Maryland Business

Yes, The Daily Record is devoted to covering legal and business news — but many of our readers are University of Maryland graduates, and they were no doubt shocked by the sudden retirement this week of longtime basketball coach Gary Williams. So, having a sports story atop our list of the week’s five most-read stories isn’t all that surprising.

1. Maryland basektball coach Gary Williams retiring – by Rachel Bernstein
“It’s the right time,” Williams said in a news release. “I am fiercely proud of the program we have built here. I couldn’t have asked any more from my players, my assistant coaches, the great Maryland fans and this great university.”

2. Towson U. could lease part of nearly vacant complex – by Melody Simmons
Administrators at Towson University are eyeing the nearly vacant Towson Commons to lease for possible classroom and academic office space, a conversion some say could rejuvenate the center of the communit

3. Md. casinos total $13.5 million in April slots revenue – by Rachel Bernstein
Hollywood Casino Perryville generated more than $10 million, or an average of $223.38 for each of the 1,500 machines at the Cecil County facility. That’s more than the $210 per machine the state said it would average before the casinos opened.

4. After relocation, ex-Middle East resident living in misery – by Melody Simmons
Just after she settled on the single-family house in the 3400 block of Kentucky Avenue in Belair-Edison for a purchase price of $184,900, a multitude of things went wrong.

5. Audit finds discrepancies in Maryland Transit Administration ridership numbers – by Nicholas Sohr
The Maryland Transit Administration reported to federal officials carrying 18 million more bus riders than it did when submitting ridership data to the state in fiscal 2009.

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The death of former Dunbar High School basketball star and Boston Celtics captain Reggie Lewis during an off-season practice in 1993 shocked many, despite warning signs that Lewis may have had heart problems.

Lewis had previously fainted during a basketball game, setting off concerns about his heart health.

Not all athletes have a warning sign or know the risks of playing sports with heart problems. Bob Wade, Lewis’ former coach at Dunbar (and also a former head coach at the University  of Maryland), wants that to change.

Wade has teamed up with Johns Hopkins to offer a screening program to detect heart abnormalities in student athletes. Volunteers will test student athletes during the third annual Hopkins Heart Hype screening on Saturday at the 14th annual Basketball Academy Competition at Morgan State University’s student center.

Hopkins says that as many as 300 athletes from 18 teams, ranging from 14 to 18 years old, will be examined for hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM), an inherited heart defect, which produced the errant heart rhythm under exercise stress that caused Lewis’ sudden death.

Hopkins and Wade want to help more athletes discover hidden heart disease so they can save lives. They hope that their program will be a model for programs nationwide.

But some athletes may not want to know about their heart problems. After Lewis fainted during a playoff game, a team of 12 cardiologists at Boston’s New England Baptist Hospital told him he had an enlarged heart and should not play basketball. Lewis went for a second opinion at Brigham and Women’s Hospital where he got a new diagnosis that didn’t involve heart disease, rather a fainting condition brought on by exertion.

After his death, Lewis’ wife said he had gotten a third opinion and was told to monitor his heart. He was planning on doing just that, if he returned to playing for the Celtics. He just never got the chance.

Others are also working to compile a registry of sudden athlete deaths, following the deaths of several prominent athletes, including Joseph Kennedy, a Toronto Blue Jays pitcher, and Damien Nash, a Denver Broncos running back, who died after playing in a charity basketball game raising money for heart transplant research. Nash had started the Darris Nash Find a Heart Foundation for his brother, who had a transplant.

For more information, you can check out the Sudden Death in Athletes program, run by the Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation.

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In light of Liz Farmer’s cover story, I decided that I wanted to find a Maryland company that benefits year in and year out from the back-to-school rush, even during a recession.

That’s when I received a tip that there is a textbook and paper manufacturer in Baltimore called Victor Graphics. They’ve been around for 26 years and are a major supplier of educational books for colleges and schools throughout the state.

The factory, which has 130 employees, is located in the heart of Southwest Baltimore (map below), a short walk from Carroll Park. A large portion of the employee base comes from the surrounding communities, which makes the plant one of the largest sources of jobs in the area.

One of the more fascinating moments of my time there involved observing the books being made, from start to finish. After all, I work at a newspaper and this was only my second time witnessing the mass production cycle.

All in all, it was pretty cool. Check out the video below.

View Victor Graphics in a larger map

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American Public University, a popular distance learning center which offers associate, bachelor and masters programs, made headlines yesterday when it held an all-day online admissions fair.

The live event, which organizers said was the first of its kind and attracted 267 prospective students, offered online chats with faculty and admissions officers and the opportunity to explore virtual classrooms to see how classes are conducted.

The idea of a virtual admissions fair sounds spot-on to me, especially for an online university.

I have noticed over the past year that a number of local colleges have cleaned up their Web sites, making them more informative, user friendly and interactive. At a time when budgets are tight and parents want to make the most informed decisions with an easy-to-navigate interface, it makes sense.

But when I read about the online event, I wondered if this could fly for schools that don’t offer much in the way of online classes.

Every year, high school juniors and seniors travel all over the country to visit schools. The trips are costly but important to the decision-making process.

The online fair might be a great idea for an online college, but nothing can replace actually walking onto a campus, meeting with professors face-to-face and experiencing campus life.

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The college application process is always a stressful time. I remember checking my mailbox every day during my senior year of high school, anxiously waiting to hear from my top schools.

Can you imagine the pressure medical students nationwide felt yesterday, knowing that they would be opening a letter that seals their fate for the next 3-5 years?

Yesterday, I attended the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine’s “match day” with fellow reporter Danielle Ulman.

Danielle illustrated the drama of the event well in the lede of her story in today’s paper. She wrote:

Thirty minutes and a velvet rope stood between medical students and their futures. As the clock ticked down to noon Thursday, anticipation seemed to bubble over in a room filled with fourth-year medical students…

Watch the video below to watch students’ reactions from beginning to end.

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Online education has been increasingly used as a tool to help people learn on flexible schedules, and without regard to the distance between teacher and instructor. That much was clear as I researched our package on higher education and the Web that appears Friday. But an interesting undercurrent in many of the discussions that I had was the idea that online learning often has little to do with convenience and more to do with the strength of the Internet as a medium.

Kathleen Harmeyer, who directs the School of Information Arts and Technology at the University of Baltimore, said she thinks computer and web-based applications are going to become a more central part of many types of classes as schools focus on younger students who have grown up online.

Her ideas are interesting, especially since a lot of online learning programs are targeted toward non-traditional students who may not have the time or ability to get to campus.

She cites an interesting economics class that she took through the University of North Carolina at Greensboro that was based around a video game. Students are aliens marooned on an unfriendly, post-apocalyptic earth after a space crash, and have to determine the best way to allocate their resources.

The point, she said, is that the web is giving schools a way to adapt to new ways of learning. That’s one of the reasons students in her program meet for class, among other places, within the computer world of Second Life.

“Our college age students today are not readers. Not that they can’t, they won’t,” she said. “It’s a way of engaging students in the subject matter that the book doesn’t do for the young folks anymore.”

I’ve learned a few things by playing resource allocation games such as Civilization (made by Sid Meier and Firaxis Games in Hunt Valley), but it’s interesting to think of earning credit for it.

ANDY ROSEN, Business Writer

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