We had a wonderful time at the 2015 PROMISE SSI! Will you join us for some memories?

• Photos: http://www.ndemay.com/p865338520 (available for viewing and for purchase)
• Join us on Twitter! View the #ThinkBigDiversity feed and contribute thoughts about faculty diversity, applaud your faculty mentors, identity diverse faculty aspirants, etc.! #ThinkBigDiversity Tweets. The video tab on this feed will show participants’ video capture of Rosie (Dr. Williams’ humanoid robot) and her yoga moves!
• Dr. Andrew Williams’ summary of his 2015 PROMISE SSI keynote address: https://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2015/08/18/think-big-diversity-advice-for-aspiring-stem-ph-d-graduate-students-postdocs-and-junior-faculty/
• Hard copy of the program: SSI Booklet – Final Version – August 2015

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  Feedback: Now that some time has passed, please let us know what you have taken away from the conference. Please tweet your response, continuing to use #ThinkBigDiversity as your hashtag.

  

  To remain engaged: Please subscribe to the PROMISE website: https://promiseagep.wordpress.com/

  Events: There are several events coming up. Please mark your calendars and check back with the PROMISE website for updates:

  • September 11, 2015: PROMISE Opening Meeting at UMBC
  • September 12, 2015: PROMISE “How to Fund Your Graduate Education” seminar at UMBC
  • September 14, 2015: Deadline for applying for the October SREB conference
  • September 19, 2015: GEM GRAD Lab at UMBC (inviting all undergraduates to learn more about graduate school)
  • November 20, 2015: PROMISE Fall Harvest Dinner at College Park
  • February 12, 2016: PROMISE Research Symposium & Professional Development Workshop at College Park
  • May 7, 2016: PROMISE Cookout in Columbia, MD
  • August 20, 2016: PROMISE SSI 2016

  This is a small subset of events. There will be several other events throughout the year. Other ways to engage:

  Events at UMBC: http://my.umbc.edu/groups/promise; Contact promisestaff@gmail.com

  Events at UMCP: http://www.gradschool.umd.edu/admissions/choose-maryland/diverse-campus-community/graduate-diversity-initiatives; Contact Christopher Perez: cperez6@umd.edu

  Events at UMB: https://umbconnect.umaryland.edu/organization/promise; Contact LaNette Parson, lparson@umaryland.edu

  As we post event pages, some of the events above will be updated and hyperlinked to the appropriate registration pages. Thank you for joining us!

  

It’s that time again! SREB! Participants in PROMISE attend the Southern Regional Education Board’s Compact for Faculty Diversity/Institute for Teaching and Mentoring every year. We’ve traveled together to Atlanta and Tampa, and this year, we’re going to be in Virginia. The website for “The Compact” is here: http://www.instituteonteachingandmentoring.org/.  We repeat what we said last year, “If you went to the PROMISE SSI this year, think of The Compact as  quadrupled!” You will join nearly 1000 early career faculty, postdocs, and graduate students from around the U.S. at the conference.  In order to go, you need to be nominated by the PROMISE AGEP. Read some of our former posts for the SREB conference from 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014 here.

YOU have a chance to go with us to Virginia, all-expenses paid – includes lodging. The invitation is for early career faculty (for the Faculty Diversity Research Mentoring Institute), and graduate students, but PROMISE must nominate you. You cannot nominate yourself. We will take as many people as we can, depending on funding. One year, we had so many great responses that we received additional funding and we took 30 people!

Here are some facts about the conference:

1.  This is the 22nd Institute on TEACHING AND MENTORING/Compact for Faculty Diversity, October 29-November 1, 2015, Marriott Crystal Gateway, Arlington, VA. We tend to refer to this conference as “SREB.”

1. GRADUATE STUDENTS: Scholars nominated to attend the Institute should ONLY be individuals who have an expressed interest in pursuing a career as faculty in a college or university (any postsecondary institution.) All of the sessions at the Institute will focus on topics and issues related to teaching at the postsecondary level. Consequently, scholars who are not interested in becoming a member of the faculty at the postsecondary level will not benefit from attending this Institute.
2. POSTDOCS and EARLY CAREER FACULTY: The PROMISE AGEP is a partner with SREB in the activities for the National Research Mentoring Network https://nrmnet.net/2015-award-announcement/. Faculty and postdocs should be in the biomedical sciences. We have the opportunity to nominate participants from all over the country, including our alumni and colleagues from other schools outside of Maryland.
3. Nominated graduate student and additional postdoctoral scholars must be minority or underserved STEM majors enrolled in Ph.D. program. SREB will not accept nominations from students. (We will consider select masters students who are on track for Ph.D. programs. Note that Social Sciences are part of the “Science” in STEM.)

