Hi everyone! I'm a UMBC PhD student graduating soon and looking for someone to take over my room in a 2-bedroom townhouse. Clean and relatively quiet preferred. All genders warmly welcome!

📍 Location: Belwood Green

• Peaceful neighborhood with plenty of other UMBC students
• 🚌 3-min walk to the UMBC shuttle stop
• 🚗 5-min drive to campus
• 🛒 Walking distance to Weis Markets and Giant
• 💖 Walking distance to a pharmacy, physical therapy, and more

🏠 The House

• 2 bedrooms · 1 full bath + 1 half bath
• Fully furnished with all necessary appliances
• 🧺 In-unit washer and dryer
• 🌡️ Central HVAC
• 📦 Plenty of basement storage
• 🐾 Pets: None
• 🌳 Private backyard
• 🚗 Dedicated parking
• 🚭 Non-smoking household

🤝 Your roommate: Rajat — clean, quiet, helpful, respectful, genuinely a great guy. (Note: the roommate staying is male.) Feel free to reach out to him directly: rajatj1@umbc.edu

💰 Financials & Lease

• Rent: $572/month (your half)
• Utilities: Aprox ~$125/month (your share of WiFi + BGE)
• Move-in cost: $1,144 — first month's rent + a $572 security deposit
• Move-in date: Mid to late August (flexible)
• Lease: Lease transfer, running through August 17

Happy to answer questions or show the place — reach out!

✉️ Email: asheshs1@umbc.edu
📞 Phone: +1 410 442 6194

Hi everyone! I'm a graduate student at UMBC (Fine Arts) looking for a private room in a shared apartment/house near campus. Here's what I'm looking for:

• Private room for a female
• Budget: around $600/month (flexible depending on whether utilities are included).
• Preferably on the shuttle route
• Move-in: September
• I'd prefer living with another graduate student or someone who is working.
• Arbutus, Catonsville, or Halethorpe

A little about me: I am neat, very respectful of everyone's private life, and mindful of keeping common areas clean. I also don't mind living with cats at all!

If you have a room available, please let me know where it is located, which shuttle route it's near, and share any photos of the room/shared spaces if you have them.

You can reach out to me by email : rokhsaa1@umbc.edu

Dear Colleagues,

We are writing to share important updates regarding the start of the 2026-2027 academic year and its impact on key university events, including Convocation and Winter Commencement.

As the academic calendar shifts to a Monday start and introduces a Fall Recess, corresponding changes are necessary in how we welcome our newest Retrievers and support their transition into the UMBC community.

Convocation will now take place on Sunday, August 23, 2026 at 3 p.m., the day before fall classes begin. 

We recognize that a Sunday event requires personal and professional adjustments for many of you, and we truly appreciate your flexibility in supporting our students and our community.   Holding Convocation immediately before the first day of classes preserves its longstanding role as the formal opening of the academic year while also providing students and families additional time to settle in through move-in and Welcome Retrievers activities.

Convocation is one of UMBC’s most meaningful academic traditions. For our newest Retrievers, it marks the beginning of their academic journey and offers an important first experience of the faculty, staff, and community that will support them throughout their time at UMBC. It is the formal academic ceremony that marks the passage from prospective student to full member of the UMBC academic community.

We encourage all faculty to attend and participate in Convocation on Sunday, August 23. Your presence is essential to the ceremony, to the institution, and most importantly, to the students you will be welcoming.

Looking ahead, the updated academic calendar also results in changes to Winter Commencement. Both the Undergraduate and Graduate ceremonies will be held on Friday, December 18, 2026 following the conclusion of finals. The Undergraduate ceremony will take place at 10:00 a.m, and the Graduate Ceremony will be held at 3:00 p.m.  

Additional details about Convocation and Welcome Retrievers activities will be shared in the coming weeks. More information about Winter Commencement will be provided closer to the event.

Thank you for your partnership, flexibility, and ongoing commitment to UMBC and the students we serve together.

