It may still be January, but UMBC’s students are already thinking ahead to Spring Break — and not for the reasons you may be thinking. UMBC’s Alternative Spring Break, which gives students a chance to band together and volunteer in a variety of settings, is as popular as ever this year.

Among the trips planned for this March:

• ARC Trip (serving mentally and physically disabled individuals in Carroll County)
• Environmental Trip (emphasizing sustainable living in urban environments)
• Through the Eyes of a Refugee (focusing on the refugee population in Baltimore City)
• Animal Advocacy Trip (exploring animal rights and humane treatment of animals)
• Day in the Life (focusing on homelessness in Baltimore City)

How great is that? We’re so proud of the ways UMBC students make a difference in the world! Read more about the Alternative Spring Break here.

Have you missed connecting with other students from PROMISE? Are the great feelings from the PROMISE Summer Success Institute at the Sheraton in Columbia, and the Fall Harvest Dinner at College Park wearing thin from needing more interaction? Then, come on out to the PROMISE Spring Opening Meeting at UMBC and get rejuvenated.

Friday, 2/17/12 
4:30-6 PM

Public Policy, Room 206

Dinner will be served.

Facilitator: Dr. Renetta Tull

Learn about upcoming activities that support graduate students, hear about themes that contribute to success of diverse graduate students from the book chapter: “Successful PhD Pathways to Advanced STEM Careers for Black Women” in the Diversity in Higher Education book series (featuring alumni from PROMISE at UMBC, UMCP, and UMB), authors: Dr. Janet Rutledge (UMBC Dean of the Graduate School), Dr. Wendy Carter-Veale (PROMISE Dissertation Coach), and Dr. Renetta Tull (UMBC Assistant Dean for Graduate Student Development and Director of PROMISE.)

We’ll also give you a glimpse of the upcoming 10th anniversary of the PROMISE Summer Success Institute.  Come and hear updates on funding and jobs from our PROMISE and Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) career partners, and hear an update from the “Why Smart People Suffer from the Imposter Syndrome” webinar.  (You can also read the article on “The Imposter Syndrome and How to Avoid it” in the magazine for theSociety of Hispanic Professional Engineers.)

Come and meet other graduate students from diverse backgrounds!

To read more about PROMISE: Maryland’s AGEP, visit the PROMISE AGEP website, learn more about the national AGEP, and see publications that discuss PROMISE and the signature programs. PROMISE is one of 22 AGEP alliances in the U.S. and is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. 

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Students from UMBC’s campus may RSVP here on MyUMBC: http://my.umbc.edu/groups/promise/events/10483.

Students from UMB, UMCP, or other campuses may RSVP as a reply/comment to this post.

Please RSVP so that we can order enough food. As with any PROMISE activity, you are welcome to bring friends and family with you.

Have you missed connecting with other students from PROMISE? Are the great feelings from the PROMISE Summer Success Institute at the Sheraton in Columbia, and the Fall Harvest Dinner at College Park wearing thin from needing more interaction? Then, come on out to the PROMISE Spring Opening Meeting at UMBC and get rejuvenated.

Friday, 2/17/12 
4:30-6 PM

Public Policy, Room 206

Dinner will be served.

Facilitator: Dr. Renetta Tull

Learn about upcoming activities that support graduate students, hear about themes that contribute to success of diverse graduate students from the book chapter: “Successful PhD Pathways to Advanced STEM Careers for Black Women” in the Diversity in Higher Education book series (featuring alumni from PROMISE at UMBC, UMCP, and UMB), authors: Dr. Janet Rutledge (UMBC Dean of the Graduate School), Dr. Wendy Carter-Veale (PROMISE Dissertation Coach), and Dr. Renetta Tull (UMBC Assistant Dean for Graduate Student Development and Director of PROMISE.)

