Complete Omics Inc., a venture-backed commercial-stage biotechnology company in located in BWTech Research Park has immediate opening for a full-time Proteomics Scientist.  

President Freeman Hrabowski, the University Steering Committee and the All-Gender Restroom Steering Committee will be collaborating to implement all-gender restrooms throughout the UMBC campus over the next few semesters. Beginning this semester, the president and the committees will work to create plans and guidelines to establish this concept, some of which include converting or renovating existing facilities and constructing new ones.

In an email to the UMBC community, President Hrabowski states that all members of the UMBC community should have access to safe restroom facilities that are more easily accessible. “Now is the time when we must put our values into action by moving forward on our commitment to making all-gender restroom facilities more widely available,” he writes.

The All-Gender Restroom Steering Committee is comprised of faculty, staff and students, some of which are members of the LGBTQ community. The ultimate goals of the All-Gender Restroom Steering committee are to focus on the dilemma of accessible restrooms inclusive to everyone and to work progressively to implement this ideal on UMBC’s campus.

According to Keith Bowman, dean of the College of Engineering and Information Technology, there are several reasons why some may prefer an all-gender restroom. “The traditional design of our buildings and restrooms create compromises for transgender people or people who do not identify in a binary way. But [traditional restrooms also affect] people who do not fit traditional norms of masculinity or femininity or people who have medical conditions,” he says. He also says that parents who are escorting their children of a different gender or children with a disability are impacted by traditional restrooms.

In 2018, UMBC renovated all single-use restrooms on campus into all-gender restrooms. There are 41 single-use all-gender restrooms inside academic and student life buildings and 16 single-use all-gender restrooms in residence halls. UMBC Facilities Management is working to add more single all-gender restrooms in the University Center and Retriever Learning Center in the Albin O. Kuhn library.

UMBC is one of several universities in Maryland to have gender inclusive restrooms and housing. Both Johns Hopkins University and Towson University have over two dozen gender-neutral restrooms on campus. “Our next step will be to expand the availability of all-gender restrooms by identifying opportunities to designate existing multi-user restrooms as all-gender restrooms in campus buildings that currently lack single-user all-gender restrooms,” states Hrabowski.

Any additional questions or concerns can be submitted on a document that is linked in the initial email addressed to the community. Additionally, anyone that is interested in being a part of the planning and implementation of this initiative can contact the All-Gender Restroom Steering Committee at @agrumbc.edu.

Fall 2019 Registration: Advising Appointment Information

Current Students:

Summer Classes:

New Students Admitted for Fall Semester:

Newly admitted students for the fall may not register for courses until Summer Orientation. Please sign up for Orientation here. If you have been admitted for the fall semester, but wish to take summer classes at UMBC, please contact Admissions.

Questions?

Often, when people want to learn a new language, they start with Spanish or French. But Sign of Life, UMBC’s American Sign Language Club, would love to add ASL to that list. “Bringing back ASL has been a vision since our conception,” said Brandon Liu, a senior studying biological sciences and animation. “As of now, we’re focusing on educating the people that come to our two [weekly] meetings and share out ASL and Deaf culture there.”

Liu is the president and one of two founders of Sign of Life. He was taught ASL by the other founder, Ella Hawkins, when they were freshmen in the Honors College. Hawkins, a junior biochemistry major, had previously learned the language from a Hard-of-Hearing student that they were tutoring in math. Liu and Hawkins both realized that UMBC did not have any ASL resources besides interpreting services and decided to create the club to bridge this gap.

Sign of Life is now in its third official year. Sign of Life meets Mondays and Wednesdays during free hour in Sherman Hall 210. On Mondays, the meetings are more structured, with an ASL workshop that includes vocabulary, practice activities, grammar and information on Deaf culture. Wednesdays are more free-flowing with a Q&A style conversation format. When asked via email why it is valuable for people to learn ASL, Liu responded, “ASL is just as useful as Spanish in the US if not more so! ASL is … helpful for those that struggle with conjugation (there is none) and prefer to learn by doing (visual/kinetic experience). It’s easy to pick up and become effectively conversational … It’s also just a beautiful language, and it helps when you need to communicate in loud spaces.”

Along with teaching about ASL and Deaf culture, the club’s larger goal is for UMBC to one day offer ASL classes. But according to Liu, there are several obstacles that stand in the way of making this happen, one being that Community College of Baltimore County has an ASL program that creates competition. While CCBC is close by, if a student is not a county resident, the classes can be expensive. Regardless, Liu would love to see ASL classes on campus, and if not, then some sort of partnership between the two schools. “Unfortunately, I had to pay out-of-county tuition, so I would be really interested if there could be a system in place that UMBC could offer tuition to CCBC for studying ASL, in a similar fashion, I’m imagining, to study abroad,” Liu said.

One common question Liu is asked is if one needs to know ASL to join. His response? A resounding “no.” “We eagerly accept [everyone] interested in learning ASL or being more involved in the Deaf community, regardless of level,” he explained. Though the Vice-President, Terri Crosby, is a Child of Deaf Adults and the club’s Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing Representative, Jack Burnett, is Hard-of-Hearing, the club does not elect officers based on ASL skill. 

Following the university’s commitment to diversity and inclusion, Sign of Life believes that because Hearing people are in a position of power they can make their communities more open to ASL. They have partnered with an organization called Deaf VISA that supports Deaf immigrants and visitors to the area. Deaf VISA also hosts monthly Game Nights, which are great opportunities to meet people from the Deaf community and are very ASL-beginner friendly. “We would love anyone interested in ASL to come join our club and be a part of our group, sharing and promoting Deaf culture and ASL,” Liu repeated. “Anyone with the passion can be a part of making this change.”