SEEKING
Policy & Government Intern   Finance Intern             Clerical Intern

Intern positions are currently available, and we are looking for applicants to start work ASAP.

DUTIES*

Duties will include assisting the Policy & Administrative Manager in day to day tasks, and taking on assignments from the Executive Director and Director of Finance.

Primary responsibilities will be assisting with loan approvals, managing our loan database, assisting in policy writing, meetings, website design and event planning.

Interns will have the opportunity to work with state legislators, and state and federal organizations on clean energy policy and initiatives throughout the state.

*Duties will vary based on experience, expertise and availability.

REQUIREMENTS

No previous experience is required for this position.

All candidates must be enrolled in an educational program at a university or community college, and have their own means of transportation to our office location in Annapolis, MD.

There is no mandated time requirement as we are very flexible, but a time commitment between 10-24 hours a week is preferred. We will work with you and your schedule to create a program that works for you.

We are looking for motivated, adaptive and innovative individuals to assist us in daily operations and gain valuable experience in small business management.

CONTACT

All interested applicants please email your resume, availability and cover letter to:

cneal@mdcnealenergy.org

Get ready for Critical Social Justice: Home with our “What You Need to Know” series.

Last year’s Critical Social Justice: Baltimore 365 was dedicated to understanding the historic and current day complexities and realities of Baltimore City. In the wake of the Baltimore Uprising, the CSJ planning team felt (and still does feel) deeply committed to creating more opportunities for our campus community to connect with and understand Baltimore. This year’s CSJ theme of Home allows for the conversation and learning about Baltimore to continue.

How does a legacy of residential segregation impact the creation and/or destruction of “home” in Baltimore? 

What does it mean to “be home” for residents of Baltimore City? 

Which Baltimore neighborhoods are perceived as homes? And, which ones are perceived as less than? How does race, gender, and socioeconomic status show up in our responses? 

How does policing in Baltimore and the recent release of the Department of Justice report impact the reality of home? 

This year, all incoming first-year and transfer students were asked to read Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City by Antero Pietila which tells the story of how racial segregation came to be and what its impact is through the story of Baltimore. Mr. Pietila will be visiting campus to explore some of the questions above (and more) at this year’s New Student Book Experience event on Thursday, October 13th. This is a great way to kick-off Critical Social Justice: Home and we hope to see many of you there!

For more details about the New Student Book Experience “Meet the Author” event, visit the event post on myUMBC. 

1.  Tell us a little about yourself…

Hi! I’m Ryan, a tutor with the LRC, and a math/economics double major. I’m a transfer student who came from Carroll Community College, and am now in my senior year.

2.  Tell us about how you are involved on campus.

I’m president of the Japanese Student Association. We believe in closing the East-West gap one person at a time, by providing language and cultural topics to give students the tools they need to reach across the Pacific. We meet Wednesdays at free hour in Sondheim 112! Come visit us! All right, shameless plug out of the way. I’m also in the accelerated pathway program in economics, a TA for econ 101, and I’m doing independent research in economics, so I’m all over the place.

3.  How long have you been a tutor? 

I’ve been a tutor since the beginning of the year. I came in last semester to tutor economics, and ended up tutoring calculus too. I’ll always remember my very first tutoring session, about trigonometric integrals. Good times.

4.  How and why did you get involved in being a tutor?

“How” is easy:  I filled out the form on their website. They make it super easy for potential tutors to apply. “Why” is a little more involved. Obviously it’s a job so there’s money involved, but that’s really not the point. It helps keep me sharp in subjects I may have taken years ago, it’s a good item for my resume, and of course, the joy of helping people learn is unparalleled.

5.  What is your favorite thing about being a tutor?

My favorite thing is the part, after a few sessions, where you and your student aren’t a tutor and a student anymore—but just friends, one of whom happens to know more about the topic. A close second is when I walk into my tutoring room and find a whole solid piece of chalk, and it practically radiates.