1. The conference will be in Virginia. Hotel rooms will be available at no cost to you. Single rooms will not be available for scholars. Students will be placed in double rooms. 
2. We will be nominating graduate students who participate in the PROMISE: AGEP-T. This means that you must be a graduate student at one of the institutions within the University System of Maryland. If you are interested, you must show evidence of participation in a PROMISE AGEP event prior to September 14, 2015.

TO APPLY: 

Write a comment to this post (below) with the following information (do not send  this information via email. If this information is received via email, without being posted below, your application will not count.) You may use last year’s page entries as a reference: https://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2014/08/27/promise-is-going-to-atlanta-in-october-2014-sreb-compact-for-faculty-diversityinstitute-for-teaching-mentoring-do-you-want-to-go/

Please follow this order:

a) YOUR NAME

b) INSTITUTION & DEPARTMENT: Please state your university & department (no abbreviations). You must be a graduate, postdoc, or early career faculty member in a STEM field from one of the universities listed here: http://www.usmd.edu/institutions/. Include the link for your department and your laboratory.

c) WEBSITE: Provide at least one link for your professional website. If you have more than one, you may provide up to three links, e.g., LinkedIn, department website. If you don’t have a professional website, please create one.

d) MILESTONE DATES: Students: Planned year of graduation for your PhD. Postdocs: Planned year for starting a faculty position. Faculty: Planned year of 3rd year review.

e) ASPIRATIONS: Students and postdocs: One paragraph that describes the reason why you want to be a professor; include your research interests and how you will contribute to research in your field. Faculty: One paragraph that describes your research program.

f) PROMISE PARTICIPATION: Which PROMISE events have you attended, and what have you learned?

g) SREB HISTORY: If you’ve been “The Compact” in the past, what did you learn?

h) TWITTER: If you have a Twitter account, please write a 140 character tweet with the name of one of your STEM faculty aspirants or mentors. Please include @PROMISE_AGEP, @SREBDocSch, and the hashtag #ThinkBigDiversity. If you don’t have a Twitter account, we encourage you to create one to participate in professional social media conversations.  You will be contributing to this feed.

Once you apply using this format, send an email to promisestaff@gmail.com with the subject “SREB 2015 application, now online” so that we will have your email logged in our database for this event.

This is the AGEP group photo of scholars from around the country, at the 2014 conference in Atlanta. Approximately 20 are from PROMISE.

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TheASM is hosting a two and half day entrepreneurship workshop for graduate students, postdoctoral and early career scientists that will provide basic information on establishing a start-up business. The Turning Your Science into a Company workshop will feature practical tips, advice, and resources from principals of leading start-up and small companies. The deadline is August 20^th.

The workshop will be held at ASM Headquarters in Washington, DC from October 1-3, 2015.

At the completion of the workshop, participants will be able to:

Learn more here:http://bit.ly/tsc15sp.

Friday Night, August 14, 2015

8:30 PM – 10 PM

The Hotel at Arundel Preserve,  7795 Arundel Mills Blvd, Hanover, MD 21076

Book Discussion & Dessert Session: Sisters in the Dissertation House

Book author Dr. Jennifer Bacon will be discussing the “Sisters in The Dissertation House” book, based on the experiences of Maryland students who persisted through their dissertation process via the intervention and support system of the PROMISE Dissertation House. Dr. Bacon, a former professor at Iona College, is currently working on writing projects as a resident of Costa Rica. This session is open to women and men.

Moderator: Dr. Shanna L. Smith, former PROMISE College Park Assistant and current Frederick Douglass Teaching Fellow, English Department, Bloomsburg State University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Smith’s writing and poetry has been published, and she was a featured professor for Bloomsburg State University’s “Big Dog” Reading Series. Shanna L. Smith is author of “Being Neighborly: Performance in Seen It All and Done the Rest”, Pearl Cleage and Free Womanhood (McFarland & Company, 2012)

Discussants for the “Sisters in the Dissertation House” session at the 2015 SSI include women who were featured in the book:

• Dr. Alexis Williams (Human Development), Lecturer in the College of Education, and Postdoctoral Fellow at the Teaching and Learning Transformation Center at College Park
• Dr. Sophoria “Nikki” Westmoreland (Mechanical Engineering) – former Visiting professor at the United States Naval Academy, and current Specialist at Accelerated Development & Support (ADS) Corporation, providing support for the Office of Naval Research.

