Hi all! This is the voting link to elect our new E-board for 2026-2027! All votes must be submitted by 05/04/26 at 11:59 PM. 

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSf4AE8X5Ghp479EWEAaR1w7RygyZ5nVouzrT2E1IDpUuUktbA/viewform?usp=dialog

Jalon Payton currently works as a freelance stage manager mainly based in the Baltimore/DC area. Towards the end of his time as a student at UMBC, he began working as a stage manager for play readings and workshops with Roundhouse Theatre & Taffety Punk Theatre in DC. Following these workshops, he made his debut at Baltimore Center Stage for the first show of their 2021/22 Season, The Swindlers: A Tru-ish Tall Tale, as a Production Assistant. His recent area credits include 10 Seconds (Imagination Stage, Stage Manager), Is Edward Snowden Single? (Single Carrot Theatre, Stage Manager); The Folks at Home (Baltimore Center Stage - world premiere, Production Assistant); Ken Ludwig’s Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery (Everyman Theatre, Assistant Stage Manager), The High Ground (Arena Stage - world premiere, Assistant Stage Manager). Jalon has experience working out of town as an Assistant Stage Manager at American Players Theatre in Spring Green, Wisconsin for 2 summer seasons (The Brothers Size, A Raisin in the Sun, The Royale, and Anton’s Shorts). In Fall 2023, Jalon will be returning to Arena Stage as an Assistant Stage Manager for the east coast premiere of the new musical, Swept Away.

Jalon was able to create a stable foundation out of his passion and drive for stage management at UMBC, thanks in part to his Stage Management Professor at the time: Samantha Paradis.

“My connection with Baltimore Center Stage began because Sam passed them my information for a position in the spring of 2020. While the show I was supposed to work on was postponed, the connection I had established with them was not forgotten. It led to my first PA position, which then opened up a lot of opportunities for me. Recently, Sam was able to visit APT to see The Royale, and it's a great feeling when your mentor gets to witness your professional work. It’s been really good getting to have conversations with Professors Eve Muson, Susan McCully, and Susan Stroupe (to name just a few) about what I’ve been up to since graduating when I periodically visit UMBC.  Watching friends who were my classmates continue to do new and exciting projects post college has been really inspiring to watch from afar.”

You can keep up with Jalon by following him on Instagram, or learn more at his website.

"After graduating in 2020 and spending a year away from theatre due to the pandemic, in 2021 I moved to NYC to work as an assistant costume designer for opera, drama, and dance at The Juilliard School as part of their Professional Apprentice Program. After my season at Juilliard, I was a freelance design assistant at several regional and off-broadway theatres before starting my MFA in Costume Design at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale.

While my first year at Yale has certainly been challenging, it's also been incredibly rewarding, and I feel that my time at UMBC thoroughly prepared me for both graduate school and the professional world. As a student I loved UMBC's emphasis on professionalism in and outside of the classroom; my experience working on shows like Girls on a Dirt Pile and Gwyneth in conjunction with my classes helped teach me how to be a successful working designer. They also sparked a love for developing new work that has carried over into my career, including being the associate costume designer for At the Wedding, a new play that premiered at Lincoln Center Theater last year.

I received an excellent design education at UMBC, but non-design classes unique to UMBC such as Mods with Susan Stroupe and Capstone with Eric Abele have also been instrumental in helping me build a career, succeed in graduate school, and figure out what kind of theatre artist I want to be. Capstone especially is a class that I benefit from every single day, and my biggest piece of advice to current students would be to really invest in using the resources provided in that class to set yourself up for success after graduation. Even though I graduated into a very uncertain world, Capstone gave me a path to make a way for myself once theatres reopened, and encouraged me to put a lot of thought into who I am and who I want to be not only as an artist and collaborator, but also as a human being."

Learn more about Caroline and her costume design work at carolinetyson.com.

Pro- Bono

Free legal advice for Tenants

Hello Retrievers! Off-Campus Student Services (OCSS) are offering free 30-minute legal consultations for all UMBC students and staff who need legal advice concerning their leases, on May 13 and May 15 from 10:30 am to 12:30 pm!

Please select your in-person/virtual slot by reaching out on: ocss@umbc.edu

What is a tenant?

A tenant is an individual or entity who occupies or possesses land or property owned by another person (the landlord), typically in exchange for rent payments. Tenants are legally recognized through a lease agreement, which outlines their rights, responsibilities, and duration of occupancy. 

