Looking for enough individuals from the UMBC community (students, faculty, staff, etc.) who are interested in reforming a badminton club in school. The organization will most likely be on the recreational level so all players regardless of experience are welcome. Please email me if interested or respond to this post. Thank you!

Looking for enough individuals from the UMBC community (students, faculty, staff, etc.) who are interested in reforming a badminton club in school. The organization will most likely be on the recreational level so all players regardless of experience are welcome. Please email me if interested or respond to this post. Thank you!

Tim Brennan, professor of public policy and economics, was quoted in a recent Brisbane Times article about the possibility of proposed net neutrality rules in Australia. Brennan, who served as chief economist of the FCC last year, was interviewed after presenting a talk about attempts to create net neutrality rules for U.S. carriers at the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) annual regulatory conference in Brisbane earlier this month.

Brennan urged regulators to take a cautious approach to net neutrality in Australia: “Before Australia embarks on net neutrality, it should have evidence of a problem and not merely presumptions that there could be a problem. Even a monopoly broadband provider has incentives to offer high-quality, unbiased access to its subscribers,” he told the Brisbane Times.

“Restricting the ability of broadband service providers to negotiate with specific users could inhibit the development of new innovations that over time could benefit all,” he added, pointing to the example of exclusive agreements between Apple and AT&T Mobile that led to the development of the iPhone and other smartphones.

Brennan is an expert in antitrust law and policy, regulatory economics, electricity markets, telecommunications and broadcast policy, and copyright and intellectual property. In addition to serving as FCC chief economist, he is a senior fellow at Resources for the Future, an independent organization that conducts economic research and analysis. Read more about Brennan’s research on the School of Public Policy website.

Sarah Jewett, executive director of the STEM Transfer Student Success Initiative, and Susan Martin, associate director of the Center for Women in Technology, recently co-wrote a two-part series op-ed for Evolllution about their work developing programs to bridge access to STEM fields, focusing on underserved transfer students.

The first part of the series discussed the STEM Transfer Success Initiative, which creates local institutional partnerships to support the success of students in transition, and the T-SITE Scholars program, which targets talented engineering and computing transfer students who demonstrate financial need.

“These projects illustrate the potential of collaborative relationships to improve academic success, increase retention in STEM majors and decrease time to graduation,” Jewett and Martin wrote.

The second part of the series focused on reflecting on the lessons that were learned during the launch process of the STEM Transfer Student Success Initiative and T-SITE Scholars program.

“Improving the success, retention and graduation rates of transfer students requires institutions to engage in critical self-reflection. Given that transfer students comprise almost half of the student population at UMBC, it was imperative for us to think seriously about how students experienced the transition between institutions, and to adopt new approaches to improve the process,” the authors wrote.

The complete two-part series can be accessed below:

STEM Transfer Success: The Value of Critical Reflection and Shared Responsibility
STEM Transfer Success: Reflecting on Lessons Learned

Hi! 

My name is Landry, I am a grad student and French adjunct at UMBC. I am from  France. I am looking for a roommate to share my house with. 

Please contact me at : 443 680 3394 or digeon@umbc.edu

Charles Village

Room For Rent: $400 + Shared Utilities (approx $80/month)

Furnished. Spacious (3 floors)

Includes Private Bathroom + Washer / Dryer + washing machine

- Supermarket with walking distance (Safeway)

- 1 furnished bedroom 

- 1 private bathroom 

- Free/Easy parking 

- 10 miles from UMBC campus 

Today's post is written by Emily Somach, a recent graduate of the College of Information Studies at College Park. Emily has been working in Special Collections this year as part of an NHPRC funded grant project; you can read more about her work with EAD-XML in a previous post. As part of this project she also wrote descriptive records for collections that had not previously been described. This blog post was inspired by Collection 156. Thank you, Emily!

Looking at cute pictures of cats is not a new pastime. The advent of the internet has certainly made it a more widespread form of entertainment, but far before the World Wide Web people were finding ways to satisfy their desire for cute kitten pictures. Most people do not realize that the most popular and effective method for admiring representations of felines was once the scrapbook, a hobby that appeared in the early 19th century and that many Victorian women greatly enjoyed.

According to Collectors Weekly, “In response to the scrapbooking trend, 19th-century bookmakers designed blank albums with elaborate, tooled-leather covers, gilt paper edgings, and engraved clasps” and materials were “explicitly produced as die-cut ‘scrap’ for decorating homemade albums.” With access to abundant scraps as well as blank-paged books, it is no wonder that the practice of scrapbooking grew so quickly in popularity. An excellent example of a scrapbook from this time period is the one seen below, from the shelves of UMBC’s Special Collections. As you can tell from the photographs, the hobby was truly a serious pursuit.

This particular album from Special Collections is a very standard example of a scrapbook from the 1800s. It is chock full of playful kittens and cats of all colors and sizes, as well as some anthropomorphized felines performing human activities (such as eating cake at a table). The images vary from the cat memes and gifs with which our modern eyes are now accustomed, but they seem to fill the same niche.

Elspeth Rountree, the co-founder of the Know Your Meme website, explains, “They're the perfect distraction from our hectic lives. You don't need any explanation or prior knowledge to understand the slapstick humor that animals provide. Cat videos and images are a quick hit of pure, unfettered 'cute.' They're also entertainment in easily digestible doses.” Who wouldn’t smile after looking at a tangle of playful kittens chasing a ball, or popping out of a snare drum?

Ben Huh, CEO of The Cheezburger Network, elaborates on the appeal of cat pictures when he states, “Cats have very expressive facial and body expressions, so they are a perfect canvas for human emotion.” This reason helps to clarify why humans used to, and still do, portray animals in clothing or place animals in human situations. After viewing scrapbooks from previous centuries, it becomes undeniable that the desire to gaze on adorable, furry felines has long been a part of human culture. The desire transcends time and space, and persists in spite of new technologies and trends.

Cited sources:

"The Million Dollar Question: Why Does the Internet Love Cats?" Mashable, accessed August 27, 2015, http://mashable.com/2010/10/21/why-does-the-web-love-cats/.

"Scrapbooks and Paper Die-Cuts," Collector's Weekly, accessed August 27, 2015, http://www.collectorsweekly.com/paper/scrapbooks.