Military's Use Of Social Security Numbers A Vulnerability For Veterans
By Patricia Murphy – KUOW (Seattle Public Radio)

A massive data breach at the federal Office of Personnel Management has exposed the Social Security numbers and personnel records of nearly every federal worker. The implications for federal employees, military service members and the intelligence community could be extraordinary.  

But at a very basic level U.S. service members have been at high risk for identity theft for decades.

In the military your nine-digit service ID number is used for everything, whether you're checking out gym equipment or picking up your laundry. Since the late 1960s that number has been a service member’s Social Security number.

Rick Forno is the assistant director of the University of Maryland Baltimore County Center for Cybersecurity. He said using Social Security numbers as a unique identifier isn't new….

Source: KUOW

At 5:30 a.m. every morning, Shanae Cole ‘13, Media and Communication Studies, sits down in the control room as she assists with managing cameras, news anchors, and viewers of the popular celebrity news show, TMZ. She carefully searches through all of her leads and quickly reviews the website for any last minute breaking news before going live.

Growing up, Cole was glued to her television screen watching the latest and greatest cartoons and entertainment television. She laughed along with Bart on “The Simpsons” and Stewie on “Family Guy,” immersing herself in the cartoons and taking on the role of audience member. She also remembers falling in love with the action and thrill that superheroes provided.

When the time came to start college, Cole found a home within UMBC’s Media and Communication Studies department under the mentorship of Jason Loviglio and Donald Snyder. She says she cannot emphasize enough the impact her education provided on her career. “Today we live in a world where being media literate is important,” Cole says. “Especially since the need for new technologies to make life more efficient will only continue to proliferate.”

At UMBC, Cole had exceptional opportunities to gain hands-on experience through internships with 92 Q Jams Baltimore, “Variety”, and Katalyst Films, Ashton Kutcher’s production company.

Cole had set her sights on moving to California and working in the entertainment industry, and she knew she had to persevere to find a path that would lead her to her ultimate goal. “I had high hopes of getting an internship with Warner Brothers because of DC Comics and the Looney Tunes,” says Cole. “but I was devastated when I got an email saying that they went with another candidate.”

Unwilling to accept defeat, Cole sought other opportunities to help expand her experience and strengthen her reputation within the entertainment industry. And she found her opportunity in an internship with Fox 45 and the CW Baltimore.

“The more hands on experience you have,” says Cole, “the better off you’ll be, especially in the entertainment industry.”

And that hands-on experience paid off. It was through this internship that Cole won a National Capital Chesapeake Bay Chapter Emmy and later a bronze medal at the National PROMAX Creative TV Marketing Awards. The award recoginzed Cole’s efforts on a promo the network aired, a promo inspired by some of Cole’s earliest TV memories — it featured a storyline based on superheroes and followed examples from “Family Guy” and “The Simpsons.”

These achievements opened doors at Warner Brothers. The dream job she thought was over resurfaced at an even greater moment in her life, and this time the position was hers for the taking. And while interning for Warner Brothers, Cole was able to launch her career at TMZ. Now, Cole says, she’s grateful to have the ability to help others chase their dreams in the entertainment industry.

The recipe for attaining your dreams? According to Cole, all you need to do is “Keep the faith, keep working hard, and great things will come.”

-Samantha Hanssen ’15

Research Assistantship

Department of Africana Studies

Work Study students are strongly encouraged to apply

Email Dr. Tyson King-Meadows for an application

tkingmea@umbc.edu

If there is one fact in my profession that every client knows, but doesn’t “know,” it’s this: You’re not perfect.

You’re going to struggle. You’re going to have bad days. You’re going to eat more than you planned on eating, and you’re going to feel like doing nothing sometimes. It’s not a matter of “if.” It’s “when.” And after helping more than 1,000 people lose weight, I can tell you “when” is usually Friday.

Friday is the most common day when people get a case of the “screw its.” When perfect is no longer an option, they just throw the play book completely out the window. But these swings in consistency are death to long-term weight loss because they rob us of momentum. So I started trying to come up with a better plan and, luckily for all my clients, I’m a huge Civil War history nerd.

One of the great generals (and characters) in the Civil War was Stonewall Jackson. A tactical genius, Jackson appreciated that the most important factor in war (and the war that’s weight loss) is momentum. So he was moving forward, even when he was moving backward. One of his contemporaries summarized Jackson:

Excerpt From Hello Healthy Coach Stevo. Read more click on link

If a university and its people are dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge, there is perhaps nowhere on campus that more embodies that mission than the library. That is surely true here on UMBC’s campus. Much more than books on shelves, the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery is an engine for discovery, providing our students and faculty with the resources and support they need on their academic journey.

This year, those resources grew thanks to Suzanne Schlenger. A member of the Friends of the Library since 2001, she recently established the Suzanne Schlenger Endowment for a Collection of American Women in Literature and donated a substantial set of books that will form the basis for this new collection.

