The University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s new Academic Success Center (ASC) held its grand opening recently, but has been operating since the beginning of the Fall 2019 semester. The ASC, which falls under the Division of Undergraduate Academic Affairs, combines two pre-existing offices — Academic Policy and the Learning Resources Center — along with the newly created Academic Advocacy program.

The decision to bring these different offices together came mostly out of a desire to improve communication and to lessen student confusion, according to Amanda Knapp, Associate Vice Provost and Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Academic Affairs. “Because we were working as separate units… students didn’t always know, ‘well, where do I go for support?’” Knapp says. “Or you’d have to be referred from one location to another location, which takes time.” With Academic Policy and Academic Resources now housed in the same place, students are more likely to get the help they need in a timely manner.

An important part of this process is the new Academic Advocacy branch of the ASC. Not to be confused with advisors, academic advocates provide support to help students navigate a wide range of challenges, such as policy and financial aid. “That doesn’t mean they’re going to be experts in those areas,” Knapp says, “but they help students to get through those processes so that they can definitely get to graduation on time without as many barriers.” Each of the three advocates specializes in a particular college.

Amanda Sharp, the academic advocate for the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, notes that the work she is doing as an academic advocate is not unique — advisors, professors and other staff all help students in addition to their other responsibilities. “Everyone’s doing this work at UMBC,” Sharp says. “It’s just now there’s a position that is only doing this work at UMBC.”

Both Knapp and the academic advocates themselves stressed that the Office of Academic Advocacy aims to serve students who have “fallen through the cracks.” These students can be referred to the advocates by their professors or other staff members using an online form; they can also refer themselves. From there, the advocates’ job is to help them identify on-campus resources to find the best solution to their problem. 

In its first two months of operation, the academic advocates have already had some opportunities to put this model into practice. Cliff Saul, the academic advocate for College of Engineering and Information Technology and a former community director for Patapsco Hall, cites one student who was referred by a professor after they emailed her, indicating their plan to withdraw from her class. It turns out that the student had run into financial issues outside of their own control, so Saul worked with the student to connect with financial aid to find a solution.

“That student was under the impression that they weren’t going to be able to finish, and they were a senior,” Saul says. “They’re on a track now to be able to finish at the end of this academic year.” For Saul, it is moments like these, where he is able to positively impact students’ lives, that make him proud to hold this new position.

Saul is not the only one who feels that way. Knapp says that, although the advocates all have excellent credentials and each went through a rigorous hiring process, one of the greatest deciding factors was their dedication to students’ well-being. 

“There are things about the job I can teach. I can teach them how to work with degree audit and help a student navigate policies. What I cannot teach them is how to care,” Knapp says. “[The Academic Advocates] were picked because they knew they truly cared about students.”

i have no interest in crumbs

or crushed up berries / but

i look out the milky window, start

to miss u / thru the panels. so

i crave the little bits. like

that could be the corner of

your roof, just a rumble

up the road, just / a twist

of my body / in the rain, just a puddle

i mud through on purpose / just

listen for a second. we’ve got glass

for yellow roses on these tabletops. and

it’s been eight months since i saw u.

we are closer now than ever. u could be here

if u wanted. if I wanted

i could ask u to, or toss it up: a

drizzle on the driveway, where the first sweet thing

i say to u / is “always”, and the next

new word u’ll need is “anytime”.

Tess McRae

tmcrae2@umbc.edu

** From Dr. Neil Rothman**

November 11 – 12:00 -1:00 pm – University Center 312

Entrepreneurs Panel
Dr. Linda Dusman – Co-Founder, Octava LLC & Professor of Music
Scott Weber – Founder and President, Med-IQ
Brian Wolf – President of Wolf Professional Security, Inc.

November 14 -  7:00 - 9:00  pm -  AOK Library Gallery 

UMBC’s Idea Competition

As part of our ongoing commitment to security, the Unix Infrastructure group will be conducting its quarterly system patching on Friday, November 15th and Saturday, November 16th.  While many of the systems will be patched without any service disruption, there are some systems which require the downtime of key services.  The schedule below outlines which key services will be offline and for how long.

Friday, 11/15/2019 between 4pm and 10pm (most systems will only be down for a short period during this time): 

• Between 4pm and 5:30pm only: LDAP-Master and Webadmin will be taken down for system maintenance.  During this time account creations and password changes will be unavailable.  Account authentication and logins will not be affected during this downtime
• The web hosting environments (virthost) will be partially unavailable (pages will be available but any database calls will not work)
• Access to Cyrus and UMBC Webmail (accounts not migrated to UMBC Gmail)
• All mail will be queued up and delivered after the server is patched
• All HFS (user) servers will be offline
• Certain software licenses will be unavailable (autodesk, cadence, idl, schrodinger, xilinx, mathematica)

Saturday, 11/16/2019 between 9am and 11am(most systems will only be down for a short period during this time):

• myUMBC lite page will be up resulting in reduced myUMBC functionality
• Wiki will be unavailable
• The sites (wordpress) web hosting environment will be unreachable

Please let us know if you have any concerns or questions.

Thanks!

Tim Champ

Manager of Unix Infrastructure

UMBC DoIT

This fall, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County is hosting two big names in hip hop thanks to the university’s Student Events Board (SEB). DaBaby and Megan Thee Stallion will perform in November for SEB’s first Fall Fest, a series of two concerts on Nov. 14 and 21, respectively. 