Sincerely,

President Valerie Sheares Ashby

Manfred H.M. van Dulmen
Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs

In partnership with the Math and Physics Departments, the Division of Information Technology is pleased to announce a pilot for Gradescope, a feedback and grading platform that integrates with Blackboard. Gradescope helps streamline the grading process, especially open-ended “short answer” or “essay” format questions for paper-based, digital, and code-based assignments.

What is Gradescope?

Gradescope is an AI-assisted grading tool that allows instructors to grade paper-based exams, quizzes, bubblesheets, and homework assignments online. It is known for its flexible rubrics and ability to group similar student open-ended answers together.

Here is what Gradescope brings to your teaching toolkit:

• AI-Assisted Grading: For short-answer or handwritten questions, Gradescope can automatically group identical or similar answers together, allowing you to grade an entire batch of student responses at once.
• Code Autograding: Perfect for computer science and engineering courses, Gradescope allows you to run custom autograders on student code submissions alongside manual rubric grading.
• Dynamic Rubrics: Tailor your rubric grading workflow with structured criteria grouping, positive/negative scoring, grid-view matrices, and leverage Markdown/LaTeX.
• Annotation Tools: Provide precise feedback directly on student submissions with text, a freeform pencil, a box tool to create overlays, and emojis.
• Detailed Analytics: Instantly view per-question and per-concept statistics to pinpoint exactly where your students are thriving and where they might need a bit more review.
• Blackboard Integration: Sync your course rosters and push grades directly back to the Blackboard Grade Center, keeping your workflow unified. Access Gradescope from the Blackboard Content Market.

How Does the Pilot Work?

The pilot is open to all UMBC instructors for the 2026-2027 academic year. 

The Instructional Technology team welcomes your participation and feedback on your experience and student outcomes to assess the tool's impact and inform decisions about tool access beyond the pilot phase. 

How to Get Started

Gradescope is available in Blackboard in the course Content Market.

• Explore the Resources: Review the Gradescope FAQs for instructor and student resources.
• Attend Training: Gradescope Essentials - August 18 (1pm-2:30pm)

Connect with Instructional Technology

As always, if you have any questions about teaching, learning, and technology at UMBC, please consider the following options:

• Check our extensive FAQ collection
• What's new in Ultra? |Known Issues
• Open a ticket via RT
• Follow the Instructional Technology & DoIT myUMBC groups
• Request a consult with instructional technology staff

Imagine a student opening a Google Docs syllabus with a screen reader. They expect to easily skip from section to section. Instead, they hit a wall of text. Why? Because simply making text bold and underlined doesn't turn it into a real header and assistive technology can't read it as one.

Because Google Docs live entirely in a web browser, building an inclusive document requires a slightly different approach than working in traditional desktop word processors. Google Workspace’s native tools make it easy to build in accessibility from the start, rather than fixing it after the fact.

Here are five steps to create inclusive Google Docs, from the first keystroke to the final share.

Step 1: Mapping the Foundation with Paragraph Styles

When building a document, it is tempting to use the font size, bold, and underline buttons to manually create visual section headers. However, screen readers cannot use visual styling to understand the hierarchy of a page. Instead, they rely on an invisible, structural blueprint.

To build this structure properly, swap manual formatting for the Styles menu:

1. Highlight your section title and click the Styles dropdown in the top toolbar (it usually defaults to "Normal text").
2. Assign Title for your main topic, Heading 1 for major sections, and Heading 2 for subsections.

The Google Advantage: Using native headings automatically populates the left-hand document outline panel (View → Show outline). Because this outline serves as a live, interactive map, it doesn't just help assistive tech users jump between sections—it allows everyone collaborating on the document to navigate massive files with a single click.

Step 2: Writing and Linking via "Smart Chips"

Pasting raw, lengthy URLs into a shared document creates a clunky visual layout and an incredibly frustrating experience for screen reader users, who have to listen to every single character read aloud. On the flip side, vague text like "click here" lacks critical context when scanned in isolation.

