UMGC Achiever Magazine 2022
The Overseas Marylanders Association Memoirs Project

EDITOR'S NOTE: This article appears in the 2022 issue of Achiever Magazine.

The Overseas Marylanders Association (OMA) is an independent organization comprising current and former faculty and staff of UMGC’s overseas operations and civilian international programs. The organization launched a Memoirs Project following the 2018 airing of a documentary on Maryland Public Television—sponsored and produced by UMGC—entitled Over There: The Adventures of Maryland’s Traveling Faculty.

Four members of the organization were honored in 2019 for their “longstanding meritorious service and leadership in support of the public mission of the University of Maryland Global Campus” and conferred the honorary title of vice president emerita, Overseas Programs: Joe Arden, John Golembe, Julian Jones, and Paula Harbecke.

Today, OMA’s Memoirs Project includes more than 150 entries, many of which underscore consistent themes that have united and guided the institution for 75 years—a willingness to innovate and think outside the box; flexibility and openness to change; a can-do spirit; and a commitment to students and meeting them where they are.

The following are excerpts from some of the most memorable entries.

NANCY DERR (FACULTY, 1971–77): The most intense assignment I had in the early ’70s was teaching aboard the USS Canopus, a ship that was moored off the west coast of Scotland. It was the mother ship for the Polaris submarine fleet which patrolled the North Atlantic and North Sea. Nuclear-powered submarines could enter Holy Loch at ocean depth and surface alongside the Canopus for repair and for R & R for the crews.

The long pier to catch the boat to get to the ship was set into a tiny community called Sandbank, where I lived. The weather in Sandbank changed dozens of times a day because of the way that the loch fit in between the mountain ranges. Winds rushed down two valleys to meet over the loch in wild confusion. It rained up your nose or in your ears, hardly ever down. . . .

Heavy fogs of deep winter meant that sailors couldn’t get shore leave, since only a boat with radar could make it to the ship, and that was the officers’ motorboat, the OMB. Sometimes I was the only passenger, and in those cases the OMB pilot helped me over to the base of the ramp.

That transit to the ship was a liminal space, a rite of passage. Hierarchies got simplified. It was beautiful in good weather, and I bought stationery with the picture of the ship, calm on a blue loch—but how rare were those quiet skies! Usually the approach was so challenging that the classes I met on the ship—escorted to them by a Marine, down many a ladder—were far more meaningful than classes on land.

NANCY DERR: In late August of 1971 I arrived in Izmir, a new employee of the University of Maryland [Global Campus], to teach enlisted personnel at the NATO installation there.

One of my students in that first class had a severe disability. A corpsman and the student’s father brought him in lying flat on a gurney and tried to position him so that he could see me. He was 19. The year before, in Texas, he had dived off a cliff into a river that turned out to be shallow: he broke his neck and damaged his spinal cord. He could not move, but he could whisper. His father listened to him and repeated what he wanted to say. His father was a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force who had brought his wife and son with him to his assignment in Izmir.

I began going to this family’s quarters, in order to give my student quizzes and to include him in three-way discussions with his father and me. I learned that his father was stationed in Vietnam in ’69–70. He was bemused by President Nixon’s denial of the bombing of Cambodia, which, he said, he had personally done. To whom was he lying? He was the first of many people I would meet who had fought in Vietnam, and I was grateful for his candor. His son listened to us avidly, propped up so that he could be fed and could see us better.

The son did well in the class, yet his chances for the future were starkly limited. His airway had to be cleared often, and he suffered from contact sores. Yet the father was determined that his son know the gratification of a challenge, of studying American history in college. I’m grateful I was his teacher.

STEVEN HOLOWENZAK was the first overseas faculty member to be honored as professor emeritus by UMGC. His 32 years overseas with the university included 25 years of classroom teaching on 125 military bases in 25 countries. He called it a “marvelous experience . . . and a wonderful life journey.” 

ALEXANDER BOERINGA (FACULTY, 2001–09): Before moving to Europe, I had taught graduate, undergraduate, and medical school students, but hands down, the politest and most fun students I have encountered were those I met through [UMGC]. Whenever I congratulated a student on a good grade or paper, one of the most common responses I received was, “Well, why wouldn’t I do my best? This is my one chance to obtain an education and move ahead in life.”

AARON GEWIRTZ (FACULTY, 1985–2013): Classes at Yongsan were fairly large and were made up of a mix of American military members and dependents, civilian employees, and some Korean local nationals. In Korea, local nationals could take Maryland classes. Many of the Korean students at Yongsan were extremely sharp and usually wound up at the top of the class. Some already had an undergraduate degree from a Korean university and were taking Maryland business courses as prerequisites for MBA degrees they would be pursuing in the U.S.

