A project management career is a wise choice for today’s fast-paced industries. Program and project management positions ensure that complex projects are executed efficiently and align with an organization’s strategic goals. 

In a recent episode of the UMBC Mic’d Up podcast, Karanveer Anand, a Technical Program Manager at Google, shared his experiences and insights into these fields. He highlighted the intricacies of these roles, the challenges involved, and the skills needed to succeed.

Welcome to the Fall semester! After what was hopefully a relaxing and perhaps even productive summer, we are coming back to campus to take classes and get reconnected with friends and student organizations.

Additionally, you may be hoping to get hired this semester. Due to a variety of reasons, perhaps the only jobs you can apply to are the ones that are on-campus. You may be experiencing challenges trying to locate on-campus employment, asking yourself where can you find these jobs, and how can you land one sooner rather than later?

At the Career Center, we totally understand and are here to help! Here are a few tips to get you started.

1. Go to Handshake. Handshake is the one-stop shop for students to find employment. By adjusting the filters in your search parameters to on-campus positions, you’ll be able to find new openings as they are posted and be able to apply as soon as possible. Just remember — not all campus jobs are posted on Handshake, so you may need to go beyond the platform.
2. Build Your Network. Whether you like it or not, your network can help tremendously when it comes to the job market. By knowing students who are working in your desired positions, you may be able to get a solid referral. By connecting with faculty members and expressing interest in their work, you might be invited to join their lab. Find opportunities such as these to get insider information on open positions.
3. Attend Career Events. Events hosted by the Career Center may lead you to a job position that’s a good fit! By becoming active on-campus and showing up to events regularly, you will increase your visibility and may become top of mind for employers when a job opening comes up.
4. Utilize Online Resources. The Career Center’s website is full of helpful resources to give you the tools that you need to find a position. In particular, we have an entire section on our website dedicated to help you find an internship or job. Take advantage of what our website has to offer, and search our pages for the latest information.
5. Get Personalized Support. If you need 1:1 support or guidance through this process, you can schedule an appointment with the Career Center. Our staff are more than happy to help you discover the best path in terms of finding an on-campus job.

We hope that you will use some or all of these tips to find the perfect on-campus job for you. Best of luck with your search!

It is open enrollment time for the university health insurance plan: Aetna Student Health.  

It is easy to enroll.  All you need to do is contact Retriever Integrated Health's email at: rih@umbc.edu or contact the Insurance Office for RIH at: 410-455-8091.  

RIH will become your primary doctor and the copay for an office visit is only $10.00. Aetna Student Health will pay your full balance due.  Also, if you have the university health plan you can add a dental plan to your coverage.  All you have to do once you are enrolled in Aetna Student Health you can go to the UMBC page on the Aetna Student Health website, go to the benefits link and click on the link for the dental plan to enroll.

Plus, one of the great benefits is that students who have Aetna Student Health can receive a discount on acupuncture and massage.  The copay for these services is $20.00 for an hour appointment.

Open enrollment starts now and ends on October 1.  However, any students who lose their insurance or turn 26 after that date can still contact the Insurance Office to be enrolled.

The Insurance Office at Retriever Integrated Health is here to answer any questions you may have about the university health insurance plan!  You can contact the Insurance Office at:  410-455-8091 or 410-455-1557.

The latest release of Ultra enhancements comes two weeks into the fall 24 semester, bringing formative knowledge checks to Ultra Documents, a redesigned course landing page, and a new learner engagement tool called AI Conversations. 

In the August release, the Ultra Document saw significant improvements to support robust flexible layouts that are mobile friendly and responsible. With this update, instructors can now create formative knowledge checks to enhance the learning experience, allowing students to engage with content and receive immediate feedback. Instructors can provide correct/incorrect feedback and access simple metrics about attempts. Knowledge checks are formative and do not pass to the gradebook at this time.

Image 1: Example of knowledge check question (animated)

As previously announced, Anthology will update the Ultra course landing page to focus content on the left and course actions on the right. Additionally, it will be easier to distinguish between content containers (e.g., folders, learning modules, other content types) to help improve course navigation for all users. Moreover, functional improvements with this redesign provide clearer options to create content throughout the course. 

Image 2: Comparison of old Ultra course page (left) and new Ultra course page (right)

The AI Conversation is a new engagement tool guided by AI, encouraging students explore their thoughts on an assigned topic. Currently available as a Socratic questioning exercise, the AI Conversation's persona is configured by the instructor (name, avatar, and personality trait) with options to test and preview for reliability. Additionally, a customizable reflection question allows students to share their thoughts on the activity and, if prompted by the reflection and instructor, lets them flag any bias or errors from the AI as part of Anthology’s Trustworthy AI Approach. On submission, the instructor can review the AI conversation transcript and the student's reflection. Future updates to this engagement activity in late FA2024 will include roleplaying and debate options.

Image 3: Example of student participating in an AI Conversation

Finally, a new activity log is available to instructors in the Ultra course, helping with decisions in academic disputes and aiding in troubleshooting. Events include course access, assessment start/save/submitted, discussion access/save/edit/reply, document access, LTI (tool) access, and journal access. The Activity log can be filtered by event type and can look to the past 140 days.

Additional updates for September include:  

• Instructors will find a new gradebook Overview tab to improve task orientation and grading efficiency.  This tab contains two sections: Needs Grading and Needs Posting.
• To help instructors stay on top of their grading workload, there will be a number in the Gradebook tab to indicate when there are new submissions to grade. 
• Ultra introduces a new student-facing submission review page for assignments that makes all instructor feedback on a submission more visible, even if the assignment is hidden by a release condition.
• The Wiris engine and equation editor is updated to improve the rendering of subscript and superscript formulas, providing a better experience for STEM courses.
• Ultra added a new option to help instructors remove submissions from the grading workflow without having to delete them. When grading a student, you can now select Exclude Attempt to remove it from the Needs Grading workflow.
• When enabled, the Automatic Zeros gradebook setting gives a zero score to students who haven’t made a submission by the due date. To help instructors find and grade late assessment submissions, they are now indicated as Needs Grading on the Grades and Gradable Items gradebook pages.  

Faculty should see the latest updates in their Ultra courses around September 5-6, 2024. The next update to our Ultra test environment will take place on September 10, 2024; release notes are posted to the What's New in Ultra that same week. Faculty who are interested in test driving new features before they are released to production should open an RT ticket to request early access. Please watch the FAQs, including the What's New with Ultra page, and myUMBC for additional information about Ultra.

The Data Science Scholars Program (DSS) is partnering with the Center for Social Science Scholarship (CS3) and The Center for Women in Technology (CWIT) in Fall 2024.

Students admitted to the program will work as teaching fellows (TFs) and peer mentors. They will also network with UC Berkeley data science students, attend special events, and be mentored by faculty.

The DSS program welcomes undergraduate scholars from multiple disciplines, including the social sciences, looking at all aspects of data and its impact on society. This year scholars will have the opportunity to be teaching fellows or research fellows. Scholars will have an opportunity to work on research projects in Climate Science, Deep fake detection, data storytelling, learning analytics and other data science related projects. For some projects look at these websites,https://www.umces.edu/chesapeake-global-collaboratory, https://iharp.umbc.edu/, https://mdata.umbc.edu/deep-fake-detection/

• COIET Students please reference the CWIT flyer for additional details.
• Humanities students please reference the CS3 flyer for additional details. 

Interested students should complete the Google submission form,
https://forms.gle/gKLakVQMEbWPHUtt6 , by Sept 6, 2024.

If you have any questions, please email iHARP@UMBC.edu.