The 2012 Southern Regional Education Board (SREB) Compact for Faculty Diversity/Institute for Teaching and Mentoring will be held in Tampa, Florida, Thursday, October 25- Sunday, October 28. Several of the PROMISE mentors have led sessions at the SREB conference in the past, including Dr. Johnetta Davis (Founding Co-PI for PROMISE at UM College Park), Dr. Wendy Carter-Veale (PROMISE Dissertation Coach), and Dr. Renetta Tull (PROMISE Director). Last year, 25 of our PROMISE AGEP graduate students from all campuses attended the 2011 SREB conference in Atlanta. As of 7/21/12,  7 students have been nominated for the 2012 conference, and others are on the waiting list.

This year, the PROMISE AGEP would especially like to encourage Instructors, Postdocs, and Assistant Professors to participate in the concurrent “Jr. Faculty Professional Development Conference” for SREB. This will be the 3rd year for this kind of extension. Here is the link with information: http://promiseagep.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/junior-faculty-conference-2012-tampa.pdf. Instructors, Postdocs, and Assistant Professors should seek funding from their respective departments for this worthwhile conference.

More about SREB -  watch the video:

(See PROMISE Alumna and Former Peer Mentor, Dr. Frances Carter (Public Policy, UMBC) at 3:10-3:23.

Related articles

• Annual PROMISE Summer Success Institute: August 17-18, 2012 @ UMBC & The Hotel at Arundel Preserve (promiseagep.wordpress.com)
• Postdoctoral Positions for Faculty Diversity at UMBC – Applications due in November (promiseagep.wordpress.com)
• 25+ Graduate Students from PROMISE: Maryland’s AGEP attend SREB conference in Atlanta (promiseagep.wordpress.com)
• Our paper on postdocs @WEPAN 2012, presented today, Columbus, OH (renettatull.wordpress.com)

Do you have an interest in Entrepreneurship?

Are you ready to intern within a Start-up this Fall?

If yes, apply to the Shattuck Family Internship Program for Entrepreneurship Innovation and Social Change.

DEADLINE TO APPLY:  Friday, July 27^th

Credentials can be e-mailed to:    

Christine Routzahn, Director of Professional Practice

The Shriver Center, UMBC, routzahn@umbc.edu, 410-455-2493

UMBC’s alumni showed themselves to be true “Retriever Believers” this fiscal year, helping UMBC to exceed its goals for alumni giving for Fiscal Year 2012, the Office of Development reports.

Final numbers for the fiscal year, which ran from July 1, 2011 through June 30, 2012, showed that:

• 2,515 alumni donors contributed during FY12, a 17% increase over FY11
• Alumni donors contributed $316,780, a 5.6% increase over our FY12 goal
• 517 alumni gave for the first time this year; of that group, 63% are graduates of the last ten years
• UMBC had an 84% pledge fulfillment rate (industry standard is 70%)

Annual Fund gifts have an immediate and direct impact on academic and other resources for UMBC students. Because State funds provide less than 25% of the University’s operating budget and tuition and fees alone do not cover the full cost of a UMBC education, these yearly gifts to the University help to keep a UMBC education within reach for our students and families and support the core elements of UMBC’s academic programs.

This year has been very successful for UMBC’s annual giving program,” said Dayna Carpenter, coordinator of Annual Giving. “For the first time in five years, we’ve had an across the board increase in all of our donor numbers including alumni, parents, and faculty and staff.”

UMBC’s Office of Development beefed up Annual Giving operations this year, most notably unveiling a new student Phonathon calling program. Students in the program enjoyed talking with alumni, sharing stories, comparing notes about classes – and even taking away valuable career advice.

“We are truly grateful to all of the donors who made gift to UMBC this year,” said Carpenter.  “They’ve helped to create and sustain scholarships and other important programming that enhances the lives of students at UMBC.”

• Read more stories about how Annual Giving helps students at UMBC.
• Make a gift to UMBC.

In a Baltimore Sun op-ed, Kimberly Moffitt, assistant professor of American studies, criticizes the number of “promotion ceremonies” held for schoolchildren and questions whether “milestones” are being overemphasized.

While acknowledging the appeal for parents of celebrating their children’s accomplishments, Moffitt noted that such ceremonies can involve valuable time and considerable financial resources from our already-strapped school systems, and proposes an alternative awards program more modest in scope for the whole of a school, with divisions in terms of elementary and middle school.

Moffitt wrote that the recently-released Maryland School Assessment (MSA) scores for Baltimore “[confirm] that more instruction time, not less, is needed for all of our children. And limiting the weeks of planning, rehearsing, celebrating and then ‘promoting’ our children might prove to be one area where we can help shift our educational culture to the business of educating, and not prematurely celebrating.”

The piece, “Too many celebrations, not enough education,” appeared in the Baltimore Sun on July 16.

Psychology professor Robert Provine’s latest book Curious Behavior: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccupping, and Beyond  as reviewed in the August 2012 issue of Scientific American.

Anna Kuchment, senior editor for the magazine, wrote in the “Recommended” section that Provine “has written a charming ode to ‘Small Science’—science that does not require a large budget or fancy equipment but that is interesting nonetheless. Taking examples from his own research, some of which involved nothing more complicated than stalking graduate students and observing how and when they laugh, he explains the origins of some of the most prevalent, but often overlooked, human behaviors.”