.

“Human trafficking is a public health issue,” said School of Public Health Dean Boris Lushniak. “To tackle it we must complement the criminal justice and social service response with prevention strategies targeted to specific populations. Our School of Public Health is uniquely positioned to partner with the SAFE Center on efforts to prevent trafficking, identify victims and provide evidence-based treatment and support for survivors.”

Human trafficking is a form of modern day slavery in which force, fraud, or coercion are used to compel women, children, and men into commercial sex, forced labor, and domestic servitude. It is an egregious crime that occurs throughout the United States. Baltimore and the District of Columbia rank among the U.S. cities with the highest number of human trafficking victims per capita.

“We are excited to establish a new home at the School of Public Health,” said SAFE Center Founder and Director, Ambassador Susan Esserman. “The School’s emphasis on prevention, health and wellness, and quality of life closely aligns with our mission of helping human trafficking survivors overcome the trauma of their trafficking and rebuild their lives.”

The SAFE Center’s newly established position within the School of Public Health recognizes the interconnected nature of human trafficking to other forms of violence and systemic inequities. The center’s efforts to fight human trafficking will benefit from the multifaceted, holistic approach that is central to public health.

School of Public Health faculty and students can engage to assess what health care providers across Maryland know about human trafficking and to train these providers to better identify trafficking survivors and refer them for needed services.

“We want to engage the medical and healthcare communities in a systemic way because they are part of the front line in identifying human trafficking survivors,” Esserman said.

The SAFE Center also just launched a pilot research project to determine the nature and prevalence of human trafficking in Prince George’s and Montgomery counties, and has taken a leadership role in advocating for the passage of several trafficking-related bills in the Maryland legislature.

Since its founding in 2016, the SAFE Center has:

provided services to more than 100 survivors of sex and labor trafficking;
launched a 24/7 human trafficking crisis intervention program in Prince George’s County;
held leadership roles on the human trafficking task forces of Prince George’s and Montgomery counties, as well as on Maryland’s state human trafficking task force; and
expanded onsite provision of bilingual immigration and crime victims’ rights legal services, as well as bilingual mental health services.

In addition to its home base with the School of Public Health, the SAFE Center will continue its collaborative work with the Schools of Social Work, Law, Dentistry and Nursing in Baltimore; and the Schools of Public Policy and Business; and Colleges of Education; Arts and Humanities; and Behavioral and Social Sciences in College Park.

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UMD Graduate Programs Secure High Rankings by U.S. News and World Report

Contacts:

Jennifer Burroughs 301-405-4621

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – University of Maryland schools, colleges and programs were recently recognized in the U.S. News and World Report’s 2020 Best Graduate School rankings. The following UMD programs and specialties ranked in the Top 10 in the nation: counseling/personnel services (2, College of Education), homeland/national security (4, School of Public Policy), education psychology (6, College of Education), information systems (9, Robert H. Smith School of Business) and public finance & budgeting (10, School of Public Policy).

This year’s highlights include:

Seven programs in the College of Education were ranked among the top 20: counseling/personnel services (2), education psychology (6), special education (12), higher ed administration (13), secondary teacher education (16), elementary education (16), and education administration (19)
The School of Public Policy ranked 22 overall with three programs and specialties in the top 20: homeland/national security (4), public finance and budgeting (10) and international global policy (12)
The A. James Clark School of Engineering has three programs ranked in the top 20: aerospace engineering (14), electrical engineering (16), and computer engineering (16).
The Robert H. Smith School of Business and College of Agriculture & Natural Resources both have one program ranked in the top 20: information systems (9), veterinary medicine (17)

The U.S. News 2020 Best Graduate Schools listing evaluates graduate programs across six major disciplines in business, education, engineering, law, medicine, and nursing, including specialties in each area. The rankings are based on expert opinions about program excellence and statistical indicators that measure the quality of a school’s faculty, research output and student achievement. According to U.S. News, the data for the rankings in all six disciplines came from statistical and reputation surveys sent to tens of thousands of academics and professionals, conducted in fall 2018 and early 2019.

The full U.S. News & World Report Best Graduate School rankings are available here, with UMD’s complete graduate rankings listed here.

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New UMD Microscopy Method Could Improve LASIK Surgery

Contacts:

Alyssa Wolice Tomlinson 30i-405-3936

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – A team of University of Maryland bioengineering researchers have developed a microscopy technique that could one day be used to improve LASIK and eliminate the “surgery” aspect of the procedure. Their findings were published today in Physical Review Letters.

