UMBC Women Who Rock is a new blog series I’m working on throughout the 2014-15 academic year. In my role as Women’s Center director, I have some of the best opportunities to become acquainted with some of UMBC’s best and brightest women on campus. I admire the ways they live authentic lives unapologetically that challenge the stereotypes and assumptions that are often assigned to women. By debunking these stereotypes and forcing us to check our assumptions, they allow us to expand our notion of what a woman is and can be.
-Jess

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UMBC Women Who Rock!
Susan Dumont, Office of Student Life’s Coordinator for Fraternities & Sororities

Goodness, if the semester was a Half Ironman, I’d be somewhere out there on my bike, at some mile marker that makes the finish line still feel very far away. I’ve been working on the concept for the post since mid-September and here I am, a month later, re-opening this document trying to get to the finish line. Susan Dumont’s voice is here with me though, repeating the refrain that I heard her say often before she completed her first Half Ironman this summer: “I like doing things that I don’t know I’ll be successful in. I want to find out what’s really possible.” This blog post certainly isn’t my Half Iron(wo)man but I’ve appreciated the motivation nonetheless.

This feeling of having someone else’s goals and work ethic inspire and complement my own instead of perceiving them as a direct threat or source of competition feels really different for me. Maybe because Susan and I both hail from all-girl high schools, my mind has drifted back to my high school days many times while working on this blog post. The smartest girls were also the most athletic girls. They were also the most popular girls. But in my experience, the cool girls knew they were cool and that cool factor usually made them pretty mean.

Oh Mean Girls…

Cue Mean Girls and Queen Bees. They made sure you knew they got the highest grade in the class and when you were still struggling on that math problem they rolled their eyes at the impossibility of why you just didn’t get it. This “us versus them” climate made the first few years of high school pretty miserable and at times, I still feel anxious just thinking about running into them again one day. I know somehow, they’ll take me back to those high school days where I never felt good enough.

When I mentioned this to Susan, I thought she would affirm my experience with similar stories of the all-girls school mean girl. She couldn’t, though. She went on to share how her high school experience developed her self-concept and provided empowering experiences for her. She went on to share about her time at Lake Forest College which was greatly impacted by her involvement in Greek Life. Not only was she in a sorority but Susan was instrumental in starting the first nationally affiliated chapter on her campus. She feels proud about creating a legacy that has shaped the sorority community at Lake Forest to have healthy national organizations. Susan began her adventures with triathlons in grad school. This is when she first connected with professional triathlete Linsey Corbin who along the way has modeled a philosophy for Susan to build the life you want and to bring good, healthy, challenging people along with you. Now that’s a counter narrative of the mean girl!

Currently, Susan is in her second year of Law School at University of Maryland, Baltimore. All of last year, I would follow her Facebook posts and chat randomly with her about how busy she must be as full-time staff member at UMBC, law student by night, and triathlete in her “free” time. I looked on from a distance with awe about how she was doing what I thought was impossible. Then over the summer, we found ourselves reflecting on the law class every graduate student in a Student Affairs program has to take. It was one of our favorite classes which is often not the case for most student affairs professionals. After our conversation, the idea of going to law school got into my head. I wanted to learn more and explore the possibility. I made a mental note to follow up with Susan about it. I never got to send that email, though. Instead, a few days later, there in my inbox was an email from Susan inviting me to one of her law classes in the fall. Without that email, I don’t think I would have picked up that LSAT study guide or visited that civil procedures class or logged onto the UMB’s law school website and signed up for an admissions day visit.

Susan crossing the finish line of her first Half Ironman with a cowboy hat from Linsey Corbin!

At this point in popular culture, almost all of us have heard about Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In. I’ll be honest and say, I only got through parts of the book, but my take away is similar to my experience in high school: lean in at the expense of other women and fight for those few coveted positions at the top. To counteract this idea, I spend a lot of time thinking about how women can lean over for each other and themselves. How can we change the culture in a way that we’re all benefiting and moving forward rather than just a few of us racing to the top?

Susan exemplifies ways in which we can all lean over for each other. Susan never confirmed my doubts that I wouldn’t be able to handle law school. Rather she pulled me aside invited me to lunch and said you can do it too. She’s challenged the way I’ve been socialized to expect that other women are going to treat me crappy, gossip about me, or make sure I know that I won’t ever be able to great as them. She leaned over and assured me that making space for me to pursue my own talents and create my own dreams, wouldn’t diminish her own. Susan encouraged me to set needs new heights for myself and that’s why she is one of UMBC’s Women Who Rock!

