Dear colleagues, 

As you might already know, UMBC is in the process of updating the faculty handbook. This process is part of a broader initiative by the Office of the Provost and General Counsel to ensure UMBC has up-to-date policies and procedures to support the work of faculty, staff, and students. 

Currently, the Faculty Handbook Revision Committee is focusing on making the UMBC Faculty Handbook more accessible and useful (for more information, see here). The Faculty Handbook Revision Committee is not making any substantive changes during this review period. 

Feedback
The Faculty Handbook Revision Committee welcomes your feedback and/or comments here as it continues its work. 

Faculty Handbook Revision Committee
Members of the Faculty Handbook Revision Committee include: 

• Lynda Aldana (Librarian IV)

• Keith Bowman (Mechanical Engineering, Professor –  Co-chair of committee)

• Lindsay DiCuirci (English, Associate Professor)

• Stephen Freeland (Biology, Professor)

• Ana Oskoz (Faculty Affairs, Vice Provost  –  Co-chair of committee)

• Patrick Sheridan (Senior Associate General Counsel, Labor & Employment, in an advisory capacity)

• Donald Snyder (Media Communication Studies, Teaching Professor, Chair of Faculty Affairs)

Process and timeline

At the last Faculty Senate meeting, we presented the process that the committee has followed, including discussion of the current faculty handbook organization, selection of criteria for revision of content, and potential reorganization of the faculty handbook. 

The Faculty Handbook Revision Committee will be updating the Faculty Senate every other meeting (February, April, September, November, and December). We aim to share a full set of proposed changes by December 2026. 

Sincerely, 

Keith J. Bowman
Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering

Ana Oskoz
Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs

Hi everyone,

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

Summary

• Completion of February Downtime (02/24/26)

• Slow read/write files on RRStor

• Some 2020 GPUs unavailable post downtime

Completion of Downtime (02/24/26)

On February 2, 2026, HPC was taken offline for maintenance. During this time, we patched a critical vulnerability to slurm on the cluster, as well as made adjustments to the management nodes that should allow us to more quickly react to issues, and installed updated software to allow for the installation of more modern software (such as GCC 15).

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."

Some 2020 GPUs Unavailable Post Downtime

Be advised, we are aware that a number of 2020 GPUs nodes remain unavailable post downtime and are actively working to resolve the underlying issue. For more information, check out this myUMBC post: "Issue with some 2020 GPU Nodes on chip."

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