As many of you already know, today marks the last day of UMBC employment for CAHSS's longtime research development anchor and lifelong arts & humanities advocate, Associate Director of CARAT Rachel Brubaker. 

Over the course of Rachel's nearly 30 years at UMBC, she has helped faculty (and the college) to shape, hone, and find funding for their research in ways that were both fundamental to their career and equally fundamental to the stature and standing of CAHSS as a whole.

Put simply, Rachel knows the funding landscape and how to navigate it better than anyone I've ever worked with. 

Her work was often quiet: collating and curating targeted funding opportunities for faculty, consulting with PIs to strategize and nudge their project ideas along (or slow them down if they needed more thought!), helping projects to create programming, content, and educational goals, scaffolding funding across a research arc rather than just in a single project, and navigating the many internal processes and protocols so that faculty didn't need to do so themselves. 

I honestly could spend another 1000 words recounting her work here, but I think that a much simpler summation captures her career far better than the specifics do:

Rachel believed that the work of CAHSS faculty was of R1 stature long before the university itself received that designation. 

She believed that the depth and breadth of the work that is done by faculty here was essential not only to the university, but to the larger fields and communities they serve.

And, most vitally, she believed in the critical need to foster and elevate the arts and humanities in everything we do here at UMBC (and in this country), arguing throughout her career that we should proudy place the research and projects done in these fields on equal footing to anything else this university produces. 

We will do everything we can to keep Rachel's work alive here in CARAT but, truthfully, she's one-of-one, and we can only hope to dutifully follow her the path she blazed during her tenure. 

The good news is that these paths have now been paved by her many successes and are simply the ways things are done now in CAHSS. It is and will be impossible to conduct sponsored research here in the college without touching upon some approach or process or strategy that Rachel helped to pioneer. 

On behalf of everyone here in CARAT, we congratulate Rachel on her incredible career and wish her all the best in every single moment of her well-earned retirement. She will be missed!

Thanks for everything, Rachel! Off you go!

Marc & The CARAT Team

===

Rachel can still be reached at her current email address:

rbruba1@umbc.edu

If you've been working with Rachel on a project, or have a question you would normally send her way, please feel free to reach out to me directly at mruppel@umbc.edu. 

Over the past semester David and Ciara hosted a number of UMBC Talks forums at which participants have had the opportunity to share their stories, pool their wisdom, and offer feedback on the Division of Institutional Equity’s draft framework for inclusive excellence at UMBC.

They hope that anyone who did not have a chance to participate in the UMBC Talks forums will take some time to review the draft framework and offer feedback by completing this form by next Friday, June 5?

We appreciate anyone taking the time to lend their voice to this effort.  Each voice is valued and appeciated.   

Dr. Özgür Çapraz, Associate Professor, CBEE, was invited to showcase his contributions to the field of electrochemistry in a new publication in the Journal of Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage titled "Emerging Investigators in Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage 2025."

The article is available here:
Emerging Investigators in Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage 2025 - ASME

https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4071726

Editorial:

This special issue features the 2025 Emerging Investigators in Electrochemical Energy Conversion and Storage. Twenty-three emerging investigators were invited to this special issue to showcase up-and-coming scientists and engineers in the field of electrochemical energy conversion and storage. Emerging investigators are typically in the early stages of their independent careers (within about 12 years following graduation with a doctorate degree) and have demonstrated potential for high impact in the field. The purpose of this special issue is to highlight emerging scientists and engineers making outstanding contributions to the field of electrochemical energy conversion and storage. 

901 Saint Charles Ave, Baltimore, MD 21229

1 furnished room for rent, about 1.6 miles from UMBC (around 4 minutes by car).

Parking available
UMBC campus shuttle stop right outside the door
Furnished room
Kitchen access
Move-in ready
WiFi and utilities shared

If interested, please text 667-786-9042 to schedule a viewing. Thank you!

The REX 2.0 Analytics Portal is currently unavailable. We are working to resolve the issues with accessing Tableau and will update you when it is available again.  We apologize for the inconvenience.

Dhruva Kathuria (618/UMBC) is a Co-Investigator on the recently funded NASA ROSES-Ecohydrology proposal “Enhancing flash drought prediction by quantifying vegetation responses to rainfall and heatwave pulses.” This three-year grant is led by Dr. Yanlan Liu (UCLA), with Drs. Kai Zhu (Univ. of Michigan), Alexey Shiklomanov (GSFC), and Kathuria, as the Co-Is.