Who are the UMBC women in your life that inspire you to think outside your expectations and assumptions? What are the counter narrative stories they’re sharing with us allowing UMBC and our greater community to be more of exactly who we want to be? Comment below and maybe you’ll just find them featured in a future UMBC Women Who Rock post.

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Check out other UMBC Women Who Rock:
Amanda Knapp (featured August 2014)

If you think undergraduate research is for you,

Check out the website for more information and to see some of the projects other students in your field have done!

Becoming a student researcher opens doors for you to connect with faculty, obtain paid opportunities, land an internship or even travel!

Don't miss out!

In celebrating LGBTQ History Month, it’s important to remember those who don’t fit into the mainstream representation of the LGBTQ community. As the LGBTQ community has made gains in society, it is important to recognize that the face of the movement is increasingly white, cis, male, gay, upper class, able-bodied, and heteronormative. When arguments for marriage equality are made, our leaders look back to Stonewall as a way to validate their arguments. Stonewall, after all, sparked the beginning of the LGBTQ rights movement in America. So it’s only right for us to assume that because the face of the LGBTQ movement today is one that is predominantly white, cis, male, gay, upper class, able-bodied, and heteronormative, it has historically been the face of the movement. We know that this is not true.

When we think of LGBTQ rights and Stonewall, we don’t think of all of the trans women of color who have both presently and historically risked their safety and continuously had their lives threatened in order to try to claim a right to navigate in our society. What we think of is people like Harvey Milk whose politics are catered towards those of a privileged LGBTQ identity. We think of Neil Patrick Harris, who is a living representation of the effects and benefits of those privileges. We don’t think of people like Sylvia Rivera, who was present on the actual night of the Stonewall riots. We don’t think of Reina Gossett, either, a trans woman of color who is representative of the same kinds of intersectional oppression faced by Sylvia and all of the others present at Stonewall. It is important to remember that what is the face of the community is not representative of the community itself, that there is marginalization within the community that leaves certain narratives untold.

As a trans woman of color, Reina Gossett’s narrative is one that is largely untold. Mainstream trans women of color such as Laverne Cox and Janet Mock do an excellent job at bringing widespread attention to unheard narratives, but Gossett delivers this narrative from an activist perspective. Gossett’s emphasis on social change and social action are things that I strongly identify with. With Gossett coming to UMBC, I find myself able to see how social justice can be practiced through social programming. I see how people like Reina Gossett, people like me with marginalized identities and generally untold stories, can find platforms through which we can have our voices heard and inspire change.

I commend Critical Social Justice, the Women’s Center, and Student Life’s Mosaic: Cultural & Diversity Center for choosing Reina Gossett as the keynote speaker for LGBTQ History Month. I am appreciative that untold narratives are being given a space to exist and thrive when they are not given such opportunities by mainstream media. It is important to remember that the while the L and G are the most prominently seen part of the LGBTQ community, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are representative of the community. Trans people of color exist now, and have existed since even before the Stonewall riots. Our stories will not be erased or eradicated.

POSITION: Verisign Labs Internships; Summer 2015

Verisign is the entity responsible for running .COM and .NET, two of DNS’ root instances, and a number of other top level domains; answering 80+ billion queries daily. Not just a leader in the domain industry, the company is also a prominent provider of DDOS protection and a suite of security services.

Verisign Labs, founded just a few years ago, is the operational research lab that generates insights from this wealth of Internet-scale routing and security data. Proprietary data sets, a computing infrastructure built for ‘big data’, and a diverse team of expert researchers are among our most prominent assets.

We are seeking highly motivated summer interns to work with our research scientists on existing and emerging topic areas in our research portfolio. Interns work closely with one or more mentors on a well-defined topic area. Past years’ intern work has resulted in internal product advancements, intellectual property (i.e., patents), and externally facing conference/journal publications. Given Verisign’s broad business capabilities and the diversity of our scientists’ expertise, the Lab seeks interns from a breadth of disciplines. Current projects include DNS privacy/security/stability, large-scale data analytics, DDoS defense, reputation and behavioral modeling, NLP over domain names, and future Internet design — and this is just a small sampling of the topics that our researchers tackle.

In addition to research work, interns participate in programming that embraces the technical, business, and social opportunities the summer provides. These include technical talks, research huddles, social events, and an intern-specific speaker series. The summer concludes with a poster session that gives interns an opportunity to present their work to Verisign’s thought and business leaders.

Verisign Labs is located in Verisign, Inc.’s global headquarters, in Reston, Virginia. The office is in Reston Town Center, an exciting cultural area with a great social atmosphere and close to plenty of outdoor activities. Reston is just about 20 miles from Washington, DC (with metro access), and is a great place to spend an exciting summer doing cutting edge research and relaxing in (and around) the nation’s capital.

