We would like to remind Faculty and Staff about the resources available to them and their household members through the Guidance Resources Employee Assistance Program (EAP).

Guidance Resources, in partnership with ComPsych, provides employees with access to free confidential counseling and connections to attorneys who can help with a variety of issues, including: 

• Family law matters, including divorce, custody, child support and adoption
• Immigration concerns
• Bankruptcy and credit issues
• Landlord/tenant issues, including eviction and lease questions
• Real estate and foreclosure questions
• Wills and living wills

How to access the EAP?

Phone: call 1-855-410-7628 to speak to a trained, caring clinician who will listen to your concerns and guide you to the appropriate services.

Website: visit the Guidance Resources website at www.guidanceresources.com and use the code: USMEAP

Attached are flyers with instructions for how to use the Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and outlines the Legal Connect services. 

Department Payroll Preparers: please post these flyers in high traffic areas in your departments. 

Hi everyone, 

I've put the form for the member incentives and the link to yesterday’s GBM slides below. Remember that the deadline is for Member Incentives is due April 15th and all hours should be logged in till now. To export the spreadsheet of hours, go to the bottom of the list of hours and there should be a export button there, you might have to do it separately for each page since they are asking hours since July 2024. Let us know if you have any questions! 

Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1pkeBiVsob3vnsDuMAckoflfit4Q34P-vUHUp7L12mw0/edit?usp=sharing

Form: https://volunteerconnection.redcross.org/?nd=vms_load_form&form_id=14052&return_nd=vms_form_list_bootstrap

Click here to sign up or scan the QR code!

Scan the QR code or click here to participate in the survey!

The deadline to apply for summer 2025 and fall 2025 internships for PBHL 470 or PBHL 471 is soon approaching! The summer internship application deadline is April 15, and the Fall internship application deadline is May 15. All students who intend to complete an internship for PBHL 470 (6 credits) or 471 (3 credits) MUST apply. Students have the option to also apply for internship positions with our internal partners or to apply to internships on their own. 

Reposted from UMBC News: https://umbc.edu/stories/measuring-forever-chemicals-in-baltimore-waters/

On a sunny and unseasonably warm Halloween this past fall, a group of costumed UMBC students strolled the banks of the Inner Harbor in Baltimore. The costumes were in good fun, but the spirit driving them to the city that day was more scientific than spectral: They were there to check on samplers they had installed around the harbor to measure the concentrations of certain chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, in the water. 

PFAS are used in a diverse range of products, including cleaning products, clothing, and fire-fighting foam, and have earned the nickname “forever chemicals” because of the way they persist in the environment. There are growing concerns about the health effects of the chemicals, and in recent years there have been efforts to eliminate PFAS from some consumer products and regulate their concentration in drinking water.

The UMBC students’ work to measure PFAS in Baltimore Harbor is one of the first projects aiming to get an understanding of how much of the chemicals are found in the waters around Baltimore and where they might be coming from. Margaret Siao, a master’s student in chemical engineering, took a lead role in the work as part of the ICARE program, which links researchers and Baltimore community members on environmental projects around the city.

Donya Hamidi, an environmental engineering Ph.D. student, also took part in the project, which served as a test case for a larger project she is working on, seeking to expand the utility of innovative passive samplers to measure PFAS in any water source. 

“I’ve lived in Baltimore most of my life,” says Siao. “The harbor is a big part of the city, although many people don’t go out on the water. And that’s one of the reasons I wanted to look at the water quality.”

PFAS are everywhere

There are thousands of different PFAS chemicals. Because of their widespread use and resistance to degradation, they are found throughout the country in the water, soil, air, and food, and in the blood of humans and animals. 

Exposure to some forms of PFAS has been linked to a range of health problems, including decreased fertility in women, developmental effects in children, reduced immune function, and increased risk of cancer and obesity. 

