A web of mentorship, as intricate as the arachnids Mercedes Burns studies, stretches from her UMBC lab to University of North Carolina at Charlotte and University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

At the web’s center is Burns, a passionate arachnologist whose guidance heavily influenced Sarah Stellwagen, a former postdoctoral fellow in Burns’ lab and now a faculty member at UNC Charlotte. Burns and Stellwagen both mentored Tyler Brown, Ph.D. ’24, biological sciences, at UMBC, and today Brown is a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow with Stellwagen in North Carolina. The web extends to Emily Marinko ’23, biological sciences, who coauthored research with Brown and Burns and today is pursuing graduate work in Nevada. 

Like spider silk, this network is strong, flexible, and enduring—fostering a love for science and a supportive environment that extends beyond the lab and into the community. All four of these researchers share a commitment to spreading their love for the often-maligned arachnids they study with broad audiences as a means of dispelling myths, reducing fear, and promoting the value of diversity.

Guiding the next generation

Burns’ mentorship style is “a very one-on-one approach,” Stellwagen says. “She has an open door and wants to talk about details and help you think through your experiments and your projects. That was a very successful way to mentor me, and I’m trying to mentor students in that way, too.” 

Burns meets students where they are, helping them pursue their interests within her research program’s framework. Burns focuses on the evolutionary ecology of Opiliones, commonly known as daddy longlegs, while Stellwagen explores the material properties of arachnid silks and glues.

“I appreciated Mercedes’ willingness to open up her lab to my interests, so we could push our expertise together, which has made me a lot more successful down the line,” Stellwagen says. “I took that openness to heart. Today, I’m a silk lab, a biomaterials lab—but for people who have different interests, as long as you can incorporate some bit of silks and glues into your research, I’m very open.” 

That attitude extends to Brown, who is more interested in behavioral research. In Burns’ lab, he led a study of Opiliones mating behaviors using a novel video-tracking method driven by machine learning. Marinko conducted many of the trials, and both are co-authors with Burns on the resulting paper. Now in Stellwagen’s lab, Brown is continuing to pursue behavioral work with a silk-and-glue twist.

“Connecting with them personally is something I’ve really appreciated with both Mercedes and Sarah. It makes the lab a more comfortable place to be in,” Brown says. In turn, “Being accessible on a personal and professional level to Emily was something that was important for me. I made sure that they had the level of independence they were hoping for.”

The personal, high-touch mentoring style in the Burns lab worked well for Marinko. “Dr. Burns and Tyler were very supportive, and I felt very welcomed. It helped me feel like I was able to ask questions, which I think is a really important part of learning in science,” Marinko says. “I wasn’t just a pair of hands that did busy work. I felt like I was really learning and contributing to the research, and that experience helped me get my position as a grad student.”

Sharing science, breaking down barriers

While much of their work happens in the lab, Burns’ team understands that thoughtful outreach can help the public care for—and perhaps even learn to like—arachnids.

“We’re talking about organisms that most people dislike,” Burns acknowledges, “so if we understand them and are curious about them, that’s going to take some of the fear away.”

For Brown, it started with “getting to know them on a more personal level”—the arachnids, that is. “Working with arachnids every day and learning so much more about them, it just becomes so much more interesting, and any fear you have sort of goes away, the more you understand them,” he says. He wants to help others overcome their fears, too. 

To that end, Brown recently participated in a children’s outreach event at a local library. “A lot of people were very nervous when they saw a bucketful of tarantula molts, but even in the short time frame of the event, getting to explain things and seeing people overcome that initial fear because they’re learning a bit—that has really helped guide me toward what I want to do with outreach.”

The entire Stellwagen lab participated in an outreach event at a major youth museum in Charlotte. “I think the commitment to outreach is born from having such a strong love for these organisms,” she says. “We do this because we love them so much, and we want people to learn about them so they don’t have this stigma. In the end, it’s about, ‘How do you get this information effectively to the public so they can care about and preserve these precious things?’”

