Whether you are brand new to teaching online or looking to make some improvements to what you have started, Blackboard Instructor Webinar Series is a set of free webinars on basic and advanced topics form Blackboard Academy.

Have a question about Blackboard or Collaborate? Join a live Office Hours session where Blackboard experts will be on hand to answer questions, demonstrate workflows and provide guidance on teaching remotely.

All webinars will be recorded and emailed to you after the session. Even if you can't attend live, please register so you can receive the recording.

Vivian Armor, the Director of the Alex Brown Center for Entrepeneurship at UMBC has sent you an invitation to consider participating from the Cangialosi Business Innovation Competition (CBIC).

DEADLINE for idea submittal is March 8 at 1pm.  See attached flier with more details.  The final competition will be held virtual on April 29.

Don't miss this opportunity...apply today!  For more information and an application go to umbc.edu/cbic 

If you have questions please contact Vivian Armor at armor@umbc.edu.

The Spotlight! Guest Instructor Workshop series from our UMBC LIbrary presents accessible talks from UMBC faculty, staff or students. This is an amazing series of scholar spotlights, kicking off with graduate student and Black Graduate Student Organization founder Nicole Telfer! We hope you can make these talks. Register at the links below. 

Nicole Telfer: Ethnic-racial Socialization Practices, Gender, and Academic Achievement Among High School Students
Date: Wednesday, February 24, 2021 (12pm)
Description: Parents of color, specifically, engage in ethnic-racial socialization (ERS) practices to increase youth's self-esteem, as well as protect them from racial bias and discrimination. Studies have found that ERS practices have implications for youths' academic achievement outcomes, and these outcomes may also vary by gender. In this presentation, Nicole Telfer will talk about a study done under the supervision of Dr. Nicole Else-Quest that examined the relationship between ERS practices and academic achievement with gender as a moderating variable.
Register: Online 


Jodi Kelber-Kaye and April Householder: Baltimore’s Radical Feminists: Community Empowerment and Urban Communes in the 1970s
Date: Friday, March 5th, 2021 (12pm)
Description: In the early 1970s, some young female academics moved to Baltimore to teach and to organize what they hoped would be the socialist feminist revolution, in addition to other revolutions they planned to inspire. In the city, they found peace activists, feminist therapists, students and young wives eager to connect with women in the varied activities of second-wave feminism. Many of these newcomers gravitated to the cheap rents in the neighborhoods of Charles Village and Waverly, where they established institutions of a vibrant counter-culture: urban communes and collectives, women’s therapy groups, a feminist bookstore, a child-care center, a people’s free medical clinic, a food co-op, a coffee house, and Women: A Journal of Liberation, a national radical feminist publication which flourished for the next fourteen years. These radical and socialist feminists created a local community that was revolutionary then and many of those women remain politically active in Baltimore today. This lecture will explore neighborhood and community histories and examine the unique radical feminist collectives, communes and organizations in Charles Village and Waverly in the 1970s and the historic attempts made by these activists at creating a living model for social change. Given the deeply embedded structural inequalities of today’s Baltimore, we contemplate how these histories are reflected in a vibrant city capable of building radical and intersectional social movements and a collective consciousness based on the concept of equity.

Graduate Students, our colleagues in the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) have asked for our help to find graduate students who can volunteer NEXT WEEK. Please consider this great opportunity to assist incredible STEM scholars in their journey!

The 4th Annual Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) USM Research Symposium is taking place virtually on Friday, February 5th and Saturday, February 6th. Due to the global pandemic, we are going VIRTUAL and need judges to review pre-recorded oral and poster presentations from Monday, January 18 through Monday, January 25th. The three-six students who receive the highest marks from judges will be asked to present their research live on Friday, February 5th during a portion of our synchronous virtual conference.

If you are interested in helping us out in this capacity, please complete this google form.  If you have questions, please e-mail lsamp@umbc.edu. Thank you!

The USM LSAMP Fall Research Symposium provides undergraduate and community college students within the University System of Maryland in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) with the opportunity to both view and present research through poster and oral presentations, while also enhancing their scientific development and STEM identity. Registrants will also participate in the Graduate School and Resource Exhibitor Fair, where they can network with graduate schools, find summer research opportunities, discover research and graduate school funding, and more!   

Warmly,

The USM LSAMP Team

        Just a friendly reminder that all faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows that UMBC has an institutional membership to the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity (NCFDD). Over the summer, the NCFDD is launching virtual campus workshops, beta-testing a brand new program for graduate students and postdocs, and modifying existing resources for increased support. Along with these new resources, NCFDD will provide members with regularly scheduled training including core curriculum and guest expert webinars, 14-day writing challenges, and multi-week courses. I've included their most recent newsletter below, which summarizes their offerings.