The United States has been experiencing frequent flash droughts in recent decades, resulting in severe ecological and socioeconomic impacts. While normal droughts occur over two to three months with below-normal rainfall, flash droughts intensify over weeks, with a combination of little rain, high temperatures, and strong winds, resulting in water loss from evapotranspiration (ET). Current land surface models struggle to accurately predict flash droughts due to unclear ecohydrological mechanisms that drive the initiation and intensification of a flash drought. Mega-droughts typically are driven by climate oscillations, while flash droughts are substantially influenced by subseasonal-to-seasonal (S2S) land-atmosphere interactions mediated by vegetation. Following rainfall and heatwave pulses, soil and atmosphere dry-downs can trigger a cascade of ecohydrological feedback within the soil-plant-atmosphere system (SPAS). Under certain vegetation and atmospheric conditions, a positive feedback loop could emerge.

Dr. Kathuria explains, “The positive feedback can arise in some cases when a rainfall event is followed by a heatwave pulse. After rainfall pulses, large ET contributes to soil dry-downs, which can be further accelerated by the heatwave. When the soil dries out and the air heats up, plants can sometimes (though not always) respond by "shutting down" and releasing less water. This then backfires: less water released into the air means even hotter, drier conditions, which dries the soil further, triggering a vicious cycle that can rapidly spiral into a flash drought. We hypothesize that this happens more frequently in areas with higher biomass and in arid climates. To improve flash drought prediction, it is critical to mechanistically quantify the ecohydrological dynamics within the SPAS, which are co-regulated by vegetation and the physical environment, and to clarify their roles in driving flash droughts; hence, this forms the overarching goal of the project. This research will be among the first to mechanistically quantify how vegetation responses after rainfall and heatwave pulses regulate flash droughts.”

“The proposal has three stages, moving from data-driven insight toward improved forecasting. First, we will use a data-driven approach to explore the causal relationships between vegetation dynamics, climate conditions, and flash drought indicators across a wide variety of biomes. We plan to do this using causal machine learning methods applied to a broad mix of field and remote sensing data. Second, we will feed this understanding into a computationally efficient physical model, the Soil-Plant-Atmosphere System (SPAS), to test which physical mechanisms (soil drying, water movement within plants, and so on) contribute the most to accurately predicting flash droughts. We start with SPAS because it is computationally light and easy to run experiments on. Finally, we will use what we learn from SPAS to develop better parameterizations for the land surface model (Noah-MP) within NASA's Land Information System (LIS), improving its ability to forecast flash droughts. Noah-MP is computationally expensive, so the logic of the workflow is sequential: data-driven causal ML informs the efficient SPAS model, and SPAS in turn informs Noah-MP in LIS. Ultimately, the project will produce a large-scale model-data toolkit to improve flash drought prediction across the western U.S. The outcome will contribute to enhanced S2S hydroclimate forecasts and support mitigation strategies for future flash drought events.”

Overview:

This CITI webinar is designed for new and early-career principal investigators and faculty who are managing sponsored research. Participants will gain a clear understanding of the financial responsibilities associated with managing federal and other sponsored awards, including understanding your award, monitoring budgets, and ensuring costs are reasonable, allocable, and allowable. 

The webinar provides practical strategies for monthly financial oversight and highlights common pitfalls that can trigger audit findings. The webinar includes usable tips and techniques to help manage grants effectively, avoid compliance issues, and support the long-term success of research programs.

Presentation by:

Tiffany Cunningham, JD - The Pennsylvania State University

Registration Link:

https://about.citiprogram.org/event/free-live-webinar-understanding-and-monitoring-research-awards-a-guide-for-faculty/

Even though AOK Library is not offering live workshops this summer, you can still build your research, writing, and information skills by watching recordings from our spring workshops.

Recordings cover topics designed to support students at different stages of the research process, from getting organized to using research tools more effectively.

View the workshop recordings here: https://www.youtube.com/@umbclibrary/videos 

Need one-on-one research help this summer? Make a research appointment with a subject librarian.

The Frederick Douglass Museum and Cultural Center is looking for an undergraduate intern to support their Preserving Freedom’s Shore: The Frederick Douglass and Chesapeake Heritage Collections Project.

