This page will serve as a chronicle and track record for some of our students in Maryland, including our LSAMP NSF BD Fellows, to review what they are learning about the 2016 NSF GRFP process, discuss questions, and receive support. Deadlines: http://www.nsfgrfp.org/applicants/important_dates

Please add your answers as comments on this page. Page down to the bottom of the page and post your entry. 

Assignment #1 – Due: 9/19/15

• Introduce yourself: Name, department, research focus, school.
• What did you learn from the NSF GRFP Training seminar from PROMISE AGEP Alumni, Dr. Frances Carter-Johnson and Dr. Patti Ordóñez? REF:  https://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2015/08/23/nsfgrfp/
• What is your timeline and how does it fit into your study schedule for classes for Fall 2015 (name the classes).
• Who are the research mentors (name, department, website) who will be writing your letters? Post after they have confirmed that they will write a strong recommendation. Discuss reasons why they will be supporting your application.

Assignment #2 – Due: 9/25/15

Write one paragraph that describes your research. Name three members of the faculty within your department (name, website, research specialty) who have research that has a connection to your work. Explain how their work is connected.

Assignment #3 – Due: 10/2/15

From the NSF GRFP website.

a. BACKGROUND QUESTIONS: Important questions to ask yourself before writing the statement:

1. Why are you fascinated by your research area?
2. What examples of leadership skills and unique characteristics do you bring to your chosen field?
3. What personal and individual strengths do you have that make you a qualified applicant?
4. How will receiving the fellowship contribute to your career goals?
5. What are all of your applicable experiences?
6. For each experience, what were the key questions, methodology, findings, and conclusions?
7. Did you work in a team and/or independently?
8. How did you assist in the analysis of results?
9. How did your activities address the Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts criteria?

b. SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH QUESTIONS: Important questions to ask yourself before writing the statement:

1. What issues in the scientific community are you most passionate about?
2. Do you possess the technical knowledge and skills necessary for conducting this work, or will you have sufficient mentoring and training to complete the study?
3. Is this plan feasible for the allotted time and institutional resources?
4. How will your research contribute to the “big picture” outside the academic context?
5. How can you draft a plan using the guidelines presented in the essay instructions?
6. How does your proposed research address the Intellectual Merit and Broader Impacts criteria?

Answer #1 from part a, and #2 from part b (both italicized above) below. Do not answer “yes” or “no” for #2 in part b. Please be specific and provide a detailed, comprehensive answer. 

Assignment #4 – Due 10/9/15

Discuss where you are in the process. List the application components that you’ve completed, and when you will complete any remaining items.

Please register here: 
http://ola.aacc.edu/mcapd/conference.html

PROMISE at UMB invites all to a special Fall Kick-off & Social Hour.

Friday, September 4, 2015, 3 pm

University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB)

Bressler Building, Hostick Lecture Hall

Featuring Dr. Nirmal Joshi, MC Chief Medical Officer for Pinnacle Health System

Transportation

Driving:

Google Directions

(Additional information will be placed in the comment section of this post.)

By bus:

A shuttle leaves at 1:30 PM and 2:30 PM from UMBC  and arriving at UMB 1:50 PM and 2:50 PM

More about PROMISE at UMB:

http://www.graduate.umaryland.edu/Current-Students/PROMISE-Program/

https://umbconnect.umaryland.edu/organization/promise

Sisters in the Dissertation House #Legacy @PROMISE_AGEP #TeamGetItDone #Reloaded #ThinkBigDiversity @drwestmoreland pic.twitter.com/SG38NGhj0Z

— Alexis Williams (@alexisinc) August 15, 2015

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

One post describes the event. It was a banner evening for the “Sisters in the Dissertaton House” discussion on Friday, August 14, 2015.

PROMISE also thanks its partner at the University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB) for sponsoring the Dissertation House for the SSI, August 13-14, 2015.

“Funding Your Graduate Education”

An Annual “Special Saturday Success Seminar”

9:00 AM – 2:00 PM

Saturday, September 12, 2015

UMBC Sherman Hall, Room 003

(First floor Lecture Hall. Sherman Hall is between the Administration Building and the University Center. It is across the walkway from the Sondheim Building.)

