I lost my grayish purple backpack, that contained my car keys and a large gray laptop with a hexagonal gear logo and a bunch of pride flag stickers on it. the last time I know I had it was Wednesday the 30th at 5:30PM, when I was sitting down on one of the barstools next to the market and placed it leaning against the base of the seat next to me. I know I went later that day to Sondheim in rooms 205 and 21D, but I can't remember if I had my backpack or not at that point.

This is the exact backpack I had, although mine was less full/bloated and had wrinkles from use. If you can return the laptop to me, I will pay you $523.80 no questions asked. I am desperate—that laptop has all my programming projects, my art, and my music from the past few years, and is irreplaceable.

If you have any information that can help, please contact me at my email b273@umbc.edu

Join PSA & watch a movie! We will be watching "A Simple Wedding" on Wednesday 11/06 at 12PM in ILSB 116A! Everyone is welcome & we hope to see you there! 

PARTICIPATION REQUIREMENTS

Faculty accepted into the QMI Spring/Fall 2025 cohort agree to complete the following activities:

• Attend a 45-minute orientation session: Friday, November 22 at either the 12 PM or 2 PM slot (choose one)
• Complete the DoIT-facilitated Applying the Quality Matters Rubric (APPQMR) asynchronous online workshop either January 7-28 or June 3-24, 2025.
• Complete a QM self-review of the course (highly recommended)
• Meet with your assigned review team for a pre-review conference call
• Implement recommendations to meet standards based on helpful recommendations from your assigned review team
• Respond to a QMI survey after the program concludes  
• Participate on a future panel or record a testimonial about your experience

SUPPORT

• Each participant will be assigned an Instructional Design Specialist to answer Quality Matters questions as the course is prepared for a QM Course Review.

APPLICATION REQUIREMENTS

An application to participate in the Spring/Fall 2025 Quality Matters Impact cohort must include both course-level and unit-level learning objectives.

Ready to submit?

• Please complete a QMI application no later than December 6.

For more information about the Quality Matters Impact program, contact the QM Coordinators for UMBC:

Dr. Susan Biro

sbiro@umbc.edu

Dr. Mariann Hawken

mariannhawken@umbc.edu

(Image: Decorative, Quality Matters logo)

“Recipes are like an address to a homeland, but they’re also very personal to your own story,” said Karla T. Vasquez, author of The SalviSoul Cookbook, in True Grit’s Test Kitchen. Celia Bonilla, a business technology administration sophomore, grinned and nodded—the addresses for her own recipes come from El Salvador and Maryland. Bonilla joined other UMBC students earlier this fall for the “More than Pupusas” cooking demonstration, sponsored by the Dresher Center for the Humanities, to learn how to cook Salvadoran street food.

Bonilla sat at one of two tables set with brown butcher paper with her classmates, Stephania Fonseca, a social work sophomore, and Jeffrey Molina Soriano, a computer science junior. They also have roots in Maryland and El Salvador. “Pastelitos [pah-steh-lee-tos] means little pie and it’s the Salvadoran version of empanadas [em-pah-nah-dahs],” said Vasquez. “Empanadas are well known all over Latin America. Greeks, Italians, and other Europeans make meat pies, too.”

Like many Salvadoran students at UMBC, their journeys to UMBC are as complex as the ingredients they use for this meal. “Sometimes Hispanic Heritage Month events portray Latinx culture as a monolith, often focusing on the Caribbean or Mexican American experience,” said Courtney C. Hobson ’10, M.A. ’14, history, program manager at the James T. and Virginia M. Dresher Center for the Humanities. “I grew up in Prince George’s County, Maryland, where a significant part of the Latinx immigrant community comes from Central America, specifically El Salvador. Many of our Latinx students have roots in Central America—I wanted to organize an event that celebrated the rich culture they represent.”

“I came here when I was six years old from El Salvador,” said Bonilla, who attended the event as part of an assignment for the Spanish for Heritage Spanish Speakers class. Students must participate in two on-campus and two off-campus cultural events that celebrate Hispanic/Latinx culture. While Bonilla is familiar with campus events as the parent of a UMBC alum Jasmine Esmeralda Bonilla ’21, chemical engineering, this event felt different. “This class gives me a chance to learn more about my culture and language by engaging with people from various countries and age groups.”