“The PFAS issue just gets more and more complicated by the day,” says Lee Blaney, the environmental engineering professor who leads the lab where Siao and Hamidi work. He notes the EPA recently released an initial risk assessment for certain PFAS found in biosolids, which are a byproduct of wastewater treatment and are sometimes applied to agricultural land as fertilizer. “It’s a big, far-reaching issue.”

Partnering with the community

Blaney is an expert on PFAS, and as concerns about the prevalence and potential health effects of the chemicals have grown, his lab has been a leading partner with Baltimore community members who advocate for and are responsible for the quality of the water.

Siao’s ICARE project was a partnership with the United States Geological Survey Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Water Science Center and Blue Water Baltimore, a non-profit organization with the mission to restore the quality of Baltimore’s rivers, streams, and harbor. Blue Water Baltimore shared their knowledge of the harbor and area waterways and their connections with the community, while lab members shared their expertise and will share their PFAS data once it has been analyzed.

“PFAS is a hot topic, so Margaret’s project is really good timing,” says Barbara Johnson, who was Siao’s mentor at Blue Water Baltimore. “I think her data will be very useful for us in helping the public understand what PFAS are, for example just understanding how many different kinds there are. Margaret has taught me so much about PFAS.”

As part of the field work, Siao and Hamidi also sampled water at the outlet of the Patapsco Wastewater Treatment Plant in Baltimore. That partnership arose when Mohammed Almafrachi, who works as an engineer for the Baltimore City Department of Public Works, became interested in the PFAS issue and sought out a local expert.

“Last year, I found Dr. Blaney’s name on the internet. I drove to the campus, found his office, and he was there. I introduced myself as an engineer at the city of Baltimore, and we sat down and started talking,” Almafrachi says. From that conversation grew not only the collaboration to measure PFAS at the wastewater treatment plant, but also a tour of Baltimore’s largest drinking water treatment plant that Almafrachi gave students in Blaney’s class on environmental physicochemical processes last spring. Almafrachi said he was happy to provide students with a window on a real-world workplace where their skills might one day be applied.

“If you have not gone to the field, then you are not yet a full engineer,” says Almafrachi. “We can talk about theories and textbooks endlessly, but the field is where you really test your skills.”

The value of field work

Siao and Hamidi agree with Almafrachi about the value of field work. They installed their PFAS samplers at three of the four trash wheels around Baltimore Harbor—personified contraptions named Mr. Trash Wheel, Professor Trash Wheel, and Gwynnda the Good Wheel of the West that collect floating trash and keep it from dirtying the harbor. To get to the trash wheels, they took a flat-bottomed wooden boat, “more like a floating platform with a little cabin,” Siao says. 

“Almost every time we collected a sampler, we saw something new or unexpected, for example algae growing on the sampler, and we had to figure out what was going on at that particular site,” says Hamidi. The team’s work and the measurements they collected and are currently analyzing will serve as a foundation for future studies about PFAS in the local environment.

Both Hamidi and Siao say they valued the teamwork of their trips, and the chance to meet people in the community impacted by their research.

“If you are stuck in a lab all day, it’s easy to forget why you’re doing research,” says Siao. “This project gave me a chance to interact with people outside of academia, to learn about what’s important to them, and to learn how to communicate about science with them, which is a really important skill.”

To address current and future Blackboard (Bb) system administration issues and opportunities, DoIT will be changing how all Bb courses are automatically created and enrolled. Specifically, the new process – auto-creating exact one-to-one (1:1) matches of all PeopleSoft (PS) section enrollments and Bb course shells – will be piloted in Summer 25 and (pending results) implemented in Fall 25.

When completed, the new process will improve Bb course roster accuracy, lay a foundation for faculty bulk final grade submission, and free up DoIT staff to help all users make the most of the tool at the hectic start of semesters. Short-term, multi-section Bb course shells will be merged "upon request" vs "by default" as they are now, but long-term, faculty will be able to merge or split any sections they teach within Bb itself.

