UMBC's College of Engineering and Information Technology will hold an Alumni Happy Hour on Wednesday, June 17 from 6:00pm to 8:00pm at Union Jack's (10400 Little Patuxent Pkwy, Columbia, MD 21044). Join fellow COEIT graduates, COEIT faculty and those who now work in those fields for a networking happy hour. Enjoy fabulous food and drinks while connecting with other Retrievers. Please RSVP online.

The event is sponsored by the UMBC Alumni Association and the UMBC Training Centers.

If you have any questions, contact Amy Dalrymple at Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address. or 410-455-2276.

Name: Amanda Quinn

Internship, Co-op or Research Site: U.S. Department of State | Title of Your Position: Public Affairs Intern

Major(s)/Minor(s): Global Studies and English Literature

Expected Graduation Year: May 2016

Briefly describe your internship, co-op, research, or service-learning opportunity, including your day-to-day tasks, responsibilities, and assignments.

Currently, I am a Public Affairs intern at the U.S. Consulate General in St. Petersburg, Russia. Most of the work I do goes into supporting the Consulate's work to plan events and programming that encourage cultural exchange between Americans and Russians. I also support the U.S. Consulate's various social media accounts.

Describe the process of obtaining your internship, research, or co-op opportunity.

I have always had an interest in diplomacy and the Foreign Service. Throughout my sophomore year, my goals became clearer and I knew I wanted to pursue a career involving international relations. I did some research and learned about the application process for an internship with the State Department and decided to apply for a Spring 2015 internship. On the application I expressed my interest and experience in Russia, but it was actually a total surprise that I was placed in St. Petersburg.

Which of the following resources did you use to find your current experience?

Career Center, USA Jobs

What have you enjoyed the most about your position or organization/company?

I am so glad to be back in St. Petersburg. I studied abroad here in the fall, but it’s interesting to be here to work rather than study. Just being able to return to this city is a definite highlight of this position. Besides that, I've enjoyed the getting involved in the social media presence of the U.S. Consulate. In today's world, social media has begun to play a key role in diplomacy, and it is interesting to see that starting to evolve.

What have you gained from your experience that you could not have gained from another opportunity ?

Participating in an internship abroad, especially in Russia, has provided me with the unique chance to get firsthand experience observing how U.S. diplomacy is conducted abroad. I'm also here during an interesting time for U.S.-Russia relations, so its been interesting watching that evolve from the perspective of American diplomats.

What advice would you give to another student who is seeking an internship or similar experience?

Do your research and explore all the ways you can get involved in your field of interest and then apply for everything that intriques you. Look into opportunities that can give you a unique perspective and experience in your field.

Please provide a short reflection or quote about what you liked most about your position / earning internship credit / the internship placement process.

Take a risk and do something that scares you. I took a semester off and went abroad to participate in this internship. Don't be afraid to explore opportunities that are unique and take you outside of the normal college experience.

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UMBC's Imaging Research Center worked more than two years recreating how Baltimore would have looked in the early 1800s. The goal is to create an accurate 3D model of the city, its terrain, land use, and buildings. In September of 2014, the first and major phase of this effort opened to the public at the Maryland Historical Society as part of their bicentennial celebration of the War of 1812 and Baltimore’s pivotal role in it.

BEARINGS of Baltimore, Circa 1815 is an interactive 2.5 billion pixel image that visualizes Baltimore City in 1815 – right after the attack by the British. UMBC's Imaging Research Center, in collaboration with the Maryland Historical Society and its network of historical scholars, has created an interactive touch-screen display at the Historical Society that allows viewers to tour the early city and understand its history.

This project was funded with generous support from the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation and from the Maryland Division of Tourism 1812 Bicentennial Commission.

On behalf of the The Reach Initiative, the Women's Center is excited to share this opportunity!! Read on!

The Reach Initiative is a mentorship research program for high school women  who are interested in entering into the STEM fields. Our team is currently looking for a diverse range of majors and people to serve on our planning committees and mentors to work directly with our young women.

