Graduate Research Conference (4/29)

The 33rd Annual Graduate Research Conference (GRC) will be held Friday, April 29, at the University Center, with breakout session rooms in M/P, Sondheim, the Seventh Floor of the Library and in the University Center itself.

The GRC keynote speaker is Ralph Semmel, director of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab. Dr. Semmel earned his doctorate from UMBC, and it is an honor that he returns to campus for this exciting day of research.

There are over 125 graduate student oral and poster presentations submitted for the GRC, ranging from gerontology to molecular biology. Alumni and UMBC faculty serve as judges at the conference.

The day begins at 8 a.m. with continental breakfast and registration for participants and judges. Session I is 9-10:50 a.m., Session II is 11 a.m.-12:50 p.m.

The lunch, keynote speaker and short awards ceremony are 1-2:30 p.m. We are pleased to announce that, for the first time, there will be a Education Poster Session in the Library, 4-5 p.m., where more than 35 education graduate students will present their research.

Faculty, staff and students are welcome to attend the oral and poster presentations as well as the luncheon/keynote speaker. RSVP to gsa@umbc.edu by Thursday, April 28.

Administrative Professionals Day – $6 Lunch at True Grit’s (4/27)

Chartwells offers a special lunch price of $6 at True Grit’s for faculty and staff every Friday.

This special lunch pricing will also be offered on Administrative Professional Day on Wednesday, April 27, 11 a.m.-2 p.m.

Concert: Gertrude Stein and Friends (4/21)

Wendy Salkind, associate professor of theatre, will perform readings of three short prose pieces by the American modernist writer Gertrude Stein in the free concert “Gertrude Stein and Friends.” Exploring Stein’s writings as musical compositions, Salkind reads “Matisse” and “Picasso” unaccompanied, while the rhythmic and witty story “Miss Furr and Miss Skeene” is read in dialogue with eleven percussion instruments played by Tom Goldstein, associate professor of music, in a score composed by Linda Dusman, professor of music.

Also on the program is “Still to JSB” by Anneliese Weibel and Dusman’s “magnificat 4: Ida, Ida.”

The concert will be held at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, April 21, in the Fine Arts Recital Hall. Admission is free.

Ecofest 2011 (4/22)

Update: Due to rain, Ecofest has been moved to The Commons Main Street.

Faculty and staff are invited to celebrate Ecofest on Erickson field in front of the Library in The Commons Main Street, Friday, April 22, 11 a.m.-1 p.m.

This is a zero-waste event (all trash will be recyclable or biodegradable) to raise awareness of sustainability and environmental awareness. As part of Ecofest, Facilities Management will have an electronic equipment waste drop-off. Bring in your old electronics and know they will be recycled appropriately. In addition, the event includes:

• Free food, shirts and other giveaways
• Maryland Zoo Zoomobile presentation on the impact of sustainability on animals
• Biodiesel Club demonstration on the process of making biodiesel
• Parks and People (non-profit in the city)
• Dream Machine (Pepsi)
• Music all day, tribal drum circle will be performing at noon
• Student research presentations
• Facilities Management and Construction Services presentation on sustainability and energy management efforts on campus.

To stay informed on UMBC sustainability efforts, please join the myUMBC Sustainability Group.

UMBC faculty, staff and students are invited to bring your computers, laptops, printers, copiers, TVs and anything else that plugs in or runs on batteries to Ecofest. Volunteers will collect your recycling as you drive through the intersection. Departments may participate if they contact Inventory Control to obtain proper forms before the event. A representative from Inventory Control will be on hand to answer questions and assist with property disposition. This is a free event.

Accepted items include copiers, CPUs (towers), fax machines, keyboards, printers, CD players, scanners, shredders, vacuum cleaners, speakers, cables/cords, telephones software, DVD players, manuals, microwaves, VCRs, televisions, radios and anything with an electric cord. Equipment is classified as recyclable when we realize that it is outdated for reuse and/or beyond repair. It is sent to one of many equipment specific dismantling departments where it is manually separated and sorted into final recovery of raw materials.

For more information, contact recycle@umbc.edu.

Fourth Annual Crime Victims Rights Summit (4/18)

UMBC will host the 4th Annual Crime Victims Rights Summit on Monday, April 18, 7-9 p.m. in the University Center Ballroom. The event, sponsored by UMBC’s Police Department, the Baltimore County Police Department and Catonsville- and Arbutus-area organizations, is free and open to the public.

This year’s summit focuses on relationship violence and will address the following issues: determining who is at risk, identifying warning signs, escaping dangerous relationships and understanding bystander intervention. There also will be a discussion on the role of the victim during prosecution.

Keynote speakers are Yasmin Karimian, president of UMBC’s Student Government Association; State’s Attorney for Baltimore County Scott Shellenberger; and William D. Mitchell, president and founder of the Kristin Mitchell Foundation, which supports educational efforts that raise awareness among young adults about the dangers of unhealthy dating relationships. Mitchell’s daughter was murdered by her boyfriend while in the midst of a breakup.

Panelists are Kim Leisey, UMBC associate vice president for student affairs and chair of the Verizon Foundation Relationship Violence Prevention Grant Committee, and Deborah Miller, domestic violence coordinator for the Baltimore County Police Department.

“Recognizing the victims of crime and especially those victims of domestic violence is especially important as it affects each of us in some way,” said Karimian. “The only way we can address the issue of domestic violence as a community is if we begin to spread the word and show the support we can provide to the victims. The summit will continue this needed conversation and will open the eyes and ears of community members to signs of domestic violence while showing the strong support our community has for victims and those affected by it.”