Speakers:

Dr. Frances D. Carter-Johnson, AAAS S&T Fellow at the NIH Center for Scientific Review

Dr. Patricia Ordóñez, Department of Computer Science, University of Puerto Rico – Rio Piedras

_________________________________

Our speakers, UMBC Alumni and former NSF GRFP winners, bring their award winner seminar back to UMBC! This seminar has been presented at the National Science Foundation’s HBCU-UP national conference, the American Association for the Advancement in Science’s  Emerging Researchers Network national Conference, Harvard, MIT, Spelman, Clemson, and at others universities in Puerto Rico, Texas, and DC. Our speakers have been part of MIT’s Tech TV series, and continue to be sought-after speakers on the topic of graduate funding. 

_________________________________

Dr. Carter-Johnson is a graduate of UMBC’s Department of Public Policy and formerly served as a STEM Policy Analyst at Westat.  Dr. Carter-Johnson has degrees in Public Policy, Applied Physics, Pure Physics, and Mechanical Engineering from UMBC, Georgia Tech, and Spelman College. She has received research support and fellowships from NASA, NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP), SREB, The Department of Education, GEM, the American Evaluation Association, NIH, and MIT. Dr. Carter-Johnson completed her postdoctoral training at the Teaching and Learning Laboratory at MIT, and is a Science and Technology Policy Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She currently designs studies and analyzes data to develop policy solutions to enhance diversity in the biomedical workforce at the Center for Scientific Review at the National Institutes of Health.

_________________________________

Dr. Ordóñez  is a graduate of UMBC’s Department of Computer Science. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras. Dr. Ordóñez has degrees from Johns Hopkins University and UMBC in Hispanic and Italian Studies, and Computer Science respectively.  She has taught several classes at UMBC and was a Technical Trainer for UMBC’s Training Centers, focusing on JAVA Computer Programming Certifications and curriculum development. Dr. Ordóñez  was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow, and has received fellowships and/or recognition from Xerox, Verizon, Google, The Ford Foundation, The Hispanic Scholarship Fund and UMBC. Dr. Ordóñez is the Leader of Biomedical Informatics Function for the Puerto Rico Clinical and Translational Research Consortium, and her research is   focused on applying machine learning, data mining, and data visualization to big time series data for the purpose of improving medicine and on developing assistive technologies for programming. Dr. Ordóñez also presents this workshop on graduate research funding in Puerto Rico in Spanish.

_________________________________

Our speakers’ work on the topic of graduate funding was presented at the “Understanding Interventions” national conference in 2012, and was published in a paper by the American Association of Engineering Education in 2013. This year, in addition to their annual workshops in Boston, their seminar, “The $10 Million Dollar Plan: Increasing Graduate Funding and Diversity in Computing” was presented at the 2014 Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing, in Seattle, WA. Their list of winners continues to grow, and participants who have taken their workshops have won the prestigious NSF GRFP Fellowship and other awards,  totaling more than $1 million of fellowship money! 

_________________________________

Learn how to apply for the NSF GRFP Fellowship, learn about the nuances of submitting a fellowship to NSF, have terms deciphered, and start your application on Fastlane – NSF’s computer system.

• Please feel free to take a look at information that was posted for seminars in the past.  Information from the 2012 seminar: https://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/how-to-fund-your-graduate-education-dr-ordonez-rozo-and-dr-carter-johnson-promise-alumni-present-their-award-winning-seminar-on-saturday-sept-15-2012/
• Information from 2013 seminar (take a look at the comments for some great tips on saving money, shared by graduate students): https://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2013/08/21/jobs-fellowships-grad-school-funding-saturday-breakfast-lunch-seminar-sept-7-2013-umbc/

_________________________________

PLEASE RSVP (Breakfast refreshments and lunch will be served): 

• UMBC’s students: http://my.umbc.edu/groups/promise/events/34284
• If you are not a student at UMBC, RSVP by posting in the comment section at the bottom of this message with your name, school, and discipline (academic department)/major.

Graduate students and undergraduates from all schools in the region are invited to attend this seminar. All current LSAMP Bridge to the Doctorate Fellows are required to attend the workshop, and are required to apply for the NSF GRFP.

Directions and Parking:

http://about.umbc.edu/visitors-guide/directions/

See the “Comments” section below for more details.

The National GEM Consortium’s GRAD Lab is coming to UMBC on Saturday, September 19, 2015. This page will serve as the host website for the event. Please stay tuned and visit regularly for updates, as the program content develops.