6.  Why should students utilize the tutoring?

Why shouldn’t students utilize the tutoring? It’s free, we cater to your schedule, and there are no obligations except to show up each week. If you want to improve your grades, or even if your grades are fine but you want to make sure they stay that way, come to tutoring. And if you really don’t like it, we can cancel your appointments and give your slot to someone else. (I’ll miss you, though, of course.)

7.  What advice would you give students about how to prepare for a tutoring session?

Make an earnest attempt beforehand to study and understand the material on your own. The lecture sets out the mold, and your studies pour into the mold to create your understanding. Tutoring is a revision process, to fix any problems in your understanding. If you don’t try to understand and come in with specific things you didn’t get, I’ll just lecture, but you already heard a lecture. (Shoutout to all my students this semester for doing great on this. You guys rock.)

8.  When and where can someone work with you through the Learning Resources Center?

I tutor Econ 101 at 11 on Mondays and 1 on Thursdays, Econ 102 at noon on Thursdays, and then Phys 112 at 10 and at 4 on Wednesdays and noon on Fridays. 

I’m always happy to help!

Courtesy of Preservation Maryland via Creative Commons

“Ellicott City: If you lived here, you’d love it!” insists a four-foot plastic sign hanging off a plastic fold-out table. A real estate agent dodges a picnic table covered in empanada crumbs, making small talk and handing out flyers picturing stately, new-looking homes on lush lawns.

Mt. Ida, a mustard-yellow mansion built in 1828 for Ellicott City’s founder’s grandson, casts a welcome shadow over the vegetable tents. The location is temporary, but for the regular produce merchants at the weekly Ellicott City Old Town Market, this Saturday morning is like any other. Local peppers gleam. Local corn costs 50 cents an ear. Local residents share local gossip over stacks of local fruit. A guitarist strums a background hum into a lackluster microphone. Business is good.

But to the left of the farmer’s market, past the concrete parking lot and onto grass humming with mosquitos, the bustle gives way to tired eyes and charity-drive t-shirts inscribed: “RISE ABOVE THE WATER.”

When the “thousand-year flood” claimed Old Town Market’s Saturday parking lot space, it also claimed the livelihoods of small business owners up and down Main Street. The flash flood of July 30 turned the historic mill town into a raging river with water as high as its restaurant awnings. The water gutted some businesses; insurance woes and petulant landlords plagued others.

For these flood victims, each week brings a new headache. But on Saturdays, those that can manage it are here, sitting under red pop-up tents and wiping away sweat and selling what they can.

A sign advertising “Rescue Jewelry: $10!” points customers to a novelty: something that survived the flood. The vintage pearls and sparkling statement necklaces, painstakingly pulled weeks ago from the muddy wreckage of the Vintage Vault, look good as new.

A Journey From Junk is an eclectic clothing shop whose storefront’s sidewalk was replaced by a four-foot ditch. It now boasts two tents at the market filled with dresses, garish Maryland flag bow-ties and socks patterned with pizza and pile-of-poo emojis.

Nearby store Shoemaker Country spreads tables of elegant home decor out in front of the tent. “No adult supervision,” says a painted black placard defiantly, perched against the leg of a fold-out table in the steamy sunshine.

Sweet Elizabeth Jane used to be in an old department store built right over the docile Tiber River. During the flood, that river burst through their floor and wall, leaving a bombed-out skeleton of a building. Today, they wear and sell matching custom t-shirts, five employees lined up in a row like uniformed soldiers. “Flooded with HOPE,” their black shirts say in highlighter blue.

Across the grass, Donna Sanger sits alone, wearing a white “Help Ellicott City” t-shirt. Her store, Park Ridge Trading Company, a gourmet grocery stocking flavored olive oils and handmade pasta, opened only four months ago. Today, she sells the smattering of goods that are left. “It’s amazing, the things that were lost and that weren’t,” she said, gesturing toward a table of glassware. “Our huge, heavy old wood furniture got swept away. But all this glass, we rescued. It’s really amazing.” All sanitized, she assures.

