To all chip users,

We are still investigating the cause of the issue that is preventing users from logging to to chip and accessing the rrstor storage system. We've escalated this issue with the system vendor and will continue to provide updates as we have them.

Gregory Ballantine

Cleaning up Your Email

Remove/Relocate Unnecessary Files 

Empty your Trash Bin

To all chip users,

We are currently aware of an issue that is preventing users from logging in and making use of network mounted storage from the RRstor system. We are investigating and will update once we have more information on the cause and solution.

Max Breitmeyer

Dear UMBC Community,

It has come to our attention that a new wave of a popular scam has emerged. Scammers are impersonating faculty or someone with a high degree of trust among the community. In some cases, this may appear to come from a UMBC account.

The scam usually begins with a story of someone with a few high-value items going through a rough patch of life. The story claims that the person lost a loved one who owned high-value items or is relocating and has to empty their apartment of valuable items ASAP. They go on to "generously" offer those high-priced items for FREE!

These items can be an expensive digital camera, a pricey violin, a collector's guitar, or a cherished baby grand piano. But it wouldn't be a scam if there wasn't a catch. The scammers only ask you to cover the shipping costs for delivering the items to your location. They generally ask that you contact them outside of the UMBC.edu domain, either via email or phone. Once an external contact is established, scammers build rapport and ask for personal information, such as mailing addresses, to process a "shipping fee."

Once a payment is made to scammers, users are generally ghosted and calls/texts go unanswered. If you believe you have been a victim to such a scam, please contact law enforcement for assistance.

Be vigilant and look for the following signs:

• A story that is too good to be true ("granny was a musical prodigy and we are giving away her collection for free!")
• Urgency in communication ("items are only available to the first person who reaches out!")
• Moving to outside platforms ("text me on my cell number!")
• Unusual request for personally identifiable information ("What's your mailing address?")
• Financial requests that are not secure or traceable ("send me the money via a digital wallet!")

For more information about this, please refer to these resources: 

1. How can I identify phishing?
2. How Can I Avoid Identity Theft?

If you suspect a phishing or scam attempt, do not reply, click any links, open any attachments, or provide your information. Instead, forward the email immediately to the security team at security@umbc.edu. Your report helps protect everyone!

Thank you all for your continued awareness and assistance in keeping our community secure.

Cybersecurity Assurance and Digital Trust
UMBC Division of Information Technology (DoIT)

Blackboard is preparing to launch a completely redesigned gradebook this summer, including a faster, cleaner, and significantly easier-to-use experience for faculty. To ensure the update meets the needs of instructors and their courses, Blackboard developers are inviting faculty members to participate in an upcoming technical preview program from April 20 - May 1, 2026. 

During a technical preview, faculty typically get access to a sandbox course with new features enabled. In the upcoming preview window, participants will get exclusive access to the new gradebook for Ultra courses. Key usability improvements include streamlined direct grade entry for quicker updates and flexible name display options, allowing instructors to customize how student names appear. Additional context panels provide quick insights into grading and essential action items.

Ongoing development of the new gradebook has been shaped by faculty feedback from a variety of clients throughout higher education over the past eight to twelve months. Earlier this semester, UMBC's participation in the new gradebook development process began when Blackboard staff visited campus to meet with faculty in small group sessions. The goal was twofold: To gather specific feedback on faculty gradebook priorities and to showcase early previews of the new interface. 

UMBC faculty who are interested in trying out the new gradebook features and providing feedback are encouraged to sign up for the technical preview.

Connect with Instructional Technology

As always, if you have any questions about teaching, learning, and technology at UMBC, please consider the following options:

• Check our extensive FAQ collection 
  • What's new in Ultra? | Known Issues 
• Open a ticket via RT
• Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups
• Request a consult with instructional technology staff
• PIVOT | Academic Continuity | Keep On Teaching | Student Technology Resources

Thumbnail-image: Ultra news update

Hi everyone,

I'm writing to give everyone an update regarding the UMBC HPCF and other Research Computing projects currently undertaken by DoIT. 