 The Reach Initiative is currently looking for women who are pursuing degrees in the STEM field or Environmental Science and who exhibit a passion and commitment to gender empowerment, the maths and sciences, and diversity. Mentors will volunteer Saturdays for 3 hours a week on campus with the possibility of receiving credit through the Honors College and/or Shriver Center.

Beginning on Tuesday, May 26th, the Women's Center will operate with the following hours:

CSEE faculty member Tulay Adali has been appointed as a Distinguished University Professor for UMBC. Professor Adali is being recognized for:

"…outstanding theoretical contributions to the field of signal processing that have enabled significant advances in medical imaging, and excellence in teaching and mentoring the next generation of engineers and scholars who continue to advance the field of signal processing."

Professor Adali started teaching at UMBC in 1992, the same year that she received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Shortly after joining UMBC, she began forging lasting collaborations, first locally, and then nationwide and internationally. This resulted in the steady buildup of a research program, with continuous and growing funding from major federal agencies, including the prestigious NSF CAREER grant, the U.S. Army, and industry. She took full advantage of UMBC’s advantageous position, with respect to proximity to major medical institutions. She moved her application domain to biomedical data analysis early in her career, where she helped define the field of data-driven image analysis and fusion, an area that continues to grow in importance. She is a very popular teacher and is mentor to an impressive number of Ph.D students, several of whom have assumed faculty positions at institutions such as Virginia Tech, the University of New Mexico, and Yale.

Professor Adali has been also active within her professional community, having chaired the Machine Learning for Signal Processing (MLSP) Technical Committee of the IEEE Signal Processing Society, and having served on a number of boards of the IEEE Signal Processing Society. She has also assisted in the organization of numerous international conferences and workshops, including the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing (ICASSP), the IEEE International Workshop on Neural Networks for Signal Processing (NNSP), and the IEEE International Workshop on MLSP. She has been on the editorial boards of a number of transactions and journals and is currently serving on the Editorial Board of the Proceedings of the IEEE, among others.

In addition, Professor Adali is a Fellow of the IEEE and the AIMBE, and has received the following awards: the 2010 IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award, the 2013 University System of Maryland Regents' Award for Research, and an NSF CAREER Award. She was also an IEEE Signal Processing Society Distinguished Lecturer for 2012 and 2013.

Today I’d like to talk about “Devil’s Advocates.”

This is the person who is often situated in a place of both privilege and ignorance, but simultaneously has the confidence to suggest simplistic, often black-and-white, solutions and questions for an often complex and multifaceted issue.

As an activist, woman of color, undocumented immigrant, and survivor of violence, I have encountered my fair share of devil’s advocates to the very issues that impact my life daily.

“The Sake of Argument” xkcd web comic [xkcd.com/1432]

So how does this differ from people who play “devil’s advocates”?

I first look to an article written by Juliana Britto Schwartz called “An open letter to privileged people who play Devil’s Advocates”  in which she articulates the potential harm in using this strategy: “These discussions may feel like ‘playing’ to you, but to many people in the room, it’s their lives you are ‘playing’ with. The reason it feels like a game to you is because these are issues that probably do not directly affect you… You can attach puppet strings to dialogues about real issues because at the end of the day, you can walk away from the tangled mess you’ve exacerbated.”

Often, devil’s advocates (or DA’s) aren’t open to engaging in a real dialogue because they are so committed to proving that they’re right… so they’re unwilling to listen, learn, and potentially change their opinions. DA’s don’t want to learn from a discussion — they want to win a debate.

Interestingly, a devil’s advocate isn’t even necessarily trying to prove that their position is correct; in fact, quite often they don’t even necessarily believe in the position they’re arguing! DA’s might argue a devil’s advocate position not to prove themselves right, but rather to prove someone else wrong– they’re not arguing for their position so much as they’re arguing against yours. So the difference between someone who engages in conversation in good faith versus a devil’s advocate is that for a DA the conversation is an impersonal and abstract intellectual exercise, whereas for people actually impacted by these issues it’s very personal and significant.

