The Fall 2014 CMPE Town Hall Meeting has been rescheduled for Friday, February 13, at 12 noon in ITE 104.  Pizza will be available in the atrium outside ITE 104 at the conclusion of the meeting.

The meeting will have a limited agenda, due to time constraints. A second Town Hall meeting will be happening later in the semester, to address issues such as Capstone and departmental Undergraduate Research opportunities.

Agenda:

• Welcome and Introductions  — Dr. LaBerge
• Changes to the CMPE Program — Dr. LaBerge
• The BS/MS Program — Dr. LaBerge
• Open forum questions and answers

If you responded to the Google Docs survey in 2015 (as opposed to the form for Fall 2014), please respond to the link below.

To ensure that there is enough pizza, please fill out the following Google Docs form if you plan on attending:
https://docs.google.com/a/umbc.edu/forms/d/1ia6FY86BWvnO_eomrzaseMbCSn_h9HKBoFB3c2iYr2g/viewform?usp=send_form.

Critical Social Justice organizers Jess Myers, Zach Kosinski, and Jasmine Malhotra share a few of their thoughts on activism, their personal and professional experiences as activists, and social media’s role in activism.

JASMINE: I think about the feelings of social justice activism as being something that infuses within all parts of your life. Social justice activism involves how you interact with others, being able to actively listen and respect other options while sharing your knowledge and experience. It is about making any space into a brave space so individuals can be okay in having uncomfortable conversations in an effort to really understand each other’s opinion. Social activism can be expressed by people asking for change, protesting, or informing others. Social media can be one of the outlooks they use but there are many other ways they can practice their activism to cultivate change and make a true difference.

JESS: I agree with you, Jasmine, about the importance of both-and in activism.  Through my  research related to better understanding the strategies employed by activists involved in the movement to address sexual violence prevention and response on college campuses, I am learning that these activists are truly using the both-and approach. These local and national activists have repeated time and time again that social media is not their activism but that social media is a TOOL for their activism. They described using social media as a means to connect with other activists, as a tool for reducing power dynamics present in other spaces, and to increase awareness with populations who may not otherwise be reached. Consequently, I’ve become more critical with the discourse around “slacktivism.” Who gets to define what activism is and isn’t? Dynamics of power and privilege related to social identities influence who gets to “be” an activist and define themselves as activists. This year’s Critical Social Justice theme of Creating Brave Spaces resonates with me in so many ways but specifically because creating brave spaces online (and off-line) helps build counter-spaces and tells counter-narratives.

ZACH: Over the past year, I’ve also experienced a shift in how I view my role as an activist and agent for social change. For years, I felt that engaging in social justice work required an “all in at all times” approach. Being more of a homebody outside of work and school, though, attending protests and rallies has never come naturally to me. For so long, I beat myself up for finding reasons not to march with my peers. Over the past few months, I’ve seen countless UMBC students I connect with on campus take a stand on social justice issues important to them. In discussions about their activism, time and time again, students have referenced articles I shared, speakers I helped bring to campus, and critical conversations we had that helped inform the activism they’re presently engaged in. Experiencing these students’ activism, I’ve seen how playing the roles of encourager, connector, resource, and supporter is not only meaningful but necessary to critical activist work. I may not be taking to the streets or expounding from the proverbial soapbox, but helping cultivate the student activists who will is just as essential.

JESS: Yes, Zach! As someone who identifies as an introvert, I sometimes feel conflicted about how to show up in social justice work and conversations. Over the past few years and through a lot of challenge by choice, I’ve learned what kind of activism allows me to challenge oppression and address social justice concerns in a way that authentic to me and my being. We all have an important role to play using our own strengths and passions. If I try to be someone I’m not in doing this work, I’ll most likely fail.

For more reflections from Critical Social Justice organizers, check out this blog post on self-care and social justice.

Are you looking for a way to spend some time away from school, but doing so in a productive fashion? If so, do not hesitate to volunteer at Refugee Youth Project. We are an organization that works to help refugee children to adjust to life in America. As a volunteer, you would be responsible for helping kids with homework, playing games with them both indoors and outdoors (they LOVE to play soccer), and simply being there for the children, as both a friend and a mentor. This a great opportunity for you to try something new and foster close relationships with fun-loving kids from a part of the world that you may have never even heard of before. 

We are looking for volunteers for Thursdays 3:30- 5:15 pm, beginning this week! 

If interested please email Eloise Grose at elgrose1@umbc.edu ASAP. 

MS Thesis Defense

Real-time Realistic Rendering of Sunrise and Sunset on the Ocean

Yuping Zhang

10:00am Monday, 9 February 2015, ENG 005

The aim of this thesis is to study advanced real-time realistic rendering techniques for outdoor natural scenes. Much research has been done for rendering realistic outdoor scenes, such as sky, ocean, terrain, etc. But sunrise and sunset are rarely discussed. Interesting phenomena like the sun mirages during sunset and sunrise could create splendid visual effects.

This thesis presents a method to render sun mirages. It uses precomputed atmospheric refraction profiles for different atmosphere condition and performes ray tracing to render the sun deformation. Combined with other methods, it renders sunrise and sunset on the ocean in real time. It simulates realistic sun mirages, sky color, ocean waves and lighting, which can be useful for realistic scenes in movies, video games or for scientific simulators.

Program Committee: Drs. Marc Olano (Chair), Penny Rheingans, Jian Chen

Community Partner Name:

Partner Representative: 

Describe the issue area(s) that your organization addresses. 

What do you consider your community's greatest strengths? 

Who does your organization bring to the community? 

What are meaningful ways that the UMBC community can work together to impact the community? 

How did you get involved with this type of work? 

To learn more about this organization, please visit www.mdfoodbank.org 

One of the Lakeland teachers, Mrs. Maxwell, tweeted about UMBC students teaching their 2nd graders how to make ice cream!