QUMBC is a student organization with the full name "Queers United, Mobilized & Bringing Change." It's a service/social action organization that focuses on projects and initiatives that take action on issues facing the LGBTQ community.

Tonight is the group's first event, beginning at 7:30 pm in the Skylight Lounge. Hear from a panel of UMBC students who will share their experiences, identity, and community, as well as answer questions.  Check it out!  For more info, RSVP, and/or to get involved, go to:

The Women’s Center at UMBC turns 25 this year! We’re excited to share our important milestone with UMBC’s 50th Anniversary and will be celebrating throughout the year with the rest of campus! We were inspired by Special Collections archival project Archives Gold: 50 Objects for UMBC’s 50th and decided to do our own digging into the Women’s Center archives. Over the course of the year, we’ll be sharing 25 “Then vs Now” archives to celebrate the origin and evolution of the Women’s Center at UMBC.
This week we’re exploring 1991 and the historical context of the year the Women’s Center opened its doors.

In 1991, Anita Hill stood up to sexual harassment in the workplace. Hill testified against her former employer, Judge Clarence Thomas, as he had perpetrated inappropriate sexual behavior towards her while she was working for him a few years prior. Thomas was being appointed as a Supreme Court Justice when Hill came forward, ending her silence and sparking a national interest in sexual harassment in the workplace. The majority male Senate went on to confirm Thomas, but this highly publicized trial brought the issue of sexual harassment into focus. After Hill stood up, more women came forward about their own experiences, and more measures were taken to prevent harassment in the workplace. This included places like higher education and our own UMBC.

Anita Hill testifying on Capitol Hill.

After this event, many more women became involved in politics, and many believe this boom came about as a direct response to the nomination of Thomas. While this wasn’t the only reason the Women’s Center was founded on campus, the national attention being paid to women’s issues in the workplace certainly helped spark an interest in creating a safe space and resource for women on campus. This story of our beginning is captured in our 20th anniversary video about the Women’s Center.

Other 1991 noteworthy events include, the release of Thelma and Louise and the influential documentary Paris is Burning. Riot grrrl, the punk feminist music movement, also began in the early 90s, and ushered in a new format of women creating activist art and music at the same time the internet opened up to commercial use for the first time ever.

What are the memories you have of the Women’s Center over the years that are meaningful to you? What does the Women’s Center mean to you today? Share your memories and pictures with us in the comment section below!

Stay up-to-date with our 25th anniversary on social media using #UMBCWC25. Share your Women’s Center experiences and memories with the UMBC community using #UMBCWC25 AND #UMBC50!

In recent months, as the U.S. presidential election has approached, concerns over email hacks and the security of voting systems have frequently appeared in the news. Rick Forno, assistant director of the UMBC Center for Cybersecurity and director of the Cybersecurity Graduate Program at UMBC, recently described to WYPR’s Sheilah Kast that voting machines are just one part of a system that has concerning vulnerabilities.

“I think we have to separate the issue between voting machines and the overall voting process, because the two are related but have very different threat and vulnerability characteristics,” said Forno, who is particularly interested in the voting process and technologies used to collect data, as well as how that data is collected, counted, and reported.

A voting machine might report votes to a laptop across the room at a polling location, and that computer might then share data from the single polling place with a computer in a regional or state hub to be aggregated. In this scenario, Forno wonders how the laptop—as one small but crucial piece in the full chain of data transfer—is protected.

Data can be corrupted at moments when it is moving, and also when it is stationary, he says. “You’re looking at a range of security concerns that start with the individual voting machine in the voting booth, all the way up through the systems that officially record and report out the outcomes of an election.”

Voting machines include computers and other hardware that need to be maintained on a regular basis, much like computers that people use at work or at home. Forno warns that not regularly updating the technologies used in voting systems, can give hackers and researchers the opportunity to identify weaknesses and potential vulnerabilities in those systems.

Listen to the full segment “Cybersecurity and the Ballot Box” on the WYPR website.

About Nielsen:

Today, there were over 500 million Tweets, over 85% of U.S. Consumers used their mobile device while watching TV, and within the next four years, women will control $28 Trillion in annual consumer spending. At Nielsen, you will help analyze and understand what all this means to our consumers, and how it truly influences and drives consumer behavior in what people watch and what people buy.

At Nielsen, we invest in you. Nielsen’s Emerging Leaders Program (ELP) offers a powerful and unique experience for top undergraduates interested in a leadership career with the world’s leading provider of global marketing information, consumer insights, and business media. Emerging Leaders Program Internships provide an opportunity for 2018 graduates to explore the Nielsen environment and gain insight into the full time Emerging Leaders Program Human Resources track.

Program Summary:

The Human Resources track is a challenging Internship program designed to develop leaders who will position Nielsen for growth. As a Human Resources intern, you will work with Nielsen businesses to help us attract, engage and develop the talent we need to grow and help our clients compete more effectively.

Intern assignments will be project-oriented and focus on the Human Resources Centers of Excellence including: Organization and Leadership Development, Talent Acquisition, and Compensation, with additional exposure to the HR Business Partner role. Assignments vary according to business need and intern qualifications; all are designed to stretch your skills, and to support your professional development by providing clear goals and actionable feedback on your performance.

Selection Criteria:

To apply for an internship, you should be an undergraduate with an anticipated graduation date of 2018 with a Human Resources related discipline and a strong record of academic achievement (minimum 3.0 cumulative GPA).

You must also meet the requirements for the full-time Emerging Leaders Program. Full details are available in UMBCworks.

Please apply through UMBCworks and Nielsen Careers. UMBCworks number 9286492.

Deadline: Thursday, September 29, 2016 at 11:59pm.

Region II is excited to announce that registration for the 2016 Careers in Student Affairs Conference is now open. This low cost professional development opportunity is aimed at providing amazing learning experiences for undergraduate, graduate and new professionals interested and working within our profession. With multiple locations around the entire region and support from seasoned professionals, it is an opportunity not to be missed.

More information will continue to be released as the event draws closer, and to stay abreast of the developments please check our website: https://www.naspa.org/events/2016-careers-in-student-affairs.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Meet Sarah,
She is an Interdisciplinary Studies major, an URA Scholar and a Linehan Scholar. Her future pursuits would include working alongside anthropologists as they complete research and photograph their work to be included in ethnographies, articles, and other publications as a means of providing a more concrete way for the reader to connect to the material they are reading about. She also thinks that photography coupled with anthropology -or any form of research- can also benefit the public because photographs can often speak to a wider demographic range than can scientific writing.

Her research will assist in documenting the ecological disaster that occurred on November 5th, 2015 in Mariana, Brazil. She photographed the effects of this disaster on the communities of the Rio Doce Valley (in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais). She is currently editing the photos as well as transcribing and translating interviews with her partner Andrés Camacho '15. She is also collaborating with Dr. Bryan McCann, a Professor at Georgetown University who is gathering an international group of scholars to study the historical background of the area and the disaster’s current environmental and social repercussions on the Rio Doce valley. This November, both Sarah and Andrés will be presenting their work at a conference (Dr.McCann & others) are organizing at Georgetown titled "Brazil’s Rio Doce Disaster: the History and Consequences of a Man-made Environmental Disaster".

Read more about her research project here...