"We recognize instructors of large courses will need to request merges of their multiple sections, rather than having them combined by default," says John Fritz, Associate Vice President of Instructional Technology. "However, mapping Bb and PS sections as part of the course creation process is an important part of our ongoing effort to streamline and enhance course management in Blackboard. It is an effective practice used at other Bb schools, even regardless of LMS including College Park, and will free up DoIT staff who have been averaging nearly 100 hours at the start of semester processing faculty requests to split sections we have merged by default. Long-term, re-engineering Bb’s integration with PS will benefit students and faculty, and DoIT staff who support them."

Summer courses will be created at the end of April.

For more information about these improvements, please see the following:

1. Presentation to Faculty Senate Computer Policy Committee (CPC) on March 4, 2025. 
2. Updated FAQs & demo video: How to request a merged course
3. Common question about the process (below, or use this Google Doc)

In addition, faculty are invited to attend an information session on May 1, 2025 about the new course creation process and why it matters. It will be a hybrid meeting ENGR 102 and recorded. 

• Check our extensive FAQ collection
• What's new in Ultra?|Known Issues
• Open a ticket via RT
• Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups
• Request a consult with instructional technology staff

Common Questions About the Revised Blackboard Course Creation & User Enrollment Process 

Why is the course creation process changing?

The course creation process is changing to ensure more accurate rosters in Blackboard that match what is in PeopleSoft. More importantly, the revised course creation and enrollment process lays a foundation for additional development by DoIT staff to support workflows for final grade extraction between Blackboard and Peoplesoft. 

How does the new course creation process work?

The course creation process will include all course types including Research, Independent Study, and Practicum. Additionally, courses without an instructor assigned in the Schedule of Classes will also be created in Blackboard, allowing departments more flexibility to request access when waiting for new hire paperwork to be processed.

What is the benefit of the new course creation process for faculty and students?

The improvements benefit faculty and students alike by ensuring that course rosters are accurate. Since rosters will be processed one at a time per section in Blackboard, students are connected more precisely to the official course record, including adds and drops. 

Since courses start in a separated state, students will not lose access to the course. Merging a course also ensures students will retain access without delay. All data is retained in a course if students drop, albeit in a disabled state that only system admins can see. The course information seen by students when they log into Blackboard will be more accurate, matching the registration information in PeopleSoft.

Faculty will also have new gradebook filters that easily identify which course section they are viewing. If they prefer to download the gradebook, a new column provides the course section information for easier sorting.

Image 1: Example of the new gradebook filter in an Ultra course.

How will my Blackboard course differ with the new process?

Your Blackboard course will function the same way except you will have separate course shells for each class you teach. If you prefer to combine your courses, please open a ticket to request a merge.

Merged courses will function exactly as before -- one course shell with all of your students enrolled. You’ll have those new gradebook filters available as an added perk. You can continue to use Copy Items, release conditions, and groups to manage your content and students.

How do I request a merged course shell in Blackboard?

Instructors who teach multiple sections of the same course will see a separate Blackboard course shell for each section or course component. Courses will no longer be merged by default. Instructors planning to use split shells will no longer need to submit an RT request.

Course shells may be merged upon request via RT ticket, which we recommend submitting at least one week before the semester starts, if not as soon as courses are created in Blackboard. NOTE: Courses should not be merged or split after student grade data and engagement activity is recorded since it will be purged as part of the separation process.

How do students access my course?

Student enrollment in Bb mirrors the official registration in SA and updates hourly. However, courses are not accessible to students by default until the instructor of record makes them available.

How do I add a non-enrolled student to my individual or merged course?

Only officially enrolled students can access your course. Faculty can add TAs, graders, course builders, and other support roles (e.g., SI-PASS, interpreter, etc.) to their courses. 

Image 2: Example of the enrollment screen in a Blackboard course.

How do I add a student to my course to fulfill an incomplete?

Please open a ticket and request a Course Availiability Override. This will extend that student’s access to the Blackboard course shell matching their official enrollment.