• Instead of: “For the library database, click here.”
• Write: “Search the Library Database directly.”

The Google Advantage: Google Docs offers a cloud-native fix for messy links. When you paste a URL into a document, immediately press the “Tab" key when prompted. Google will automatically convert the raw web address into a clean Smart Chip or a descriptive preview title pulled directly from the destination page's metadata.

Step 3: Handling Visuals and Decorative Content

Images, charts, and diagrams require text alternatives (Alt Text) so screen readers can describe the images in the Documents. 

To add this in Google Docs:

1. Right-click the image and select Alt text (or use the shortcut Ctrl + Alt + Y / Cmd + Option + Y).
2. Type your summary strictly in the Description box, focusing on why the image matters to the document. You can leave the "Title" box blank.

The Google Disadvantage: Unlike desktop processors, Google Docs does not feature a native "Mark as decorative" checkbox for purely aesthetic graphics (like accent lines or background shapes). To work around this limitation without confusing assistive technologies, either omit purely decorative images entirely, or explicitly type "Decorative image" in the description box so a screen reader user knows they aren't missing out on critical content.

Step 4: Creating Lists

A hand-type dash or asterisk might look like a list on screen, but screen readers have no way of knowing it’s meant to be one. Instead, they announce each line as a separate, disconnected sentences, leaving the listener with no sense of how many items exist or where they are in a sequence.

• Use numbered lists when sequence matters, such as steps in an assignment or the order of operations in a grading rubric.
• Use bulleted lists when items carry equal weight, like a set of recommended readings or optional resources.

The Google Advantage: Applying a native list format (Format → Bullets & numbering) tells assistive technology exactly how many items are in the list and which one is currently being read, while also letting collaborators reorder or indent items automatically, without retyping symbols by hand.

Step 5: Maintaining Simple Typography

Decorative or script fonts, along with fully justified paragraphs, can be difficult for low-vision or dyslexic readers to track, since justification stretches spacing unevenly and creates awkward gaps between words. Standard, legible fonts paired with left-aligned text keep spacing consistent and predictable for every reader.

• Keep body text at 11pt or larger, since smaller sizes force low-vision readers to rely entirely on browser zoom.
• Reserve underlining for hyperlinks only since underlined body text can be mistaken for a broken or dead link.

The Google Advantage: Selecting "More fonts" from the font dropdown lets you preview and filter Google's full font library before applying it document-wide, making it easy to swap in an accessible typeface consistently across the whole file.

Remember: The biggest difference between Google Docs and desktop alternatives is the ecosystem: Google Docs does not feature a native, built-in "Check Accessibility" button in the toolbar. Therefore, you must review your work for accessibility before selecting the “Share” button.

On May 26th, UMBC welcomed academic leaders and enrollment professionals from Anne Arundel Community College (AACC) and the College of Southern Maryland (CSM) for the Strategic Transfer Excellence Plan (STEP) Convening. Supported by the Maryland Higher Education Commission (MHEC) and the Aspen Institute, the event brought together partners to align priorities, strengthen collaboration, and advance a shared vision for improving the transfer student experience.

STEP is a student-centered partnership focused on creating seamless pathways from community colleges to UMBC. Through the initiative, the partner institutions are working together to identify and remove unnecessary barriers to transfer, reduce time to degree, and increase bachelor's degree attainment for community college students. The partnership has committed to five shared goals:  expanding transfer enrollment from AACC and CSM, improving first-year success, increasing graduation rates for community college transfer students, reducing equity gaps in student completion, and strengthening STEM pathways.

The convening was centered on laying the foundation for the next phase of the work through discussions on governance, accountability, stakeholder engagement, communication strategies, and the resources needed to support long-term implementation. Participants represented a broad cross-section of the transfer experience, including deans, faculty, and leaders from admissions, advising, financial aid, the registrar, institutional research, information technology, orientation, student success, and student affairs.

Student voices grounded those conversations in lived experience. They highlighted the different pathways students take to UMBC and the opportunities institutions have to better support them along the way.