FREE WORKSHOP FOR GRADUATE SCHOOL PREPARATION

The GEM Getting Ready for Advanced Degrees (GRAD) Lab is a program for people who are considering graduate study in STEM fields. While most of the participants in the national GEM GRAD Lab programs are undergraduates in their junior and senior years who are seeking graduate admission at either the M.S. or doctoral level, UMBC also invites freshmen and sophomores who want a head start, M.S. students who are seeking tips for Ph.D. admission, and career professionals who are considering a return to school to earn any graduate STEM degree. Special invitations are further extended to undergraduate students who attend institutions within the University System of Maryland, and students who participate in programs such as NSF’s Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation (LSAMP), the National Society of Black Engineers  (NSBE), the Society for Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE), the American Indian Science and Engineering Society  (AISES), the Society for the Advancement of Chicano and Native American Scientists (SACNAS), and McNair scholars.

The 2015 GEM GRAD Lab at UMBC will be principally sponsored by PROMISE: Maryland’s Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP), which is funded by the National Science Foundation. The GEM GRAD Lab at UMBC follows the 2015 PROMISE AGEP Summer Success Institute (continuing PROMISE theme for 2015-2016: #ThinkBigDiversity), and is part of the AGEP’s programming to encourage diverse STEM students to prepare for and apply to graduate school.

Co-sponsors include Penn State University, Binghamton University – State University of New York (SUNY), the Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland College Park, University of Virginia, and Howard University. The Intel Foundation is a national sponsor for the GEM GRAD Lab.

Here are basic facts for the GEM GRAD Lab at UMBC:

Time and Location

Date: Saturday, September 19, 2015

Time: 8:00 AM – 3:30 PM

Location: The Engineering Building Lecture Hall & Atrium (ENGR 027 – Lecture Hall 5)

Directions and Parking: UMBC Guide/Directions, Google Map Street View Image, Google Map Coordinates: 39.254657, -76.713960

• Parking Lot 8: Participants driving personal cars (right in front of the Performing Arts building on Hilltop road)
• Parking Lot 22: For buses.

Follow the signs! We will have several for parking and to get to the building.

Please follow the link to see the parking map of the UMBC campus.

Parking map: http://about.umbc.edu/files/2012/08/2015-2016-Parking-Map.pdf

Lodging

If you are arriving on Friday, Sept. 18, 2015, and checking out on Saturday, Sept. 19, 2015, please consider our preferred hotel, The Hotel at Arundel Preserve, http://hotelarundel.com/, which has a special UMBC rate of $139/night + tax for this event. The UMBC room rate (for two queen beds or a king bed with a sleeper sofa) is available until Friday, September 4, 2015.

AGENDA

Registration

Registration is now open. Please register here, via the GEM program’s official process: https://egem.gemfellowship.org/events/ViewEvent.aspx?contextID=10167

Please note that all student participants must register via the website above. The PROMISE AGEP is not able to take a list of students nor email notifications in lieu of the registration process that is outlined within the link above. Thank you for following this procedure. 

Registration is free. To share this page and its contents, feel free to use the shortened version of the URL: http://tinyurl.com/UMBC-GEMGRADLab

Transportation

• Frostburg students: To reserve a bus seat you must email Wendy Wilson in the Office of Graduate Services at wwilson@frostburg.edu
• College Park students: Contact Taifa Simpson, Director, LSAMP in the Center for Minorities in Science and Engineering for bus information, tsimpson@umd.edu.
• Penn State students: Contact Wayne Gersie, Director, Multicultural Engineering Program, Office of Engineering Diversity, wgersie@engr.psu.edu
• Binghamton students: Contact Shanise Kent, Director of Diversity Programs & Initiatives, Thomas J. Watson School of Engineering & Applied Science, Binghamton University
• UMES students: Contact Tracy Bell, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Biology, Department of Natural Sciences, University of Maryland Eastern Shore, tdbell@umes.edu
• Howard students: Contact Kamla Deonauth Ph.D., Director, Graduate School, Howard University

The Graduate Fair

The lunch activity will include a graduate school fair that will feature colleges and universities who are interested in talking with students about applying to their graduate programs.  Schools that are interested in sharing their graduate programs with guests are invited to reserve a table at the “Lunch & Graduate Fair” by emailing promisestaff@gmail.com, with the subject “GEM GRAD Lab Lunch Fair.” This free table space is limited. Priority will be extended to co-sponsoring schools, and institutions within the University System of Maryland.

The PROMISE AGEP is led by UMBC, the University of Maryland Baltimore, and the University of Maryland College Park. All of the universities within the University System of Maryland are part of the PROMISE AGEP. Read more about PROMISE AGEP: Maryland Transformation (AGEP-T) here: https://promiseagep.wordpress.com/about/about-promise-the-agep-for-maryland/

Official Flier: 2015 GEM GRAD Lab at UMBC