The German American Cultural Center (GACC), located on the grounds of historic Zion Church near Baltimore’s City Hall. We are seeking a part-time fundraising professional to provide dynamic fund-raising direction and implementation. This individual will work closely with the Board of Directors to help develop a progressive schedule of fundraising activities for the GACC’s community outreach.

American cities face environmental challenges that are exacerbated by climate change, from air and water quality issues to flooding and heat. Low-income neighborhoods and areas that were previously subject to racial redlining often experience these effects more intensely. 

A new program supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DoE) has funded Urban Integrated Field Laboratories in three American cities (including Baltimore) to generate resilience-enhancing solutions to urban climate challenges in collaboration with community organizations. The Baltimore-centered consortium, named the Baltimore Social-Environmental Collaborative (BSEC), will receive $24.5 million through the program. UMBC will receive $2.3 million of this larger grant. 

Leading UMBC’s work on the project is Claire Welty, professor of chemical, biochemical, and environmental engineering and director of the Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education (CUERE). Johns Hopkins University leads the overall project, which also includes collaborators at the Pennsylvania State University, Morgan State University, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Drexel University, and the University of Virginia.

“This Baltimore Social-Environmental Collaborative is an important program during a critical time for our region, for our state, and for our planet,” says Karl V. Steiner, vice president for research at UMBC. “I am pleased that Baltimore was selected to serve as a representative metropolitan area for the climate challenges faced by many mid-sized industrial cities across the U.S.”

Listening to the community

Welty and UMBC colleagues such as Andrew Miller, professor of geography and environmental systems, bring decades of expertise in environmental monitoring to the project through their individual research and the Baltimore Ecosystem Study (BES). Originally funded as one of only two urban Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) sites in the U.S., the BES has compiled massive datasets on the Baltimore region’s watershed, ecology, and sociological issues related to the environment for more than 20 years. The new BSEC will bring opportunities to expand this work in fresh directions.

“The exciting thing is leading from the needs of the community. To me, that’s what’s different about this,” Welty says. “What we want to try to do is partner with the communities to come up with solutions to these climate impact problems, and then what we’re bringing to the table are our tools to implement that.”

Welty and Miller bring expertise in understanding patterns of water quality, flood and groundwater modeling, and rainfall patterns and how they are changing. UMBC also brings experience interacting with local agencies, such as the Baltimore City Department of Public Works and Maryland Department of the Environment. Other institutions in the consortium bring complementary expertise, such as overall climate forecasting, an understanding of how climate impacts intersect with issues of public health, and experience building trust with community groups.

“Among us, we think we have tools that can be applied to solve these problems,” Welty says. “We’re not imposing our tools on community groups, though, or telling them what their problems are. They’re telling us, and we’re responding with support and resources.”

Adding nuance

Welty, Miller, and others have spent decades generating models and collecting on-the-ground (and sometimes underground) observations of water quality, flow, and more in the Baltimore region. They will continue that work with the BSEC, and with input from communities, prioritize certain issues or geographic areas.

The BSEC will also fund deployment of new sensors at existing Baltimore Ecosystem Study stream sampling stations in the Gwynns Falls watershed . These stations have a 22-year record of weekly water quality sampling, and the new sensors will add data on other parameters  at 15-minute intervals, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The data will be accessible in near- real time, on only about a one-hour delay.

The BES data is “the best urban water quality data set in the world. This is not meant to replace that, but to add nuance,” Welty says. For example, Baltimore streams have struggled with inundation from road salt in the winter. “You might miss the peak of a salt event with weekly sampling,” Welty says, but finer scale sampling would easily identify it in the data.

A giant puzzle to put together

The BSEC is a unique project that brings together wide-ranging expertise to address pressing urban needs. “The guiding objective of the BSEC process is to produce the urban climate science needed to inform community-guided, equitable pathways for climate action,” says Ben Zaitchik, professor of Earth and planetary sciences at Johns Hopkins and the overall project lead. “In doing so, we address a number of fundamental urban science questions from across natural science and social science disciplines.” 

UMBC’s Steiner adds, “This partnership with John Hopkins University and other research institutions is building upon our strong and long-term record of environmental research and educational initiatives here at UMBC. It will both challenge and enable us to explore equitable climate solutions.”

While the exact priorities and concerns that local communities will bring to the forefront are unknown, the BSEC group plans to bring their tools to bear in a way that best serves the people of Baltimore. Building coalitions with researchers and community members, learning the communities’ needs, and then finding the best ways to address them “is like a giant puzzle to put together,” Welty says. “It’s going to be exciting to see how it all unfolds.”

