March is Women's History Month!

This year’s national theme is Women Inspiring Innovation Through Imagination: Celebrating Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.  This theme is meant to honor generations of women who throughout American history have used their intelligence, imagination, sense of wonder, and tenacity to make extraordinary contributions to the STEM fields.

As part of our Women’s History Month celebrations, the Women's Center and CWIT are partnering to showcase six talented women in engineering and IT fields at UMBC. The future of women’s history is being created as we speak and there is importance in sharing our lived stories now. We invite you to join us throughout the month of March to learn more about these women, their experiences, and their dreams.

Emily Scheerer, CWIT Scholar
Junior Computer Science major & STEM Editor of Retriever Weekly

Describe what sparked your interest STEM and the journey to choosing your major.
My interest in STEM was sparked in my sophomore year of high school. I took Computer Science 1 at my high school to fulfill my technology education requirement. My father encouraged me to take Computer Science over some of the "easier" options. I discovered that Computer Science was fun and came naturally to me. I had an amazing teacher who noticed my interest and convinced me to be in her Computer Science AP course the following year. My teacher continued to encourage me, pointing me towards various extracurricular opportunities, including MESA (Math, Engineering and Science Achievement) and NTHS (National Tech. Honor Society). I experimented with various kinds of engineering, but ultimately chose to stay with software design and Computer Science.

Tell us about an internship, research experience or project that you are proud of.
While I’m proud to have been a part of a lot of projects and programs, the one that shines out most is my internship at Booz Allen Hamilton the summer between my freshman and sophomore year.  I worked on a team of 12 interns, four of whom were women. The high concentration of women was significant in making it one of the best intern experiences I've had.  As a team we worked in conjunction with three full-time employees to build an automated testing capability for an existing project from scratch. In ten weeks, we built a library of automated tests that could be applied and used in many different ways, and created documentation for that library so that it could be easily referenced. After we left, our manager contacted us to let us know that the work we did was ultimately crucial to the final completion of the project.

Who are your role models in the engineering or IT field?
First, Dianne O'Grady-Cuniff, the teacher who inspired and encouraged me in high school, who spent many hours after her work day working with students to encourage our interests, and is super committed to education. I hope I can one day encourage and inspire young women the same way she does.

Second, Marie desJardins. I admire her confidence and the projects she works on. Whenever I have told Dr. desJardins I have doubt in my abilities, she tells me a personal anecdote about how she feels a similar way but still manages to achieve the successes she's achieved. Ultimately, I admire her self-confidence and strive to replicate it.

Third, Lady Ada Lovelace. Lady Lovelace is one of the iconic figures in computer science history. Although at the time her work was largely unnoticed, she predicted most of the common programming constructs that we use today. Lady Lovelace, like myself, enjoyed writing in addition to computing, and managed to raise a family while collaborating on one of the world's first computer. Her iconic success is my reminder that one woman can go a long way in changing stereotypes related to women in the STEM fields.

Explain your experience as a woman in a STEM major, including the challenges as well as the rewards.
As a woman in STEM, I'm always aware of the fact that I'm female in a class of mostly guys. I tend to count the number of women in every class I've been in at UMBC and am always aware that the ratio between men and women in my classes will be skewed. Another challenge of being a female in the STEM fields is that everyone, and even sometimes yourself, assumes your success can be attributed to the fact that you're a woman, and not because of your skills. The desire to prove you actually belong and have achieved your own success will never go away.

The rewards of being a woman in STEM include an instant community with other women in STEM.
Every woman in the field knows the battles you will face and they will help you to succeed. Additionally, being a woman in STEM means that you are defying a stereotype and hopefully becoming a role model for the future.

The Center for Women In Technology (CWIT) is dedicated to increasing the representation of women in the creation of technology in the engineering and information technology fields. CWIT efforts begin with nurturing a strong group of Scholars, grow to building community resources for other women in these majors, extend to fostering a healthy gender climate and ITE pedagogy in College of Engineering and Information Technology (COEIT) departments, and finally expand into outreach efforts to increase interest in technical careers. A successful program for female-friendly engineering and information technology education at UMBC will help make UMBC a destination for women (and men) interested in technical careers and serve as a national model for other universities.

Learn more about our community athttp://www.cwit.umbc.edu/

Dynamically Reconfigurable Layered Filesystem (DLFS)

Dr. John Dorband

Research Associate Professor
Computer Science and Electrical Engineering
University of Maryland, Baltimore County

1:00pm Friday, 8 March 2013, ITE 227, UMBC

The standard filesystem paradigm is based on a hierarchy of directories and files. The Dynamically reconfigurable Layered Filesystem (DLFS) adds a new dimension to filesystem organization that of filesystem layers and the ability to make custom configuration of them. The DLFS filesystem consists of many layers where each layer is mounted transparently on the root, ‘/’, directory. It is dynamic in the sense that every user can have a customizable list of layers that are included in a personalized view of the filesystem. We present in here the concept of a dynamically reconfigurable layered filesystem. We also present how it can be used, such as how it facilitates security and system management.