Culinary traditions

Most students at the event said they had eaten pupusas (puh-poo-suhz) at home or at a restaurant. This flat corn flour cake, stuffed with cheese, beans, and sometimes meat is the national dish of El Salvador. “I have an aunt who is from El Salvador. She taught my mom, and then my mom taught me how to make pupusas with my sister,” said Fonseca. “My dad is from El Salvador, and my mom is from Mexico. We learned to make pupusas together as a family. So it became a typical food from my home.”

As students kneaded the dough into a palm-sized disc, filled it with sautéed mushrooms, and pinched the edges to seal the pastelitos, they also shared what food meant to them in the context of their family and student life. A clear theme emerged, culinary traditions can extend beyond the kitchen. “We have the Philly pretzel factory. I’ve never been able to find a soft pretzel as good as the Philly Pretzel Factory,” said Ashley Gutshall about her hometown of Royersford, Pennsylvania. Gutshall, a history and Spanish sophomore, shares, “It’s our family tradition to get Philly soft pretzels after doctor’s appointments.”

Snack routines also create taste memories. “I was born in El Salvador during the Civil War [1980-1992] but was raised in Los Angeles. I would often fantasize about the routines my family would have had if they had been able to stay in their homeland,” said Vasquez, as she cooked down strawberries that she used to sweeten a large container of water filled with chan seeds—similar to chia seeds in texture and nutrition. “Fresco de chan satisfied that question for me because it’s a drink students have after school,” said Vasquez. 

Food as a cultural bridge

Dishes are a fingerprint of a family’s traditions and tastes that can also serve as a timeline marking the evolution of ingredients locally and globally. “When my mom hears of these new trending food ingredients like chia seeds or quinoa,” says Vasquez, “she argues that they have been used in El Salvador and Central American communities for a long time.” 

Whether savory or sweet, the names of foods and spices across Latin America, and the dishes they inspire, are rooted in indigenous, African, and European languages and culinary traditions often fused to create unique dishes with local variations. Vasquez noted that achiote [ah-chee-oh-teh], the spice used to season and enhance the yellow color of the corn flour dough for the pastelitos, is a Nahuat word. Nahuat is a widely spoken indigenous language in Mexico and Central America. The rich legacy of Salvadoran food is seldom recognized alongside Western cuisine, even though many of its ingredients are sourced from the Global South—reinforcing cultural divisions. The Dresher Center’s “More than Pupusas” cooking event aimed to bridge this gap and celebrate the cultural footprint of Salvadoran cuisine.

“I interviewed more than 100 women while I’ve been working on this project. It’s taken me nine years,” says Vasquez about her recent release, The SalviSoul Cookbook. “I wanted to make sure that we’re giving credit where credit is due.” 

(r): Bonilla and Molina Soriano taste the fried pastelitos. (Marlayna Demond ’11/UMBC)

The tasters and aspiring chefs were grateful to be part of the long tradition of communities brought together across borders and time to learn, cook, and share a meal with new and old friends. They stamped their seal of approval with dough—a squiggly line, a star, a smile—sealing each pastelito with personal flair.

“Recipes are like an address to a homeland, but they’re also very personal to your own story,” said Karla T. Vasquez, author of The SalviSoul Cookbook, in True Grit’s Test Kitchen. Celia Bonilla, a business technology administration sophomore, grinned and nodded—the addresses for her own recipes come from El Salvador and Maryland. Bonilla joined other UMBC students earlier this fall for the “More than Pupusas” cooking demonstration, sponsored by the Dresher Center for the Humanities, to learn how to cook Salvadoran street food.

Bonilla sat at one of two tables set with brown butcher paper with her classmates, Stephania Fonseca, a social work sophomore, and Jeffrey Molina Soriano, a computer science junior. They also have roots in Maryland and El Salvador. “Pastelitos [pah-steh-lee-tos] means little pie and it’s the Salvadoran version of empanadas [em-pah-nah-dahs],” said Vasquez. “Empanadas are well known all over Latin America. Greeks, Italians, and other Europeans make meat pies, too.”