Greetings Residential Retrievers--

We can hardly believe that October is here!  As we enter a new month, we want to provide you with some important residential updates. 

Important Dates

• October 1, 2022 | Spring Student Success Scholarship Opens on Scholarship Retriever
• October 6, 2022 | True Grits Festi-Fall Celebration
• Week of October 2, 2022 | Health & Safety Inspections (see below)
• October 7-16, 2022 | Homecoming & Family Weekend
• October 12, 2022 | Sign Up for the Pesto Teaching Kitchen
• October 23, 2022 | Spring Student Success Scholarship Deadline

Health & Safety Inspections

Residential Life values the co-creation of a safe environment in every residential community. It is the responsibility of every resident to ensure that they are contributing to a safe and healthy environment in their residence by:

• committing to community standards set at the beginning of each year with their floor
• reviewing and adhering to the Residential Life Rights and Responsibilities Guide, 
• submitting requests for facility maintenance 

It is the responsibility of Residential Life staff to educate residents through positive, personal contact,  maintain the residential facilities and conduct health and safety checks in residential rooms intermittently throughout the semester to identify health and safety issues in a timely way. These issues could include facility issues, fire safety, and the presence of prohibited items. 

This semester, Residential Life staff will be conducting these health and safety inspections on the week of October 2, 2022. Residents are not expected to be present during the inspection, but if you would like to be please contact your RA to schedule a time.

If concerns or issues are found in your room, you will receive notification via email. Please review the email and follow the instructions for correcting the issues in advance of a reinspection. Failure to correct the issues by the reinspection date, outlined in the email, may result in Student Conduct Action. 

If you have questions about these inspections, please contact your Resident Assistant or Community Director. 

Mail & Package Reminders 

Residential students are encouraged to have mail and standard packages delivered directly to their residential community during. All residents are assigned a mailbox and combination that they will share with their roommate(s). If you have misplaced your combination you can ask the Community Desk for assistance. 

Students commonly report that they have received notice from the shipper that their package has been delivered, but it is not immediately available for in-community pick up. This is most often due to misdelivery of packages by third-party carriers. For this reason, we highly encourage students to include the name of their residential community desk in the shipping address (ex. Apartment Community Center or Harbor Community Desk) to ensure packages are directed to their communities rather than Central Receiving or another UMBC building. Mail should be addressed like the example below to avoid delays or loss:

Your Name
Community Desk Name
Room/Apartment # Number
UMBC, 1000 Hilltop Circle
Baltimore, Maryland 21250

Mail and packages that are not addressed for a current residential student and/or a residential facility may be refused by staff at Campus Card & Mail Services, Central Receiving, or Residential Life community desks.

When items are misdelivered by carriers, we ask for student's patience as Campus Card & Mail Services, Central Receiving, and Residential Life staff work to redirect, deliver, and log packages appropriately. This can take up to 3 business days.

For more information about mail and package procedures please visit https://reslife.umbc.edu/rlexperience/procedures/

Residential Hall Community Kitchen Updates 

We are excited to share that we will begin reintroducing communal cookware into our residence hall ground floor community kitchens in Chesapeake, Susquehanna, Patapsco and Potomac Halls.  During the pandemic items were removed from these kitchens to help minimize the spread of COVID-19 and had to be checked out at Community Desks.

With the reintroduction of items like pots, pans, and other cookware we wanted to remind students of expectations for using these items:

• Clean and sanitize items after use. Dish soap will be provided to ensure you are able to clean the items.
• Return dried items to the location in which you found them. 
• Ensure that any spills or any other mess is cleaned.
• Lost, stolen, or damaged items will not be replaced during the academic year.

Again, please keep in mind that this addition to the communal kitchens is a privilege.  Reports of misuse of the items and/or the space may result in the revocation of these items.

Student Success Scholarship

The purpose of the Student Success Scholarship is to assist current residential life students who demonstrate significant financial need to remain on-campus residents, who may otherwise be unable to afford housing during the academic year. The scholarship is supported by Residential Life. Award funds are for the following semester. If you are applying in fall, the funds would be applied for the spring semester housing balance. Several scholarships may be awarded each semester. Funds will vary based on eligibility and will range from full semester housing costs to partial semester housing costs, not to exceed the cost of a double room.

The application is open on Scholarship Retriever from October 1-23 for Spring Awards.

For questions or concerns please contact your Resident Assistant or Community Director. We hope you have a wonderful day!

Residential Life Staff

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