Associate Professor of History Michelle Scott has been appointed to the National Professional Development Planning Committee for the Social Science Research Council/Mellon Mays Graduate Initiatives Program.

The Graduate Initiatives Program is funded by the Andrew Mellon Foundation. It “aims to transform the academy by eradicating racial disparities on the faculties of colleges and universities in the United States and South Africa. To that end, the program provides support for scholars from all backgrounds with a demonstrated commitment to this goal through a predoctoral research grant opportunity and an integrated cycle of capacity-building activities intended to enhance the success of Mellon Mays fellows at key moments in their careers. To date, 400 fellows have completed doctoral degrees and over 600 are in doctoral programs.”

To learn more about Baltimore GiveCamp, visit http://www.baltimoregivecamp.org, or connect with us on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter (@BmoreGiveCamp). To learn more about or register for Seminar Saturday, visit http://www.seminarsaturday.org. To find out more about the national GiveCamp movement, visit http://givecamp.org/.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAjbDyCHUNY

Press release:  http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/10/prweb11202568.htm

Tanvi Gadhia ’09, geography and environmental systems, has the job of assessing UMBC’s progress in making its goal of becoming climate neutral and helping push the university to get there even more quickly.

Gadhia was hired last year as UMBC’s first environmental sustainability coordinator. As a student, she led groups including UMBC Students for Environmental Awareness and the Maryland Student Climate Coalition – raising awareness about the issue of climate change and advocating for change.

In her new job, Gadhia coordinates the sustainability efforts across the entire campus, tracking the university’s movement toward its climate targets and increasing community awareness of those goals.

Coordination is necessary because of the diverse groups working under the umbrella of UMBC’s Climate Change Task Force. Larger initiatives such as reducing energy consumption on campus, providing greener alternatives to single-person commuting and managing the university’s parking resources are being led by various administrative departments at the university.

Yet the push for a greener UMBC isn’t just coming from the top down. “A lot of the progress that we’re seeing is from grassroots initiatives,” Gadhia says. A composting proposal was created and led by UMBC students. And UMBC faculty members are pursuing new research to create a sustainable future as they organize workshops to weave climate issues into the curriculum.

Gadhia was especially inspired by a June workshop specifically designed to brainstorm ways to integrate sustainability into courses across the university. “There was representation across so many different disciplines,” she says. “Having faculty from environmental engineering and political science in the same room, and seeing all these different lenses through which we can view the issue. There was interest in even more collaboration across those boundaries – and a desire to link up research efforts and classroom efforts.”

These combined efforts have already had a tangible effect on UMBC’s push for climate neutrality. “As of the most recent reporting, we have reduced our carbon footprint by 13.3 percent since 2007,” Gadhia says. The university’s goal is to reduce such emissions by 15 percent by 2015 and by 25 percent by 2020.

Other numbers also show progress. The rate at which UMBC recycles has more than doubled since 2008, from 20.1 percent to 40.4 percent. And a $5 million chilled water optimization project across the campus’s heating and cooling systems will reduce UMBC’s climate footprint by another 3.5 percent.

“The percentage of the energy that we purchase from renewable energy sources like solar and wind is now 20 percent,” Gadhia observes.

Ask Gadhia where UMBC struggles most to make positive changes, and she says “transportation definitely moves to the forefront of my mind. Being situated in the suburbs, we exist in a very automobile-dependent culture.”

Gadhia points to carpooling as one area where grassroots momentum toward more sustainable practices is being accelerated with university support – including providing carpoolers with preferential parking spots on campus.

“In recent surveys we started asking how many people are casually carpooling,” Gadhia says. “We found that many, many people have set up their own carpooling systems independently so what we’re doing is we’re strategizing ways to help facilitate and foster that.”

UMBC is making other efforts to reduce single-passenger commuting. “We have new bus stop shelters that are solar powered,” she says, “and the [Maryland Transit Authority] buses are stopping here now. We have improved UMBC Transit in so many ways. We’ve upgraded the shuttle vehicles so that they’re more efficient and more appealing. And we’ve done research to determine where everyone lives and optimal routes that our buses can serve.”

Gadhia is intent on making every member of the UMBC community aware of their ability to help address the climate crisis.

“We have a huge untapped opportunity to raise awareness on simple things each and every one of us can do,” she says. “Creating a culture where we don’t walk around campus and see classrooms, conference rooms and common rooms where lights are left on all night every night. We can make a huge dent doing simple things collectively.”

UMBC’s successes so far – and the collaborative spirit in which they have been achieved – also inspire the woman in charge of guiding the university’s efforts.

“I have been pleasantly surprised at how rapidly things happen,” Gadhia says. “If an idea comes up, how quickly that idea takes root and actually is implemented. A lot of the things that have been really successful have been things that build community and bring people together. We are laying the groundwork for substantial infrastructure changes by creating a strong, vibrant, active, and very engaged community of people who will support making major changes happen.”

– Richard Byrne ’86

That’s right! It’s time for another episode of The Treehouse Show. This week Nick and Jason cover how someday you’ll be able to ask the browser to fill out payment forms for your customers (or today if your customers are using Chrome Betas), some amazing transforming navicons, and a CSS preprocessor that makes your CSS beautiful.

Watch it on Treehouse Subscribe on YouTube Subscribe on iTunes

This Week’s Links

• requestAutocomplete – take my money, not my time – HTML5 Rocks
• Navicon Transformicons
• Prerender – AngularJS SEO, BackboneJS SEO, or EmberJS SEO
• ProCSSor – Advanced CSS Prettifier
• jonathanstark/FastActive · GitHub
• Optimizing UI icons for faster recognition « Boxes and Arrows
• benweet/stackedit · GitHub

The post Request Autocomplete, Navicons, and CSS Preprocessing – Treehouse Show Episode 61 appeared first on Treehouse Blog.

Maryland’s Health Services Cost Review Commission (HSCRC) is in the process of preparing for a new hospital payment system.

An advisory group has been created to provide input and expertise as the new system rolls out. David Salkever, Professor of Public Policy, has been named to the advisory council which is set to hold its first meeting November 13th. He was mentioned in the Baltimore Business Journal along with other members of the council in an article last week.

The federal centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services must review and sign off on a waiver proposal that would change the way hospitals are paid and make them more accountable for working with community health organizations to address public health problems.

The advisory group will oversee the change. You can find the full article mentioning David Salkever here.