Dear UMBC Community Members,

As UMBC continues to respond to the worldwide impact of COVID-19 and the campus prepares for spring break, we are receiving a number of inquiries about travel and want to provide you with resources to help you be safe and healthy. For additional information on UMBC’s response to COVID-19, please visit our website. Currently there are no suspected or confirmed cases of COVID-19 at UMBC. 

Before traveling for spring break, please be sure you are aware of the risks of travel during this time. Please note that UMBC is prohibiting university-related travel to any country that is under a CDC Risk Assessment Level 1, 2, or 3 related to COVID-19. We also strongly advise against any international travel, independent of CDC levels. Non-essential national travel is also not advised. 

If you choose to travel, know that even a country not currently experiencing an outbreak could be declared a high-risk area, resulting in heightened exposure to the virus, difficulty with departure, immigration barriers in returning to the U.S., and possible quarantine or self-isolation upon arriving in the U.S. If you are traveling in the U.S., be aware of how the area you are traveling to may be impacted and plan accordingly.

Finally, no matter where you will be during spring break, remember to keep basic health measures in mind to prevent the spread of any virus. This includes minimizing personal contact, including shaking hands. 

If you are feeling unwell, please stay home and rest. Community members with underlying health conditions, who take medicines that suppress their immune system, who are 65 or older, or who have other risk factors, should consult with their health provider immediately if they have cold or flu symptoms. If you believe you may have been exposed to COVID-19, call your personal health provider.

Lynne Schaefer, Vice President, Finance and Administration and Nancy Young, Vice President for Student Affairs
Co-Chairs, UMBC Crisis Management Executive Team

Have a great Spring Break, UMBC!

Name: Nazily Zaza

Internship, Co-op or Research Site: Northrop Grumman

Position Title: Technical Intern

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

Current Class Level: Senior

Work Term: Summer 2019

Tell us about your internship, co-op, or research opportunity, including your day-to-day responsibilities.

At Northrop Grumman, I worked as a technical intern doing software engineering work. I worked on a Northrop internal research project that included using skills that I never thought I would work on in a technical internship such as various types of code management and design, how to conduct technical research, and how to appropriately present my work findings. My day-to-day activities included code writing, review and editing, and helping out wherever needed in our lab. I also participated in intern activities that allowed me to learn about all the different aspects of the Northrop company. It was a very enlightening experience.

Describe the process of obtaining your position. When did you hear of the position and submit your application?

I was contacted by email by a Northrop recruiter who had cited that they had reviewed my resume from UMBCworks and wanted me to attend an interview session being held in the University Center. I got myself ready for the interview and when I attended I was welcomed by the recruiter and we talked about my projects, classes, what I enjoyed learning in school, and what I wanted to do with my degree. It was an experience that was different from the usual technical interview, and I was really able to shine and sell myself.

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

The thing I enjoyed most about my position were the individuals I got to work with every day. I was really afraid I wouldn't be able to do my best during my work but the people I got to work with over the summer were some of the nicest and most intelligent individuals I met. They helped me every step along the way and got me acquainted to the work that I'd be doing because it wasn't easy. They made my transition smooth and made my summer experience one I'll never forget.

How do you believe you have made an impact through your work?

Northrop Grumman is a company that makes and sells products, mainly to our government, that is used to protect our country every day, and I get the pleasure of knowing that the work I did may play a future role in making the lives of people easier. I wanted to become a software engineer so I could make something that would make a difference in the world, and I really do believe that I can do that at Northrop Grumman.

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

My best advice is to keep working hard and take every chance you can at an opportunity because you never know when that will be the one that changes your future. Whether you get an internship late or early make sure your enthusiasm to learn and grow never diminishes!

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Want to be the next Intern of the Week? Make sure to fill out this form and stay tuned. New interns are announced every Friday!

Nandi is a Junior, English major, student staff at the Women’s Center, and member of the Retriever Poets slam poetry team

(Still from Girlhood (2014))

  Picture this: It is 7:25AM in your high school. You are a student there again (I know, bare with me). You are barely awake, as is the natural order of things. Then, from the stupor of the morning a voice rings out clear as the lunch bell, “GIRL BYE, YOU PLAY TOO MUCH. SEE YOU, BESTIE”. She strolls into homeroom, late like every day, in pajama pants with an Arizona iced tea firmly in hand. You wonder how she can muster up the will to socialize outside of polite grunts at this hour, and you decide that you’ll just never get it. She is extremely friendly with the teacher while she expertly swoops her baby hairs into little parabolas. Everyone in the room seems on edge. She is so outside of the norm that nobody quite knows how to handle her, so most just settle on annoyance. But really, what makes her so different? Perhaps it is the fact that on a girl who already operates at about a 7-9, darker skin just seems to turn everything up to 11. 

     Navigating the school system as Black and Brown girls is no easy task. Especially at a predominantly white institution (PWI) that seldom gives you the space to express yourself fully. Seizing the little opportunities that you get to be yourself is so crucial to staying afloat in a system that, due to varying forms of segregation in most places, was built specifically to exclude you. For a lot of girls, and women, that may look like having your favorite snack in your bag, doing beauty rituals every day, or laughing as loud as you possibly can whenever the mood strikes. But again, you are at a PWI so how is all of this being filtered through the white gaze? 

     Recently on Tik-Tok, the latest video format social media app, teens have been making a barrage of memes about the “Hot Cheeto Girls” at their schools. The jokes range from harmless self-roasts reliant on the Hot Cheeto Girl as a framing device, to downright racist depictions by white teens. Now, memes are memes, but examining the origins of our humor opens us up to exploring our internal biases and unspoken beliefs. The beliefs presented here are somewhat obvious and representative of known implicit biases in the school system. People feel that Hot Cheeto Girls are extraordinarily loud, which is underscored by the belief that these young women should be quiet. Classmates find them mean and abrasive, and we know that Black and Brown women are consistently seen as far more aggressive than their white counterparts. Hot Cheeto Girls are stereotyped as “ghetto”, which places them right in the cross-hairs of ALL the violent discrimination that the term evokes. 

     Being up against all of this racism, misogyny, and misogynoir and still choosing to be your authentic self takes a lot of confidence. The double-edged sword here is the fact that expressing this confidence daily renders these young women hypervisible. Hypervisibility is the way that people of color are subjected to higher levels of surveillance and judgement, which results in more focus on their shortcomings and failures. Constantly being under the microscope in this way is damaging because it carries over into other areas of life. Being conditioned by the school system and their peers to see themselves as too loud, too disruptive, too aggressive, and deviant just by way of existing in their bodies contributes to lower self-esteem overall. In short, it just isn’t fair to be the butt of everyone’s joke. 

(from @whorati0 on TikTok)

     I think that there should be more jokes in praise of the Hot Cheeto Girl. I think that we should recognize their inherent joy and infectious laughter. I think that working to cultivate more genuine self-expression in schools at every level is something that we should do more. This world, so wrapped up in oppressive, normative fallacies, would be far more equitable and inclusive if people took the time to challenge their biases before making fun of what is strange to them. Recognizing women of color’s voices, especially when they are loud and excitable, as valuable and vibrant is a small step that all of us in academia can take to realize this goal.     

We invite UMBC Tenure-Track and Tenured Faculty to take the survey.

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