Like many Salvadoran students at UMBC, their journeys to UMBC are as complex as the ingredients they use for this meal. “Sometimes Hispanic Heritage Month events portray Latinx culture as a monolith, often focusing on the Caribbean or Mexican American experience,” said Courtney C. Hobson ’10, M.A. ’14, history, program manager at the James T. and Virginia M. Dresher Center for the Humanities. “I grew up in Prince George’s County, Maryland, where a significant part of the Latinx immigrant community comes from Central America, specifically El Salvador. Many of our Latinx students have roots in Central America—I wanted to organize an event that celebrated the rich culture they represent.”

“I came here when I was six years old from El Salvador,” said Bonilla, who attended the event as part of an assignment for the Spanish for Heritage Spanish Speakers class. Students must participate in two on-campus and two off-campus cultural events that celebrate Hispanic/Latinx culture. While Bonilla is familiar with campus events as the parent of a UMBC alum Jasmine Esmeralda Bonilla ’21, chemical engineering, this event felt different. “This class gives me a chance to learn more about my culture and language by engaging with people from various countries and age groups.”

Culinary traditions

Most students at the event said they had eaten pupusas (puh-poo-suhz) at home or at a restaurant. This flat corn flour cake, stuffed with cheese, beans, and sometimes meat is the national dish of El Salvador. “I have an aunt who is from El Salvador. She taught my mom, and then my mom taught me how to make pupusas with my sister,” said Fonseca. “My dad is from El Salvador, and my mom is from Mexico. We learned to make pupusas together as a family. So it became a typical food from my home.”

As students kneaded the dough into a palm-sized disc, filled it with sautéed mushrooms, and pinched the edges to seal the pastelitos, they also shared what food meant to them in the context of their family and student life. A clear theme emerged, culinary traditions can extend beyond the kitchen. “We have the Philly pretzel factory. I’ve never been able to find a soft pretzel as good as the Philly Pretzel Factory,” said Ashley Gutshall about her hometown of Royersford, Pennsylvania. Gutshall, a history and Spanish sophomore, shares, “It’s our family tradition to get Philly soft pretzels after doctor’s appointments.”

Snack routines also create taste memories. “I was born in El Salvador during the Civil War [1980-1992] but was raised in Los Angeles. I would often fantasize about the routines my family would have had if they had been able to stay in their homeland,” said Vasquez, as she cooked down strawberries that she used to sweeten a large container of water filled with chan seeds—similar to chia seeds in texture and nutrition. “Fresco de chan satisfied that question for me because it’s a drink students have after school,” said Vasquez. 

Food as a cultural bridge

Dishes are a fingerprint of a family’s traditions and tastes that can also serve as a timeline marking the evolution of ingredients locally and globally. “When my mom hears of these new trending food ingredients like chia seeds or quinoa,” says Vasquez, “she argues that they have been used in El Salvador and Central American communities for a long time.” 

Whether savory or sweet, the names of foods and spices across Latin America, and the dishes they inspire, are rooted in indigenous, African, and European languages and culinary traditions often fused to create unique dishes with local variations. Vasquez noted that achiote [ah-chee-oh-teh], the spice used to season and enhance the yellow color of the corn flour dough for the pastelitos, is a Nahuat word. Nahuat is a widely spoken indigenous language in Mexico and Central America. The rich legacy of Salvadoran food is seldom recognized alongside Western cuisine, even though many of its ingredients are sourced from the Global South—reinforcing cultural divisions. The Dresher Center’s “More than Pupusas” cooking event aimed to bridge this gap and celebrate the cultural footprint of Salvadoran cuisine.

“I interviewed more than 100 women while I’ve been working on this project. It’s taken me nine years,” says Vasquez about her recent release, The SalviSoul Cookbook. “I wanted to make sure that we’re giving credit where credit is due.” 

(r): Bonilla and Molina Soriano taste the fried pastelitos. (Marlayna Demond ’11/UMBC)

The tasters and aspiring chefs were grateful to be part of the long tradition of communities brought together across borders and time to learn, cook, and share a meal with new and old friends. They stamped their seal of approval with dough—a squiggly line, a star, a smile—sealing each pastelito with personal flair.