FROM:   Provost Philip Rous, Co-Chair, Strategic Planning Steering Committee

Bruce Walz, Chair, Academic Planning and Budget Committee, Co-Chair, Strategic Planning Steering Committee

We understand how busy this time of year can be, so we have extended the deadline for the campus strategic planning survey through Thursday, December 18.

If you have not yet had a chance to do so, we encourage you to take this opportunity to contribute to the strategic planning process by sharing your experiences and perspective with the strategy groups.

Please participate in our faculty and staff strategic planning survey »

Thank you.

The Summer Urological Research Experience (SURE), is a great opportunity for students to move beyond the classroom learning experience to gather the knowledge and skills needed to pursue a career founded in the biomedical sciences.  SURE is designed to provide a one of a kind research experience to students in the hope to foster an interest in students in the areas of urological and cancer research. 

The James Buchanan Brady Urological Institute provides a unique opportunity for young scientists to work alongside some of the leading researchers in urology and oncology while utilizing a broad range of techniques and methodologies. The Department has the unique ability of providing young researchers with a chance to see how research done at the bench can be translated into patient care.

In addition to the vast amount of research experience that will be gained during the program, students will be given numerous opportunities to attend lectures and seminars given by the University's and the  Department's numerous gifted faculty that will prepare them for the paradigms, problems, and technologies in biomedical research. 

In addition to providing participants with both theoretical knowledge and practical training in research and scientific experimentation and other scholarly investigations, the program offers a stipend of $3,000 for the ten weeks that the program is active. Housing is provided near our undergraduate campus and the University maintains a shuttle service that provides convenient transportation between the medical school campus and the undergraduate campus.

This year the program is scheduled to run from Sunday, May 24th through Saturday, August 1st, 2015.  Interested parties should have their application materials submitted no later than February 1st, 2015.

This summer internship program requires a full-time commitment. Interns should be prepared for long days and short weekends. It is not permissible to take academic classes or hold other employment during this internship. There are no vacations during the program.

Critical Social Justice organizers Amelia Meman, Lisa Gray, and Megan Tagle Adams share a few of their thoughts about self-care in/as social justice work. 

AMELIA: Coming up on CSJ 2015, I’m thinking about generosity, compassion, and sustainability, especially in regard to how these connect with movement building and the self. I think about generosity in regard to the tough situations we get into (the difficult dialogues, you could say), and how I and others should be cognizant about the differences we are bringing into conversations and the mutual respect we all deserve; the generosity we extend is integral to building bridges and coalition. With our selves, in small conversations, in bigger conversations, between movements, I hope we can strive for generosity while continuing to work towards a more critical engagement. Compassion is directly related to how I try to deal with both myself, and others. I try to be aware of the needs of others, to listen and learn from them, to care and empower them, while also trying to know when I need to take care of myself—when I need compassion. This act of self-care and the generosity above are crucial to both my sustainability as a (critical) social justice warrior and to Critical Social Justice itself. As we work towards building a campus initiative that will continue into the years, I am focused on all three of the aspects—generosity, compassion, and sustainability—the cyclical nature between them, and the way they affect both our groups and the individuals in them.

LISA: Yes, Amelia. Your idea of of viewing social justice movement building through the lenses of generosity, compassion and sustainability resonates with me! Far too often, those of us who engage in what we hope is (critical) and reflective social justice work, here at UMBC and beyond, short change the “how” of the work as it relates to self care and community care. It’s hard to be generous with our energies, talents, and skills or have compassion for others when we don’t take the time to give it to ourselves first. And yes, as Audre Lorde so beautifully stated, “caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” As I think about both my personal role as well as the Student Life Mosaic Center’s role in actively supporting sustainability for CSJ in 2015 and beyond, I believe it can happen only by intentionally engaging in high levels of generosity and compassion as well as empathy and self-reflection. I believe that empathy will help us better relate to one another’s unique positionality as we move through the intersectional aspects of our shared work while self-reflection will keep us honest about how our privileged and underrepresented identities either help or hinder the impact of that work. This year’s theme of Creating Brave Spaces provides a great platform for us to use generosity, compassion, empathy and self-reflection to help our campus to learn and grow as educators, activists and (critical) social justice change agents in person or online.

MEGAN: Amelia and Lisa, that quote from Audre Lorde that you both reference has also been instrumental in shaping my own approach to self-care and sustainability in doing social justice work. While social media has made it much easier for me to constantly learn about various social justice issues and perspectives that I may not have otherwise encountered, I’m also trying to be mindful of the impact of this immersion. I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the (perhaps self-imposed) pressure to be all in at all times. When I feel intellectually and emotionally exhausted after a long day of engaging in these difficult dialogues, even scrolling through Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook doesn’t provide much of a respite since my feeds are about 90% feminism-related and 10% cat pictures. However, for me it’s been helpful to shift my understanding of what self-care looks like so that it doesn’t necessarily mean taking a break from social change work but rather re-framing my own commitment social justice as an act of self-preservation and self-care in itself.

For all of those interested in being involved in the planning process for UMBC's Take Back the Night, please fill out this form. 

If you serve on the committee, please plan to be available to also volunteer on the night of the event, April 16th, from roughly 5-9:30pm.

Planning meetings will be held every two weeks on Wednesdays at noon.
For more information, contact Jess at womens.center@umbc.edu.

REU Program

The Baltimore Sun  recently published an article about a series of volunteer opportunities organized by the Jewish Federation of Howard County on Christmas Day. Last year, 250 volunteers participated throughout the day, and this year, the Jewish Federation is partnering with Food on the 15th and the Asian Studies Food Pantry program for low-income Asian seniors.

Asian Studies Program Management Specialist Julie Rosenthal is founder and director of Food on the 15th and was quoted in the article discussing the overall impact of the volunteer program.

“We are partnering with the Jewish Federation for Mitzvah Day because we want to provide a rewarding experience for children of any age and their parents,” said Rosenthal. “Helping to deliver food to a low-income senior citizen building in Howard County brightens the day of not only the residents living at the building that are receiving the delivery, but also the students, parents and families doing the delivery,” she added.

To learn more about the Asian Studies Food Pantry program, click here. To read the full article in the Baltimore Sun, click here.