Like Britto Schwartz describes, it can be incredibly hurtful, damaging, and insensitive to approach a conversation with a person about a painful experience with an “objective” viewpoint and expect the person to do the same. You might hear comments like, “Don’t be so sensitive…”, and “But I heard that…*insert story about the exception to your point here*”

This is where the idea of “objectivity” as “truth” comes into conflict. I’d like to challenge this idea of “objectivity” and the misguided assumption that someone who has not had a personal experience or investment in an issue is necessarily better able to understand it and is thus more equipped to provide critical perspective and solutions. I, along with many of my friends, particularly women of color, have often expressed our frustration with this idea of “objectivity” as truth.

Why is it that an issue or experience can miraculously become relevant and worth listening to when someone who is not directly impacted talks about the issue? It’s as if people are more willing to listen to and empathize with someone who they feel is not “too involved” or a “direct survivor” of an experience because it is more comfortable.

As I was working on my senior capstone, I came across an insightful and informative research report called, “American Perceptions of Sexual Violence” from the FrameWorks Institute. The goal of the research was to figure out some of the effective ways of communicating what constitutes sexual violence and what can be done to address this in the United States. The study measured both experts’ and the public’s perceptions about sexual violence and showed the discrepancy between experts, who looked to larger social and cultural patterns to explain why sexual violence is pervasive, and the public, who often saw sexual violence as a problem that rested within the minds, hearts, and actions of particular individuals. Interestingly, one of the main thought models that the public most often used is similar to what I have often seen used by devil’s advocates.” This thought model is called the Mentalist Model. 

“According to the mentalist model, Americans tend to view outcomes and social problems as a result of individual concerns that reflect character, motivation and personal discipline. As such, the use of mentalist models by the public has a narrowing effect—it boils complex interactions among individuals, contextual determinants and systems down to either the presence or absence of individual motivation and internal fortitude.

Sexual violence continues to be perceived as a problem solely and fundamentally created by individual moral failings on the part of the perpetrator and, on the part of the victim, the lack of responsibility to ensure one’s safety (often seen in Victim-Blaming).” (4)

While this research was focused on attitudes toward sexual violence, I find it incredibly relevant to many other social issues in our society. For example, in discussions about unemployment, a DA can be heard dismissing or ignoring the importance of systemic inequality, generational poverty, and racial discrimination by reducing the problem to “laziness.” Or talking about how “illegal” immigrants are taking “hardworking Americans'” jobs, when undocumented workers are not even eligible for the jobs that DA’s allege they’re “taking.” How people of color need to “get over it” and “stop talking about race” because we live in a “post-racial” society in which racism no longer exists and everyone has equal opportunity for success (also meaning that any disadvantage is, again, caused by the control and decisions of the individual). And of course, when we talk about sexual assault and gender-based violence and the DA references how one woman lied about her rape, thus reinforcing the idea that women are vindictive, untrustworthy, and constantly “crying rape,” or the popular favorite: “Not ALL Men…”

When we are faced with challenging discussions about social issues, particularly those that we have not experienced, it is so important to take a step back, consider the larger perspective, and listen to the members of the community who actually experience the issues that we might only talk about in the comfort of our homes and schools. Playing devil’s advocate to someone’s life experience by spurting out counter statistics and black-and-white solutions can be both isolating and damaging. It is important that we all check our privilege, recognize and acknowledge when we do not know things, and make clear our intentions when we engage in critical dialogues.

The path to social change requires community and solidarity. In order for solidarity to develop, we must practice listening to and talking with— rather than talking at. We are not all going to see eye-to-eye on everything, but by taking the first step to solidarity, I believe we can get a lot more done together.

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Here are some helpful videos to check out!

• “Just stop talking about race” – Chescaleigh
• “Five tips for being an Ally“- Chescaleigh
• “Not All Men: How discussing women’s issues get derailed” – Slate
• “Debunking the ‘Pull Yourself Up by Your Bootstraps’ Myth”– Everyday Feminism
• “5 Questions to Help you know when to pick your battles in controversial conversations” – Everyday Feminism