Zoha Waleed and Joaquin Seminario, AACC students who presented research through UMBC's inaugural URCAD Partners program, shared how participating in undergraduate research before transferring helped them see themselves as part of the UMBC community and inspired them to consider pursuing PhDs.

Laura Comey, who participated in dual enrollment at CSM before enrolling at UMBC as a first-year student, reflected on the lasting impact of her community college experience.

"Looking back, CSM was not just the place where I earned college credits. It was the place where I learned how to be a college student. It was where I learned how to advocate for myself, how to ask for help, how to lead, and how to imagine a bigger future for myself."

Markala Pharr, who transferred from CSM to UMBC, shared how delays in credit evaluation affected her first semester.

"Since I also had to wait for certain courses to be reevaluated during my first semester, my options for classes were limited."

Together, the students reinforced a central theme of the convening: transfer students bring resilience, experience, and valuable perspectives to their institutions, and their success depends on intentional, coordinated systems that make navigating the transfer process as seamless as possible.

The Maryland Higher Education Commission (MHEC) and the Aspen Institute, also in attendance recognized the partnership's commitment to expanding opportunity, noting its excitement about the life-changing impact the initiative can have for students across the region through UMBC's efforts to expand access and invest in transfer student success.

This summer, STEP enters Phase 2 of the Maryland Transfer Initiative, with work focused on stakeholder engagement and governance, shared vision alignment, resource alignment, and strengthening data and institutional infrastructure. As executive leadership across all three institutions continues to guide the partnership, STEP will serve as the framework for advancing coordinated action that improves outcomes for current and future transfer students.

• Rent: $318 /month + utilities
• No lease signing required
• Available for August or immediate move-in

Amenities include:

• Balcony
• Furnished living room
• Bidet fitted in toilet
• Parking access
• TV

5-minute walk to UMBC & MTA bus stop.

Perfect for students on a budget.

If interested, please message +1 (410) 961-8708 or WhatsApp

Desi students preferred 🇮🇳

Hello, My name is Rose. I am a senior psychology major. I have a room available in a 2 bed, 1 bath apartment about an 8 min drive from campus and a half mile from the shuttle. Rent is $479 plus electric. I also have a cat, so any perspective tenants would need to be okay with living with a cat. For more information, please contact me at rtambwe1@umbc.edu.

The Spoon Theory is a popular metaphor created by Christine Miserandino in 2003 to explain the daily reality of living with a hidden disability or chronic illness. It uses "spoons" as a unit of energy, with a person starting each day with a limited number of spoons. Every daily task—like showering, dressing, or working—costs a specific number of spoons. Once a person runs out of spoons, they have no energy left and must rest.

Because many disabilities and health conditions (such as lupus, fibromyalgia, autism, and chronic fatigue) are not immediately visible to others, this theory helps outsiders visualize the hidden mental and physical exertion required to navigate daily life. People with these conditions are often referred to as "spoonies"

Many people in the chronic illness and disability communities rely on this concept to set boundaries and explain their limits to friends and family. 

“On a high-pain day, a relatively simple task of showering or getting ready for the day can take four spoons. On a low-pain day, that same task might take just one spoon.

The Spoon Theory is a popular metaphor created by Christine Miserandino in 2003 to explain the daily reality of living with a hidden disability or chronic illness. It uses "spoons" as a unit of energy, with a person starting each day with a limited number of spoons. Every daily task—like showering, dressing, or working—costs a specific number of spoons. Once a person runs out of spoons, they have no energy left and must rest.

Because many disabilities and health conditions (such as lupus, fibromyalgia, autism, and chronic fatigue) are not immediately visible to others, this theory helps outsiders visualize the hidden mental and physical exertion required to navigate daily life. People with these conditions are often referred to as "spoonies"

Many people in the chronic illness and disability communities rely on this concept to set boundaries and explain their limits to friends and family. 

“On a high-pain day, a relatively simple task of showering or getting ready for the day can take four spoons. On a low-pain day, that same task might take just one spoon.