Dear Graduate Students at UMBC,

The Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) is working with universities across the country to learn more about the financial needs of graduate students. We're asking all graduate students, including those who are working full-time, to participate in this conversation by completing a survey. 

We launched the survey in April, but CGS is allowing us to offer a BONUS ROUND for the "Survey of Financial Standing" for those graduate students who did not complete the survey last month. We have winners for the initial round: $500 in prizes! For this BONUS ROUND, There will be three additional prizes of $50 gift cards! *ALL* graduate students from all disciplines are eligible, including both part-time and full-time students.  

The following information was sent to all graduate students on May 7th: 

The Graduate School is administering the CGS Survey of Financial Standing, so that UMBC and graduate schools around the country can understand, and better serve, graduate students' financial needs.  If you did not take the survey in April 2014, please click:

 https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PS8BHG9

As part of our ongoing commitment to security, the Unix Infrastructure will be conducting its quarterly patching of systems.  While many of the systems will be patched without any service disruption, there are several systems which require the downtime of key services.  The schedule below outlines which key services will be offline and for how long.

Friday May 23rd, 6pm to 12am

• myUMBC lite page will be up resulting in reduced myUMBC functionality

• The sites (wordpress) web hosting environment will be down

• The new web hosting environment will be down (pages will be available but any database calls will not work)

• All HFS (user) servers will be down

• Student mySQL databases will be offline

• RT will be down (expected to be down 6pm to 8pm)

• Userpages will be down

• Wiki will be down

• License5 will be down (autodesk, cadence, idl, schrodinger, xilinx)

• Student mySQL databases will be offline

• Perseus will be down

There will be no data loss during the outage and no user action is required prior to the downtime. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Technology Support Center at x53838.

HEADLINES

1. DoIT Seeks Campus Feedback Through IT User Survey

2. SU2014 Blackboard Courses Created April 17

3. Everyone Must Change Password by May 23

4. New Director of Instructional Technology Starts May 27

5. Campus Webmail to be Upgraded May 28

6. DoIT & FDC Sponsor June 5 Hybrid Workshop

7. Known Issue: Missing Bb Modules Caused by Editing Them

8. Students More Accepting of Using Clickers for Exams

9. Using Box to Collect and Assess Job Applications

As part of our annual assessment plan, the Division of Information Technology (DoIT) encourages the campus community to complete the following annual survey of information technology services: 

http://umbc.edu/go/doitusersurvey

This brief (10 minute max), anonymous survey will help us in our planning for academic year 2013-2014 and provides important feedback to understand what technology services are important to you and how well we are meeting your needs. The survey results are shared with our governance committees and used in our planning for the upcoming year.

If you have any questions about this survey or need more information, please contact our Technology Support Center (TSC) located on the first floor of the library or call 410.455.3838.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation and assistance. Your input is critically important in shaping the services we offer.

Bb course shells for SU2014 were created on April 17, 2014 on the Bb production server at http://blackboard.umbc.edu.  Enrollments for SU2014 courses will continue to be updated daily. Bb shells are available for all courses (designated as lecture, lab, field or discussion) listed in the UMBC Schedule of Classes (SOC), provided that there is an instructor of record listed. The addition of new course sections and/or instructors will result in new Bb shells being automatically generated each morning. Student enrollment in Bb will continue to mirror the official registration in SA, and will update hourly.

If you are an instructor, and your name is not associated with the course you are teaching in the SOC, please see your departmental scheduling coordinator to get that issue resolved. Once you are listed in the SOC, your Bb course shell will be created automatically.

Note: Previously, in situations where one instructor was teaching multiple sections of the same course, by default all sections were combined into one Bb course shell. This also included sections of the same course taught in both Summer Session I and II. DoIT has addressed this Session I and Session II issue so there will be distinct shells for each if taught by the same instructor. But if you find this is not the case, and you want separate shells for Session I and II, please submit an RT ticket with your request. If you need a shell for a research or independent study course, please submit a new course request.

When:

Fri May 16, 2014 6AM to 9AM

Where:

Santa's House (@ Catonsville Fire Station)754 Frederick Rd, Catonsville, 
MD 21228

What: 

Participants in Bike to Work Day who stop by the event location will receive a free t-shirt, commuting guide, and a chance to win prizes. Coffee & refreshments provided. Simply bike to work, and stop by 754 Frederick Rd. Register here.

Why: 

Bike to Work Day is a national event to encourage and celebrate bicycling to work and promote public awareness of bicycling and bicycle safety. Locally, it's a part of Maryland's Clean Commute Month in May. Register here.

Late Spring is the start of the ground-level ozone season, when we hear about Code Red and Orange Ozone Action Days. On these warm smoggy days, the air is dangerous to breathe – especially for the young and for the elderly. Emissions from single occupancy vehicles(driving alone) contribute approximately 20% of our region's dangerous ozone levels. Driving alone also results in increasingly congested roadways and parking issues. We can save money, protect the environment, stay in shape and have fun while biking.

Transportation accounts for 38% of UMBC's carbon footprint. In 2007, President Hrabowski committed to campus carbon neutrality.

How: 

Resources on UMBC's sustainable transportation alternatives are listed at:http://sustainability.umbc.edu/transportation/

• Ride Transit
• Carpool Together
• Bike to Campus    
• Borrow a Free Bicycle
• Charge an Electric Vehicle
• Borrow a Zip Car

Who: 

These sustainable transportation options have been developed and promoted by the following groups. If this topic is of interest to you, consider getting involved:

• UMBC Transportation Work Group (part of the Climate Change Task Force)
• UMBC Cycling Community
• UMBC Off Campus Student Services, Sustainable Transportation Outreach Intern
• UMBC Sustainability

Hometown: Baltimore, Maryland, USA

Alma Mater:  University of Baltimore