Wan to learn more about this topic? We have some good news! 

Jason will be teaching a course on Entrepreneurial Finance (ENTR 330) this fall which correlated closely to this workshop’s content. You can find more information about the class here.

Richard Forno, assistant director for UMBC’s Center for Cybersecurity, was recently in American City and County to discuss government recruitment of cybersecurity practitioners. American City and County is a magazine that features stories of interest to state and local government officials.

In the article, Forno recommends that governments look for cybersecurity professionals with a combination of technical and soft skills. “You need people that have the right mix of technical talent and the ability to apply that talent effectively in the workplace,” he said.

Click here to read “Hunting cybersecurity talent” in American City and County.

A technical malfunction forced UMBC students to switch buses on their way to Arundel Mills Mall last weekend.

On Saturday, April 11, a UMBC Transit bus driving along the Arundel/BWI MARC transit line broke down on Interstate 195, near the Baltimore-Washington International Airport. Students and other passengers then waited for approximately 40 minutes before a replacement bus from UMBC Transit was able to pick up the group.

Alfred Hayre, a junior information systems major, was riding the bus with a group of friends when the incident occurred. Hayre recalled the back of the bus began to fill with smoke.

“A student went to the front of the bus to inform the bus driver of what was going on,” Hayre said. “The bus driver said that he was aware of the smoke in the back, and that he was trying to get to a safe spot where he could pull over.”

The bus driver pulled over near BWI Airport. Once stopped, according to Hayre, the driver initially stated that a broken radiator had likely caused the breakdown.

A replacement bus arrived thereafter to pick up the original group of passengers and resume the route. No one on board the first bus was injured.

Ricardo Jay Boulware, Associate Director of UMBC Transit, said that maintenance personnel determined the cause of the breakdown to be a cracked exhaust pipe. Boulware said that the crack in the pipe “triggered the the fire suppression system to go off, as it is designed to do.”

According to Boulware, an “immediate message” was sent out via the UMBC Transit Tracker system to alert other potential passengers of the incident.

Boulware stated that UMBC Transit is now taking preventative measures against possible similar malfunctions on its other buses. “UMBC Transit is inspecting other exhaust pipes to see if this is an age-related issue and if a similar condition exists.”

Read more stories from: The Retriever Weekly

Penny Rheingans, director of The Center for Women in Technology (CWIT), Susan Martin, associate director of CWIT, Carolyn Seaman, information systems, and E.F. Charles LaBerge, computer science and electrical engineering, recently received a $632,488 grant from the National Science Foundation to support transfer scholars in computer science, computer engineering, and information systems.

The grant will continue the work of the Transfer Scholars in Information Technology and Engineering (T-Site) program. The program provides scholarship funds, academic and professional programming, and a supportive community to encourage transfer student success in computing majors. The program is open to transfer students from Maryland community colleges.

Click here to learn more about the T-Site Scholars program.

On April 11, Jean Fernandez, English, delivered a talk on Reading Chairs as a panelist for the Baltimore Museum of Art’s exhibition event “Ten Chairs.” The panel consists of a cross-disciplinary group of thinkers who addressed one of the chairs in the collection as seen though the eyes of their discipline. Other featured speakers came from Johns Hopkins University, Columbia University, University of Pennsylvania, and the Smithsonian Institution.

On the same day, Fernandez also participated as a panel member in a discussion of Henrik Ibsen’s “Ghosts,” as part of Everyman Theater’s World of the Play Series. The discussion was hosted by Marc Steiner and will be broadcast as part of The Marc Steiner Show.

For the first time, UMBC is hosting Baja SAE Maryland, the national Baja competition in the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) Collegiate Design Series. One hundred teams of college students from the U.S. and eight foreign countries will attend the competition, held at Budds Creek Motocross in Mechanicsville, MD, May 7-10, 2015.

Baja SAE is a four-day engineering design competition where student teams will meet to present their off-road race cars to engineering and business professionals, undergo strict technical inspections, and compete solo and wheel-to-wheel for a chance to prove their engineering skills.

We need as many volunteers as possible to help with the event and give all of this year’s competitors the best possible setting to succeed. Experience with engineering, motorsports, or Baja SAE is particularly helpful, but there are plenty of track and event support roles to fill during the event.

Click here to sign up to volunteer.