Join us on Wed, May 6 for a film screening of Dr. Zareen Taj's براي قوما | For my people: A Hazara Woman's Journey. 

We'll kick off the event with some delicious Afghan appetizers. We'll then engage in a participatory dialogue about hope & culture building rooted in UMBC's 2025-2026 Culture Builders Program and the themes of the film. We'll then screen the film and have a conversation with Dr. Taj.

About the Film

"This film brings together my life story, my academic work, and my years of activism into a single narrative that moves between memory and analysis. Beginning in a rural village in Afghanistan and shaped by war, displacement, and life as a refugee, the film traces how I came to question the expectations placed on girls and, over time, found my voice in resisting them. It also documents my return to Afghanistan to record the stories of Hazara communities living through violence and loss, and the difficult process of making sense of those experiences through both filmmaking and scholarship. At its core, the film reflects on what it means to live at the intersection of gender and ethnic oppression, while also showing how storytelling can create connection, visibility, and a sense of belonging—for myself and for the communities whose stories I carry.

The film’s title, “براي قوما | For my people,” speaks to my work advocating for my people and the message I share to Hazaras across the world: to tell their stories." - Dr. Zareen Taj '26, LLC; Adjunct Faculty, AMST & ASIA

About Culture Builders at UMBC

This event is co-organized by Priya Bhayana, Global Asias Project Manager, who is a 2025-2026 UMBC Culture Builder. Culture Builders is a cohort-based initiative launched by the Division of Institutional Equity. Culture building is the intentional practice of developing shared values, beliefs, and behaviors that shape how we live, learn, and lead together. In a time marked by polarization and a loss of shared humanity, creating an inclusive culture requires all of us. Each of us has a role to play. Read more here.

Original Post

The Simons Foundation’s Life Sciences division is now accepting applications for its latest Simons Graduate Fellowships in Ecology and Evolution request for applications (RFA). These awards provide support for students entering U.S.-based Ph.D. programs with a plan to perform research in ecology and evolution. We are particularly interested in interdisciplinary research that jointly considers processes on both ecological and evolutionary timescales, or that links studies of ecology and evolution to other STEM fields, including physics, computer science, mathematics, chemistry and other areas of biology, especially genetics.

Key Dates

• Fellowship application deadline: June 30, 2026 at 12:00 p.m. (noon) Eastern time
• LOI notification: October 30, 2026
• Acceptance deadline (finalists only): April 15, 2027
• Full proposal deadline (finalists only): May 27, 2027
• Award notifications: July 1, 2027
• Fellowship start date: August 1, September 1 or October 1, 2027

All LOIs must be submitted electronically through the Simons Award Manager (SAM).

APPLY HERE!

Hi everyone,

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

Summary

• Critical Vulnerability Patched

• Slurm bug and misuse of GPUs

• GPU machines currently down

• Reminder of gpu-general partition

• Slow read/write files on RRStor

Critical Vulnerability Patched

In April, a critical vulnerability was announced that affects every Linux distribution since 2017. As a result, chip and other research machines had to take an emergency shutdown on April 27, 2026 to patch the affected machines, and resulted in the reboot of all login nodes and compute nodes. Jobs were killed as a result. If you have questions about how this may have affected you please submit an RT Ticket.

Slurm bug and misuse of GPUs

Earlier this month, it came to our attention that users could gain access to more than initial requested GPUs from slurm by remotely accessing nodes running active slurm allocations and manually changing environment variables, resulting in jobs that were expecting more VRAM than was available, and causing jobs to die with out-of-memory (OOM) errors. This bug has been fixed. As a reminder, users should abide by the constraints set out by slurm. Any efforts to subvert the use of slurm constraints may result in a lock being placed on your account. 

GPU machines currently down

We are aware that the following machines are currently down: g24-07, g20-03, g20-10, g20-13. Please bear with us as we attempt to make repairs to these machines. 

Reminder of gpu-general partition

Recently, we’ve received multiple tickets asking why jobs were being preempted before the three day limit. This has been in large part due to the use of the “gpu” partition, and increased interest in the 2024 GPUs. As a reminder, back in September, we rolled out the use of dedicated access partitions for GPU users. This means that jobs placed on any of these partitions may be preempted before the three day grace period if a contributor wants access to that machine. If you wish to avoid this, you may use the “gpu-general” partition, which guarantees you will only be placed on to nodes that will give you the three day minimum runtime.  

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.”

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

As we head into the final stretch of the semester, UMBC Dining Services has plenty of treats to keep you fueled, focused, and smiling. Check out our lineup of events for the rest of May:

🥩 May 6 (Wed) | Prime Night — True Grit’s

🥤 May 6 (Wed) | National Beverage Day Pop-up — University Center

🏡 May 7 (Thu) | Taste of Home — True Grit’s

🥞 May 12 (Tue) | Midnight Breakfast — The Commons

🧑‍🍳 May 13 (Wed) | Teaching Kitchen — True Grit’s

📚 May 13 (Wed) | Study Day Pop-up — University Center

🍦 May 19 (Tue) | Ice Cream Social — True Grit’s

Mark your calendars and come grab a bite with your friends! Good luck with your finals, Retrievers—you've got this!

Join us on Wed, May 6 for a film screening of Dr. Zareen Taj's براي قوما | For my people: A Hazara Woman's Journey. 

We'll kick off the event with some delicious Afghan appetizers. We'll then engage in a participatory dialogue about hope & culture building rooted in UMBC's 2025-2026 Culture Builders Program and the themes of the film. We'll then screen the film and have a conversation with Dr. Taj.