While the Korean students could speak English quite well, it was not uncommon for instructors to allow them to have a Korean/English dictionary when taking exams. During a marketing exam, I noticed the Korean students were busy thumbing through their dictionaries. I stopped the exam and asked what the problem was; did they need a word translated that was not in their dictionary? One student raised her hand and asked, “What does ‘Chevrolet Camaroʼ mean?” None of them knew what that was, and it was not listed in their dictionaries.

Also at Yongsan, I had told the students in one of my classes that I was engaged to marry a Korean woman. One of the young Korean women took me aside after class and asked if she could meet this woman I was planning to marry, perhaps for lunch. She would not tell me why, and I thought it was a rather strange request.

I asked my wife-to-be what she thought. She was very curious and agreed to meet with her. We met for lunch and the student asked me to leave while she and Soonja talked for a while. She later explained to both of us that she wanted to be sure that I was not being taken in by one of the Korean bar girls who just wanted to marry an American to obtain U.S. citizenship. She gave me her seal of approval!

HUGO KEESING (FACULTY, ADMINISTRATOR, 1970–1991): After being deposited at Marmara Hall and leaving my luggage in my BOQ room, I went to meet the base Education Services Officer, Bill Berlin. Bill had a reputation for liking Maryland instructors and filling classes. He wasted no time explaining his methods. All incoming personnel were subject to his mandatory briefing on the values of a college education. Bill used charts and numbers to extoll promotion rates, post-military employment, and the like. Without being explicit, he also made clear to me that he expected all of “his” students to get at least passing grades.

When I met the first of my three psychology classes a day later to go over the syllabus, course requirements, etc., I encountered an unexpected problem. With the military working in the base’s “elephant cage” assigned to duty “flights,” they would miss significant class time when their work shift overlapped my teaching hours. My solution was to require that those affected would take the course as a “learning pair.” An Able flight student could pair with either a Baker or Charlie so that one of the two was always in attendance. They were expected to work out how to divide readings, share notes, and complete assignments. They would take the open-book mid-term and final exam together, with only one answer permitted from the two of them. I briefed Bill on my unorthodox solution, explaining that as a psychologist I knew what I was doing [not really]. He had no objection, especially after I told him this would be the best way to ensure that all students could complete my classes.

Term IV went smoothly. After the midterm, students quickly concluded that two heads were not necessarily better than one. Agreeing on a single answer to a question involved trust, compromise, communication skills, and other traits required in small group work. In some ways this “fix” to a scheduling problem presaged a learning environment that would become commonplace 30 years later. This hoped for [for me] but unexpected [for them] outcome of the psychology courses was possibly the most important learning students took away. The term ended with no student incompletes or drops. I think everyone passed and student feedback was good. Bill Berlin was happy and asked to have me back Term IV, 1972–73. Therefore it was a pleasure to return to my favorite installation a year later.

BARBARA DOW NUCCI (FACULTY, 1978–2007): I was teaching for the University of Maryland in Europe, Naples Program, and my students were primarily active-duty American military. Most of them had never been abroad before and an assignment to Naples seemed exciting, but perhaps not to all, as the city had an extremely negative reputation as being dirty and unsafe. The schools, the hospital, the church, the PX and Commissary, and some of the office buildings were all located on a support site at Gricignano, a small town located 20 miles from the center of the city of Naples. Everything they needed was inside this walled town. The orientation class was full of warnings, such as avoid eating gelato or mozzarella as both are made with unpasteurized milk.

The first-level Italian course these students had enrolled in consisted of 16 three-hour evening classes over a period of eight weeks, not an ideal schedule for learning a language.

In-class time was important but, following my belief that language is a vehicle of culture, I knew that my students would greatly benefit by direct experience of Neapolitan life. I modified the class schedule to allow for two all-day Saturday field trips during which they could practice their growing language skills and observe Italian culture firsthand.

I handed out the itinerary and a map of the area we would be exploring. The walk from the Montesanto Station to the historic center of the city was a lively slice of Neapolitan life: narrow alleyways with cars pressing shoppers onto the already crowded sidewalks; horns honking; shops of every kind spilling their merchandise almost into the street; harried housewives yanking along large carts full of the day’s food shopping; tables of dripping whole fish; coffee bars exuding aromas of steamy espresso and freshly baked pastries; pajamas and tablecloths hanging from the doorways; shoeboxes stacked against the wall, a sample shoe on top; peddlers wheeling carts strung with socks and underwear; rainbows of fruits and vegetables piled precariously high on sidewalk tables. The cries of the vendors, the loud voices of the crowd, the frequent bursts of song were deafening!

