The 2016-17 season brought a couple of firsts for the Retrievers men’s basketball team. It was their first winning season since 2007-08. It was also their first season with double digit wins since 2008-09. Head coach Ryan Odom deserves a bevy of credit for turning this program around. However, their quarterfinal loss in the America East Conference Playoffs shows there is still work to be done.

The Retrievers surprised a lot of people this season. Using the same players the team had a year ago, Odom guided the team to 18 wins and their highest seeding in the AEC playoffs since 2009. The teams plus-4.3 average point differential also suggests the turnaround was not fluke. The team’s performance was especially impressive considering the roster was mostly the same as last year’s 7-25 team.

Odom helped mold this program into one of the best offenses in the country. The team ranked 39th in the country in points scored per 100 possessions. The Retrievers often used the three point shot to overwhelm their opponents. The numbers bare this out, they ranked 35th in threes made, 79th in threes taken and 20th in three point percentage.

UMBC basketball fans also saw marked improvements in several players. Sophomore forward Joe Sherburne morphed into one of the best three point shooters in the country this year, making a blistering 47 percent. Sherburne also improved his overall and free throw efficiency (50 and 87 percent respectively). With presumably two seasons left at the school, Sherburne should remain a viable stretch option for the Retrievers.

As the old Vanessa Williams song goes, senior forward Will Darley saved the best for last. The Timonium native showed flashes of brilliance last season. This year, he blossomed into one of the best stretch fours in the AEC. Darley upped his scoring average from 11.9 to 15.7. He also increased his usage (from 19.8 last year to 23.2) and shot attempts (8.7 to 10.7) without sacrificing his efficiency (.484/.447/.887 shooting line).

A preseason All-Conference selection, junior guard Jairus Lyles remained the focal point of the offense. Lyles led the team in usage rate this year (29 percent) and showed why he got most of the touches. He led the team in scoring (19 PPG) and rebounding (6.4 RPG). Lyles also had the highest player efficiency rating on the team (21.4).

All that said, there is still room for improvement for the Retrievers. As good they were on offense, they were just as bad on defense. While the Retrievers defense did improve under coach Odom, they still finished an alarming 255th in the country in points allowed per 100 possessions.

In games against some of the better teams in the AEC, the Retrievers were often overwhelmed by the superior depth those programs had. One glaring weak spot was the front court depth. The Retrievers had only three forwards/centers on the roster coming into the season. While they got away with it early on, it later led to games where they got out-rebounded by their opponents.

On the whole, there is a lot for the Retrievers to build on. The team will lose just two players to graduation, though the loss of Darley will be big. However, another season with Lyles and fellow transfer guard K.J. Maura, the continued development of Sherburne, a full season of junior guard Rodney Elliott and some added depth should position the Retrievers as one of the favorites to win the AEC next year.

The Retrievers season is not over yet though, as they will now go on to compete against Fairfield University in the College Insider Postseason Tournament on March 15 at 7 p.m. in the RAC.

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Shared Services Centers (SSC) Town Hall Meeting, March 24, 2017

10-11 a.m. – UC312

Join us at our next Town Hall to discuss significant progress on BPI and SSCs updates.  

BPI – Multiple Demos on new DocuSign Workflows! BPI will be the focus of this meeting.

Phase I & Phase II Updates

- The following new processes developed within our BPI initiative will be demonstrated.

o   DocuSign workflow examples (e.g. – payroll adjustments, loans, inventory)

o   New REX-Finance Reports and updates on adding all funds

- Updates will be provided on the following additional business process improvements:

o   PageUp recruiting software

o   E-travel Phase II and Travel Reimbursments

o   PeopleSoft Finance 9.2 Upgrade

o   UMBC 101 Training

- We will update on you on Phase II planning for implementing Shared Services in the College of Engineering and Information Technology and Student Affairs.

-   We will have open discussion with an opportunity to ask questions and provide feedback on BPI and SSCs.

-   We will share updates of the TAP (Toolkit for Administrative Professionals) website.

We look forward to seeing you there.

Hebrews 4:12-13 (MSG) - “God means what he says. What he says goes. His powerful Word is sharp as a surgeon’s scalpel, cutting through everything, whether doubt or defense, laying us open to listen and obey. Nothing and no one is impervious to God’s Word. We can’t get away from it-no matter what.”

2 Timothy 3:16-17 (MSG) - “There’s nothing like the written Word of God for showing you the way to salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. Every part of Scripture is God-breathed and useful one way or another-showing us truth, exposing our rebellion, correcting our mistakes, training us to live God’s way. Through the Word we are put together and shaped up for the tasks God has for us.”

We end this week with the powerful ‘workings’ of the Word in our lives.  The transforming power of God’s Word works like a scalpel in the areas of our lives that need masterfully cut away. Only the careful hand of the Master Surgeon (our Lord) can perfectly cut through the things that have hindered, marred, and maimed our lives and relationship with God and His people. As a patient spends time in an operation so that they can get well or live more fully, we also are invited to spend time in God’s Word daily, under the careful surgical hand of the Holy Spirit revealing, cutting free, and healing our lives.

And like a breath of fresh air, God’s Word will bring us to life and continue to strengthen us in all that ways that help us become more and more like Jesus. The Word will show us that ‘bad air’ of our rebelliousness, it will exhaust the mistakes, and pump in all that we need to live more true and faithful to the wonderful things he has planned for us. Our life depends on God’s Word.

