Dean John Jeffries retired at the end of June after forty years of service to UMBC. In recognition of his profound impact on UMBC, we are delighted to announce the establishment of the John Jeffries International Fellowship.

The Fellowship fund honors John’s commitment to building a strong and distinctive undergraduate curriculum and to educating students to become informed and engaged global citizens.  The Fellowship will provide faculty with resources to create, or redesign, and teach a course in their fields in order to add or enhance an explicit international or transnational focus. Our expectation is that the resulting courses will be taught regularly and will broaden the intellectual scope of the curriculum in the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences.

In a matter of weeks, current and former Department Chairs, Program Directors, and Associate Deans in the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences have contributed more than $25,000 to endow the John Jeffries Fellowship. Since then, others have contributed towards the goal of $200,000, which will enable the campus to support two Jeffries Fellows each year.

If you are interested in making a gift to the John Jeffries International Fellowship Program or have any questions, please contact Marjoleine Kars, Jason Loviglio, or Carole McCann.

“The lesson we’ve learned over these last 10, 15 years is no matter how good your [crisis management] plan is, it’s always going to fall short,” says Sunil Dasgupta in today’s Gazette.

Dasgupta, director of UMBC’s political science program at the Universities at Shady Grove (USG) and non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, is co-teaching a crisis management class at USG. The point of the course, he explains, is not to prepare for specific disasters, but to get students thinking about how to build resilience and make decisions in catastrophic situations that they cannot fully plan for or predict. Although many students in the course have not yet selected majors, Dasgupta says he hopes some of them will explore careers in crisis management.

Ms. Remer's seminar will focus on natural aerosols in human-induced climate change and will be held on Wednesday, June 5, 2013 at 3:30 pm in GSFC Building 33, Room H114.

Aaron Draplin is a graphic designer and founder of the Draplin Design Company. He’s done work for everyone from his friend’s hot dog company to President Obama himself. He’s also a speaker and co-creator of Field Notes, a popular notebook series among designers. He’s bold, outspoken, and unapologetic about being awesome.

He took a minute to talk with expert teacher, Mat Helme, and threw some knowledge bombs at him. Enjoy!

The full interview will be available tomorrow to all Treehouse Gold Members.

The post Tall Tales From A Large Man – Interview with Aaron Draplin appeared first on Treehouse Blog.