UMBC Transit Logo Redesign
Progression from top to bottom
Cory Blische & Andy Hsu
]]>Finally, as always, please contact me with any comments, questions, problems or suggestions: collier@umbc.edu
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UMBC Transit Logo Redesign
Progression from top to bottom
Cory Blische & Andy Hsu
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Website updated for the launch of our revamped blog. Thanks, Andy!
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Geekosystem continues the conversation the New York Times started in its article about death and Facebook and the interesting questions that arise when the two intersect. No, this isn’t an article about “internet suicide,” in which someone attempts to remove themselves from all aspects of online social networking and community. This article looks to explore how the one-employee-for-every-350,000-Facebook-users team can manage a very sensitive issue better in the future.
“At the moment, a dead person’s profile will sit unchanged (that is, unless the person’s survivors have their passwords), and it will continue to show up in the profiles and home pages of that profile’s friends. The deceased’s survivors can either have the page removed, or “memorialize” it, which requires them to fill out this form, and include a link to an obituary or news article as proof of the person’s death.
“Ms. Chin said Facebook was considering using software that would scan for repeated postings of phrases like ‘Rest in peace’ or ‘I miss you’ on a person’s page and then dispatch a human to investigate that account.
“We are testing ways to implement software to address this,” she said. “But we can’t get it wrong. We have to do it correctly.”
How do you think Facebook can best deal with this? And what do you think about the future of media technology, especially as more issues like death that were previously experienced by a small circle of people “IRL” are being experienced by an increasing number of people through online communities?
Find by Katie / Post by Stefanie
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A book published today praises UMBC for its leadership in the field of higher education by including it on a list of the top ten schools where students can receive a first-class undergraduate education at a reasonable price.
In Higher Education? How Colleges Are Wasting Our Money and Failing Our Kids— and What We Can Do About It, authors Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus ask what students and families receive for the approximately quarter of a million dollars four years at a top-tier American university will cost. They examine how a college education came to be so expensive, and question whether universities have lost sight of their primary mission: to educate their students.
The authors included UMBC on a list of the top ten “schools we like,” praising UMBC for emphasizing quality teaching at the undergraduate level.
“Of all the research universities we visited, UMBC was the place that we thought had most capably connected its research functions with its undergraduate schooling,” they say.
U.S. News & World Report shares the authors’ admiration for UMBC; on top of naming it as the top up-and-coming national university, US News also selected UMBC as one of the top four universities in the country for undergraduate education.
UMBC’s strategic plan states that one of the university’s goals is “providing a distinctive undergraduate experience” by “integrating a high-quality undergraduate education with faculty scholarship and research through a distinctive curriculum” that includes a wide variety of experiences. Undergraduate students have the opportunity to participate in research through Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement Day (URCAD), the UMBC Review, our journal of undergraduate research, and by working with faculty that share the university’s commitment to undergraduate education.
Hacker is the author of the bestselling book Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile,
Unequal, and writes regularly for the New York Review of Books and other publications. He is a professor at Queens College. Dreifus writes for the Science Times section of the New York Times and teaches at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs.
Hacker and Dreifus will be on campus on September 20 to share their experiences during their three years on research at colleges and universities across the country. They will discuss what’s wrong and right in higher education today and why UMBC earned a spot on their top ten list. The talk will take place at 4 pm on the 7th floor of the library and is sponsored by the Office of the President, the Social Sciences Forum, and the Dresher Center for the Humanities.
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