We then made our way through the crowds to the Decumanus Maior, the main avenue of three primary streets of the ancient Greek grid plan, whose original streets, I reminded them, lie but 20 feet below the modern cobblestones. I wanted my students to FEEL the layers of history of this amazing city. Naples was founded in the 6th century B.C. to become a huge commercial port and remained Greek in language and culture long after the Romans took control. There followed a series of dynasties, each adding its own styles and traditions.

Next on the itinerary were the excavations of the Roman market of the 1st century A.D., once the Greek agora, discovered in the 1970s under the lovely 13th-century Gothic church of San Lorenzo. Down flights of steel stairways, we came upon narrow streets lined with brick-walled shops—a bakery, a dye shop, a tax office. I asked my students to imagine these underground alleys and stores just as full of vendors, shoppers, and excitement as we had found on the streets now above us.

We next visited Napoli Sotterranea, or Underground Naples. By narrow stone steps, we descended 15 stories into the earth, and came upon a tufo quarry (in English, tuff, a yellow volcanic stone) where marks of the chisels used to cut out the building blocks for the original Greek city are still evident. These huge underground quarries eventually became water cisterns and later part of the vast system of Roman aqueducts bringing fresh water into the city from the mountains to the east. This water supply was used by the city until the late 19th century, when a cholera epidemic caused its shutdown, and the cisterns were not utilized again until they became air raid shelters during the heavy bombardments by the Allied Forces in 1943.

At our next class, two students could hardly wait to tell me that they had taken their families plus some neighbors to Greco-Roman Naples on Sunday and had retraced our itinerary all the way. They had had new experiences, practiced Italian phrases, and observed Italian etiquette! I smiled to myself and thought, Mission accomplished.

MARIAGRAZIA WALKER (FACULTY, 1978–94): In January 1990, I received my new assignment from Julian Jones: Marine Biology at Kwajalein that coming summer! I was so excited!! I was going to the largest atoll in the world!

Kwajalein Atoll is located in the Marshall Islands, approximately halfway between Honolulu and Manila. On the reef enclosing the lagoon are about 100 small islands. Kwajalein is one of the three largest islands in the atoll and the home of a large U.S. Army base.

Dr. Jones added that most of my students were working for Lincoln Lab, the prestigious lab from MIT.

My marine biology friends asked me to keep my eyes open for signs of deformity in marine animals, since Kwajalein is close to Enewetak and Bikini islands, sites of atomic bombs tests. I was happy to report that we did not see any sign of body deformity.

I flew from Kadena to Kwajalein on an Air Force 141, a big military cargo plane with seats facing the rear of the aircraft.

Madelain Westermann, UMAD representative on site, met me at the airport and took me to a trailer, my home on “Kawj.” The place was simple but had everything I needed. The most interesting feature was the toilet’s water tank. Water pumped from the ocean was used to flush the toilet since fresh water was a precious commodity brought in by ship. I taught in the evening, and I used the morning to prepare the lesson, walk the beach, and pick up ocean life to bring to class. To keep the animals alive, I placed them in the toilet tank. After class I took them back to the ocean. Often we started class with a lecture in the classroom and continued on the reef.

Kwajalein was the site of a battle during WWII. The U.S. Army won the battle and in 1944 captured the island from the Japanese. The bombing left big holes on the reef. Over the years, life settled there, and they became tidepools, teaming with life, our gorgeous aquaria!

I taught marine biology on other tropical islands, but none had such a great lab!

LUCIA WORTHINGTON (FACULTY, 1991–2014): The First Gulf War started during our orientation in Japan. Some faculty old timers had somber looks—they heard it in the engines of planes leaving. Soon there would be no C-141s as cargo planes left the airbase for the Middle East. They would return only when the war was over the following February. Months later at another meeting at Yokota AB, Julian Jones listened and then announced to us all, “The war must be over; the planes are coming back.” He was correct.

One of the highlights of the Tokyo orientation was the grand welcome celebration at the Black Tea House—a converted grist mill outside of Tokyo. . . . One of the foods presented with great ceremony were tiny bite size crabs in their shell. Julian said they tasted crunchy like popcorn and encouraged us to try them. At the end of the evening, he asked who had eaten them whole. Some of us, including me, raised our hands. Julian smiled and told us that those who tried eating them whole had the adventurous spirt to meet the challenges of teaching in the Asian Division. I passed the test. It was true for me.