For more than a decade, Rita Choula was the primary caregiver for her late mother who lived with frontotemporal degeneration (FTD), a lesser known form of early onset dementia that typically affects people under the age of 60.

“My mother started saying things like ‘I don’t feel like myself. I feel like I’m losing my mind.’ She used to be someone that was really engaged and outgoing and she started to pull back a bit. She used to be very empathetic, very people-loving, and showed a lot of concern, and it reached a point where that empathy went straight out the window,” recalls Choula ’95, information systems management, M.A. ’16, aging services.

The process of learning what was affecting her mother, who passed away in October 2020, was a long and challenging one for Choula and her family. That’s why in her current role as the senior director of caregiving at the AARP Public Policy Institute, Choula advances equitable, culturally responsive policies and practices by elevating the unique nature of each caregiving experience.

After four years of misdiagnoses and cycling through several neurologists and medical practitioners, Choula’s mother, at age 60, was finally diagnosed with behavioral variant FTD, a subtype of early onset dementia that doesn’t specifically impact memory, but instead causes personality changes, apathy, and a progressive decline in socially appropriate behavior, judgment, self-control, and empathy. 

“It was a true battle to determine her diagnosis. The lack of an early diagnosis left me bitter because it took away a lot of opportunities for us to just be with her,” says Choula. “So much of our journey was me figuring it out and having to educate professionals on it.”

Developing as a leader in aging services

But how did she go from a frustrated family caregiver to a leader in the aging studies field?

Nearly 20 years after receiving her undergraduate degree, Choula returned to UMBC to continue her academic journey at the Erickson School of Aging while in the throes of caring for mother. Her caregiving experience encouraged her to learn more about how to more adequately and holistically care for aging adults and the caregivers that supported them, like herself. 

“The program was shaped in a way that allowed a working caregiver and mother to be able to pursue her dreams of getting a degree, while still helping me navigate a really difficult time in my life,” says Choula. 

Becoming a critical thinker

In the 1990s, UMBC was one of Choula’s top university choices, stemming from the keynote speech delivered at her high school graduation by none other than UMBC’s then-president, Freeman A. Hrabowski, III.

“Hearing this educated Black man speaking about the importance of education and quoting Langston Hughes’ ‘A Dream Deferred’ made me say ‘[UMBC] is where I want to go.”

Choula, who hails from Suitland, Maryland, was interested in information systems management because of UMBC’s strong computer science programs. She found value in coupling her major with a minor in Africana Studies. Her educational experience helped her to “broaden how I saw myself as a Black woman in this world,” Choula shares. 

Choula cites professors emeritus Acklyn Lynch and the late Miriam Decosta-Willis as mentors who helped expose her to many Black scholars and thinkers across the African diaspora. 

“I was challenged across my courses to critically think about what we were learning, to ask those difficult questions, and to work together as a student body on many different issues to push forward change.”

A personal touch

When Choula returned to earn her degree in the Erickson School, she says the professors imparted much more than academic knowledge—they also assisted her in her personal caregiving experience, especially when it came time to transitioning her mother into living at a nursing home facility. “I went to several of my professors and asked how I should navigate this. They picked up the phone to make calls to care facilities on my behalf—it impacted me tremendously and taught me the importance of seeing a student as a whole person.”

Choula’s experience as a Retriever laid the foundation for the work that she does in support of family caregivers. She specifically remembers a class with Joseph DeMattos, president of the Health Facilities Association of Maryland— the state’s largest and oldest long-term care association. Choula noted how DeMattos’ guidance on leadership helped to inform her current career pursuits. “DeMattos taught me how to position myself as a leader, the different types of leadership styles, and what type of impact I want to have not just on my work but on the people who I’m leading,” says Choula.

Choula applies all that she’s learned at UMBC to bring together policy, research, and practice—the three critical areas of aging services. With her expertise, she works to bridge the three areas, centering on identifying and supporting the needs of diverse family caregivers across ethnicities, cultures, and generations.

“I learned so much about myself as a UMBC student. My experience taught me to take on issues from a place of critical thinking and ensure that we center the needs of people while working with them to affect change and impact.”

Got questions for your CNMS Advising team?

Christine Powers, CNMS Assistant Director for Student Success, and Emma Barnaby, CNMS Student Success Coach, will be in the above WebEx room from 12-1 PM on Wednesday, June 14 to help you find all the answers you need! We can assist with anything from questions from incoming first-year or transfer students to how to have a successful summer as an upper-year student.