Events at libraries, schools, and museums can foster scientific literacy and humanize scientists and the scientific process, leading to a better informed and more open-minded community. 

Marinko started out with some of their own hangups around arachnids, but over time, that changed. “When Dr. Burns talked about her research, she was so passionate about it that I wanted to be more like her, I guess. I wanted to overcome my fear; I wanted to be braver,” they say. Today Marinko works with a potentially even scarier organism: ticks. “And obviously since I ended up working with ticks, I’m not as afraid of them as I used to be, either,” Marinko says.  

Embracing difference

Reducing fears of organisms we don’t understand can even affect how we think about and interact with people who are different from us, Burns says. “I don’t think it’s an accident that I’m interested in biodiversity, and I also care a lot about human diversity—about celebrating that experience and how people bring different ideas, passions, and interests to the table,” she says.

Burns strives to promote curiosity, a genuine desire to learn, and a willingness to change one’s mind in all of her students. “If you’re curious about something, there’s less fear and more of a motivation to understand,” she says. “By getting a broad range of students involved in research, they’ll go out and have those casual conversations with friends and family that lead overall to a more open perspective on biodiversity and, more broadly, an appreciation of diversity.”

“When you go into Mercedes’ lab, there’s an excitement about these organisms that you feel,” Stellwagen says. That passion helps attract outstanding students and keep them motivated, she adds. “Mercedes has created arachnology ‘lifers’ with her enthusiasm, and now that’s trickled down into me being able to pull in some lifers, too.”

Teamwork fuels discovery

The culture of supportive mentorship in Burns’ lab extends beyond work in the lab to the group members’ collaborative approach to applying for grants to fund their ongoing research. Together, Burns, Stellwagen, and Brown refined a strategy—ranking reviewer concerns and proposing solutions—that won funding after initial rejections. 

“We collaboratively came up with techniques to go through the grant application process, and that has helped us all a lot,” Burns notes. Having each other for support also kept the group’s morale up, even when they received harsh feedback from reviewers. 

Brown was involved in some of those applications, which he says “definitely helped me make mine into a successful application in my second year in Sarah’s lab.”

Burns collaborated with Stellwagen on a major grant when Stellwagen was still a postdoc in her lab, which is not necessarily typical. “I feel like a collaborative approach to grant-writing has been more my style,” Burns reflects. “If we want rich collaborative experiences, we need to enable our colleagues to be co-PIs and apply with us.”

The mentorship web spun by Burns, Stellwagen, Brown, and Marinko at UMBC illustrates a dynamic cycle of learning, collaboration, and outreach. Their shared passion for arachnids not only drives innovative research but also fosters a supportive environment where students can grow into confident scientists. 

This network, built on personal connections and open inquiry, extends its impact through public engagement, encouraging broader appreciation for biodiversity. By fostering curiosity and embracing diverse perspectives, the lab’s legacy weaves an ever-expanding web, inspiring new generations to advance science and understanding—and maybe even grow an appreciation for arachnids along the way.

The UMBC Instructional Technology Update is provided by the Division of Information Technology for students, faculty and staff. If you have questions or need help, please consult the Blackboard Help FAQs or directly at www.umbc.edu/blackboard/help.  You can also contact the Technology Support Center at 410.455.3838 or submit an RT (Request Tracker) ticket via the myUMBC Help Menu or directly at my.umbc.edu/help.

