Navigating the U.S. job market as an international student can feel like solving a complex puzzle. Between understanding visa regulations, identifying employer sponsorship history, and adapting to American networking norms, the process requires more than just a great GPA — it requires a specialized toolkit.

The transition from academic success at UMBC to a professional role in the U.S. is a journey of strategy and persistence. Whether you are looking for CPT internships or post-graduation OPT opportunities, the right resources can bridge the gap between "applying" and "hiring." Here is how you can take control of your search.

Target Sponsorship-Friendly Employers

One of the biggest hurdles for international students is identifying which companies have a history of hiring global talent. Instead of guessing, use data-driven tools like GoinGlobal. These platforms allow you to filter for H-1B sponsorship history and see which organizations actively value the diverse perspectives international hires bring to the table.

Perfect the American-Style Resume

U.S. resumes have specific standards that may differ significantly from your home country's CV format. Focus on impact-driven bullet points rather than just listing tasks. Highlight your technical skills and cultural adaptability as competitive advantages. Remember, a U.S. employer wants to see how your specific actions led to measurable results — think "Preparation + Action = Opportunity."

Bridge the Networking Gap

In the U.S., "who you know" is often as important as "what you know." Building a professional network isn't about asking for favors; it's about establishing professional credibility. Start by connecting with UMBC international alumni who have successfully navigated this path. Their insights on the "hidden job market" can provide the roadmap you need to bypass traditional application hurdles.

Understand Your Work Authorization

Confidence is key when speaking with recruiters. You should be able to clearly and concisely explain your CPT or OPT status. When you can articulate the logistics of your work authorization, you remove uncertainty for the employer. Reframing the conversation from "legal paperwork" to "available talent" keeps the focus on your skills.

Put This Into Action

Ready to learn more about the job search process in the U.S.? Join us at the International Student Career Conference on Friday, March 27th from 10 AM to 2:30 PM at University Center 312. We hope to see you there. 

What is a Woolie?

Woolies are ambassadors for UMBC who help facilitate a smooth transition for new students at UMBC, acting as guides, mentors, and a resource during one of the most important transitions of a student's life. If you love UMBC and want to make a real difference for the incoming class, this is your opportunity.

What You'll Do

As a Woolie, you'll develop relationships with and encourage a group of new students to engage with events, serve as a resource throughout the first six weeks of the fall semester, and participate in training around topics relevant to welcoming new students to campus.

Day-to-day, that looks like:

• Playing icebreakers and creating community through small group time
• Encouraging attendance at events like Commons Takeover, Involvement Fest, Big Breakfast and Bingo, and more
• Being a guide to the culture and nuance of UMBC

Who We're Looking For

We're looking for a diverse group of students who have a desire and the ability to work with people from various backgrounds, excellent communication skills, leadership potential, and a genuine desire to serve the UMBC community.

You're eligible if you: Are a current undergraduate student who has completed at least one semester at UMBC and are in good judicial and academic standing (minimum 2.5 cumulative GPA).

The Commitment

• Three (3) one hour virtual sessions: various times over summer
• Virtual outreach to new students : early August
• In-person training: August 19–22, 2026
• In Person Program: August 23 through September 1
• Weekly virtual outreach during the first 6 weeks of the fall semester
• Two hours of event support in September or October.

What You Get

Woolies receive a $750 stipend, all work-related meals during in-person training and program core dates, early move-in to fall housing with all early move-in fees waived (for on-campus residents), and free Welcome, Retrievers! apparel.

How to Apply

Applications open March 2 and close March 27 at 11:59 PM.

What is a Woolie?

Woolies are ambassadors for UMBC who help facilitate the Welcome, Retrievers! program for new students , acting as guides, mentors, and a resource during one of the most important transitions of a student's life. If you love UMBC and want to make a real difference for the incoming class, this is your opportunity.

What You'll Do

As a Woolie, you'll develop relationships with and encourage a group of 45–80 new students to engage with Welcome, Retrievers! events, serve as a resource throughout the first six weeks of the fall semester, and participate in training around topics relevant to welcoming new students to campus.

Day-to-day, that looks like:

• Playing icebreakers and creating community through small group time
• Giving campus and classroom tours and eating meals with new students
• Encouraging attendance at events like Commons Takeover, Involvement Fest, Big Breakfast and Bingo, and more
• Being a guide to the culture and nuance of UMBC

Who We're Looking For

We're looking for a diverse group of students who have a desire and the ability to work with people from various backgrounds, excellent communication skills, leadership potential, and a genuine desire to serve the UMBC community.

You're eligible if you: Are a current undergraduate student who has completed at least one semester at UMBC and are in good judicial, behavioral, and academic standing (minimum 2.5 cumulative GPA).

The Commitment

• Three (3) one hour virtual sessions: various times over summer
• Virtual outreach to new students : early August
• In-person training: August 19–22, 2026
• In Person Program: August 23 through September 1
• Weekly virtual outreach during the first 6 weeks of the fall semester
• Two hours of event support in September or October.

What You Get

Woolies receive a $750 stipend, all work-related meals during in-person training and program core dates, early move-in to fall housing with all early move-in fees waived (for on-campus residents), and free Welcome, Retrievers! apparel.

How to Apply

Applications open March 2 and close March 27 at 11:59 PM.

