Times Talk Discussion

Focus Frostburg 2025 will take place Wednesday, April 23, at Frostburg State University’s Lane University Center (LUC). The full day event features films, programs, discussions and hands-on activities highlighting issues of sustainability and climate awareness. All presentations are open to the campus community and the larger regional community.Events kick off at 10 a.m. in LUC room 111 with a film titled Renewal, which captures the vitality and diversity of today’s religious-environmental activists. From within their Christian, Jewish, Buddhist and Muslim traditions, Americans are becoming caretakers of Earth. Their stories of combating global warming and the devastation of mountaintop removal, of promoting food security, environmental justice, recycling and land preservation and of teaching love and respect for life on Earth are the heart of Renewal.Following the film at 11 a.m., attendees will have the opportunity to learn about how climate anxiety has spurred an international environmental justice movement. Presented by Dr. Kara Rogers Thomas, this workshop will explain this new documented mental condition and how it’s encouraging young people to take a stand and fight for a better future.At noon at the Clock Tower, the FSU Tree Campus Higher Education group will proclaim Arbor Day in celebration of how important trees are to the campus, the state, the country and the world. Also at noon in LUC room 113, there will be another short film shown titled A Thousand Pines, which shows the lives of migrants who depend on the controversial guest worker visa program, following a crew of workers from Oaxaca, Mexico over the course of a season planting trees throughout the United States. The crew struggles to balance the job’s physical demands and its extreme isolation while remaining connected to their families back home. Director, Producer, Noam Osband will be joining the session for a brief question and answer period. Osband is a filmmaker, radio producer, and anthropologist. His first feature was the nationally-broadcast film Adelante, and his documentary, The Radical Jew, won Best Short Documentary at the Charlotte Film Festival and the Tallgrass Film Festival. He is also a radio and print journalist, whose bylines include The Atlantic, BBC4, Criminal, and Freakonomics Radio.Head back to LUC room 111 at 1 p.m. to hear from Dr. Elesha Ruminski and Renee Mason about Sustaining Civility in 2025 and Beyond: Renewing the Choose Civility Campaign. Allegany County’s chapter of Choose Civility is undergoing a strategic planning process to update its vision and structure. Attendees will learn about the mission of this grassroots effort and can contribute to its reframing during this listening session.At 2 p.m. in LUC room 113, visitors can learn about STATCOM technology, which is capable of both generating and absorbing variable levels of reactive power continuously, as opposed to the discrete values of fixed and switched shunt capacitors or reactors. Presented by Dr. Tariq Masood and Dr. Jamil Abdo, this workshop will show how with a continuously variable reactive power supply, the voltage at the STATCOM-connected bus may be maintained smoothly over a wide range of system operation conditions. This enables the provision of sufficient power quality to the electric energy end-users and can significantly reduce the chances of network failures.Join Tracy Edwards and her geography students from 2-4 p.m. in LUC Atkinson Room to explore key Maryland environmental, energy and climate action sites in the state. Take your shoes off to “tour” these sites on a giant map of Maryland.At 3 p.m. in LUC room 111, hear from Jeffrey Simcoe, Executive Director of the Frostburg Outdoor Recreation Economy Institute (FOREI), about growing the regional outdoor recreation ecosystem in a way that impacts the community’s health and prosperity. This presentation will frame the regional outdoor recreation economy, introduce FOREI’s programs and highlight the benefits of outdoor recreation.From 3-5 p.m. in the LUC Atkinson Room, sustainability students will showcase information on their Spring 2025 Engagement Initiatives, including an EcoBrick build at 4 p.m., Nature Forward’s Taking Nature Back, FSU pollinator garden progress and experiences with state parks and the Department of Natural Resources. Also present during this showcase will be Maryland DNR representative Seth Moessinger with a station on fisheries science in Maryland’s cold-water streams and rivers.Wednesday’s activities culminate at 5 p.m. with an analysis of trash in local streams and waterways through GIS mapping and crowdsourcing. A team of local elementary and middle school robotics students developed a GIS mapping app for recording trash collected from streams and waterways. They worked with FSU students during the fall of 2024 to collect data from local streams and areas around storm drains. Which item is the most frequently found in the trash pickup? Come to this session to find out and learn about how you can utilize the app to help in trash pickup and prevent our waterways from being polluted.The full schedule will be posted to https://www.facebook.com/frostburglglg and https://www.frostburg.edu/lglg. For more information, contact Dr. Kara Rogers Thomas at krogersthomas@frostburg.edu.