Summary

• Scheduled downtime for March (03/31/26)

• Slow read/write files on RRStor

• First of the Monthly SIG User Experience Meetings (03/24/26)

• Scale-Up Series Continued

Scheduled Downtime (03/31/26)

On March 31, 2026, chip will be taken offline for maintenance. During this time, we will patch the machine hosting the ada volumes and the RRStor. See this post for more information.

Slow Read/Write Files on RRStor

Be advised, we are aware of the ongoing issues with the RRStor filesystem and are actively working with our vendor to resolve the issues. For more information, check out this myUMBC post: "Storage System Performance Update."

First of the Monthly SIG User Experience Meetings (03/24/26)

Yesterday we had our first of the Monthly SIG User Experience meetings. The agenda for what was discussed can be found here. As a reminder, anyone is welcome to attend, and these meetings will take place every month until the end of the semester on the 3rd Tuesday of each month from 1200-1300 in Engineering 102. 

Scale-Up Series Continued

Our series of tutorials, titled "Scale-Up" continues with tutorial 2 on March 26th and tutorial 3 on April 7th. For more information about the series, check out this site.

Publications
If you have any publications, presentations, theses, or other works that made use of the campus cluster, please submit an RT Ticket with bibliographic information so that we can accurately reflect this work in our records and on the HPCF Website. 

Need Help?
As always, please communicate any issues/questions to the Research Computing RT Queue (hpcf.umbc.edu > User Support > Request Help).

As always, keep computin'!
Max Breitmeyer,
HPC System Administrator

Within the past two years, multiple professional groups on UMBC's campus have come together to implement an application process for our very own Diagnostic Medical Sonography Program. Thanks to these efforts, prospective students can seamlessly apply to the program as they take a crucial step towards their future careers.

UMBC's Diagnostic Medical Sonography Program (DMSP) is a 13.5-month, full-time professional certificate program offering three tracks to prepare for an entry-level sonography role. The DMSP has a history that spans decades, including a lengthy headquartering at UMBC's Training Centers in Columbia, Maryland, until just a few short years ago. During this recent timeframe, the program needed to relocate to maintain its operations and moved to UMBC's campus as an official program within the Division of Professional Studies. 

While this is an exciting development, the program's move home to UMBC brought its own share of challenges, both technical and logistical. The Office of Academic Services was tasked with integrating UMBC's systems to function with the existing infrastructure of the DMSP, which included ensuring that 2024's cohort had access to classes and resources when they arrived. During this phase, and throughout the logistical side of implementation, Diana Spake from Student Business Services, Nate Czarnota from the Registrar's Office, and Andrea Cipolla from Financial Aid, along with their entire teams, were crucial in their support. 

Once the 2024 cohort had been onboarded and records were efficiently organized, building a new Continuing Education (CNED) application for 2025's cohort and beyond became the main focus of the initiative. With work beginning in the spring of 2024, extensive technical work was done within PeopleSoft and Perceptive Content to ensure that the data of every applicant could be accessed and evaluated by the DMSP director. This effort saw collaboration between numerous teams and spanned multiple divisions across campus, primarily the Division of Professional Studies and the Division of Information Technology. Frequent communication and partnership with the company CollegeNet also occurred throughout the process.

CollegeNet is where the applicant's data was submitted and delivered from. All of this data, which included transcripts and other sensitive material, needed to be sent to and stored by UMBC, which in turn required logistical communication with CollegeNet. After being received, the data needed to be transported into PeopleSoft, which functions as UMBC's data warehouse and system of record. Due to the way these different files and systems operate, getting everything into PeopleSoft would not be seamless. This is where Dondre Hatef's work came in, successfully bridging the gap. 

ImageNow, also known as Perceptive Content, is the other software involved in this process. While PeopleSoft serves as a comprehensive repository of applicant data, ImageNow is a document imaging system for PDFs and other unstructured types of documents. To handle these documents, the team created new technical workflows to capture files and link them to relevant data from PeopleSoft. DoIT managed the technical development, while DPS and CollegeNet worked together to ensure each PDF was correctly formatted. Kashka Donaldson played a pivotal role on this side, onboarding the DPS team into this new system. Meanwhile, Steve Ostrove tackled the challenge of digital storage, ensuring that vital PDF documents arriving from CollegeNet were stored securely and were easily accessible. Ultimately, all necessary technical work was completed, and documents were made searchable by specific criteria, such as name. 

