Hi everyone,
I am a PhD student looking for a private bedroom near UMBC from 1st July. I am clean, responsible, quiet, and respectful of shared spaces. I would prefer a neat and peaceful place, ideally close to UMBC or near the UMBC shuttle/bus stop.

Please message me at 6673698784 if you have any availability or know of any leads. Thank you!

We are excited to announce the next phase of My WorkView in PeopleSoft HR: the Alternate Work Arrangements (AWA) Portal!

As part of UMBC’s ongoing commitment to workplace flexibility, collaboration, and service excellence, eligible employees can now formally request, update, and route their telework or remote work schedules entirely online.

What’s New?

The new AWA Portal within My WorkView allows eligible individuals (including exempt staff, non-exempt non-bargaining staff, Contingent I and II staff, and graduate assistants) to:

• Electronically submit hybrid telework, compressed schedule or fully remote work requests.

• Specify your requested schedule and number of off-campus days including an as needed option. 

• Route requests directly to your supervisor and department leadership for seamless digital approval.

• Securely upload required program documentation.

• Monitor the status of your AWA request. 

Important Requirement Before You Apply

To utilize the portal and submit a formal request, you must first complete the required AWA Training Session. You will be required to upload your training completion certificate to finalize your submission in PeopleSoft.

• Did you attend the training but haven’t received your certificate yet? Please hold off on submitting your portal request and reach out to awasupport@umbc.edu for assistance.

If you have not yet attended AWA Training you should complete the asynchronous training course on Blackboard. The course is accessible under the 'Organizations' tab and save your certificate of completion for uploading in PeopleSoft.

How to Access It

1. Log into PeopleSoft HR via myUMBC, or directly at: https://my.umbc.edu/go/peoplesoft-hr

2. Click on the My WorkView tile on your homepage.

3. Select Alternate Work Arrangements from the left-hand navigation menu to open the request form.

Note: If you do not see the updated menu options immediately, please clear your browser cache and cookies. Instructions can be found here:https://clear-my-cache.com/detect.html. For the best experience, we recommend completing this form on a desktop or laptop computer.

Step-by-Step Instructions

Need help navigating the new screens or figuring out where to upload your certificate? We’ve got you covered. Review our quick, Request and Approval Guide Campus Guide on the HRSTM AWA Webpage.

Who should I contact for support?

• For questions regarding policy eligibility, scheduling options, or missing training certificates, please email awasupport@umbc.edu.

• Visit the AWA webpage on HRSTM’s Website to access the slide deck from the live trainings andother pertinent resources.

Hi,

People at UMBC had the opportunity to share their stories and offer feedback on the Division of Institutional Equity’s draft framework for inclusive excellence at UMBC, which was hosted across campus last semester. 

If you did not have a chance to participate, please take some time to review the draft framework and offer feedback by completing this form by next Friday, June 5.

Happy Summer!

Irina and Shuling

The Division of Institutional Equity has hosted a number of UMBC Talks forums at which participants have had the opportunity to share their stories, pool their wisdom, and offer feedback on their draft framework for inclusive excellence at UMBC.

If you did not have a chance to participate in the UMBC Talks forums, you have another chance to share your feedback! Please take some time to review the draft framework and offer feedback by completing this form. Please complete it by next Friday, June 5!

Hi everyone,

I'm writing to give everyone an update regarding the UMBC HPCF and other Research Computing projects currently undertaken by DoIT. 

Summary

• Critical Vulnerabilities Patched

• Users Can Configure Email Notifications from Slurm

• Coming Soon: “develop” Partition on chip

• Performance Improvements on RRStor

• ada Volumes Being Sunset by June 30

• Reminder: chip Maintenance Period on June 2nd

Critical Vulnerabilities Patched

In May, a few major vulnerabilities were disclosed that affected all major Linux distributions. In short, these flaws could allow a standard user to improperly gain full administrative control of a system. Our team quickly installed the necessary security patches and protective mitigations to prevent malicious users from taking advantage of these exploits.

Users Can Configure Email Notifications from Slurm

Users can now supply additional sbatch/srun/salloc flags to their normal slurm scripts or commands to instruct slurm to send notification emails to specified email addresses. These notifications can trigger based on job status and other slurm allocation metrics, e.g., Job Start/End or Job 90% through timelimit. Please see the “--mail-type” and “--mail-user” flags in the “man” pages for these slurm commands for more information. 

Coming Soon: “develop” Partition on chip

In an effort to better support the development and testing of slurm jobs on chip, we will be adding a new “develop” partition. This dedicated partition is specifically designed for users who need to test code interactively, allowing users to quickly check if changes worked without waiting in the main job queues. Jobs running on this partition will have a short time limit (up to 90 minutes) to keep queue times low and maximize availability for rapid troubleshooting.

We aim to make this available following the chip maintenance period on June 2nd.

