The Critical Social Justice: Baltimore 365 keynote “Baltimore in Action: Always Rising” featured a panel of social justice activists and leaders discussing a few of the many issues currently impacting Baltimore City.

• Rev. Dr. Heber Brown, III, faith-based activist and community organizer
• Dr. Marisela B. Gomez, public health advocate and author
• Tawanda Jones, activist and sister of Tyrone West
• Jacqueline Robarge, founder of Power Inside
• Kwame Rose, social activist and hip-hop artist
• Moderated by radio host Marc Steiner

Do you have an internship or research position for this Summer?

Get it recognized on your academic transcript by registering for the Career Center Intern/Co-op/Research Practicum (PRAC). Registering for PRAC provides an official record of your experience, letting future employers and graduate schools know about your hard work. 

WHAT IS PRAC?

PRAC is a zero-credit, pass/fail course that requires a few small assignments and attendance at two professional development workshops. It is designed to help you grow as a professional and support you throughout your experience. Check out this short PRAC orientation video for details.  PRAC is FREE for all student

HOW TO REGISTER:

Log in to UMBCworks and follow these easy steps. You will be asked to attach a letter or email from your employer verifying that you will be/are working there this spring. This can be a Word document, PDF, or screenshot. Please register online by June 30. Retroactive enrollments for past experiences are not permitted.

Note: We are also holding a PRAC enrollment drop-in day from 10 a.m.-2 p.m. on Tuesday, May 10 in the Career Center.  Simply stop in and a coordinator will assist you with your registration.

EARNING CREDIT FOR YOUR EXPERIENCE:

Although PRAC is zero-credit, you may be able to couple it with an academic internship or research course, allowing you to earn credits for your experience. On the registration form, you can indicate whether you're interested in this option. Some courses require PRAC enrollment. Check out your options for earning credit.

Questions?  Email us at internships@umbc.edu.

• Present research at Leadership Alliance National Symposium (LANS) as well as a UVA research symposium.
• Work hands-on with UVA faculty mentor(s) and graduate student mentor(s).
• Participate in workshops on research methods and the grad school application process, and enroll in an intensive GRE preparation course.

• A $3000 stipend and some travel and meal expenses.
• Housing in a university residence hall.

• Be a member of a group that is underrepresented in educational research.
• Be a current junior, with 2 semesters or less to complete after the internship.

PhD Dissertation Defense

Distributed Protocols for Connectivity Restoration
in Damaged Wireless Sensor Networks

Yatish Joshi

9:30 Monday, 23 November 2015, ITE 325b

Decreasing costs and increasing functionality of hardware devices have made Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) attractive for applications that serve in inhospitable environments like battlefields, planetary exploration or environmental monitoring. WSNs employed in these environments are expected to work autonomously and extend network lifespan for as long as possible while carrying out their designated tasks. The harsh environment exposes individual nodes to a high risk of failure and their failure can partition the network into disjoint segments. Therefore, a network must be able to self-heal and restore lost connectivity using available resources. The ad-hoc nature of deployment, harsh operating environment means that proactive strategies based on redundancy cannot be applied as the scope of the damage could be so large that redundant nodes could be lost as well. The lack of external resources like satellite coverage preclude the application of centralized recovery approaches since they require the entire network state to be available for recovery. Hence distributed approaches that employ reactive strategies are the most viable solutions for these networks.

In this dissertation, we tackle the problem of distributed connectivity restoration in a WSN that has been partitioned into multiple disjoint segments due to multi-node failures. We consider multiple variants of the problem based on the available resources, and present a set of novel recovery schemes that suit the capabilities and requirements of the WSN being repaired. The correctness and time-complexity of all proposed approaches are analyzed and their performance is validated through extensive experiments.

Committee: Drs. Mohamed Younis (Chair), Charles Nicholas, Chintan Patel, Kemal Akkaya (FIU), Waleed Youssef (IBM)

CSEE Professor Gymama Slaughter will talk about her research on Human Powered Biosensors as part at the 2016 TEDxBaltimore conference in January. The one-day conference will be held at Morgan State University on January 14, 2016 with the theme OUTLIERS: ideas that challenge traditional thinking. She will join about 15 other speakers each sharing an “idea worth spreading” with the expected 1,500 attendees.

Dr. Slaughter’s research focuses on the application of sensor-processor integration, bioelectronics design and theory, optimization methods for physical circuit design, biologically inspired computing (neural networks), and sensor interfacing and wireless networking and communications. You can find out more about the work that she and her students are doing by visiting her Biolectronics Laboratory website.

Below are featured events and internship/employment opportunities that have recently been posted or have application deadline dates that are quickly approaching!  To see all that the UMBC Career Center has to offer YOU, please visit our myUMBC group page or log into your UMBCworks account!

FEATURED EVENTS…

NEW!  TUESDAY EVENING - Federal Bureau of Investigation Information Session, Tuesday, November 10, 5 pm – 7 pm, Commons 318.  ALL MAJORS interested in pursuing Full-Time and Internship Opportunities at the FBI.  MANY positions in numerous career paths are available.

Internship Success Conference Wednesday, November 11, 2015, 5 pm – 8 pm

NEW! Keys to Success: Linked In/ProNet Monday, November 16, 2015, Noon – 1 pm

NEW! Inside Scoop: Entrepreneur Panel Wednesday, November 18, 2015 Noon – 1pm

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NEW!  On-Campus Interview Deadlines

United States FBI
Deadline to Apply:  November 12
Interview Date:  November 18

FEATURED FULL-TIME & PART-TIME JOBS, INTERNSHIPS, AND RESEARCH POSITIONS

Multimedia Artist & Animator Intern, Textron Systems

Intern at a Department of Energy Lab

Nonprofit Internships at Education-Based Latino Outreach

Keep an eye on the Career Center website for all upcoming events and programs!  Freshmen, Sophomores, Juniors and Seniors….this is an excellent opportunity for you to learn more about career paths…whether you are exploring possibilities or searching for an internship or full-time opportunity!