In the 20 years since the FDA first approved LASIK surgery, more than 10 million Americans have had the procedure done to correct their vision. When performed on both eyes, the entire procedure takes about 20 minutes and can rid patients of the need to wear glasses or contact lenses.

While LASIK has a very high success rate, virtually every procedure involves an element of guesswork. This is because doctors have no way to precisely measure the refractive properties of the eye. Instead, they rely heavily on approximations that correlate with the patient’s vision acuity—how close to 20/20 he or she can see without the aid of glasses or contacts.

In search of a solution, Giuliano Scarcelli, an assistant professor with the University of Maryland’s Fischell Department of Bioengineering (BIOE), and members of his Optics Biotech Laboratory have developed a microscopy technique that could allow doctors to perform LASIK using precise measurements of how the eye focuses light, instead of approximations.

“This could represent a tremendous first for LASIK and other refractive procedures,” Scarcelli said. “Light is focused by the eye’s cornea because of its shape and what is known as its refractive index. But until now, we could only measure its shape. Thus, today’s refractive procedures rely solely on observed changes to the cornea, and they are not always accurate.”

The cornea—the outermost layer of the eye—functions like a window that controls and focuses light that enters the eye. When light strikes the cornea, it is bent—or refracted. The lens then fine-tunes the light’s path to produce a sharp image onto the retina, which converts the light into electrical impulses that are interpreted by the brain as images. Common vision problems, such as nearsightedness or farsightedness, are caused by the eye’s inability to sharply focus an image onto the retina.

To fix this, LASIK surgeons use lasers to alter the shape of the cornea and change its focal point. But, they do this without any ability to precisely measure how much the path of light is bent when it enters the cornea.

To measure the path light takes, one needs to measure a quantity known as the refractive index; it represents the ratio of the velocity of light in a vacuum to its velocity in a particular material.

By mapping the distribution and variations of the local refractive index within the eye, doctors would know the precise degree of corneal refraction. Equipped with this information, they could better tailor the LASIK procedure such that, rather than improved vision, patients could expect to walk away with perfect vision—or vision that tops 20/20.

Even more, doctors might no longer need to cut into the cornea.

“Non-ablative technologies are already being developed to change the refractive index of the cornea, locally, using a laser,” Scarcelli said. “Providing local refractive index measurements will be critical for their success.”

Knowing this, Scarcelli and his team developed a microscopy technique that can measure the local refractive index using Brillouin spectroscopy—a light-scattering technology that was previously used to sense the mechanical properties of tissue and cells without disrupting or destroying either.

“We experimentally demonstrated that, by using a dual Brillouin scattering technology, we could determine the refractive index directly, while achieving three-dimensional spatial resolution,” Scarcelli said. “This means that we could measure the refractive index of cells and tissue at locations in the body—such as the eyes—that can only be accessed from one side.”

In addition to measuring corneal or lens refraction, the group is working on improving its resolution to analyze mass density behavior in cell biology or even cancer pathogenesis, Scarcelli said.

In addition to Scarcelli, BIOE Ph.D. student Antonio Fiore (first author) and Carlo Bevilacqua, a visiting student fromthe University of Bari Aldo Moro in Bari, Italy, contributed to the paper.

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UMD Raises Over $2M On Sixth Annual Giving Day

Contacts:

Natifia Mullings, 301-405-4076

COLLEGE PARK Md.-- The University of Maryland community raised over $2 million on its sixth annual Giving Day. Held on March 6, the 24-hour giving challenge raised money to support student scholarships, academic programs, and campus initiatives. The university received 8,649 total gifts from students and parents, faculty and staff, campus organizations, and alumni.

Donors were able to give to a wide variety of funds or programs dedicated towards schools and colleges, athletics, libraries, performing arts, and Greek and student organizations. Donors also had the option to support one of the many University funds, including the Keep Me Maryland Fund and the Veterans Scholarship Fund.

Athletics led donations with a fundraising total of close to $190,000, followed by the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences and the Office of Undergraduate Studies with totals of close to $113,000 and $72,000 respectively. The Office of Undergraduate Studies received over 1,000 gifts, the highest number of gifts given to a specific unit.