• Pro Bono (5).png Flyer 

Hello everyone!! 🎲
Join Quantitative Finance & Analytics for a fun Board Game Night before finals week stress kicks in!

We’ll have games like:
UNO, Jenga, Monopoly, Catan, and Secret Hitler!!

Date: May 5th, 2026
Time: 7:00pm
Location: ilsb 201

We’ll also be kicking things off with elections for our new e-board—so come out, have fun, and get involved!

Don’t miss it!

Greetings CAHSS Graduate students, Faculty, and Staff, 

The Graduate Student Association (GSA) invites you to our upcoming Graduate Student CAHSS Town Hall on April 29th at 12:00 PM in Commons 331. As we navigate the current academic year, your voice is the most critical tool we have for driving policy changes, improving funding structures, and enhancing student well-being. 

This is your direct line to GSA leadership and university administration. Whether you have concerns about stipends, housing, GA/lab culture, or want to hear about upcoming initiatives, we want you in the room. 

The CAHSS graduate senators are committed to bridging the participation gap between our graduate students and the GSA. We want to ensure our CAHSS graduate community is fully aware of-and benefiting from - all available campus opportunities. In preparation for the townhall meeting, we are asking graduate students to complete the CAHSS GSA Participation Survey. Your feedback is very important for helping us understand how GSA can better serve our college.

Additionally, the GSA is currently seeking CAHSS Senators (paid appointment) for the 2026-2027 academic year. If you are interested in representing your peers, or would like to nominate a colleague, please email gsasenatespeaker@umbc.edu (GSA Senate Speaker) and Kneil1@umbc.edu (GSA Elections Chair) for information. 

If you manage a myUMBC group, you've probably noticed some things look a little different lately. We've been working on a big round of improvements to the editor and groups experience, and I wanted to walk you through what changed and why.

There's a lot here, so I'll try to keep it organized.

A Much Better Editor

The most visible change is the editor itself. We replaced the old one with a modern rich-text editor that, hopefully, just gets out of your way.

Paste from Word or Google Docs and it just works. Formatting comes in cleanly without a wall of mystery HTML. This one has been a long time coming.

Images are easier to work with. You can paste, drag-and-drop, or upload images directly into the body of your post. No more hunting for a separate upload button. When you insert an image you'll be prompted for alt text (more on that in a minute).

Paste a YouTube URL and it becomes a player. Drop a YouTube link into the editor and it automatically embeds as a video player. In the notification email that goes out to your group, recipients will see a clickable thumbnail linking to the video instead of a broken embed.

Attachments and tags got some attention too. The interface for attaching files is cleaner, and the tag editor now works like a chip input: type a tag, press Enter to add it, click the x to remove it.

One small but important change: the "Silent" option on the post form has been renamed to "Send Notifications." It's on by default, which is the right behavior for most posts. If you don't want to send a notification, just uncheck it. We made this change because "silent" wasn't exactly self-explanatory.

Preview Before You Publish (and Scheduling!)

Instead of going straight from editing to publishing, there's now a Preview step in between.

On the edit form, you'll choose whether to publish immediately or schedule your post for later. Group admins can schedule up to 30 days in advance. Once you've made that choice, you click Preview before anything goes out.

From the preview screen you can:

• See exactly what your post will look like to readers before it goes live
• Send yourself a test email to see what the notification looks like in your inbox
• Copy a shareable preview link to send to other group admins if you want a second set of eyes before it goes live

Then you confirm the publish or the scheduled time from there.

If your group does a lot of time-sensitive announcements, scheduling should make your life a lot easier.

Alt Text is Now Required

We're making a serious push on accessibility, and one concrete change is that alt text is now required on all images before you can publish. If you've got images without alt text, the Publish button will stay disabled until you fix them.

When you insert an image you'll be prompted right then. If the image is purely decorative, you can check "decorative" and move on. Otherwise a short description goes a long way for people using screen readers.

You may notice other accessibility-related changes around myUMBC as we continue this work. We do our best to make sure nothing breaks along the way, but if something feels off please don't hesitate to reach out to me or the team.

Archive Your Content

Groups can now archive posts and events rather than choosing between leaving old content in the feed or deleting it forever.

Each post and event now has an Archive button. Archiving moves that item out of the main listing into a separate archived view. On your Posts tab, there's a button on the right side that says "View Archived Posts" to toggle between active and archived content.

This is especially useful for groups targeting students with announcements. Old posts that aren't relevant to new visitors can be tucked away without losing them permanently.