This fall, UMBC launched a campaign against relationship violence, funded by a grant from the Verizon Foundation. The campaign includes a lecture series, campus awareness programs and a relationship violence prevention advocates group. The campus also has a longstanding Voices Against Violence program designed to address issues around domestic or relationship violence, sexual assault, and other forms of person-to-person violence, including stalking and sexual harassment.

The summit was founded to support National Crime Victims’ Rights Week, which is sponsored by the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs and the Office for Victims of Crime.

Sponsors for the April 18 event include the UMBC Police Department, the Arbutus Business & Professional Organization, Baltimore County Police Department – Wilkens Precinct 1, CCBC Foundation Catonsville, CCBC School of Justice, Greater Catonsville Chamber of Commerce, Lansdowne Business & Professional Assocation, Saint Agnes Hospital, Soroptimist International of Arbutus, and the Wilkens Police & Community Relations Organization.

For more information, contact the UMBC Police Department at ext. 5-5555.

Retirement Party for Terry Cobb, Theatre (5/6)

Terry Cobb, long-time lighting and sound designer for the Department of Theatre, will be retiring at the end of the semester. To honor his many years of creative work, teaching and service to the department, the university and his profession, the Department of Theatre will host a retirement party, Friday, May 6, 3-5 p.m., in the Fireside Lounge. Please come to wish Terry a fond farewell and best wishes for the future.

RSVP to Patty Wilson at johnson@umbc.edu or ext. 5-2917 if you plan to attend.

E-Cycling Collection at Ecofest (4/22)

UMBC faculty, staff and students are invited to bring your computers, laptops, printers, copiers, TVs and anything else that plugs in or runs on batteries to Ecofest, Friday April 22, 11 a.m.-1 p.m. located at Library field at the intersection of Poplar Avenue and Center Road. Volunteers will collect your recycling as you drive through the intersection. Departments may participate if they contact Inventory Control to obtain proper forms before the event. A representative from Inventory Control will be on hand to answer questions and assist with property disposition. This is a free event.

Accepted items include copiers, CPUs (towers), fax machines, keyboards, printers, CD players, scanners, shredders, vacuum cleaners, speakers, cables/cords, telephones software, DVD players, manuals, microwaves, VCRs, televisions, radios and anything with an electric cord. Equipment is classified as recyclable when we realize that it is outdated for reuse and/or beyond repair. It is sent to one of many equipment specific dismantling departments where it is manually separated and sorted into final recovery of raw materials.

For more information, contact recycle@umbc.edu.

Diversity, Identity and Inclusion (4/15)

On Friday, April 15, at 11 a.m. in ITE room 229, Mañuel Pérez-Quiñones, associate professor of computer science at Virginia Tech, will present “Diversity, Identity and Inclusion.” He will provide basic definitions of these terms and discuss some of the research literature connected with them them. He will present evidence that supports diversity and inclusion beyond the typical social justice argument. With this as a framing context, Pérez-Quiñones will describe his experiences over the last few years
working in this domain in the context of university administration, professional service activities and researcher. Anecdotally, the stories show incidents of biases, misconceptions, misunderstandings and resistance to change. Based on these experiences, Pérez-Quiñones draws conclusions and provides advice for working in diverse groups, recruiting a diverse graduate student population and fostering an inclusive work environment.

Pérez-Quiñones’s visit to UMBC is sponsored by Women in Science and Engineering, the PROMISE program, the Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering and
the Department of Information Systems.

Click here for more information, or email mariedj@cs.umbc.edu with questions or to schedule a meeting with Perez-Quinones.

CSEE Colloquium: The Social Life of Personal Information (4/14)

The CSEE Colloquium will present “The Social Life of Personal Information” with Manuel Perez-Quinones, associate professor of computer science at Virginia Tech, on Thursday, April 14, at 1 p.m. in ITE Room 325B.

Personal Information Management (PIM) practices are the set of behaviors that we follow to organize our information. This often includes the management of email messages, documents, bookmarks, digital pictures, music, etc. Research in PIM has identified a core set of set of behaviors: encountering information, deciding to keep the information, filing/archiving and reusing the information. The plethora of digital information and online transactions has us struggling to manage information effectively. Research groups are exploring how we can help address this problem. In this talk, Perez-Quinones will present previous work on PIM and highlight some new projects that his research group is exploring at the intersection of PIM and social networks. The rise of social networks presents an opportunity for the management of personal information. Email in a person’s inbox, for example, is “shared” between the sender and the receiver. What if we could share the PIM practices within our inner personal circle? Could we leverage the power of our social network to be more organized?

Click here for more information, or email mariedj@cs.umbc.edu with questions or to schedule a meeting with Perez-Quinones.

4th Annual Crime Victims’ Rights Summit (4/18)

The 4th Annual Crime Victims’ Rights Summit will be held Monday, April 18, 7-9 p.m., in the University Center Ballroom. Keynote speakers are Yasmin Karimian, president of the UMBC Student Government Association and William D. Mitchell, president of the Kristin Mitchell Foundation.

The 2011 professional panelists and moderator will address your questions on the following topics:

• Who is at risk?
• Identifying warning signs
• Escaping dangerous relationships
• Bystander intervention

The event is free and open to all, and light refreshments will be served.

The summit is sponsored by the UMBC Police Department; the Arbutus Business and Professional Association; the Baltimore County Police Department, Wilkens Precinct 1; CCBC Foundation Catonsville, CCBC School of Justice; the Greater Catonsville Chamber of Commerce; the Lansdowne Business and Professional Association; Saint Agnes Hospital; Soroptimist International of Arbutus; and the Wilkens Police and Community Relations Organization.