Deadlines to apply for the Legal Internship and Policy, Politics and
    Public Administration Internship Programs have been extended until Monday,
    November 14. Please see http://poli.umbc.edu/internships/ for information
    and application instructions.
    

• BY LEVI BEVERLY
 
• •   NOVEMBER 3, 2016
• • https://retrieverweekly.umbc.edu/umbcsky-david-hasslehoffman/

Watch your email, myUMBC and Blackboard for notifications regarding online Student Course Evaluations beginning November 30th. 

The survey window for fall 2016 is November 30th through December 13th.

The secure online system grants students 24/7 access during the evaluation period.  Surveys must be completed before the December 13th deadline.

Survey results available to instructors after fall 2016 grades are posted. 

See the IRADS website and Frequently Asked Questions for more information.

UMBC intramurals will once again offer its 5K Turkey Trot.

This event is completely free and will take place on Wednesday, November 16, 2016 at 12:15pm. You can register in advance at imleagues.com or register the day of  starting at 11:00am in the RAC.

Early registration forms and the race route can be found at the http://my.umbc.edu/groups/intramurals/posts/61920  page. Prizes will be given to the first place male, female, and first faculty/staff!

Be sure to sign-up now!

• Plan and implement programs that address the needs of commuter students
• Represent OCSS by sitting at the front desk and answering student, staff and visitor questions
• Serve as a role model to UMBC students and develop a sense of community among commuter students.
• Assist with OCSS events as needed, including but not limited to, Welcome Week and Commuter Week

• CAs must attend training sessions prior to the start of the semester (January 25-27, 2016).
• CAs work an average of 10 hours per week, including attendance at weekly team meetings on Fridays at 12pm. 
• If you are unable to attend training or the weekly team meetings (Fridays at 12:00pm), you cannot serve as a Commuter Assistant.

Courtesy of David Hoffman

Civic duty is something one has probably heard much about in the past month of political affairs. As active body members of the country, it is said that we should perform our civil duties by voting in elections and maybe even the occasional community service.

However, in the constantly changing political and cultural sphere of 2016, voting and brief community service is only the scratching the service of civic engagement that college students can partake in. Fortunately enough for us, The Retriever was able to sit down with David Hoffman, the assistant director of Student Life for Civic Agency, to talk about just that, along with his thoughts on UMBC as a community.

Hoffman is an alum of UCLA, the Harvard Kennedy School, the Harvard Law School and UMBC. After his years in education, he spent time as a lawyer in California and worked as a community organizer in California, Massachusetts and Maryland. He then became part of UMBC’s faculty in 2003. Hoffman is one of the friendliest guys on campus and he is always active on Twitter. It is clear, based on our interview, that Hoffman thinks of UMBC and the opportunities faculty, staff and students have here.

“Civic agency is the capacity to work with other people to bring about positive social change,” Hoffman explained. “My job is to lead to a group in Student Life that supports students’ leadership development and engagement on campus and beyond. I also work with faculty, staff and students on an initiative called BreakingGround.”

BreakingGround is one of UMBC’s potent, but fairly undiscovered, tools for civil agency. The BreakingGround website is a hub for all things civic at UMBC. There you can find pieces and articles from across the web regarding civic topics, as well as articles from UMBC students.

“BreakingGround is partly a philosophy and partly an organizing process,” said Hoffman. “The philosophy is that people can pull together to collectively shape their communities and they can do that in ways that go well beyond voting and providing occasional community service.”

“For example, you can approach your professional role in a way that supports communities and democracy. You can be a civic doctor, or a civic professor, or a civic lawyer,” said Hoffman. “In addition to that philosophy, it’s an organizing process in that people are having conversations across campus about how to embed the idea that ordinary people can work together to change the world through courses, research and campus activities.”

Hoffman also shed some light on his philosophy of civic agency as it applies to our country in addition to our campus. “I think that, fifty years from now, we’re going to look back on this time in American history and say the two biggest challenges that we had to confront were climate change and a crisis of democracy,” Hoffman said. “Climate change is well known. We know what the threat is and what the consequences of not addressing it could be.”

“The crisis of democracy, I think, is evident all around us, but we haven’t yet gotten to the point where it’s common to point to it as a thing that we can address together – a problem that can be solved,” Hoffman said.

“People feel powerless and think that they don’t have a meaningful say in the policies that affect their lives despite living in one of the most advanced times and places in human history. Helping those people discover how to connect and work together to decide how they want to live is crucial. If we cannot address that problem, the consequences could be as devastating as those of climate change,” Hoffman explained.

Hoffman continuously expressed his love and gratitude for UMBC, and believes that his philosophy of civic agency is something that has the potential to truly spread and live on at this campus and hopefully, beyond. He remarked, “I love the people that I get to work with. This place seems to attract creative minds and people with energy and hope.” Anyone who follows Hoffman on Twitter knows that he lives and breathes UMBC, particularly through his trending hashtag, UMBCsky.

“I’ve been taking pictures of the sky outside of my office window for a while now. I come from South California, where the sky wasn’t nearly as varied as it is here. The sky here looks beautiful every day. Pictures that I take for UMBCsky remind me to stop and appreciate what we have. Now that it is trending, it has become somewhat of a community art project to remind each other that there really is beauty all around us,” Hoffman stated.

Hoffman finished our interview with a reminder for all of us here on campus. “The opportunity we have here is precious and I hope no one sees their time here at UMBC as a time of ‘just passing through.’ We are all here together at such a pivotal time and the things we make together truly matter.”

The post Talking to the #UMBCSky guy appeared first on The Retriever.

Special Topics in Chemistry: Applied Analytical Chemistry Project provides a unique student experience by offering a course that provides hands-on experience in the discovery design process. Students learn the progression of a project from defining the problem, collecting relevant information, generating ideas, developing a plan, producing a solution, presenting their ideas to others for feedback, improving designs, and delivering a product. Course topics include project management, economics, team dynamics, and legal and ethical responsibility of today’s researchers, decision making, and entrepreneurial thinking. Formal technical documentation and oral presentations are emphasized as critical professional skills. Students in this course will collaborate with an industry partner to find solutions to real-world problems. Corporations provide project ideas, an industry mentor(s) and support for the projects. The project will address a technical problem at a level appropriate to a college student’s knowledge and skills. Projects will require a multidisciplinary approach. This course is intended for senior and upper-level chemistry students.

For permission to take this course please contact Dr. William LaCourse at lacourse@umbc.edu.