Hi everyone!! I'm looking for 2 graduation tickets!! I will pay for them as well! Please email message me if you are selling yours. My email is j320@umbc.edu

Two weeks ago, Friday, April 24th, The Shriver Center's Community Engagement Team hosted an evening event for our Shriver Living Learning Community (LLC) to honor our Shriver LLC student leadership, outgoing 12th cohort and incoming 13th. Over the course of the year, they have lived, learned, and served together on and off campus. Highlights of the year include taking UNIV 101 together, playing Monster Mini-golf, making jewelry, communal baking, Cultural Night celebrations, visiting Washington DC, watching the superbowl/Bad Bunny Concert, creating podcasts about The Sargent and Eunice Kennedy Shriver Family history and legacy, creating reflective Digital Stories, and interviewing the 27th cohort The LLC.

The outgoing leadership students are four year Shriver LLC Community member and Resident Assistant Vunnathi Ankem '26 and Peer Mentors Angelie Colachagua, Rishika Bandi, Jahanavi Dhavala, Joseph Hartlove, and Riya Koshy. Yonu Akanji will return to the floor as our Resident Assistant. 

Many operations and logistics went into the behind the scenes planning. We appreciate Keynote Speakers Dr. Ken Baron, Assistant Vice Provost for Academic Advising and Student Success, Office for Academic and Pre-Professional Advising highlighting student success tips for every year in college and Dr. Joby Taylor, Assistant Vice Provost and Shriver Center co-leader, sharing the importance of reflective practice and our connection to Sargent Shriver's legacy as we move through experiential learning.

All the event photos are now available: Folder Link 

Wrapping up its 26th year, The Shriver LLC proves to continue to be a mentoring- focused, supportive environment for transitioning into college and professional relationships. This week, rising Peer Mentors and Staff have been earnestly interviewing high school seniors for (the 27th) our next cohort of Shriver LLC members who will move onto the floor in August 2026.

Rising Peer Mentors pictured left to right: Wyatt Prosperie, Marcy Younis, Blessing Lawson, and Maya Miller.

Dr. Naghmeh Karimi and her students in SECRETS Lab (Javad Bahrami, Hasin Ishraq Reefat, Hossein Pourmehrani, Mohammad Ebrahimabadi, and Trevor Kroeger) along with their collaborators, won the Best Hardware demo award at Hardware Oriented Security Conference (HOST 2026), a flagship conference in hardware security, among 17 teams participating in the competition. They presented their research work on "SPY-PUF: Learning from One PUF to Spy on Another"!

This Monday, listen to an insider's perspective on medical school admissions! Walter Parrish, Vice Provost of Faculty Affairs, will join Melissa Huselton, Health Professions Advisor, to talk about his experience in medical school admissions and outreach. Details and registration are on the event page here.

Hello everyone,

We will not be having a meeting this upcoming Monday, go study for your final exams.

Also, AGC has recently increased their guest fee to $20 per person. Please make note of this if you plan to attend our next range trip.

Thanks and good luck on finals!

Hello!

Today is the LAST day we will be accepting applications for the 2026-2027 Exempt Staff Mentoring Program.  If you desire to participate in this program as a mentee, mentor or BOTH, please complete the ESS Mentoring Program Application by the end of the day.

2025-2026 Year-End Update: Building a Neuroinclusive UMBC

We’d like to thank our members and allies for gathering this week for a wonderful discussion and to revisit the mission and values of our community. We also took time to recognize and thank our interim co-chairs Dr. Karen Chen (faculty) and Dr. Tory Williams (staff) – without them, this group would not have been possible. 

Our “wins” this year included:

• Physical Accessibility and Neuroinclusivity: We partnered with Facilities Management on the Gathering Space Annex renovations and coordinated with The Commons to paint stairwell handrails in contrasting colors for better navigational safety.

• Sensory Mapping: We collaborated with the Neurodivergent Student Club to begin drafting a sensory map of The Commons.

• Virtual Support: We held virtual body doubling sessions on Friday afternoons

• Campus Presence: We represented our community at New Faculty/Staff events, the Faculty Senate, HR’s “Thriving Thursdays” and in other areas.

We’ve expanded the Neurodiversity section of the Women's, Gender & Equity Center library. Visit to borrow:

• A Practical Guide to Teaching Neurodivergent College Students

• The Canary Code: A Guide to Neurodiversity, Dignity, and Intersectional Belonging at Work

• Neurodiversity at Work: Embracing the Strengths of Diverse Minds: Strategies for Inclusive Workplaces and Unlocking the Potential of Neurodiverse Talent

• Designing Neuroinclusive Workplaces: Advancing Sensory Processing and Cognitive Well-Being in the Built Environment

We are officially members of the College Autism Network (CAN). This gives our community access to monthly virtual research sessions, specialized newsletters, and higher-ed resources.

SAVE THE DATE: The 2026 College Autism Summit will be held November 8-11 in Baltimore. The call for proposals ends May 29, 2026.

Finally, we’d like to thank the Women’s Gender & Equity Center for being such gracious hosts to our community. 

Thank you for a great year! If you have any suggestions or would like to join our planning meetings, please reach out to the new co-chairs, Dr. Tiffany Banks (Faculty) and Gina Hoagland (Staff). 