HEADLINES

What’s New

• Anthology announces retirement date for Blackboard Original Courses & Organizations
• FA2025 Courses Created in Blackboard on July 16, 2025
  • New Online Form Available to Request Merge of Blackboard Course Shells
• UMBC to migrate from Panopto to YuJa by March 2026
• Meet AVA: Blackboard’s AI-Powered Virtual Assistant for Faculty
• CourseArc offers new AI-supported features including image descriptions
• New Voicethread login for campus access

Training & Professional Development (recording archive | view upcoming events)

• New Faculty Orientation to Blackboard Ultra (8.12)
• Getting Started with Google Meet (8.13)
• Ultra Quick Start: Copy Content into Blackboard Ultra (8.14)
• What's New in Ultra Courses for Teaching & Learning FA2025 (8.14)
• Create Accessible Content with Google Office Tools (8.18)
• Ally Course Reporting to Improve Accessibility (8.19)
• What’s New About UMBC’s Blackboard Course Creation & Enrollment Process? (8.19)
• Accessible Images: Basics of Alt Text & Decorative Images (8.20)
• Poll Everywhere Course Management Features Training (8.20)
• Create Accessible Content with Microsoft Office Tools (8.21)
• New Faculty Orientation to Blackboard Ultra (8.21)
• Ultra Essentials: Create Assessments in Blackboard Ultra (8.25)

In Case You Missed It: Recordings & Tips

• Creating Accessible Content Series 
  • Digital Accessibility Guidelines Checklist
  • Creating Accessible Documents (44:51)
  • Creating Accessible Presentations (31:24) 
  • Creating Accessible Instructional Videos (45:19)
• Course Prep Checklists
  • Tips to Wrap Up Your Blackboard Course for the Semester
  • Effective Practices for Delivering Blackboard Tests
  • Tips to Get Your Blackboard Course Ready for Next Semester

Other DoIT & UMBC News

• Tom Penniston selected for prestigious Fulbright Award to advance learning analytics
• Internet2 NET+ Honors UMBC’s Jack Suess with the 2025 Cloud Superhero Award
• Security Updates:
  • Update your annual eduroam wifi Certificate
  • GlobalProtect VPN Authentication Change
  • How To Detect a Phishing Email
• How to Get the Most Out of Webex

This fall, UMBC faculty will have the opportunity to test Blackboard’s new AI Virtual Assistant (AVA), a suite of tools designed to support common teaching tasks. 

AVA Feedback Assistant will launch in early fall. This tool offers two functions to help instructors save time while maintaining high-quality, student-centered communication:

• Summarize Feedback generates a clear summary of rubric-based grading. AVA does not read student submissions and cannot evaluate student work. 
• Rewrite Feedback transforms short grading notes into polished, constructive responses.

Instructors must choose to activate AVA each time they want to use the functions.

Coming later this year, AVA Responses will help address frequently asked student questions send via Messages by generating real-time answers based on your course content. Whether it’s a question about deadlines or grading criteria, responses are linked to the original source in the course and shared with the instructor, who can review, confirm or correct as needed.

AVA will be available for faculty use through June 30, 2026, and ongoing feedback about these tools will be essential in evaluating the effectiveness of AVA and its long-term potential at UMBC. 

An information session will be scheduled in September when AVA is available. As with all of Blackboard’s AI tools, instructors must choose to activate AVA each time they want to use the functions.

About Blackboard’s AI Tools

UMBC currently uses Blackboard’s Course Design Assistant tools, which include AI support to:

• Define a course structure including learning modules, titles, descriptions.

• Generate images based on keywords for learning module thumbnails or course content, or search the Unsplash stock image gallery.

• Generate test questions and question banks, authentic assessments, journal and discussion prompts based on selected content in the course or other inputted keywords.

• Create rubrics drawing on an assessment, discussion, learning objectives, or selected course content.

• Create Socratic or roleplaying AI conversations around a topic or scenario to engage your students.

• Design attractive layouts for Ultra Documents that include images, knowledge checks, and helpful headings.

All AI tools and features are optional and available under Anthology’s AI Trustworthy Framework, giving instructor full control over how and when they use them. 

For more information about Blackboard’s AI tools, please contact Instructional Technology via RT ticket.

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The Graduate Student Association (GSA) is now accepting nominations for four College of Natural and Mathematical Sciences (CNMS) Graduate Senator positions — an opportunity to represent over 2,500 graduate students and shape the future of student life at UMBC.

You can nominate yourself or another eligible graduate student. You or your nomination must be from the CNMS college.

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