“New sales figures show slow the decline of the personal computer is accelerating, with consumers abandoning the desktop units in droves in favor of more portable devices.

New figures from the International Data Corp. show 1 million fewer PC shipments than tablets in the third quarter of this year,” wrote Nathan Porter of the Washington Times.

The article, addresses the question, will PC’s soon be a thing of the past with the increasing popularity of tablets?

Not so, says Tim Finin a professor in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, ”

“While I think this trend will continue, there are still going to be many people who will need to use PCs,” said Tim Finin, an engineering professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.”

Kimberly Moffitt, writer and professor of American Studies, will join other prominent leaders in higher education in a two-hour panel discussion on race equality, civil rights and policy change at Tufts University’s National Dialogue on Race Day.

Inspired by recent events such as the supreme court ruling on voting rights and the civil rights demonstrations following the verdict of the George Zimmerman case, the all-day conference, held in Boston, Mass. on Sept. 12, will focus on three broad themes and questions:

• 50 Years after the March On Washington for Jobs and Freedom: How Far Have we Progressed as a Nation in Achieving Dr. King’s Dream of Multicultural and Multiracial Democracy?
• Trayvon Martin, Mass Incarceration, and the public school to prison crisis
• Race and Democracy in the 21st Century: What does racial integration, justice, and equality mean in contemporary America and how can we shape and impact this dialogue in our respective communities, nationally and globally?

For those who unable to attend, you can access the live stream of the event, available tomorrow morning.

UMBC was ranked #6 on U.S. News and World Report’s Best Colleges Guide’s list of schools with the “Best Undergraduate Teaching,” along with such universities as William and Mary, Berkeley, Princeton, and Brown.

UMBC has also again been named the top national university for “promising and innovative changes.” This is the 5^th consecutive year that UMBC has topped this “Up-and-Coming” list.

“I’m encouraged that our colleagues around the country continue to recognize the quality of our academic program. Our faculty and staff are consistently looking for creative ways to strengthen teaching and learning on our campus, and we are proud that this has made us a leader in redefining excellence in undergraduate education,” says President Freeman Hrabowski. “Each fall, I see the result of our hard work as I welcome yet another outstanding class of undergraduates.”

This continued recognition points to what makes UMBC unique: our community successfully combines a deep commitment to undergraduate education with achievements in graduate education and research. Our investments in undergraduate student success and steady efforts by our faculty and staff to maximize student engagement and success are attracting ever-larger numbers of talented, diverse students. This year, we welcomed a record-breaking incoming class of 1,660 freshmen. These students are planning to study in a wide range of disciplines.

Most important, we continue to assess student outcomes and explore new ways to advance teaching and learning. For example, the Hrabowski Fund for Innovation invests in faculty initiatives that fuel creativity and enterprise, helping more students from all backgrounds to excel. Our iCubed study, funded through the National Science Foundation, is examining the effectiveness of a variety of learning activities for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) students. And our STEM Transfer Student Success Initiative, funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is building a national model for ensuring more transfer students complete four-year degrees.

Congratulations to our faculty, staff, students, alumni, and supporters who make UMBC a national model for educational excellence.

At the 2013 UMBC Convocation, held on Tuesday, August 27, President Freeman Hrabowski welcomed incoming students and shared UMBC’s continued national recognition, the importance of the civil rights movement in opening the doors for diversity in education, and what it takes to succeed at UMBC – and in life.

Dr. Hrabowski spoke to a crowd of more than 1,500, sharing his experience growing up during the civil rights movement and how those tumultuous times ultimately led to social and political change that made it possible for many more Americans – of all backgrounds – to attend college and earn degrees.

Dr. Hrabowski also discussed the state of higher education in America, citing the need to increase our numbers of college graduates. “Nearly half of all students who begin college do not graduate. At UMBC, however, we fully expect that you will graduate – and we will do everything we can to support you,” he said.

Shifting the conversation to UMBC priorities and expectations, Dr. Hrabowski assured the new students the campus community is dedicated to support as well as challenge them. “Our goal for each of you is that you graduate prepared to lead a meaningful, productive life,” he said. “You are here chiefly to prepare for the rest of your life – and you will have the greatest influence on your own success.”

Read his full Convocation speech »

According to a recent PolicyMic ranking, UMBC is listed as a top ten school where students get the ‘best bang for their buck’ in terms of cost, graduation rates and starting salary, and debt at time of graduation.

Using recent data for average student debt upon graduation, starting salaries, tuition and room and board for four-year universities, six-year graduation rates, and percentage of students who qualify for Pell grants as rough indicators, the rankings identified the top dozen schools that are performing above average.

“First The New York Times; now the Canton Kayak Club?

The website for the group of urban paddling enthusiasts was the victim of an apparent hacking Wednesday and Thursday, bearing an image of a man on a horse with a spear and the messages “NO WAR!” and “All Hail the Islamic world, we’re here!,” wrote Scott Dance of the Baltimore Sun.

Dance interviewed UMBC’s Rick Forno for the piece. These days cybersecurity is more than just technology.

“In cyber security nowadays having a good situational awareness of world events is crucial,” said Rick Forno, assistant director of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County Center for Cybersecurity.”

Read more: http://www.baltimoresun.com/business/technology/blog/bs-bz-canton-kayak-club-website-hacked,0,5296086.story#ixzz2dr99CXuU

Forno was also recently interviewed by SpiderOak University about the topic of cybersecurity.

Dr. Patrice McDermott, Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs, has been named Senior Fellow at the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) where she will partner with the STEM project, Project Kaleidoscope, on research initiatives designed to increase the number of women and women of color in academic STEM disciplines.

“After touring the construction site for his school’s new performing arts building, Kabish Shah could see himself working at the construction management and general contracting company and applied for a summer internship through UMBC’s Shriver Center,” writes Sonia Su.

The story goes on to profile Shah’s internship.

Professor Alan Sherman received two research awards from the National Science Foundation to support work at UMBC on cybersecurity.

Sherman is a co-principal investigator on a two year, $300K Eager award to foster research cooperation among four successful and mature Centers of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Research: Purdue University, UMBC, UC Davis, and Mississippi State. The project will provide opportunities for students to work on problems proposed and mentored by practitioners in the real world rather than just faculty led research. As a result, more pressing and urgent problems will be addressed, the students will benefit from the guidance of multiple and interdisciplinary research faculty from multiple institutions and the student-lead research may produce solutions for pressing national problems.

Professor Sherman also received a supplement of $271K to his UMBC Cybersecurity SFS Program award to support graduate research assistants who will work on two new projects. One will develop new algorithms for verifiable randomness that can generate random bits in a way that the recipients will have verifiably high assurance that the bits were generated in a truly random fashion. The work will improve upon the (unverifiable) NIST random beacon project. The second project will develop a new security education game, inspired by the UMBC-developed classroom game SecurityEmpire, to be fielded as a Facebook application for free use by anyone. This is joint work with UMBC faculty Marc Olano and Linda Oliva.

The research will be carried out in the UMBC Center for Information Security and Assurance under Professor Sherman’s supervision.

Dr. Richard Forno, Director of UMBC’s Graduate Cybersecurity Program and Assistant Director of the UMBC Center for Cybersecurity, appeared on WEAA’s ‘The Marc Steiner Show’ as part of a long-form panel discussion on assorted cybersecurity issues. He was joined by Edward Erickson of the Baltimore City Paper and Stephen Bono, CEO of Baltimore-based Independent, Security Evaluators.

Listen to the full segment »