Today's 2025 Service Award Celebration is an opportunity to pause and take a moment to thank those award recipients for their service. In doing that, I wanted to thank everyone in DoIT for all you are doing for UMBC. I'm very honored to be the leader of DoIT, everyday I see the dedication, caring, and knowledge that you bring to your work and by extension to UMBC. The work you do in managing complex systems, securing critical data, and advancing digital accessibility is more than technical support; it directly powers higher education by fostering a dynamic, technologically-driven environment that is essential for a leading research university like UMBC. Thank you for your commitment to excellence and for being a vital force in our mission.

Please take a minute to congratulate your coworkers on the list below for their years of service to the USM and UMBC!

5 Years

Peter Ariev, Instructional Technology and Media

Ally Hepp, IT Administration

Melissa Manthorne, OIT Business Systems

10 Years

Helena Dahlen, IT Administration

Michael Fosu, OIT Infrastructure and Support

15 Years

Eric Ludy, OIT Business Systems

Jennifer Moser, OIT Business Systems

William Schneider, IT Administration

20 Years

Carlos E. McKinney, Telecommunications

Andrew Smith, Telecommunications

Ray Soellner, OIT Infrastructure and Support

James Sonnichsen, OIT Infrastructure and Support

25 Years

Vladimir Plotkin, OIT Infrastructure and Support

Christopher Sutherin, OIT Infrastructure and Support

30 Years

John Fritz, Instructional Technology and Media

Kevin D. Joseph, OIT Business Systems

Retirees

Lance Rand, OIT Business Systems

The room is bright and spacious, and it has two full closets. 

This is a great 2-bedroom apartment in Catonsville in a safe, quiet, and convenient area. The UMBC bus stop is right across the street; it's 5 minutes to UMBC if you drive (parking is available), and the MTA bus to Downtown Baltimore stops on the corner of the street. The current roommate is a UMBC student. The apartment has utilities, including internet, a heating and cooling system, and a full kitchen. The living room is furnished. The laundry is shared in the building. Surface lot parking is available. 

I am a PhD student looking for a clean and well-mannered roommate.  If interested, email me at ssemsar1@umbc.edu

Please message me for more information and to schedule a visit.

-Everything is furnished except the bedroom.

Requirements: 

- No smoking 

- No pet

Extracting Implicit Social Information from the Space Around Us

Digital Accessibility Liaison for the College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences for sites.umbc.edu hosted websites:

UMBC is committed to insuring its digital content meets or exceeds the federal guidelines for accessibility. To assist with the project of remediating existing content on sites.umbc.edu sites that does not currently meet those standards, ahead of the April 2026 federal deadline, a liaison from each college has been asked to serve as a point person for the sites.umbc.edu website remediation and compliance project with the DoIT Digital Accessibility Team. For more on this project and the drop in-clinics: 

Main myUMBC/sites post: https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/sites/posts/155026
Clinic on the 11th: https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/sites/events/148864
Clinic on the 18th: https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/sites/events/148865

Melissa Penley Cormier, manager of Research Graphics, is the acting liaison for CNMS. Any questions or assistance needed in regards to sites.umbc.edu website accessibility, can be directed to Melissa at melico1@umbc.edu or researchgraphics@umbc.edu. 

More information about Research Graphics' website design and management services:
https://researchgraphics.umbc.edu/webdesign/

Member of CAHSS, will be working with Jason Duncan and members of COEIT, with Karen D. Mattingly.

All the food has been taken — we are officially out.
Thank you to everyone who stopped by! 

Follow OGSL on MyUMBC so you never miss future updates or events.

If you haven't yet seen the campus announcement regarding digital accessibility, please read that first and come back!

What is the Sites Accessibility Remediation Project?

You can read more about the project here.

This specific project is to remediate websites hosted via UMBC Sites/WordPress for accessibility.  We currently have just over 500 Sites!  We have identified 85 Sites for phase 1 of this project as "top priority."  These Sites were chosen because they are at the intersection of high use by our community (internal and external) and most in need of assistance.  Phase 2 Sites have not yet been identified, but our goal is to assist all 500 Sites over time.

If I'm not top priority and I don't want to wait for Phase 2, am I able to receive help?

Yes, we welcome site admins who are seeking to complete their own remediations ahead of our schedule!

If you have a question on how to fix or remediate a specific accessibility problem:

• Leave a comment on this specific post we put up for community crowd-sourcing solutions.

If you are seeking more general assistance or support or want to learn how to fix a specific problem in a live, online setting:

• Attend our weekly Sites Accessibility Drop-In Clinics, hosted online on most weeks.  Head to our myUMBC events page to get the Webex link or calendar event for the next one!

• This is a drop-in/drop-out setting where site admins working on Sites accessibility remediations can ask questions or just hang out and be in good company with other people who know what "it keeps deleting the title of the expander when I try to insert a paragraph" means.

• Sites Project staff will be present at every call to help answer questions and offer solutions.

If you've tried both of the above categories and have a still-unanswered question:

• Fill out the UMBC Sites Support form to request assistance from Sites staff, and select "I need help remediating my Site for accessibility."

• Sites' staff availability and capacity to support requests will vary, and we may not be able to assist you with your question or problem immediately.

• Questions are not guaranteed to be answered in a first-come, first-served order.  We will prioritize what we have the capacity for.

• In some cases, we may ask you to wait until we are able to put you and your Site through the remediation process.

What resources are available to me to remediate my website for accessibility on my own?

Silktide is the tool we are using to identify what accessibility remediations each Site needs, and it is available for you to use on your own.

• If you haven't logged in to Silktide yet, this myUMBC post explains how to get started.

• Silktide has a huge library of videos in its Academy that can teach you how to fix specific problems.  They also link their videos to their accessibility checks, so you can typically learn what the problem is and watch a video training you on the solution in the same place!

• The UMBC wiki now has pages on how to use and understand Silktide.

The Digital Accessibility site hosted by the Office of Disability and Accessibility Services has a page dedicated to website accessibility, which consists of tools and recommendations specifically for UMBC Sites and WordPress.