On Oct. 7, excited students gathered on Commons Mainstreet to watch SEB drop a banner announcing the first Fall Fest artist, Megan Thee Stallion. When the tickets went on sale the following week, they sold out in just 12 minutes. “In the three and a half years I’ve been in SEB, I’ve never seen that happen,” said Mayra Perez Olivier, a senior psychology major and the president of SEB. Students were allowed to purchase two tickets each, totaling “700 or so” people filling the UC Ballroom.

But SEB wasn’t done yet. Just two hours after the Megan Thee Stallion tickets went on sale and immediately sold out, students gathered on Mainstreet once again for a banner drop. This time, SEB announced DaBaby as Fall Fest’s second artist. Although these tickets have not sold out yet, Perez said that most of the 3,750 tickets have already been purchased. Since DaBaby’s concert will take place in the Retriever Activities Center, SEB allowed students to purchase four tickets each and later opened the concert up to faculty, staff and alumni as well. 

Perez attributed the negotiations and booking the artists to Jen Dress, the Associate Director of Campus Life, who began communicating with the artists’ managers over the summer. “We have really good relationships with agencies, so we get really cool performers to come out,” Perez added.

After Dress hammered out the details, the SEB executive board officers were the next to know about the concerts. “We found out about it at our summer retreat,” said sophomore biology and psychology major Anna Parker, an event programmer for the organization. “We had to keep it a secret for a long time.”

SEB has handled most of the promotion for the concerts, including promotional videos created by the designers and marketers on staff. The organization is also responsible for many tasks the day of the concerts, including helping set up the stage, line control and cleaning up. “A big part of what our job is… is making sure that everything goes okay,” said Perez. “That’s essentially our big role in any concert that comes to UMBC.” 

Perez says that UMBC students can hopefully expect more Fall Fests in the coming years, especially because performers tend to be more available in the fall than in the spring. “In the spring, we run into the problem of… music festivals,” Perez said. “So it’s more likely that we can get artists in the fall.”

Despite the general excitement over the two concerts, Perez noted that SEB has heard allegations of sexism voiced around campus by those who dislike the decisions to host Megan Thee Stallion in the UC Ballroom and DaBaby in the RAC. “That’s based on a contract, that’s what a lot of people don’t know,” said Perez. She cited Ali Wong and Kesha, two major female artists who have held events in the RAC in the past. 

Although there are critics of the concerts, Perez and Parker agree that the feedback has been generally very positive. “Overall, it’s going to be a lot of genuine excitement,” said Parker.

The Baltimore Book Festival showcases the literary art of various writers from various hometowns and with various specialties. The annual event brings together different walks of life to enjoy a common theme: books and literature. From food writers to children’s book authors, the festival gave select incredible writers a place to share their works, including a few students from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

The Ivy Bookshop Stage hosted a student-writing presentation for which Tess McRae, an English communication & technology major, and Morgan Mullings, a media and communications studies major, shared their marvelous pieces of poetry. Lia Purpura, Artist in Residence at UMBC, familiar with the utter talent and outstanding ability of McRae and Mullings, encouraged these students to share their poetry at the festival alongside many other talented writers. 

The participation of McRae and Mullings in such an anticipated Baltimorian event, specifically organized for lovers of literature, is extremely admirable and inspiring. McRae and Mullings’ successes shine a light on the capability and opportunity for college students to pursue creative careers with great effort, inspiration, editing and critiques, of course. Nonetheless, McRae and Mullings’ readings at the Baltimore Book Festival marked a pivotal step in their individual journeys as writers.

What does reading at the Book Festival mean to you?

McRae: I’ve been thinking of this experience as my “debut” as a poet in the Baltimore area. My poetry has received state-wide and national recognition in print, but I’ve only ever performed my own work in front of people in community on an institutional level. I’m honored to have a chance to take an embodied step into this grander kind of spotlight.

At the festival, McRae read three of her poems titled “at the third light turn right,” “at the throat” and “you say, ‘out loud!’” Her poetry explores a plethora of topics and themes, one of which being the painful care one could possess for someone they do not know how to help. McRae strategically pairs influxes in her voice and facial expressions with the multiple emotions expressed throughout her poetry. Her reading possessed great movement and brought life to her pieces.

Mullings read four poems including “my rising is an earth sign” and “before first words.” Their poetry documents the effects of and steps in healing from intergenerational trauma as well as the intersections of their identities. Mullings’ poetry wears an individual style, making the writer distinguishable and recognizable. Their reading did justice to the natural progression of themes in their poems, mimicking the constant rise of emotion throughout the works that they are remembered for.

How does it feel to be reading at the same festival as many other phenomenal writers?

Mullings: There’s a lot of imposter syndrome that I reconcile with and getting this opportunity brought out a lot of that. At the same time, I’m very proud of myself. Some of the best interactions I’ve had were meeting writers and I always think “I want to be where you are one day.” 

The Baltimore Book Festival celebrates skillful writers, two of which who can be found on our very own campus. Students have the special opportunity to watch McRae and Mullings advance in their literary careers through publications and readings. They are the living stories of where aspiring student writers can go and how they can get there.