The volumes, which now reside in UMBC’s Special Collections, include many works by Willa Cather and Edith Wharton, as well as a limited edition of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. The collection was built over many years, as Mrs. Schlenger and her late husband, Jack Schlenger, a lawyer and friend of Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, travelled the world looking for works by their favorite authors.

“My husband was a book collector and a reader,” she says. “I read everything he collected, and I wanted to collect books, too.” Mrs. Schlenger and her husband thoroughly enjoyed their search, which took them as far away as Europe. “I have a collector’s mind,” says Mrs. Schlenger. “This satisfies my love of books, my love of reading, and my love of collecting.”

Although Mrs. Schlenger could have opted to sell her books, she says that donating them to the library and establishing the endowment just felt right to her.  She sees this as an opportunity to ensure that the books are well used, and she is eager to see what research and scholarship comes out of her collection. “I wanted to pass [the collection] on to scholars,” she says. “I hope people come and read it.”

Her love for books and reading is clear. When asked about her favorite book in the collection, Mrs. Schlenger answers without pause: it’s Willa Cather’s My Antonia. She cites Antonia’s resilience as a key factor in her appreciation for the book. “[Cather] is an outstanding stylist,” says Mrs. Schlenger. “She writes sparely with such style, and she digs at your heart.”

And while Mrs. Schlenger’s books provide a critical base for the new collection of American women writers, the library staff will also be able to use the endowment she’s created to enrich and expand that collection in consultation with faculty from the English and Theatre Departments. This, Mrs. Schlenger hopes, will fill a void in the library and ensure a rich collection in years to come.

“I’ve seen UMBC grow, and through my husband’s enthusiasm for UMBC, I joined him in that,” says Mrs. Schlenger of her choice to invest her time, treasure, and talent in the university.

One hundred teams, including 30 international teams from eight countries, gathered at Budds Creek Motocross Race Track for the action-packed Baja SAE Maryland 2015 competition, hosted May 7-10 by UMBC’s College of Engineering and Information Technology and Department of Mechanical Engineering. The energy and excitement of the event were clear from the moment registration opened. Participant spots for the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) competition were filled in just four minutes.

The UMBC Baja design, engineering, and racing team has become nationally recognized for exceptional performance over the past decade. This reputation led to SAE inviting UMBC to host this year’s Midwest event, one of three annual SAE competitions nationwide.

Most organizing universities have three years to prepare, but a last-minute location change to find the ideal track challenged UMBC’s organizing team to pull off the race with only six months to plan. The organizing committee, headed by Steven Storck ’08, ’09 M.S., ’14 Ph.D., mechanical engineering, brought together UMBC Baja alumni with representatives from University of Maryland, College Park and Johns Hopkins University to plan the event, with guidance from Neil Rothman, mechanical engineering graduate program director.

With their past competition experiences in mind, the organizing committee focused on what mattered most to participants: the race track and spectators. “Being a former Baja competitor, our main goal was to provide an exciting event that was focused around the engineering efforts of the student,” Storck shared.

The committee took an engineer’s approach to designing the race course to avoid potential scoring anomalies from tight turns and difficult obstacles. They also thought carefully about the race order, spending hours rearranging events and schedules to maximize the time competitors could display their hard work.

The committee also recognized that student participants want to share this experience, and the products of their work, with family and friends. They designed the race course so spectators could easily view the competing teams from one central location. Organizers also set up a high quality live webcast of the event to broaden the race’s audience. The livestream reached over 27,000 viewers in 124 countries. Videos of the entire first day and the Endurance Race are still available to view online.

During the competition, student teams presented their off-road race cars to engineering and business professionals, underwent strict technical inspections, and competed solo and wheel-to-wheel to prove their engineering skills. The organizers’ efforts paid off as events moved forward seamlessly. The wildly successful race garnered an unheard of 98% approval rating in a satisfaction survey following the event.

Sam Barill, head manager of SAE’s collegiate design series, praised the event, saying, “The Baja SAE competition recently held in Maryland and hosted by UMBC [demonstrated] top-notch organizing by Steven Storck and his group…and emphasized just how important these events are to the education and hands-on learning of future engineers.”

Neil Rothman, UMBC Baja team advisor, is enthusiastic about the skills students learn through participating in competitions like Baja SAE Maryland. “It is clear that engineering students benefit from experiential learning…hands-on activities where they can put engineering principles into practice,” he says.

“Baja is experiential learning on steroids,” Rothman explains. “This is ‘real engineering’ at its finest and the students who participate in Baja will stand out as those who understand how things should be designed and built. These are the skills companies are looking for.”

Based on the overwhelmingly positive feedback from SAE, race participants, and families, UMBC has already started to explore hosting a future Baja race.