A blog reflection written by Women’s Center intern Julia Gottlieb. 

After reading the Baltimore City Paper’s recent daily Power Rankings, I got to thinking a lot about white women and women of color’s status in the arts. Three weeks ago, UMBC’s Theatre department held their annual New Playwrights Festival, featuring student playwrights.

I attended one night of the Festival, and got to see Elizabeth Ung’s play, a story that on the surface is about a sister and brother surviving in a post-apocalyptic world, but underneath it poses deeper questions of morality and emotional survival. Ung, who is a student of color here at UMBC, explains that she was inspired to write plays after taking a play-writing class through the theater department last semester, saying “[Playwriting] was something that I felt like I always wanted to do, to tell stories. It’s something that I want to do to get my voice out there.” Additionally, her characters are inspired by her everyday experiences and interactions with those around her: “I definitely get a lot from my own experiences, because that’s really the only reliable resource that I can definitely count on. You know, the littlest conversations can inspire dialogue and conflict within the plot.” This is especially important given the severe lack of representation of women of color and their experiences within theater and the arts as a whole.

Here is a helpful infograph to visually show the state of women’s representation in the arts. Even here an intersectional view on this issue is missing, and women of color’s experiences are not represented.

We know that white women have significantly less representation than men in play-writing and in theater overall. Meanwhile, women of color’s voices and experiences are even more underrepresented. Along with this disparity, there is a lack of comprehensive studies that specifically track the numbers of women of color playwrights and directors within theater in both specific cities and across the country. One study finds that of the plays being produced in Washington DC this season, “80% of playwrights are white, 7% are African American, 6% are Latino, 2% are Asian American and 2% are multi-ethnic.” This study gives a sense of the vast disparities that already exist within DC’s theatrical productions. The study’s lack of attention to intersectionality is illustrative of the fundamental problem of representation–the voices of white men and white women have more representation than the voices of women of color. And as long as women of color’s voices are not represented, a vast number of important experiences and viewpoints go ignored and invalidated.

In his piece, Unpacking ‘Diversity’ in Musical Theatre, Michael R. Jackson explains that rather than focusing on fulfilling a diversity quota, theater’s ultimate goal should be “to hold the mirror up to humanity and reflect it back (or distort it) in order to share, person-to-person, what it means to exist in joy and suffering in the world.” Representation matters to me because it affects what stories are being told and who gets to have a place in the world. I want the mirror to reflect an honest view of humanity and its diverse voices.

For example, as someone who identifies as fat (or plus-size if you prefer), the character Rae from the British TV show My Mad Fat Diary was very important to me because I had never seen a larger girl as the main character of a TV show. Seeing someone who looks like me on TV–having the mirror held up to reflect my life and my experiences was so affirming for me and I want everyone to be able to have that experience.

Representation is how we find characters to relate to, take comfort in, and hold up the mirror to and for ourselves. The arts are at a crucial time to make that a reality for more women of color and other underrepresented people. 

For the third year of the Critical Social Justice initiative, we chose the theme Baltimore 365 to learn about how we can cultivate deep and lasting commitments to Baltimore City that are meaningful to us as individuals and as part of the UMBC community. Take a look back at some of highlights from throughout the week and catch up on anything you missed with the linked videos for the events!

Dr. Jodi Kelber-Kaye helped us kick-off CSJ with “Baltimore 101: Why Baltimore Matters,” providing historical answers that explain why things in Baltimore are the way they are.

Later that night, Delegate Mary Washington gave an insightful presentation on LGBTQ Youth Homelessness, and how Baltimore itself is specifically affected.

Before the Keynote event on Tuesday, Dr. Marisela Gomez visited UMBC for a talk-back with the Honors College about approaches in activism.

 One of the issues Dr. Gomez and the Honors College students discussed was the termination of the SUCCESS Program here at UMBC. If you want to learn more about this issue, check out this article recently published by the Retriever and use Dr. Gomez’s words of wisdom to do some activism.

Tuesday night was our keynote event, a teach-in panel called “Baltimore in Action: Always Rising.” It was moderated by Marc Steiner and was broadcast on the Marc Steiner Show on November 2nd. Watch the video!

Thursday, we were joined by Karen Houppert, author and editor-in-chief of Baltimore City Paper, and independent journalist James MacArthur (@BaltoSpectator) who spoke to their experiences of reporting in independent and alternative media outlets in a discussion on Main Street during our Vines, Rhymes, and Headlines exhibit. (Video)

Women’s Center staff members created exhibits centered on the Baltimore Uprising and media portrayal and displayed them on Main Street during the discussion.

Later on that night, The Mosaic Center hosted an Interfaith Dialogue featuring religious and spiritual leaders engaged in social justice activism in Baltimore.

On the last day of #CSJ365, UMBC parents eager to bring a dialogue about social justice home to their kids participated in a roundtable discussion called How To Talk To Kids About -Isms.

 We rounded out the week with Dr. Kate and a very special walking tour of Baltimore City.

CSJ was action-packed and full of important information about Baltimore City and social justice. Check out our Storify, Livestream, and What You Need To Know tag to learn even more. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and Facebook too!

The CSJ Team with Keynote Speakers