Singer songwriter Todd Burge returns to Mountain City Traditional Arts (MCTA) on Sunday, April 27 at 4 pm. Burge’s singular brand of folk-pop storytelling brings together his wry humor, dexterous guitar work and an ear bending vocal range to cover a full range of everyday topics. Each of his songs tells a story, whether drawn from personal experience or a tale of poetically woven fiction.A native of West Virginia's Wood County region, Burge spent the '80s and '90s earning his place as one of the most important, prolific and enduring figures in the state's music scene, fronting everything from the alt-rock band 63 Eyes to the outlaw-country cover project Triple Shot. Since the early 2000s, Burge has concentrated on his singular brand of folk-pop storytelling. If it’s been discovered by man, Todd Burge has written about it.Burge has graced stages at an array of venues, from iconic locations like CBGB's and The Country Music Hall of Fame to the prestigious stages of The Kennedy Center, alongside countless music venues and theaters. He has been a repeat guest on various nationally syndicated programs including Mountain Stage Radio (NPR) and Songs at the Center (PBS).MCTA is a program of FSU and a founding member of Maryland’s Folklife Network. It receives support from the Maryland Traditions Program of the State Arts Council. For more information, call 301 687 8040.

Home Baseball Doubleheader - Games at 1 PM and 4 PM

Home Softball Doubleheader - Games at 2 PM and 4 PM

Astronomy Club Meeting

Frostburg State University Department of Music presents its Evening of Jazz!, featuring FSU Jazz Orchestra, directed by Dr. Brent Weber, on Friday, April 18, at 7:30 p.m. in the Pealer Recital Hall of FSU’s Woodward D. Pealer Performing Arts Center. Admission is $10 for adults; $5 for seniors, military and FSU faculty and staff; and free for students and children. Tickets are available online at tickets.frostburg.edu or at the University Box Office, Lane University Center 203 from Monday through Friday 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tickets will also be available at the door the evening of the concert. This event will not be livestreamed.Special guests will include the FSU Vocal Jazz Quartet and Dr. Donny Albrecht on trumpet.The program will include “The Chicken” by Jaco Pastorius, arranged by Kris Berg; “Green Piece” by Maria Schneider; “On a Clear Day” by Burton Lane and Alan Jay Lerner, arranged by Darmon Meader; “Quintessence” by Hank Levy; “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy” by Josef Zawinul, arranged by Phil Wilson; “Chameleon” by Herbie Hancock, Bennie Maupin, Paul Jackson and Harvey Mason, arranged by Jay Chattaway; “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” by Charles Mingus, arranged by Andrew Homzy; “Good Day Sunshine” by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, arranged by John Daversa; “Eleanor Rigby” by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, arranged by Eric Richards; and “Ms. Garvey, Ms. Garvey” by Jason Marshall.For more information, contact FSU’s Department of Music at 301-687-4109.Situated in the mountains of Allegany County, Frostburg State University is one of the 12 institutions of the University System of Maryland. FSU is a comprehensive, residential regional university and serves as an educational and cultural center for Western Maryland. For more information, visit www.frostburg.edu or facebook.com/frostburgstateuniversity. Follow FSU on X @frostburgstate.FSU is committed to making all of its programs, services and activities accessible to persons with disabilities. To request accommodations through the ADA Compliance Office, call 301-687-3035 or use a Voice Relay Operator at 1-800-735-2258.