About the Film

"This film brings together my life story, my academic work, and my years of activism into a single narrative that moves between memory and analysis. Beginning in a rural village in Afghanistan and shaped by war, displacement, and life as a refugee, the film traces how I came to question the expectations placed on girls and, over time, found my voice in resisting them. It also documents my return to Afghanistan to record the stories of Hazara communities living through violence and loss, and the difficult process of making sense of those experiences through both filmmaking and scholarship. At its core, the film reflects on what it means to live at the intersection of gender and ethnic oppression, while also showing how storytelling can create connection, visibility, and a sense of belonging—for myself and for the communities whose stories I carry.

The film’s title, “براي قوما | For my people,” speaks to my work advocating for my people and the message I share to Hazaras across the world: to tell their stories." - Dr. Zareen Taj '26, LLC; Adjunct Faculty, AMST & ASIA

About Culture Builders at UMBC

This event is co-organized by Priya Bhayana, Global Asias Project Manager, who is a 2025-2026 UMBC Culture Builder. Culture Builders is a cohort-based initiative launched by the Division of Institutional Equity. Culture building is the intentional practice of developing shared values, beliefs, and behaviors that shape how we live, learn, and lead together. In a time marked by polarization and a loss of shared humanity, creating an inclusive culture requires all of us. Each of us has a role to play. Read more here.

Original Post

Looking for a summer course?

Consider taking Interdisciplinary Social Science Research Training (SOCY 497/698), an online (synchronous) course!

SOCY 497/698 provides training in research methods, professional development, and key topics in health, alongside direct faculty mentorship and participation in active research projects. Students will also have the opportunity to connect with faculty and get involved in their research projects!

Meets Tues., Wed., Thurs., 9:00 AM–12:10 PM over 4 weeks. Open to undergraduate and graduate students with flexible prerequisites.

To register, simply email Dr. Mair at christine_mair@umbc.edu for permission.

Looking for a summer course?

Consider taking Interdisciplinary Social Science Research Training (SOCY 497/698), an online (synchronous) course!

SOCY 497/698 provides training in research methods, professional development, and key topics in health, alongside direct faculty mentorship and participation in active research projects. Students will also have the opportunity to connect with faculty and get involved in their research projects!

Meets Tues., Wed., Thurs., 9:00 AM–12:10 PM over 4 weeks. Open to undergraduate and graduate students with flexible prerequisites.

To register, simply email Dr. Mair at christine_mair@umbc.edu for permission.

Have you ever spent more time wrestling with Blackboard's Groups tool than actually designing the group work itself, especially in a large course? The May Ultra update delivers meaningful improvements across course management, giving instructors more flexibility and students more clarity from day one.

Groups Management receive a significant overhaul in this release. Blackboard redesigned the entire Groups experience to address long-standing usability challenges, particularly in large courses where creating, organizing, and managing groups has historically been cumbersome. The updated interface is faster, clearer, and more consistent across group types, so instructors can spend less time configuring group logistics and more time designing the collaborative learning experiences that make group work meaningful.

Image 1: Instructors can now sort group members by first or last name, student ID and sort groups by group name or number of members.

Release Conditions just got more transparent. Instructors can now view any release conditions inherited from a parent learning module or folder directly within the release conditions panel of an individual item. These inherited conditions appear in read-only format, giving instructors a complete picture of everything controlling an item's visibility -- both conditions set on the item itself and those cascading down from a parent container. This update also closes a gap where discussions hidden inside a learning module could still be accessed from the Discussions tab; discussions now fully respect the release conditions applied at the learning module level.

Additional updates for May include:

• Course Switcher search: The Course Switcher now includes a search box, letting users find and navigate to any course by name or course ID, without browsing the full Courses page.

• Discussion Due Date in Gradebook: The second due date for discussions now appears on the Gradebook's Overview and Gradable Items pages, helping instructors stay aware of discussions that need grading.

• Document spacing improvements: Blackboard refined spacing and layout behavior in Documents to reduce unnecessary vertical white space, improving readability and visual balance across content items and images whether editing existing content, creating new content, or using AI-generated layouts.

• Group filter carried into Flexible Grading: The group filter selected in the Gradebook grid view now persists when entering Flexible Grading. The active filter is displayed within the Flexible Grading view, reducing the need to re-filter after switching views.

When can you expect the update?

Faculty should see the latest updates in their Ultra courses around May 7-8, 2026. The next update to our Ultra test environment will take place on May 12, 2026; release notes will be posted to the What's New in Ultra page within two weeks. Faculty who are interested in test driving new features before they are released to production should open an RT ticket to request early access. Please watch the FAQs, including the What's New with Ultra page, and myUMBC for additional information about Ultra.

For additional information about the latest updates to Ultra, and to get a sneak peek at June’s release, please register for our What’s New in Ultra for Teaching & Learning SU2026, scheduled for Friday, May 15, 2026.

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

Living Water is having our last Overflow meeting tonight, we'll be having a General Body Meeting! 

Come chat with the leadership team about how we're doing! We'll also be talking about how you can get involved this summer.

Come join us in ILSB118, tonight, Tuesday 5/5. Hope to see you there :D

Happy Double Heritage Month!

At LUNAR, we honor both our Asian and Jewish heritage year-round, but we like to get extra loud and proud in May because it's both Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month AND Jewish American Heritage Month!

We coined the term "Double Heritage Month", not only to celebrate the serendipity of both heritage months occurring together, but also because we truly view our multiple cultures as "double", not "half / half". So join us this month and beyond in celebrating double the traditions, double the ancestral legacies, and double the community, here at LUNAR.