The application successfully went live in December 2024, with all technical work complete aside from annual maintenance. For many of the teams involved, this was a routine project, while for others, such as the Sonography team, it was crucial to the program's functioning. All of the services relied on by the campus community do not run on their own, and initiatives of this nature happen more often than many think, often going unthanked and under-appreciated. This is work that touches everyone, and the Sonography applicants are just one group that relies on professional efforts like the one just described every year. 

Many thanks to the following team members: 

•   Lindsey Sarangoulis and Jeremy Matthews for the project requirements and details.

•   Dondre Hatef for the PeopleSoft implementation part of the project.

•   Steve Ostrove for helping with the storage of the PDF files arriving from CollegeNet. 

•   Kashka Donaldson for coordinating and onboarding DPS into Perceptive Content.

•   Diana Spake, Nate Czarnota, Andrea Cipolla, and their teams. 

As we approach our late-April accessibility compliance deadline, we want to share a clear roadmap of the changes coming to myUMBC and what they mean for you.

Phase 1: Content Checks & Preview

Coming later during the week of March 23rd.

Content Checks

When editing a Post or Event, you'll see a new Content Checks section that flags accessibility issues before publishing, such as missing alt text on images or broken links.

Previously, you could publish posts and events without addressing accessibility issues. That is no longer the case, flagged issues must be resolved before content can go live.

Preview & Publish

The publish button has been replaced with a Preview & Publish button. Clicking it takes you to a preview of your content where you can:

• Review how it will appear to readers
• Return to edit if needed
• Send a preview of the notification email to yourself
• Share the preview link with teammates for review
• Publish to make it live

Phase 2: Content Archiving

In late-April, any content with unresolved accessibility issues published before January 1, 2023 will be marked as archived. The most common issue is images missing alt text.

Admins will have access to a report showing all of their group's flagged content. If you resolve issues before mid-April, that content will not be archived.

Here's what to expect for content that is archived:

• It will appear under a new Archived filter in your group
• URLs will not change, so existing links won't break
• Archived content is read-only, but you can edit and republish it at any time
• It will display a prominent banner indicating the content is archived and may not be current

For departmental websites: If your site pulls in myUMBC group content, no changes are needed on your end. Archiving will be reflected automatically on your site.

Why This Matters

These changes reflect UMBC's institutional commitment to making myUMBC accessible to everyone. The goal is to make compliance as manageable as possible — catching issues early, giving you visibility into your content, and providing time to act before archiving occurs.

Questions? Reach out to collier@umbc.edu.

Dear UMBC Community,

Imagine a stranger secretly using your home internet or your laptop to hide their tracks. Recently, security experts have found that certain apps are doing exactly that! They are secretly turning personal devices into "digital masks" for cybercriminals. 

When you download a seemingly harmless app, it may contain hidden code that shares your internet connection with a global network of hackers. This makes their activity look like it is coming from your device and our campus.

How to spot strange activity on your device:

Your device might be working for someone else if you notice: 

• Performance Issues: Your phone or laptop suddenly runs slowly, gets hot for no reason, or has a battery that dies much faster than usual.
• High Data Usage: You see a massive spike in your internet data usage that you can't explain. 

Tips to keep your tech private: 

• Look Before You Click: Even in official app stores, check the reviews. If a simple app (like a flashlight or a calculator) asks for permission to access your files, contacts, or location, it's a red flag. 
• Beware of the "Too Good to Be True": Be skeptical of "cracked" software or free versions of paid apps. They often come with a hidden "tax" on your security. 
• Cheap Smart Tech: Very inexpensive "Smart Home" or Internet of Things (IoT) devices often have weak security, making them easy targets for hackers. 

What to do if you suspect trouble: 

If your device is acting strangely or you receive a suspicious email, do not click any links. Please forward any suspicious emails to the security team at security@umbc.edu.  

If you suspect a phishing or cybersecurity attempt, do not reply, click any links, or open any attachments. Instead, forward the email immediately to the security team at security@umbc.edu. Your report helps protect everyone!

Thank you all for your continued awareness and assistance in keeping our community secure.

Cybersecurity Assurance and Digital Trust
UMBC Division of Information Technology (DoIT)