If you want to do a bulk cleanup, say archive everything before a certain date, submit a ticket and our team will take care of it.

A Few More Things

Events: In-Person, Virtual, or Hybrid. When creating an event you now explicitly choose the format, and the form shows or hides relevant fields based on what you pick. No more filling in a location for a fully virtual event.

Subscription tag filtering. If your group subscribes to another group's content, you can now limit that subscription to specific tags so only the content you care about comes through.

Group inactivity process. After eight months of inactivity, your group will start receiving emails letting you know. You'll have the option to extend the group for four more months, or choose to archive or delete it. Archiving sets the group to read-only so people can still see past content but no new posts can be made. Deleting removes the group itself but keeps individual posts intact since we hold onto public content for the historical record.

My Events page. Go to the Events section in the left nav and choose My Events to see upcoming events you're signed up for, plus upcoming events from the groups you belong to.

Personal posts are now called Messages. For groups that use them, you'll see the updated label.

Questions?

If something isn't working right or you have questions about any of this, reach out to our team and we'll be happy to help.

Are you, or do you know someone who is a part of the Early Childhood community and ready to drive meaningful change in Maryland?The Maryland Early Childhood Leadership Program (MECLP) is officially seeking applicants for its next transformative cohort.

The MECLP Experience

Strengthen your leadership skills and commitment to equity through this yearlong, graduate-level hybrid course designed for ECE change-makers. Join a statewide network of leaders and receive personalized coaching to drive meaningful change for Maryland's children and families.

Important Dates

Don't miss the chance to learn more or submit your application:

• Virtual Info Session 1: May 8 @ 10:00 AM 
• Virtual Info Session 2: May 27 @ 7:00 PM 
• Application Deadline: June 24, 2026

Ready to Lead?

Apply Today Here For session links, email marloeli@umbc.edu or visit umbc.meclp.edu for more details.

Please find the flyer attached for more details!!

The Governor's Office of Crime Prevention and Policy (GOCPP) seeks candidates for the Fall 2026 internship program. 

GOCPP is seeking talented students with an interest in criminal justice and public service.

GOCPP is Maryland's one-stop shop for resources to improve public safety.

Main Purpose of Job: Individuals will experience the inner workings of state government from the vantage point of each division within the office. Individuals can expect to assist the office in making data-driven and policy-driven decisions and utilizing evidence-based practices to create a safer Maryland. This program also provides an opportunity to network with professionals throughout state and local government agencies, corrections, law enforcement, and nonprofit organizations, all of whom will support professional growth and career interests.

Learned outcomes or skills learned throughout this program include developing work habits and attitudes necessary for career success; receiving informal feedback and mentoring from their supervisor; developing communication, interpersonal, and other critical skills necessary for success in the workforce; and building a record of professional work experience in the public sector.

Potential Program Placements: 

·        Maryland Criminal Intelligence Network (MCIN)

·        Audits

·        Criminal Injuries Compensation Board (CICB)

·        Data and Research

·        Victim Services

·        Grants

A successful candidate will be enrolled in criminal justice, social sciences, research, business, or a related program.

Be a Junior or higher standing (i.e., a minimum of 60 credit hours obtained).

Possess a demonstrated interest in criminal justice-related subjects.

Have a strong desire to engage and learn about the criminal justice system and public safety. Possess excellent written, oral, and interpersonal communication skills.

Be detail-oriented and have strong organizational skills.

Additional Program Information: This is an unpaid opportunity; therefore, students must be eligible to receive school credit (or an equivalent) from their university.

Program Dates: September 2nd, 2026 through December 15th, 2026.

Up to 16 hours per week. Most positions are located at 100 Community Place, Crownsville, MD 21032, however the CICB position is located at 6776 Reisterstown Rd #206, Baltimore, MD 21215.

Both require at a minimum one in-office day per week, with the Crownsville location having preferred in-office days on Wednesdays, whereas the Baltimore location has a preference for Tuesdays or Thursdays.

For more information, visit this website

Please reach out to melissa.bitting@maryland.gov or dlinfo_goccp@maryland.gov if you have any questions or need assistance.

Relationship skills can make the difference between a strong and a weak professional school application. Adam Morris, Assistant Director, Internships and Employment, Career Center joins Melissa Huselton, Health Professions Advisor, to talk about how to make professional connections, build relationships, and make a good impression in professional environments.

Send your questions to us in advance here!

Original Post & RSVP Link can be found HERE. 

This event is taking place TODAY, 4/29 from 12-1PM in TLC (UC 115).