Dr. John E. Dorband received his PhD in Computer Science from Penn State University in 1985. He worked for NASA GFSC from 1985 until 2007. He currently is a Research Associate Professor at UMBC. Dr. Dorband was one of the builders of the first Beowulf system, constructed at GSFC in the fall of 1994. In the 80’s, he pioneered work in the generalized use of extremely parallel SIMD fixed-routing grid architectures through the use of sorting to implement generalized routing methods. This facilitated such application areas as image processing, graphics rendering, symbolic processing, database operations, and other irregular applications on parallel architectures that lacked generalized routine hardware. Dr. Dorband has been an innovator in the area of parallel programming language paradigms as a means of simplifying the implementation of applications on parallel computers. His professional specialties include designing and prototyping high-performance computer architectures; designing and implementing languages for simplified implementation of applications on parallel computers; designing and implementing algorithms for parallel computers; applying highly parallel architectures to image processing, signal processing, and data processing; and applying highly parallel architectures to computational science.

Each semester UMBC sets aside several days for partnering organizations to be showcased on campus. Through our Corporate Visibility Days program, organizations are given the opportunity to highlight themselves to the UMBC student body.  Traditional schedules include information sessions, career-related workshops,networking opportunities and lunch.

Held from 11:00 am - 2:00 pm, you do not need to attend the entire event, please stop by when you are able and stay for as long as you can!

** National Security Agency (NSA)
March 13 ~ 11:00 am - 2:00 pm
University Center 312

** Next Century Corporation
March 27 ~ 11:00 am - 2:00 pm
University Center 312

** Kennedy Krieger Institute
April 4 ~ 11:00 am - 2:00 pm
Commons 331

** Mitre Corporation
April 10 ~ 11:00 am - 2:00 pm
University Center 312

The following full-time positions have been posted within the past week to UMBCworks. Login to your account (via the link in the Jobs & Internships topic in myUMBC) and find details and application instructions as well as hundreds of other job postings! 

9256862 - Application Support Analyst - Brown Advisory
9256859 - Software Developer - RDA Corporation
9256860 - Product Support Representative - Brookes Publishing Company
9256840 - Financial Representative - Northwestern Mutual Financial Network
9256809 - Java Developer - i3 Analytics

The following part-time positions have been posted within the past week to UMBCworks. Login to your account (via the link in the Jobs & Internships topic in myUMBC) and find details and application instructions as well as hundreds of other job postings!

9256822 - Line Cook - The Rumor Mill Fusion Bar & Restaurant
9256821 - Receptionist/Data Entry - Bill's Music House, Inc
9256790 - Technical Assistant - Baltimore County Police Department
9256773 - Sales Associate - Shrerwin Williams (Arbutus)

URI internship expectations:

Summer term:  180 hours; 10-12 weeks, 15-18 hours/week

Most internships are unpaid; paid internships contingent upon funding-  Academic credit may be applicable; see your academic advisor or internship office.

For priority consideration, apply before April 1.

For information, contact Dr. Edward Orser, URI Program Manager (orser@umbc.edu)

Please submit the following:

            --a cover letter of interest, addressing your skills and experience relevant to the internship;

            --your resume;

            --the name and e-mail contact information for the faculty academic advisor from whom we will request a reference

Send your application either electronically to jobs@parksandpeople.org;

Or by mail to URI Internships, Parks & People Foundation, 800 Wyman Park Drive, Suite 010, Baltimore, Md. 21211

March is Women's History Month!

This year’s national theme is Women Inspiring Innovation Through Imagination: Celebrating Women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. This theme is meant to honor generations of women who throughout American history have used their intelligence, imagination, sense of wonder, and tenacity to make extraordinary contributions to the STEM fields. As part of our Women’s History Month celebrations, the Women's Center and CWIT are partnering to showcase six talented women in engineering and IT fields at UMBC. The future of women’s history is being created as we speak and there is importance in sharing our lived stories now. We invite you to join us throughout the month of March to learn more about these women, their experiences, and their dreams. 

Morgan Madeira, 
CWIT Scholar 
Senior Computer Science major & STEM Editor of UMBC Review

Describe what sparked your interest STEM and the journey to choosing your major. 

I decided to take my first programming course in high school even though I knew nothing about the subject. It only took writing one program for me to fall in love. I thought it was amazing that I could control the computer with only a few lines of code. It reminded me of solving problems in math class, which I had always enjoyed, but programming was way more fun. I remember when it came time to choose a major computer science was the only one that seemed to interest me.