We’ll also give you a glimpse of the upcoming 10th anniversary of the PROMISE Summer Success Institute.  Come and hear updates on funding and jobs from our PROMISE and Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) career partners, and hear an update from the “Why Smart People Suffer from the Imposter Syndrome” webinar.  (You can also read the article on “The Imposter Syndrome and How to Avoid it” in the magazine for theSociety of Hispanic Professional Engineers.)

Come and meet other graduate students from diverse backgrounds!

To read more about PROMISE: Maryland’s AGEP, visit the PROMISE AGEP website, learn more about the national AGEP, and see publications that discuss PROMISE and the signature programs. PROMISE is one of 22 AGEP alliances in the U.S. and is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. 

——————————-

Students from UMBC’s campus may RSVP here on MyUMBC: http://my.umbc.edu/groups/promise/events/10483.

Students from UMB, UMCP, or other campuses may RSVP as a reply/comment to this post.

Please RSVP so that we can order enough food. As with any PROMISE activity, you are welcome to bring friends and family with you.

This story and photo is taken from the Wall Street Journal. It's a great website, especially when they actually let non-subscribers read the articles.

Some time ago, UsDemoCrazy posted a heartwarming piece about empowerment of women in Saudi Arabian retail. This is something of a follow-up to that, with a bit more detail.

See, aside from the fact it's an oppressive, monarchistic muslim theocracy, Saudi Arabia does have have something in common with the United States. Yes, it can feel our pain. Like, right now, it's struggling with immigrants stealing jobs from Saudi natives. Course, in Saudi Arabia, they're called expatriates, and they aren't illegal, but, in fact, the Saudi Government used to seek them out.

So what went wrong? As one Saudi puts it in the article, the private sector in that country became addicted to "cheap foreign labor" over the course of the last 30 years, when there was a surplus of jobs and a shortage of workers in the Public Sector. As a result, the Saudi Government was able to fill all its government jobs with Saudi nationals. Saudis became used to "cushy jobs" and elevated wages.

Sound Familiar?

Well, these days, half of Saudi Arabia's native population is under 18, and it has one of the highest youth unemployment rates in the developed world! Why? many of these young saudis expect to be like their parents... and they wait for that cushy government job to open up. Also, retailers will refuse to hire them, because foriegn labor has pushed down wage rates.

Sound Familiar?

In fact, over 90% of private sector jobs in Saudi Arabia are held by expatriates. Responding to this, the Saudi Government has now instituted a program to pressure private businesses from hiring Saudis. This has become especially important in light of recent developments, when nearly 7,000 Saudi Lingerie shops were forced to lay off mostly male expatriate workers and hire females. In many of these cases, male expatriates were laid off and replaced with Saudi females. Ironically, in some cases, they earn more money than the male expatriates did, giving you some idea of the disparity between what expatriates and nationals are paid.

Anyway, it's a great story. Read it.

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• Black Rocket Productions -- Instructors/Assistant Instructors -- ID# 9249171
• YMCA of Central Maryland -- Sports Instructors (668-221) -- ID# 9249203
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UMBC Cyber Defense Lab Research Meeting

Using data visualization techniques to support digital forensics

Tim Leschke

11:00am-12:15pm, Friday, Feb 3, 2012
ITE Room 228

Digital forensic examiners explore large datasets in search of evidence of a crime. In order to keep pace with the growing amount of data that is subject to a forensic examination, digital forensic examiners need to be more selective about the data they examine. One way to be selective about data is to focus attention at data that has changed-over-time. We present Change-Link, a data exploration tool which allows the user to see directories that have changed within an operating system. Our novel contributions are 1) the development of a segmented-box-and-whisker icon for representing change to individual directories, and 2) the first data visualization tool developed specifically for the domain of digital forensic data. We show that by using Change-Link to view change to a directory-tree structure, digital forensic examiners can enhance their ability to perform forensic examinations.

Tim Leschke is a Ph.D. student in the Computer Science program at UMBC.

Host: Professor Alan Sherman