“We are extremely proud of the success of this year’s Giving Day,” said Brian Logue, Executive Director of Annual Giving at UMD, “It’s amazing to see the entire campus community come together to support our institution and show Maryland pride.”

Throughout the day there were several opportunities for donors to have their donations matched. When donors gave to the Clark Challenge for the Maryland Promise, a need-based scholarship program for undergraduate students from underserved populations in the state of Maryland and the District of Columbia, gifts were matched dollar for dollar by the A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation and the University of Maryland. Similarly, the Clarvit Family helped match gifts from students, recent graduates, and first time alumni donors as well as donations made towards emergency scholarship funds.

In addition to matching opportunities and leaderboard challenges, this year the Testudo Selfie Challenge encouraged the UMD community to take a selfie with Testudo to help raise money for the fund of their choice. By posting a selfie on Facebook or Twitter with a printable version of Testudo and using the hashtag #UMDGivingDay, participants entered the fund they support for one of ten prizes. Winners of these prizes included the Robert H. Smith School of Business, Hillel, Gamer Symphony Orchestra Support Fund, UMD Student Crisis Fund, Clark School's Alumni Network Scholarship Fund, Philip Merrill College of Journalism, the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center Fund, the Friends of the Center for Young Children Endowment, Student Entertainment Events (SEE) Scholarship Fund, and Libraries.

Since its launch in 2013, UMD Giving Day has raised more than $6.5 million from the UMD community.

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UMD Team Again Reaches “Final Four” in HUD Affordable Housing Competition

Contacts:

Maria Day-Marshall 301-405-6795, Lee Tune 301-405-4679

Last years championship UMD team presents at 2018 HUD Innovation in Affordable Housing Student Design and Planning Competition

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – An team of graduate students from the University of Maryland School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation has earned a slot in the four final of the sixth annual HUD Innovation in Affordable Housing Student Design and Planning Competition, beating out over 70 teams from some of the most prestigious architectural graduate programs in the United States. UMD teams finished first last year and second in 2016, their only two previous entries in the competition

According to HUD, “the need for quality, affordable housing has never been greater,” and its affordable housing competition is intended to “advance the design and production of livable and sustainable housing for low- and moderate-income people through research and innovation.” On April 17, UMD will defend its 2018 competition title, going head-to-head against teams from the University of California-Berkley, Yale University and Virginia Polytechnic and State University at HUD’s Washington, D.C. headquarters.

“We are delighted to have made the final four in the three times that we have participated in this very prestigious competition,” said Maria Day-Marshall, director of UMD’s Real Estate Development Program. “I believe our success is reflected in the interdisciplinary nature of the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and the quality of work of our students.”

Team Maryland is comprised of graduate students Kyle Huck (dual master’s degree program in architecture and real estate development), Casey Huntington (dual master’s degree program in architecture and real estate development), Lauren Stamm (master’s degree program in community planning); Andrew Mazer (master’s degree program in architecture); and Nyasha Mandima (master’s degree program in real estate development). The team’s advisors are Day-Marshall and Rob McClennan, senior project manager, Bonstra | Haresign Architects, AIA, and UMD adjunct professor.

The HUD competition challenges interdisciplinary, graduate-level teams to address social, economic and environmental issues surrounding a real-world housing problem in the United States by developing innovative and original solutions through development, design and finance. The competition is guided by the philosophy that ideas and innovations from the next generation of professionals are essential in tackling affordable and sustainable housing.

This year, teams are designing a development on a new 2.58-acre site adjacent to the famous River Walk near downtown San Antonio. The San Antonio Housing Authority would like to add to its public housing communities by building approximately 100 new mixed-income workforce dwellings along with commercial mixed-used space and amenities. Teams were asked to maximize diversity in their designs—diversity of uses, diversity of incomes and diversity of unit sizes. The first round of the competition required schematics and a preliminary pro forma.

"Our team is thrilled to be able to continue to participate as finalists,” Team Maryland leader Huck said. “We have invested significant time and effort into crafting a unique proposal to respond to the site’s specific needs. It has been a great opportunity for us to work in an interdisciplinary environment and we look forward to continuing to improve our design.”

The teams will refine their projects and produce more detail in the weeks leading up to the competition, aided by a site visit in early March. The first place team is awarded $20,000. To learn more about HUD’s IAH competition and criteria, visit their website.

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