Hilary Brich, owner of yoga store and studio Gogo Guru, sells a round-faced pre-teen a lavender flax-seed eye pillow. Long-haired and bespectacled, wearing her own stretchy black yoga merchandise, Brich folds her tall, thin frame into a too-short lawn chair.

Brich sits by two clothing racks and a single table, covered in orange and red $100 yoga mats and long-sleeved cotton tops ethically made in India. “It’s almost fall!” she insists, wiping her forehead in the muggy summer heat. A girl in a Pokémon cap peruses the jewelry on the table.

Gogo Guru was barely damaged by the flood itself, but that made the space valuable property; the following rent hike was more than Brich’s business could take.

“We’re supposed to be out soon,” she sighed. Higher-paying tenants from the lower end of Main Street will soon move into the studio. After six unsuccessful weeks of negotiating with the building’s landlord, she gave up and went public, posting a plea for fairness and unity on Facebook. “I’m usually the shy, non-political type,” Brich said. “But this is it. I don’t know what else to do.”

Brich listened intently as a man from her yoga class chattered about his back troubles. The lawyers and the paperwork and the tragedy seemed to melt away; her customer had her undivided attention. 

The Ellicott City Old Town Market takes place every Saturday morning from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. at Mt. Ida in Ellicott City.

The post Flooded Ellicott City businesses offer rescued goods and hope appeared first on The Retriever.

This past week, the Albin O. Kuhn Library and Gallery held the last installment for the archival project, “Archives Gold: 50 Objects for UMBC’s 50th,” bringing the school’s official 50th celebration to a close. This exhibition, which displayed one new item every week, began its run in Oct. 2015. The collection started off with a brick from one of the original three buildings, Gym 1, which was torn down in 1999 to make room for The Commons.

The previous weeks’ 49 objects that were displayed included campus maps, photographs, the very first issue of The Retriever (previously known as “UMBC News”) and various other memorabilia from past graduating classes. One item – which encompasses the sentimental and “groundbreaking” qualities of a school coming into its own – was a bag of dirt collected from the lot where the campus broke ground to begin construction of the Performing Arts & Humanities building, which was open to students in the Fall 2014 semester.

The last object displayed to the campus which brought the project full-circle was the exhibition book, “Sharing the Past, Building the Future: UMBC at 50.” The book’s title also became the official slogan for UMBC’s 50th Anniversary Celebration.

The exhibition book itself contains a variety of photographs, old maps of the campus and features of organizations and groups that have helped make UMBC into the college that it is today. As the last item of the collection, the book brings together a lot of the items that were displayed in previous weeks and is available for purchase in the Bookstore.

There is an online version of the exhibition book which highlights all of its contents, giving anyone who may have missed the original showing to catch up or enjoy looking at the different memories again. There are several themes covered in both the physical book and online, ranging from founding UMBC, student activism and student publications to athletics and campus growth, as well as others.

Just like all of the other 50th Anniversary events that took place this semester, there were key people behind the scenes that made everything run smoothly to add to the celebration. The Library Gallery and online exhibits were put together with the help of chief curator Tom Beck, archivist Lindsey Loeper, curator of exhibitions Emily Hauver, special collections librarian Susan Graham and many others who contributed to writing, researching and organizing with hard work and dedication to celebrate UMBC.

Observers got a look into the past life of UMBC throughout the full exhibit and the final displayed book, with its purpose of helping them feel as if they were a part of the 50 years it helped capture. When the future celebrations of monumental milestones of UMBC take place, whether it is the 60th or the 100th anniversary, current students and faculty can look forward to the many things that will be displayed to showcase their time spent on campus. If those celebrations are anything like the 50th Anniversary, there is no doubt that many will return to see it all come back to life.

The online exhibit can be found at http://umbc50.omeka.net/exhibits/show/umbc50

The post Archives Gold: 50 Objects for UMBC’s 50th appeared first on The Retriever.