Responsibilities:

• Work with technology and business leaders to identify pertinent research questions.
• Perform research tasks under the guidance of a Verisign thought leader.
• Document and present research results in appropriate forums (internal and external).

Qualifications:

• Current enrollment in a US-based PhD or MS degree program in Computer Science or a related field; PhD students are preferred.
• Availability for ~12 weeks of summer 2015 and a willingness to relocate to Reston, VA for that period. There is some flexibility with respect to start dates and duration.
• Involvement in applied/operational research; publications are a significant plus (send a complete CV).
• Experience in one or more of the following technology areas:
  • Internet infrastructure and application protocols, including TCP/IP, DNS, BGP, and HTTP.
  • Internet security and privacy, including DDoS, DNSSEC, and authentication.
  • Internet profiling and measurement, including crawling and content analysis.
  • Applied machine-learning, especially the extraction of metadata and NLP features.
  • Big data technologies (Hadoop, Hive, Pig) and statistical analysis.
  • Strong interpersonal and communications skills.

LEARN MORE here

APPLY DIRECTLY here

See Flyer here

Name: Anil Jangam

Internship, Co-op or Research Site: FutureWei Technologies - Santa Clara, CA

Major(s)/Minor(s): Computer Science

Expected Graduation Year: Master Student - December 2014

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

Internet with its current architecture/design, is becoming insufficient to cope up with the ever increasing bandwidth demands. As per the Moor's law, the computing and storage capability is increasing faster than the evolution of the core network. The increasing use of smart phones is also putting additional load onto the network. I could study some of these network related challenges to a greater detail, and the approaches research and engineering communities are devising to meet these demands. As an intern, I got the opportunity to work with a team of researchers at FutureWei, on a project in systems and algorithmic research in content delivery network architectures. The project involves using and extending existing open source tools to specify and prototype storage and distribution of content over a LAN-wide and in particular, how to distribute video streams.

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

Since I knew my requirements, I searched for the people and companies on Linkedin who were working in the area of my interests. After shortlisting, I wrote the email to each individual with my resumes, and followed each one of them for sometime before getting a call for further discussion. Overall it took about two months to get an offer letter.

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

Career Center, LinkedIn

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

Learning the problems through existing work being done in form of research papers, brainstorming and discussions, and eventually developing the systems to demonstrate the problem itself and the solutions. Enjoyed most on developing prototypes using various different opensource tools with corss platform deployments. Enjoyed coding in Java, C++ etc.

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

Research experience! FutureWei being a US R&D center of Huwwei, focuses mainly on researching the problems and proposing the solutions to them. Currently I am also in the process of documenting and publishing the work being done at a IEEE research conference. We are going to submit our work in form of a research paper.

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

Having worked in an industry on live projects before coming for full-time MS studies, I knew what I wanted to do. The same experience also helped me land an internship at FutureWei precisely in the domain area I wanted to be in. I certainly recommend to everyone to know your goals ahead of time and I would say, half the battle is already won! It's a win-win situation for both student, and the employer.

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

Follow your passion, be consistent and you will be all right!

April Jones

Role at the UMBC Career Center: General Office Assistant/Receptionist

Q:Where have you earned your college degrees?

A: Albright College/Reading, PA

Q: What program(s) did you study? How did you chose your major?

A: I studied Theatre. I have been singing since I was 8 and acting since I was 14. My mom always called me a drama queen, so I knew that Theatre was the way to go.

Q: Tell me about the job and internship process when you were in college. Were you able to find job/internship positions that were related to your major or your career interests?

A: I went to a liberal arts college so we were taught to broaden our horizons and not get stuck in the bubble of our major. I was receiving As in my Spanish and History courses, so it was recommended to become an on-campus tutor. I did that during my junior and senior years and still do that as a side job.

Q: What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?

A: I was told to never be apologetic for my creative works. I was given this advice after I wrote and performed a play that wasn't well received on campus. I'm glad I listened because just when I was about to lock it way forever, it ended up being nationally nominated for a playwriting award. It's funny how that works.

Q: Why should students visit the Career Center?

A: Students should visit the Career Center because it really is the best way to jump start the internship/job search. There are people who work here who are incredibly knowledgeable about the job search and the current job climate. Come give us a chance!

Q: What is your favorite aspect about UMBC?

A: That there is a really high chance that you'll meet someone new every day.

Q: What is one item on your bucket list?

A: Perform on Broadway. *crosses fingers*

Want to connect with April or any of our great Career Center team? Call our office at 410-455-2216 or check out our contact us page here: http://careers.umbc.edu/aboutus/