Kaleb Cave’s story is unique among almost all collegiate swimming and diving athletes: When he started college, he was not a strong swimmer.

He is, however, the youngest person ever to perform a standing double backflip. His athletic prowess had also earned him a spot on the USA Gymnastics national team in the Senior Elite Trampoline and Tumbling division.

So how did this mechanical engineering major and gymnast end up on the swimming and diving team? It started on Instagram: Cave’s account (@lub.lub), where he chronicles his athletic feats, has over 140,000 followers.

Junior computer science major Andy Vines, a member of the diving team, messaged Cave when he saw the tumbler was a fellow Retriever. “My mom always told me to find a way to get involved at UMBC, and I thought this might be it,” Cave says. “After reaching out to head dive coach Jeff Fisher, a few months later, I was on the team and in the water.”

From setback to success

While diving and tumbling have many similarities, the transition was anything but smooth water for Cave. 

“Learning how to dive was more of a mental than a physical battle for me. With my gymnastics background, the flipping and twisting came naturally. However, I struggled —and still struggle—with my approach and entries into the water,” Cave says. “Landing on my head was definitely weird to get used to, especially when I’ve been landing on my feet all my life. My aerial awareness is pretty good, though. As a gymnast, I’m used to doubles and triples, so when I have to dial it down, my body doesn’t quite understand.”

Cave officially joined the UMBC swimming and diving team as a sophomore. He had a solid rookie campaign, qualifying for the finals in both the one- and three-meter board events at the America East Championships. However, less than a month later, his diving journey suffered a big setback.

In March 2025, he ruptured his Achilles tendon at a tumbling national team camp. He had surgery five days later and started physical therapy eight weeks post-operation. 

“My physical therapist did an amazing job getting me back to where I need to be, and he is still helping me become stronger,” Cave says. “In the beginning, physical therapy frustrated me—seeing how weak I was and how long it was taking to gain back little bits of strength was taxing on my mental health.”

However, he persisted with rehab and returned to competition in October 2025, just under seven months after the injury—much faster than anyone expected. 

“It felt great,” said Cave. “My return didn’t feel rushed at all, just natural and smooth.”

Two for the team

In January 2026, Cave broke a 14-year-old school record en route to winning the three-meter competition at the Towson Diving Invitational. He qualified for NCAA Zones, the preliminary event for the NCAA Diving Championships, in the one- and three-meter events.

Two weeks later, Cave won bronze in both the one- and three-meter events at the America East Championships, helping lead the men’s swimming and diving team to its 15th title.

Cave’s two medals “contributed to the team winning that title, which means more to me than if I had felt like I didn’t contribute to it. Those were also my first diving-related medals ever, which is special to me,” he adds.

With two full seasons of diving under his belt, Cave feels ready to level up. “Next year, I definitely think I can start pushing the difficulty, now that I’ve cleaned up my form a bit since my very first season.”

Being a student athlete is time-consuming, especially when learning a new sport and alongside a technical major like mechanical engineering, but Cave says UMBC has allowed him to succeed.

“UMBC provides so much support for student-athletes, whether it be a quiet place for us to study or one-on-one tutoring sessions. Teachers are always here to provide help when needed and guide you through the course content.” It seems that Cave has landed on his feet after all. 

By Zachary Seidel ’12, M.S. ’15

Hello all!

The time has come to elect new leadership for the LGBTQ FSA. If you have not heard, I have accepted a new position at another university and will be leaving UMBC. While this is bittersweet, I trust the work of the LGBTQ FSA will continue to shine and grow. Any questions about elections should be directed to Keith Bowman and Tim Phin as they will be carrying the torch until we have elected new leadership. 

There are TWO positions available, President and Staff Co-Chair. Keith Bowman will remain as Faculty Co-Chair for another year as leadership positions are on a two-year appointment. There is a small amount of funding available for leadership to account for the additional workload. This does change year to year and as the budget is not decided for 2026-2027, but leadership positions often receive ~$1500-$3000 as a stipend or professional development funds (tbd on amount and method). 

Nominations are available NOW through May 15th. Please use this Google form to nominate someone (or yourself!) for a leadership position. 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdtDJqwiPn-LmiyU57YslGdciG_JfZBN_sxHya9gpHyAraPiw/viewform?usp=publish-editor

Elections will begin 5/23 once nominations are collected. To vote, make sure to request to join the LGBTQ FSA Member Group. 

All the best,

Gavin

The Chesapeake Section of the American Water Works Association's (CSAWWA) 2026 Spring Meeting took place on May 7, 2026, in Baltimore, MD, and two CBEE students were among the three winners of the student poster competition. 

Marylia Duarte Batista (PhD student, Lee Blaney) took first place with her poster: Hybrid anion-exchange resins improve the uptake and selectivity for (ultra)short-chain PFAS in drinking water

Maaike Swaters (BS student, Lee Blaney) took third place with her poster: Optimizing membrane selection to decrease ion pair effects on nutrient recovery by Donnan dialysis

Jacob Craft, (BS student, Lee Blaney) also attended the event and presented his poster. 

Congrats, Marylia and Maaike! More information about the event can be found here: https://www.csawwa.org/spring-meeting.html.