To reserve a space, please register by sending email to

promisestaff@gmail.com

using the subject:

“SSI 2015 Sisters in the DH”

with the following information in the body of the message:

1) NAME, 2) School/Organization, 3) Phone #, 4) Reason for interest in the session.

This session will be held in a hotel suite. Details will only be released to those who have registered using the method above. 

____________________________________

“Sisters in The Dissertation House” is published by New Forums Press, available at: http://newforums.com/our-titles/successful-faculty-development/scholarly-writing-publishing/sisters-dissertation-house-dissertation-narrative/.

Also available on Amazon:

The California Alliance offers postdoctoral research fellowship opportunities at four top-tier California institutions; UC Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, and Caltech in the Mathematical, Physical Sciences and Engineering fields.  The program also includes faculty mentoring, professional development, and academic networking opportunities.

The website is now hosting the application process for the next cycle of the postdoc program. Kindly visit the following link for more information:

https://www.california-alliance.org/postdocfellowships

Here is the direct link to the application page:

https://www.california-alliance.org/fellowship-application

Important Dates:

Applications can be submitted by going to: https://www.california-alliance.org/fellowship-application

Two letters of reference are required; one recommendation from the applicant’s Ph.D. advisor, and one letter of support from the applicant’s proposed postdoc advisor. The deadline for both letters is December 1st, 2015. Letters should be sent in PDF format to Dr. Annette Angus at: info@california-alliance.org.

PRIORITY CONSIDERATION IS GIVEN TO APPLICATIONS SUBMITTED BY NOVEMBER 1st, 2015.

Need a place to achieve career-life balance? A place to de-stress, relax, and rejuvenate? Come to the Mind Spa.

The Mind Spa offers several resources, including, but not limited to: a massage chair, and oil diffuser, a biofeedback device, books, and a meditation area. Photo Credit: Shawnisha Hester

The Mind Spa is a room that offers a stress-free environment to anyone who visits.  The ceiling is covered with fabric, giving the perception of clouds. Upon entering the room, there is a welcoming small table with a teapot, paper cups, and assorted tea bags. At each corner of the room, there are three different relaxation resources. In one corner, there is a meditation area where the floor is covered with fabric and cushions. At another corner is a full body massage chair. In the third corner, there is a computer connected to an EmWave device, biosensors that clip onto your fingers to measure your heart rate. On the computer, you can play games and guided simulations, such as breathing techniques, where the EmWave device would provide biofeedback as a measure of the participant’ stress level and inside harmony. Inside this room, there are also other resources to provide a calm, stress-free environment: sandboxes, stress-free balls, small plants, vertical paper lanterns, and an oil diffuser.

Services from the Counseling Center are open to all registered UMBC students.  Everyone (including faculty, staff and administration) can feel free to stop by and check out the amazing Mind Spa! The Counseling Center is open Monday through Friday 8:30 am – 5:00 pm. There are no fees and no limits as to how many times you access these resources! Feel free to walk in and use the resources at The Mind Spa, or, reserve a resource in The Mind Spa in advance by calling 410-455-2472.

We learned about The Mind Spa through Dr. Susan Han and Dr. Emilie Stuber-Lawson, who served as guest speakers for the PROMISE AGEP’s  Dissertation House at UMBC earlier this week. Learn more about the beneficial resources that the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) Counseling Center has to offer. Located between the Susquehanna Hall and the Chesapeake Hall dormitories on campus, the Counseling Center provides free counseling services to the entire UMBC community, including: individual counseling, couples counseling, and group counseling. If you are unsure about setting up a counseling appointment, fear not! There is an “Interactive Screening Program” on the Counseling Center’s website (http://counseling.umbc.edu/resources/) where you can anonymously contact a campus counselor.

For students who are writing a dissertation at other universities, we encourage you to check your campus Counseling Center. Similar resources may be offered at your university.

Submitted by Amanda Lo (Graduate Assistant for the Career-Life Balance Initiative and the PROMISE AGEP team)