Don’t Miss the Opportunity to Present
FIRST TIME IN THE U.S.A

Undergraduate and graduate students are invited to submit an abstract – Extended deadline is now July 30, 2018.

For abstract submission go to the following link:

https://www.xcdsystem.com/weef/abstract/index.cfm?ID=CK3RwTr

Letter from the WEEF-GEDC chair:

“Dear colleague,

Peace engineering envisions and works towards a world where prosperity, sustainability, social equity, entrepreneurship, transparency, community voice and engagement, and a culture of quality thrive. Engineers have the power to play a vital role in delivering creative solutions that can radically transform and improve human and natural wellbeing.

As we educate future engineers, we must ensure that they embrace their role as engineers of peace. We must provide them with the skills, understanding, capacity for reflection, sense of social responsibility and ethics, and resources to successfully navigate the socio-political impacts of their projects, engage in transdisciplinary developments and frankly, imagine, design, and create a better world for us all.

On behalf of the conference planning committee, I would like to invite you to submit an abstract for presentation or poster to the 2018 World Engineering Education Forum – Global Engineering Dean’s Council to be held in the heart of the Southwest, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Ramiro Jordan, PhD
Chair, 2018 WEEF-GEDC”

Blackboard course shells for FA2018 were created on July 24, 2018

About Course Creation

Bb shells for FA2018 are available for all courses (designated as lecture, lab, field or discussion) listed in the UMBC Schedule of Classes (SOC), provided that there is an instructor of record listed. As new course sections and/or instructors are added to the SOC by Department Scheduling Coordinators, corresponding Bb shells are automatically generated overnight. 

• If you are an instructor, and your name is not associated with the course you are teaching in the SOC, please see your Departmental Scheduling Coordinator to resolve the issue. Once you are listed in the SOC, your Bb course shell will be created automatically. 
• If you and your Department Scheduling Coordinator believe you are correctly assigned as the instructor of record in the SOC and you do not see your course shell in Blackboard, please submit a Request Tracker (RT) ticket via my.umbc.edu/help.
• If you need a Bb shell for a research or independent study course, please submit a new course request.

Instructors who teach multiple sections of the same course will find those enrollments merged into one Bb course shell. These sections may be split upon request by an RT ticket, which we recommend submitting at least one week before the semester starts, if not as soon as courses are created in Blackboard.

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.

As always, if you have any questions, please consider the following options:

• Check our extensive FAQ collection
• Open a ticket via RT
• Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups
• Request a consult with instructional technology staff

Last Sunday’s Boston Globe greeted readers with a front-page story about lessons to be learned from a top research university, but it wasn’t about local powerhouses Harvard or MIT. It was a profile of UMBC.

The bold headline read, “In Maryland, lessons for UMass Boston: Thriving UMBC has support of students, faculty, and, most importantly, the state.” Above that headline, just under the masthead for the Sunday Globe, was a quote from President Freeman Hrabowski. It gave a snapshot of UMBC, noting, “Nothing is more important here than brainpower and grit.”

In Maryland, there are lessons to be had for UMass Boston. https://t.co/1hmUR5qQKj pic.twitter.com/YZnHnKXeIW

— The Boston Globe (@BostonGlobe) July 22, 2018

The article starts in a math refresher course, where students are hard at work during the summer to prepare for the semester ahead. Even in the academic off-season, the campus is buzzing with activity, reporter Laura Krantz found. “At UMBC, black and yellow flags flutter above the central sidewalk and even in the summer,” she wrote, “the campus is alive with summer camps, graduate students doing research, and the Meyerhoff students, who are still in calculus class.”

Krantz spent hours meeting with students, faculty, staff, and alumni, and shadowing President Hrabowski, to learn what makes UMBC tick. “It’s never about the one person” at UMBC, President Hrabowski explained. “It has to be a tone that when the person comes in it’s not us versus them, but how do we work together.”

Working together to constantly improve is one of the secrets behind UMBC’s success, the article suggests. “We’re not perfect,” said Dean Bill LaCourse of the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences. “But when we look in the mirror we don’t…blame the students, we don’t blame external aspects, we look at ourselves first and see what can we change.”

The supportive community that this kind of growth-oriented collaboration creates is meaningful for faculty, staff, and students alike. “It’s a very safe environment to try new things, to innovate, so that’s huge,” said Katharine Cole, vice provost and dean of undergraduate academic affairs.

State investment in education is another key to the university’s growth and its ability to serve as an economic engine for the region, the article also emphasizes. “The state feels that it is important to support higher education,” said Delegate Adrienne Jones ’76, psychology, Maryland House Speaker Pro Tem. “We see that as a link to the economy of the state and a well-educated workforce.”

Thanks to everyone who makes UMBC such a special community. “It’s one of those places where everyone always seems to be upbeat, even when it’s raining out and you’re dodging raindrops,” said @DelegateAJones.https://t.co/ebR7k5xyFf

— UMBC (@UMBC) July 24, 2018

Ultimately, said President Hrabowski, “We want working- and middle-class people to believe that they have opportunities to go to first-rate institutions that they can afford.”

The Globe reports that data show UMBC is achieving its goal of providing a first-rate education to students of all backgrounds. The paper notes that the university’s graduation rate is strong across all racial and ethnic groups, and that 2018 alumni have gone on to promising careers and graduate programs at Columbia, Cornell, Duke, MIT, Harvard, and Yale.

UMBC is a place, the Globe notes, that has skyrocketed to “students’ first choice,” and continues to focus on growth.

Featured image: Orientation Peer Advisors at UMBC. All photos by Marlayna Demond.