Questions? Reach out to welcomeretrievers@umbc.edu

Following Provost van Dulmen's November 2025 announcement regarding UMBC's commitment to digital accessibility, the Digital Accessibility Steering Committee (DASC) is launching "Strive for 85." This institutional goal calls for all Blackboard courses to achieve an Ally "Overall" accessibility score of 85% or better across all colleges and departments by the end of 2026.

As of the most recently completed Fall 25 semester, the campus's overall Ally score for Blackboard courses (which make up ~90% of all UMBC courses) is approximately 74%. To help faculty close this gap and reach the "Strive for 85" goal, the Division of Information Technology (DoIT) has prepared a voluntary, self-paced Blackboard training organization called "Course Roadmap to Equity" (CoRE) that complements and incorporates existing Ally FAQs, live workshops, and drop-in consulting. 

Among other things, the CoRE Blackboard training focuses on practical faculty objectives:

1. KNOW how to find a Bb course's Ally "Overall" score and what it means.
2. UNDERSTAND why content may be "low scoring" and its impact on student equity.
3. ACT by reducing remaking, or remediating inaccessible Blackboard content.
4. REQUEST an Equally Effective Alternative Access Program (EEAAP) exception (forthcoming).
5. COMPARE your new Ally "Overall" score to the "Strive for 85" UMBC goal.

In addition to the self-paced Blackboard resource, the Provost and DASC are working with Deans and Department Chairs to identify Digital Accessibility (DA) "Peer Mentors" who will provide on-the-ground help and support to their colleagues across campus. 

Finally, to give everyone a bird's eye view of UMBC's "Strive for 85" progress, anyone with a UMBC account can visit umbc.edu/go/allyreport (UMBC VPN required for off-campus viewing). 

"Ally is a reasonable, widely-used, and effective proxy for achieving new digital accessibility legal requirements that go into effect on April 24, 2026," says DASC Co-chair Tanyka M. Barber, Chief Diversity Officer and Vice President of the of the Division of Institutional Equity. 

"By then," adds Barber's co-Chair, Jack Suess, Vice President of IT, "our Spring 26 term will be nearly completed, but we already start from a position of strength. Blackboard itself has identified UMBC's Ally overall score to be higher than other peer 4-year public university clients across North America."

For more information, see the following resources:

• umbc.edu/go/allydemo
• umbc.edu/go/allytraining 
• umbc.edu/go/allyfaqs
• umbc.edu/go/allyreport (requires UMBC VPN to view from off-campus)
  
• UMBC Digital Accessibility
• USM Digital Accessibility Hub

Akila successfully defended on Monday, March 9, 2026

Throughout her time with us, Akila's dedicated contributions have made her an invaluable member of both the iHARP and UMBC communities. This significant achievement is a true testament to her scholarly rigor, hard work, and immense talent.

Congratulations, Akila, on this incredible milestone! We have been honored to witness your growth and look forward to your future successes. The entire iHARP community wishes you the very best as you embark on your next great adventure!

• Dr. Jianwu Wang, Chair/Advisor (UMBC)
• Dr. Vandana Janeja, Co-Chair (UMBC)
• Dr. Houbing Song (UMBC)
• Dr. James Foulds  (UMBC)
• Dr. Donald K Perovich (Dartmouth College)
• Dr. Nicole Schlegel (NOAA)

Rapid and accelerating Arctic climate change poses significant challenges for artificial intelligence (AI) systems, primarily due to severe data scarcity, inherent nonlinearities, and complex spatiotemporal interactions within the ocean–ice–atmosphere system. Conventional deep learning approaches rely heavily on large data volumes and often lack physical consistency. Consequently, purely data-driven models may produce physically implausible predictions and offer limited interpretability, thereby reducing their utility for scientific discovery and decision-making. To enable reliable and trustworthy sea ice prediction, physics-embedded learning architectures are required to leverage domain-specific priors that encode known physical laws, constraints, and causal mechanisms.

This dissertation presents a physics-integrated deep learning framework for modeling and analyzing the time-series evolution of Arctic sea ice. The proposed framework systematically combines physical knowledge with data-driven learning to enhance predictive performance, interpretability, and scientific validity. Specifically, this work introduces three complementary strategies for embedding physical constraints and governing principles directly into the learning process, each addressing a distinct scientific challenge in Arctic climate research.

First, a physics-informed deep learning model is developed for sea ice thickness prediction by explicitly incorporating thermodynamic constraints and governing energy-balance laws into the loss function. This approach ensures that model predictions respect known physical relationships while remaining flexible enough to learn from sparse observational data. Second, the dissertation introduces physics-encoded neural network architectures that embed established physical relationships directly into the model structure. These architectures enable the inference of latent physical parameters from noisy, incomplete proxy data, facilitating physically meaningful representation learning. Third, knowledge-guided temporal causal models are formulated to quantify the causal impact of sea ice variability on coupled oceanic and atmospheric processes. By incorporating time-varying treatments, causal structural constraints, and physics-based priors, these models provide interpretable estimates of causal effects that are consistent with established physical mechanisms rather than spurious correlations.

Across all evaluation settings, the results demonstrate that physics-integrated models consistently outperform conventional deep learning baselines. Overall, this work highlights the critical role of physics-integrated machine learning in advancing predictive capability, causal understanding, and trustworthiness in climate and Earth system modeling.