Please note that this will be a group session - if you would like to speak to a CNMS advisor one-on-one, please email CNMSAdvising@umbc.edu to make an appointment.

WebEx link: https://umbc.webex.com/meet/ebarnaby

In spring 2022, UMBC softball swept all three tournament games to win their third America East championship. The Retrievers held their opponents scoreless, becoming the first team in conference history to achieve this milestone. And no one cheered louder for their success than Jamie Gurganus, faculty in engineering and computing education and mechanical engineering. Decked out in softball gear (and now with a championship ring necklace gifted from the team engraved with “Prof. G”), Gurganus ’04, M.S. ’11, Ph.D. ’20, mechanical engineering, ended her inaugural semester as honorary faculty coach to the record-breaking team on a high note. (UMBC Softball would go on to nab a fourth consecutive America East championship in 2023.)

But beyond cheering on their successful teams, how do honorary faculty coaches “coach” their teams? Enter Adriana Mason, associate athletic director for academics, who originally envisioned the role of “faculty liaison honorary coaches” lending their expertise to UMBC’s 17 Division 1 teams—maybe not moving magnets around a tactics board and giving game instructions but providing another listening ear and being a loud member of the cheering section.

“The goal is to foster and strengthen the relationships between athletics and academics. Sometimes there can be a disconnect, so we really wanted to try to build that bridge,” explains Mason, who initiated this program alongside Athletic Director Brian Barrio.

Since spring 2022, each UMBC athletic program has had its very own faculty coach. While “coach” may be in the title, squad selection, tactics, and practice plans are still in the hands of professionals. 

When she met the softball team, Gurganus (known as “Prof. G” to many) made it a point to ask each team member. “‘Who are you? Tell me about your major.’ I blocked out time to figure out who every single person was.”

“You have to be the initiator because sometimes they don’t know how to approach you,” says Gurganus. “I came down wearing a softball shirt, and I’m like ‘I’m one of you.’” 

“When we were assigned her, I thought it’d be like the university saying, ‘Hey, professor, you have to be the honorary coach.’ But when she’s coming in so often and actually talking to us, and complimenting us, we can tell she actually wants to be here,” says first-year softball player Mikayla Bryant, chemical engineering.

 It’s not only about the winning moments—Gurganus is no fair weather fan. During a recent tough moment for the team, “she showed up,” shares Bryant. “It wasn’t like she was forced to be there, but she had some words of advice for us and that was really nice. At that moment everyone was like, ‘Wow, she’s really here for us.’”

Coaches have also witnessed the benefits of the initiative. “We have several students who have a close relationship with her and, more as a mentor or a sounding board for different things going on in their own lives,” says UMBC softball Head Coach Chris Kuhlmeyer, who has led the team to four consecutive championships.

Honorary faculty coaches have their own reasons for wanting to participate in the initiative. 

“Honestly, there are research centers that if I wanted to do pure research, I could go do that,” explains Jeff Leips, honorary coach of the UMBC swim and dive team and biological sciences professor. “But when I’m sitting here alone in my office thinking about science, and then I go talk to the team, that’s a great break.”

For Leips, the chance to get out of his office and “doing what I can to promote learning in whatever environment that I can,” is what taking on this role has been all about.

“It definitely changed my thinking about how to facilitate the learning environment for athletic students,” says Gurganus.

Even though the faculty coach initiative is still in its infancy, Leips and Gurganus see the potential for UMBC to continue leading the way in student support. “We can come together to help support these students in a bigger way, and a very non-traditional way, unlike any other university, I think,” says Gurganus.

— Eric Widemann ’21

At approximately 3:42pm, DoIT staff became aware of a potential outage with third-party tools on our instance Blackboard Learn. System admins confirmed reports that an AWS outage in US-East is impacting Blackboard and many third-party tools in Blackboard including, but not limited to:

• Class Collaborate
• VoiceThread
• Cengage
• Pearson
• CourseArc
• WileyPLUS

The service disruption prevents users from authenticating into an application, whether through Blackboard or directly via the vendor's website. Active sessions may also be disrupted. Inline grading and viewing student submissions is also affected by this outage.

AWS is responding to the incident and will provide further updates to vendors about the service disruption. Instructional Technology staff opened a ticket with Blackboard support and continue to monitoring the outage.

This post will be updated with additional information as we receive it.

Update 5:15 PM - Many AWS cloud services have been restored. Amazon continues to work on the issue. Blackboard appears to be functioning normally, but Instructional Technology staff will continue to monitor server performance for the next 24 hours.