We all have a calling to live fully, passionately, and faithfully for the Lord. We all have the calling to love and lay our lives down for others to know Jesus. The Word is a grace-filled means to all of this happening in our lives. Today let’s thank the Lord for giving us the Word so that we can know Him better and be powerfully transformed into the likeness of Jesus. And let’s pray that we will be ’students of the Word,’ ‘lovers of God and His Word,’ and ‘witnesses and proclaimers’ of this wonderful Word that brings us into relationship with God and life (awesome life) forever and ever.

Now, joyfully, go live the Word out in the power of the Holy Spirit…and love like Jesus has loved us.

-TR

"Looking Back To Move Forward"

Towson University 21st Multicultural Conference

• Colorism: Prejudice Within Communities of Color
• Cultural artwork, short films, and performances
• Representation in Media
• Moving Beyond Tolerance
• Womanism Across Borders
• Policing Our Communities/ Respecting Our Communities
• Know Your Rights
• Islamophobia
• Immigration Reform
• Health and Wellness in Diverse Communities
• Gender Equity

Proposals can be submitted here: https://goo.gl/forms/QAF9bv5PdJkOCIum2

Proposals are due by Monday, March 30, 2016. Presentations should be approximately 1 hour in length, including 15 minutes for discussion/questions. You will be notified regarding your proposal in Mid-March.  If you have any questions, please contact Co-Chairs Joshua White and Aaliyah Perez at towsoncdso@gmail.com

• Working with the project team, and liaising with ECA/A/L and program partners, ensure that program offerings meet program standards for TESOL content and instructional design, and support program objectives.
• Work with project team and ECA/A/L to identify field needs for TESOL related professional development, and evaluate proposals and applications for course and materials development.
• Work with project team to explore and refine best practices for online learning in low-resource environments.
• Assist project team with the implementation of digital platforms, including Drupal-based content management system (CMS) and Canvas learning management system (LMS); programming experience is not required.  Ensure a uniform user experience by evaluating the user interface and visual design of digital components and creating guidelines and templates.  Evaluate and define program specific strategies for engaging Community of Practice (CoP) members and promoting interaction.
• Provide support related to the program’s digital platforms as needed by and requested from program stakeholders including Regional English Language Officers (RELOs) and U.S. Embassy staff, program participants, program partners, and ECA/A/L staff.

• Bachelor's Degree or its International Equivalent - Economics, Education, Environment, Health, Human Development, Information Science, International Development, Social Sciences or Related Field.
• Typically requires 5-8 years of managing data collection and technical assistance experience.
• Proficiency with database management software and on-line search tools required.
• Has sensitivity to cultural diversity and understanding of the political, contextual, and ethical issues in assigned areas.
• Articulate and professional and able to communicate in a clear, positive fashion with clients and staff.
• Must be able to read, write, and speak fluent English.
• Prior work experience in a non-governmental organization (NGO), government agency, or private company.

• Pleasure, joy, jouissance, delight, splendour, enchantment, empathy, and kindness
• Love, passion, and amour fou
• Middlebrow pleasure
• Living the queer life, and queer(ing) happiness
• Eudaimonia, mindfulness, and wellbeing
• Eudaimonic reading, and the eudaimonic turn in cultural and literary studies
• The hermeneutics of suspicion, paranoid and reparative reading, and their aftermath
• Ethical criticism, the ethics of hope, and hopelessness
• The body as site of happiness, joy, pleasure, etc.
• Affect, the theories and/or histories of positive emotions
• Celebration, and celebration as protest
• Burlesque, clowning, circus, carnivals, and the carnivalesque
• Kitsch, camp, and drag
• Sex and play, sex lives, fun
• Vitality, verve, vigour, and liveliness
• Biological life, bios, zoe, survival, sur-vivre [living-on], affirmation
• The utopian tendencies of gender studies and queer theory
• The (queer) future, queer futurity, and happy endings

Gender studies and queer theory are located across and between disciplines, and so we welcome submissions from across (and outside of, against and up against) the full cross-/inter/-trans-disciplinary spectrum, and from inside and outside of conventional academia.

Do not be limited. Be brave. Play with form, style, and genre. Invent, demolish, reimagine.

The deadline for submissions is 29 May 2017.

Written submissions, whether critical or creative, should be between 3,000 and 6,000 words in length, and should adhere strictly to the 16th edition of the Chicago Manual of Style.

All submissions—critical, creative, and those falling in between; no matter the format or medium—will be subject to a process of double-blind peer review.

For more information, please contact our guest editor, Dr Juliane Roemhild: J.Roemhild@latrobe.edu.au

2017 MASC-SLL Call for Papers

Mid-Atlantic Student Colloquium on Speech, Language and Learning

• Computational models of human language processing
• Computational phonology and morphology
• Discourse and pragmatics
• Evaluation
• Information retrieval and question answering
• Knowledge base population and machine reading
• Language acquisition
• Language disorders
• Language generation and summarization
• Language resources and annotation
• Lexical semantics and ontologies
• Machine learning
• Machine translation and multilingual processing
• NLP for the Web and social media
• Semantics
• Sentiment analysis and opinion mining
• Speaker variability
• Speech recognition and synthesis
• Syntax and parsing
• Text and document classification
• Text mining and information extraction

Important Dates

• Submission deadline (abstracts): March 31
• Decisions announced: April 10
• Registration opens: April 10
• Program schedule released: April 15
• Registration closes: May 1
• Colloquium: May 6

For more information
If you have questions or need more information, you can send email to the 2017 MASC-SLL organizers at organizers@mascsll.org.