• AlarmWATCH -- Customer Service Alarm Dispatchers -- ID# 9248865
• WTOP AM/FM -- Freelance News Assistant -- ID# 9248968
• Wellness Medical Center -- Front desk Receptionist -- ID# 9248736
• Jewish Community Center -- Marketing Assistant -- ID# 9249034
• Examkrackers, Inc. -- Marketing Representative -- ID# 9248839
• College Nannies and Tutors -- On Call Nannies Needed Immediately -- ID# 9247129

• UMBC The Retriever Weekly -- Advertising Manager -- ID# 9248388
• UMBC Office of Undergraduate Education -- Receptionist/General Office Assistant -- ID# 9248418
• UMBC Albin O. Kuhn Library -- Reference Student - Web Assistant -- ID# 9248502
• UMBC Provost's Office -- Student Assistant - Office Work -- ID# 9248426
• UMBC Central Receiving -- Student delivery clerk -- ID# 9247082
• UMBC Office of Undergraduate Education -- Web Manager/Office Assistant -- ID# 9248414

The Summer Medical and Research Training Program is for undergraduate students who are interested in exploring a career in scientific research. We encourage Ph.D.-oriented candidates to apply. Up to 80 students are recruited for the SMART Program from across the nation. The program offers:

• Nine paid weeks of biomedically related research in a broad range of areas
• Daily seminars designed for undergraduates
• Free SMART GRE prep workshops
• Career development activities
• Housing at Rice University dorms

        The Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (12/9, Olson) reports, "According to the Robinson-based company's poll of department heads at those schools, 37 percent gave their institutions a 'C' or lower grade for how well they retain and graduate black, Hispanic and Native American students. Twelve percent ranked majority male recruiting/graduating records as poor, and only 14 percent said the same regarding females." Among factors deterring minority students from pursuing STEM studies in college, according to the survey: "32 percent of faculty heads cited 'limited quality' college-prep in STEM fields; 17 percent cited a 'lack of role models'"; and "10 percent said 'their cultural background doesn't value science (and/or) the pursuit of science.'" Although 84 percent of the respondents "found minority and female recruiting and retention to be a key issue for their universities, only one-third of them said their universities had comprehensive plans to recruit and retain minority and female students in STEM studies."

        The State (WV) Journal (12/9, Bonnstetter) reports, "STEM chairs said the number of women in their STEM courses has stayed steady." The respondents "also said they believed women came to college most prepared to tackle STEM subjects, while minorities came the least prepared." Preparation aside, the Journal reports, "one-third of survey participants said they believed that minority students were less likely to graduate with a STEM degree than women or majority students. Women were considered as likely to graduate as their male counterparts."

        Pennsylvania's Essential Public Radio (12/9, Song) reports Dr. Mae Jemison, the first female African-American astronaut, "said that some schools are overcoming the obstacles to diversity by changing the introductory courses, by eliminating confidence-eroding situations, by exposing students to role models in their particular group, and by challenging stereotypes."

UMBC CHMPR Colloquium

Oil Spills and Search and Rescue:
Key Computational Challenges

Dr. C. J. Beegle-Krause
Environmental Research for Decision, Inc.

1:00pm 16 December 2011, ITE 227 325b

Leveraging the research community into societal issues can help save lives and reduce environmental impacts from both natural and anthropogenic disasters. For example, Search and Rescue, oil Spills, and marine debris drift are decision support areas commonly solved with Eulerian-Lagrangian models. These models typically use wind and current fields derived from external circulation models. These problems share many similarities:

• Use of a “leeway” or “windage” to simulate drift on the water surface or atmospheric transport,
• Increased leveraging of larger scale physical ocean and atmospheric circulation models, and
• Predicting geolocation information with sufficient accuracy for detection (e.g. finding the person) or response (booming off the beach),

However, there are some distinct differences and each field has some case types with complexities that remain unanswered by the research community. This presentation will cover some key examples, such as:

• Mystery spills (reverse drift) – Where did oil come from?
• Surface collection areas (sensitivity of drift to surface circulation convergence and divergences and shoreline contact);
• Accuracy required for locating a target – small islands may be missing in implementation of numerical model; and
• Extensive drift problems – an overdue vessel may have crossed the domains of several small and large-­‐scale models.

The 21st century vision of numerical modeling includes Lagrangian Coherent Structures (LCS, and application of chaos theory), Social Media (thanks to UMBC), further integration of numerical and geospatial data streams, and more real-­‐time information access through handheld computing.

Dr. C.J. Beegle-Krause is President of Environmental Research for Decision, Inc., a nonprofit dedicated to three primary missions: transitioning peer reviewed research into Decision Support applications; Education; and Data Rescue. As founder of the nonprofit, she has a strong vision of the Next Generation Trajectory. Her background is in physical oceanography, specializing in modeling chemical transport. She is one of the original developers of the NOAA Office of Response and Restoration (OR&R) GNOME trajectory model, and spent five years of her career at NOAA as one of the U.S. lead trajectory forecasters, on-call 24×7 for events around the world. She was called back to NOAA OR&R for the Deepwater Horizon (MC252) oil spill and continues to work on aspects of that incident and future model development.

The 2nd Annual Spring Into Leadership event planning committe needs YOU!

Volunteer online at http://bit.ly/springintoleadershipcommittee.

The committee will meet twice a month in January and February and then weekly in March (excluding Spring Break).

This interactive event will have 100 attendees, include industry representatives, and build connections among women (and interested men) in engineering and IT majors at UMBC! 

Representatives from each of the major student organization in the College (ASME, NSBE, CWIT Student Council, SWE, Tau Beta Pi) are needed!!!