Position Description

Project Overview:

Twin Oaks, the summer cottage built for Frederick Douglass, is home to the Frederick Douglass Museum and Cultural Center (FDMCC). This three bedroom home that faces east with a spectacular view of the Chesapeake Bay was designed by Frederick Douglass. For him, one of the most important features was a second-floor balcony. He wanted that view, he said, "so that as a free man I could look across the Bay to the Eastern Shore where I was born a slave."

In February 1996, Twin Oaks was deeded to the town of Highland Beach at a ceremony held at the state capitol building in Annapolis. It was officially named the Frederick Douglass Museum and
Cultural Center. The museum today has an extensive collection of artifacts, documents, photographs, furniture, and more related to the life of Frederick Douglass,

Mary Church Terrell, Paul Robeson, Robert Weaver, Harriet Tubman, W.E.B Dubois, Dr. Charles R. Drew, poets Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Langston Hughes, and the history of the communities of Highland Beach and Venice Beach. The museum will be undergoing extensive structural renovations through an African American Heritage Preservation Program (AAHPP) grant. The FDMCC operates without paid staff. All operations, including collections stewardship, programming, and visitor engagement, are supported by volunteer board members and docents. Many items have not yet been fully catalogued or digitized, limiting access and increasing vulnerability during renovation.

Position Summary:
The Undergraduate Intern will play a central role in the preservation, cataloging, anddigitization of  the collections of the FDMCC as part of the Preserving Freedom’s Shore project. Working collaboratively with museum leadership, volunteers, graduate interns, and professionals from the Maryland State Archives, the intern will assist with collections surveys, archival cataloging, condition assessment, digital documentation, and the safe preparation and relocation of materials during a major renovation project.

This position provides hands-on experience in public history, archives, museum collections management, digital humanities, and cultural heritage preservation. The intern will contribute to the development of sustainable archival workflows and public facing digital access initiatives that preserve and expand access to the histories of Frederick Douglass, Highland Beach, Venice Beach, and African American life along Maryland’s Chesapeake Bay. The ideal candidate is highly organized, detail-oriented, collaborative, and interested in archival practice, museum studies, African American history, public humanities, digital preservation, or related fields.

Full position responsibilities, time frame, and application instructions are in the attachment. Deadline to submit your application is June 15th, 2026.

For the past 30 days, this feed has been a living gallery of the Jewish American experience. We’ve looked at so many stories of vibrant, brilliant, and unyielding Jewish joy.

But as May comes to a close, we have to look honestly at the landscape around us. According to recent national data from the ADL and Hillel International, while we have seen a push for greater institutional accountability on college campuses, harassment, vandalism, and physical assaults remain at staggering, historically high levels compared to just a few years ago.

Our campus is feeling that tension. It can feel exhausting to walk through spaces where your identity is hyper-scrutinized, debated, or targeted.

But Jewish heritage is not a story of victimhood. It is a story of vibrant resilience.

True solidarity means celebrating our culture while actively protecting our community. To our peers, faculty, and neighbors on campus who have asked how to support us during this tense time: allyship is an active, daily choice.

3 Ways to Be an Ally Right Now

1) Do Not Force Jewish Individuals to Be Political Monoliths: Build Nuance.

Recognize the vast diversity within the Jewish community. Jewish students and faculty hold an incredibly wide range of perspectives, beliefs, and relationships to global events. Avoid demanding that your Jewish peers answer for, explain, or defend complex geopolitical issues just to justify their presence on campus.

2) Call Out Everyday Hate Speech: Interrupt the Bias.

Don't wait for a major crisis to speak up. When you hear a casual stereotype, a harmful conspiracy theory masked as a "joke," or see exclusionary language in student groups, interrupt it. True allyship means carrying some of the weight so that Jewish students aren't always forced to be the only ones defending their own humanity.

3) Show Up for Our Joy, Not Just Our Trauma: Celebrate Inclusion.

Don't only text your Jewish friends when a hate crime makes the news. Countering hate requires building genuine, proactive cultural bridges. Show up to cultural events, learn about Jewish history outside of the Holocaust, support Jewish creators, and celebrate the rich traditions that make this community thrive.

Tikkun Olam (Healing the World): A core tenet of Jewish tradition teaches that we are not obligated to complete the work of perfecting the world, but neither are we free to abandon it.

Thank you for spending this month learning, listening, and celebrating with us. Jewish American heritage didn’t start on May 1st, and it doesn't end today. Let's work together to make our campus a place where Jewish students don't just survive, but openly and joyfully thrive.