UMBC wants to give you $750 for telling us your idea! How can you win cash for your innovative solution?

The UMBC Idea Competition is designed to challenge you to think about problems and opportunities facing society. If UMBC is one of the most innovative schools in the nation, then UMBC students are just the kind of innovators that can really change the world. Now’s your chance to make it happen.

Submit your idea online via the entry form. And you can also grab your camera or smartphone and post a YouTube video in which you pitch your idea. The top entries will be judged, live, by a panel of professionals and alumni along with a crowd of students at the final competition held November 12, 2015, in the Sports Zone in The Commons. The top 3 winners, determined by the results of student and panel voting, will receive cash prizes up to $750.

How to Enter
To enter the competition, complete the UMBC Idea Competition Entry Form, which asks you to (i) describe a problem or opportunity, and (ii) describe your idea for addressing it. Submission forms will be limited to one page, so you will need to articulate the problem you have identified and your idea succinctly. You will also be allowed to post a video to YouTube in which you can personally pitch your idea to the campus. The videos are not required, but they are encouraged as an effective way to communicate ideas to the review committee. YouTube videos are limited to 60 seconds and creativity is encouraged. Videos longer than 60 seconds will not be considered by the judges.

For a full list of the rules, visit http://entrepreneurship.umbc.edu/competitions/umbcs-idea-competition/

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS ARE DUE IN ONE WEEK, 
OCTOBER 8, 2015 AT 5:00PM!

Shayla Adams, CEO and Founder of RemixEducation, spoke to the UMBC community about her experiences as a social entrepreneur with a fast paced life style.

If you missed this informative and exciting workshop be sure to listen to the unedited audio of the workshop available below. Also below is the slide deck Shayla used in her presentations.

Shayla started off this series by talking about how she has always had the “entrepreneurial spirit.” As a kid she would sell toys and lemonade and as she grew, she constantly came up with new ideas to help her community. This was how she started getting involved with nonprofits.

After finishing college she came back to her hometown in Columbia, Maryland and saw that many students from her high school weren’t going to college because of their financial situations. She saw a need in her community and decided to start a scholarship to help first generation college students achieve their goals. This demonstrated Shayla’s first lesson of social entrepreneurship, which is to identify a need in the community.

She then moved to North Carolina to teach, and saw a need to help at-risk high school students. She went on to establish the H.E.R Story Program, where she exposes at risk girls to various post-secondary opportunities and mentoring. After the first year in North Carolina was a huge success, she was asked to open a program in Washington DC. This leads to Shayla’s second lesson of social entrepreneurship, which is to develop a strategic plan before you grow. She said it would have been a lot easier to start the Washington DC program if she had set goals and guidelines that encompassed the next 2-5 years. She said to always have a system set before growing, or it will be very hard to stay on top of everything.

She persevered through the challenges of running two programs in two different states because the problem she was trying to solve was authentic to her, which is the third lesson of social entrepreneurship. She has a passion and a great deal of knowledge about the education system and what at-risk youth needed to thrive. Shayla says to start something that you’re passionate about and then do research on that issue, which is the fourth lesion of social entrepreneurship. It is up to you to figure out if what you want to do is feasible and right for your community.

She then talked about her biggest challenges/surprises as an entrepreneur. She said her biggest challenge was identifying and maintaining leadership. To her, leadership is influencing others to want to follow you and your vision. She also said she was surprised to learned many managerial skills while running her business and was surprised with how often she needed to train others on these skills (i.e. Writing professional emails, how to document activities, etc.)

She suggested checking out the podcast called Startup, which is something she wished she listened to years ago.

She is also looking for student help! Shayla believes that innovative minds are what makes her program better. Below are the opportunities she is offering:

• Innovation fellows needed to help her throughout the year (with the potential to get college credit).
• Tech gurus needed to help her software company, Test4Me, continue to grow.
• Interns needed to work for her early start up involving “coworking spaces” called The Nest.

If you are interested in any of these opportunities please reach out to Shayla directly at shayla@remixeducation.org.

Snag a free ticket at DCTechDay.com and stay up to date by following@techdayhq on Twitter.

The Dresher Center invites applications for new Faculty Working Groups in the Humanities. Faculty Working Groups are collaborative, interdisciplinary communities of scholars working on humanities projects, research concerns, or matters of public interest. The Dresher Center provides support for the formation and first-year activities of these groups in an effort to promote intellectual exchange and support research activities in the humanities among scholars across campus. Working groups meet regularly and may also use their funds to travel to sites or archives, host speakers, explore technologies, create new resources or materials, or other similar activities.

Faculty Working Groups can apply for up to $1,000 in annual support ($500 per semester) for their first-year activities. Priority will be given to groups with at least one member from a humanities department.

Deadlines for best consideration are November 1, 2015 for groups beginning in spring 2016 and April 1, 2016 for groups beginning in fall 2016. 

To download an application and to find out about current Faculty Working Groups, visit: http://dreshercenter.umbc.edu/scholarly-resources/faculty-working-groups-in-the-humanities/ 

Contact for questions: Jessica Berman (jberman@umbc.edu), Director, or Rachel Brubaker (rbruba1@umbc.edu), Assistant Director

For this episode of BMoreArt Conversations Gary Kachadourian is interviewed by Jack Livingston. Gary is an IMDA MFA Program alumnus - a visual artist and curator born in 1957 in Baltimore, Maryland. 

He makes pencil drawings of everyday places and objects – like giant dumpsters, chain link fences, and the interior of his own bathroom. Gary’s drawings are designed to be photo-copied and enlarged to the actual size of his subjects. These giant Xeroxes are exhibited, and also distributed as printed booklets, prints, posters, or 3D objects.

About the Organization: As Maryland’s only 501(c)3 non-profit cultural organization dedicated to the ceramic arts, Baltimore Clayworks provides essential programs and services to local, national and international artists, both from its campus in northwest Baltimore and in community sites throughout the metropolitan area. Currently it operates four essential program areas: education, exhibitions, community arts and artist residency program. Clayworks’ stated core values are artist-centeredness, inclusivity, excellence, integrity and joy.