Performance Improvements on RRStor

This past month, the team has been fine-tuning the RRStor ceph storage cluster behind the scenes to make it faster, more stable, and self-healing. In particular, we have automated how the system handles disconnected users to prevent file lockups, and improved our early-warning monitoring to catch hardware issues before they cause issues that could lead to widespread slowdowns.

For more information, check out this myUMBC post: Storage System Performance Update.

If you have noticed performance changes that may be related to storage, please submit a descriptive RT ticket, and DoIT Research Computing Staff will work with you to investigate and suggest ways to speed-up your workflows.

ada Volumes Being Sunset by June 30

Given the age of the ada NFS sever, the 170TB spread across 42 volumes will be migrated to RRStor in careful coordination with those volume owners. Please keep an eye out for emails from DoIT Research Computing Staff to kick-off this process ahead of June 30.

Reminder: chip Maintenance Period on June 2nd

This is a reminder that on Tuesday June 2nd, chip will be inaccessible during business hours (ET) to undergo maintenance. Refer to this post for more information: 20260602 Downtime Announcement

Publications
If you have any publications, presentations, theses, or other works that made use of the campus cluster, please submit an RT Ticket with bibliographic information so that we can accurately reflect this work in our records and on the HPCF Website. 

Need Help?
As always, please communicate any issues/questions to the Research Computing RT Queue (hpcf.umbc.edu > User Support > Request Help).

--
Gregory Ballantine
HPC Specialist
UMBC DoIT

Current external funding opportunities for Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences, with deadlines from June through December 2026, are available here: https://mailchi.mp/umbc/funding-opportunities-humanities-humanistic-social-sciences-summer-fall-2026?e=[UNIQID]

CARAT (Creative Achievement and Research Administration Team) assists CAHSS faculty with research development and pre- and post-award services. CARAT offers a range of support activities for faculty seeking extramural funding, including drop-in sessions, individual consultations, workshops, and co-sponsored sessions. Check our website and myUMBC group for upcoming activities.

Faculty seeking to develop extramural grants and fellowships should submit a CARAT Consultation Request form for research development support, or a CARAT Proposal Development Request form for help in preparing and routing an application for a known opportunity. To request a consultation or to begin a proposal, visit our pre-award assistance webpage (you must be logged-in to myUMBC to complete CARAT request forms). The lead time for fellowship proposal development is 2-3 business weeks, and at minimum 4 business weeks for grant proposal development. CARAT reserves the right to decline proposal requests that do not include adequate lead time. External grant and fellowship applications must be routed for university approval in either UMBC's Kuali system or through the CAHSS internal routing form before submission. Plan additional time (5-7 business days) for routing.

Rachel Brubaker, CARAT’s Associate Director for Research Development, retires on June 1, 2026. Contact CARAT Director Dr. Marc Ruppel (mruppel@umbc.edu) with questions about CARAT’s pre-award services. Consult with your department chair or program director before beginning any funding application!

PI Eligibility: UMBC uses Kuali, a cloud-based research administration tool, for proposals and awards. UMBC faculty, who are identified as a Principal Investigator (PI), Co-Investigator, or Key Person on proposals and awards, must obtain and then maintain PI eligibility in order to develop external funding proposals and receive awards at UMBC. This includes all faculty on the tenure track. Teaching Professors may also become PI Eligible through an exception process. Becoming PI Eligible involves completing the following trainings in CITI: Principal Investigator Research Administration Training and Education (PIRATE), and the Research Security Combined Module, as well submitting a PI Eligibility request form via DocuSign (after trainings are completed). PI applicants must also obtain PeopleSoft Finance and PAW Access. Both CITI trainings are required to apply for any external funding, including from non-federal sponsors. NOTE: Faculty will need to re-take and renew their PIRATE certification three years from the date of completion.

Visit CARAT's website for FAQs on proposals and research policies and procedures at UMBC: https://carat.umbc.edu/support-for-pis/faqs/.

Hailey Turney, M.A. ’21, first came to UMBC as a student pursuing an academic passion in the text, technologies, and literature program. She connected right away with faculty and other community members. Now, as an undergraduate academic advisor in the College of Engineering and Information Technology and an instructor teaching introductory English and university orientation classes, she helps current UMBC connect and find their own path, too. 

Hailey shares what she loves about UMBC and her advising job. Take it away, Hailey!

Q: Tell us about yourself. 

A: I am a COEIT academic advisor. I mostly work with mechanical engineering students now. I also teach a section of ENGL 100 each semester and UNIV 101 in the fall semesters. I love being able to help students and engage in my community, so advising and teaching feels like a great way to reach students on different levels. 

When I was an undergrad, I did not have the best advising experience, so being able to make a difference as an advisor now feels like an interesting, but great, twist of fate. I also like to play Volo soccer in Baltimore and do Dog’s Day Out at BARCS outside of work!

Q: Who are some of the people at UMBC who have most supported you?

A: My amazing boss Emily Abrams-Stephens is spectacular. She supports me and my fellow advisors every day. She is always advocating for us and showing us how much she cares everyday. Working with her, I never doubt that I am valued here. She always listens to our ideas and is a fantastic (and popular) morning chat partner.

