TO: UMBC Campus Community

FROM: Provost Philip Rous, Co-Chair, Strategic Planning Steering Committee
Bruce Walz, Chair, Academic Planning and Budget Committee, Co-Chair, Strategic Planning Steering Committee

RE: Online Comment Period for Mid-Year Interim Reports Ends Feb. 28

The strategy groups and Foundations Work Group mid-year interim reports describing work to date, key findings, and emerging themes are now available online to the campus community. We encourage you to take a moment to review them and share your thoughts and comments. The reports will be available for comment through Saturday, February 28, 2015.

This is an important opportunity for campus engagement with the strategy and foundations groups as each continues to work on analysis of the collected data and begins to develop recommendations that will include goals, objectives and measures of success. Feedback collected through your comments online and from the fall campus survey will inform development of final recommendations due to the Strategic Planning Steering Committee in mid-April.

We would also like to thank all those who participated in the strategic planning interactive gallery last week. Your experiences and perspective shared throughout the afternoon sparked insightful and informative discussions with the strategy and foundations group members.

Professional Recommendations

Hi everyone! Please spread the word: our Critical Social Justice Keynote lecture is RESCHEDULED to WEDNESDAY, February 18th @ 7:30 p.m. Doors open at 7 p.m

Dear Graduate Students,

The PROMISE AGEP co-sponsors monthly professional development seminars for graduate students, and one of the increasingly popular workshops is called, “When Faculty Say ‘X’ … Understanding Faculty Expectations, Unwritten Rules.” This seminar, held annually at UMBC, features a panel of faculty members who answer questions that students post (often anonymously) on the PROMISE website. Sometimes, faculty do not have a chance to answer all of the questions since the seminar has time limits. In addition, if students ask individual or small group questions following the seminar, the general audience does not have the benefit of hearing the answer. To address these additional questions, graduate students in PROMISE asked if I would take some time to provide some answers. The result is a short video series called “Moments To Mentor” which answers all of the questions that were not addressed in the seminar.

These “Moments to Mentor” will be posted throughout the rest of the Spring 2015 semester. We invite you to visit the PROMISE YouTube Channel for other videos that showcase seminars on topics such as financial education, and advanced statistics.

Best wishes as you pursue your degree and career goals.

Kind regards,

Renetta G. Tull, Ph.D.

Director, PROMISE: Maryland’s AGEP

President Hrabowski gave the keynote address at Maryland Arts Day last week. Maryland Arts Day is an annual event hosted by Maryland Citizens for the Arts, a statewide arts advocacy organization.

In his address, Dr. Hrabowski examined the role of the arts in finding our value as human beings. “The way we think about ourselves as a society, the language that we use in discussing who we are, the values that we hold will shape who we are,” he said. “I posit to you that the arts intersect with our very souls.”

Dr. Hrabowski also spoke about the importance of the arts, drawing on his childhood experiences of balancing his love of mathematics with piano lessons. He said, “I didn’t understand that one could love math and love music. Because too often still today, we teach kids that they’re one thing or the other and the whole point of the arts is that it is to create whole citizens who understand you can do many things. I want every child to know and feel and embrace the artist within herself.”

Click here to find our more information about Maryland Arts Day and to watch a video of Dr. Hrabowski’s remarks.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center’s Mesoscale Atmospheric Processes Laboratory held its annual awards ceremony on February 13, 2015.  JCET faculty members William Olson and Ali Tokay were recognized during the ceremony. Dr. Tokay received the Code 612 Contractor Award for Best Paper - “An experimental study of spatial variability of rainfall” published in the Journal of Hydrometeorology. Dr. Olson was honored with the Code 612 Contractor Award for Exceptional Scientific Achievement with this citation: "For outstanding scientific contributions and leadership for developing the GPM Combined Radar/Radiometer Algorithm.”