I had a previous job that weighed on me every minute of the day—even outside of work. I missed the activities I loved to do because of it. At UMBC, I have a trusting team—my boss and my fellow advisors—that supports me. If I am ever away, I know my students will be taken care of by my colleagues. The trust I have in my team is something I will never be able to replace. The most remarkable thing about UMBC is the people.

Q: What’s the one thing you’d want someone who hasn’t joined the UMBC community to know about the support you find here?

A: There will always be someone in your corner. I did my master’s here and it was the first time I immediately felt seen in my academic career. When I came to work here, I immediately felt wanted and supported. There are so many resources available to the UMBC community and there is always someone there to help you find them. As an advisor, it is now my job and honor to help students find those resources and their own supporting community.

Q: What part of your job do you enjoy the most and why?

A: I love interacting with students and helping them find their way. Being that person that they can turn to when they don’t know where to go is the most important part of our job. We want students to succeed and feel secure in their place here at UMBC.

Q: What brought you to UMBC in the first place? 

A: I came to UMBC because I wanted to expand my knowledge on a topic I was passionate about. The faculty in the English department had so many interesting areas of study that I knew I would be well-supported in finding my own. After meeting with some faculty members for a graduate assistantship, I felt hopeful that this would be an interactive community. The faculty responded to my emails right away, were interested in what I had to say, and were encouraging from the beginning. I came for the academics and stayed for the community. This continued as I found a job here at UMBC as well—I was hesitant to leave. 

Q: What would you tell someone who is considering a career at UMBC?

A: You will find a great community here. You will also find ways to continue to improve and learn no matter where you end up.

* * * * *

UMBC’s greatest strength is its people. When people meet Retrievers and hear about the passion they bring, the relationships they create, the ways they support each other, and the commitment they have to inclusive excellence, they truly get a sense of our community. That’s what “Meet a Retriever” is all about.

Learn more about how UMBC can help you achieve your goals.

UMBC has established a new M.S. graduate program in Artificial Intelligence in the CSEE Department. Designed for students seeking to go beyond a general computing degree, the program offers a focused, rigorous pathway into AI research, development, and deployment, equipping graduates to drive innovation across industry, government, and academia. Read more about the new AI MA program here.

This program is now enrolling for the fall 2026 semester! Apply by August 1 here.

As many of you already know, today marks the last day of UMBC employment for CAHSS's longtime research development anchor and lifelong arts & humanities advocate, Associate Director of CARAT Rachel Brubaker. 

Over the course of Rachel's nearly 30 years at UMBC, she has helped faculty (and the college) to shape, hone, and find funding for their research in ways that were both fundamental to their career and equally fundamental to the stature and standing of CAHSS as a whole.

Put simply, Rachel knows the funding landscape and how to navigate it better than anyone I've ever worked with. 

Her work was often quiet: collating and curating targeted funding opportunities for faculty, consulting with PIs to strategize and nudge their project ideas along (or slow them down if they needed more thought!), helping projects to create programming, content, and educational goals, scaffolding funding across a research arc rather than just in a single project, and navigating the many internal processes and protocols so that faculty didn't need to do so themselves. 

I honestly could spend another 1000 words recounting her work here, but I think that a much simpler summation captures her career far better than the specifics do:

Rachel believed that the work of CAHSS faculty was of R1 stature long before the university itself received that designation. 

She believed that the depth and breadth of the work that is done by faculty here was essential not only to the university, but to the larger fields and communities they serve.

And, most vitally, she believed in the critical need to foster and elevate the arts and humanities in everything we do here at UMBC (and in this country), arguing throughout her career that we should proudy place the research and projects done in these fields on equal footing to anything else this university produces. 

We will do everything we can to keep Rachel's work alive here in CARAT but, truthfully, she's one-of-one, and we can only hope to dutifully follow her the path she blazed during her tenure. 

The good news is that these paths have now been paved by her many successes and are simply the ways things are done now in CAHSS. It is and will be impossible to conduct sponsored research here in the college without touching upon some approach or process or strategy that Rachel helped to pioneer. 

On behalf of everyone here in CARAT, we congratulate Rachel on her incredible career and wish her all the best in every single moment of her well-earned retirement. She will be missed!

Thanks for everything, Rachel! Off you go!

Marc & The CARAT Team

===

Rachel can still be reached at her current email address:

rbruba1@umbc.edu

If you've been working with Rachel on a project, or have a question you would normally send her way, please feel free to reach out to me directly at mruppel@umbc.edu. 

Over the past semester David and Ciara hosted a number of UMBC Talks forums at which participants have had the opportunity to share their stories, pool their wisdom, and offer feedback on the Division of Institutional Equity’s draft framework for inclusive excellence at UMBC.

They hope that anyone who did not have a chance to participate in the UMBC Talks forums will take some time to review the draft framework and offer feedback by completing this form by next Friday, June 5?

We appreciate anyone taking the time to lend their voice to this effort.  Each voice is valued and appeciated.