The GSA Invites You to The Center for Democracy and Civic Life on 2/25 from 5 PM - 7 PM. 

The GSA Invites You to Join Us, Starting Friday, 2/12 3 PM - 4:30 PM

Register here:

https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/ucs/events/92119

Connecting While Apart: Graduate Student Support Group is geared towards students in masters's and doctoral programs.  This group is designed to provide a safe and confidential environment for graduate students to discuss the stress and challenges they are facing being in grad school during the current global pandemic. Members will also gain support for managing loneliness and social isolation, as well as other relational concerns and personal difficulties they may be experiencing. We hope that the group cultivates a sense of safety , trust, and deep and meaningful conversations, and contributes to group members' emotional wellbeing. 

UMBC graduate students who are physically in Maryland, are eligible for this group.  Please note that this group requires full commitment to the scheduled meetings (8-9 meetings in total depending on the start date) and anyone who is interested, should contact our co-facilitators directly.

Day and Time: 8~9 Fridays, 3PM-4:30PM, starting in late February or early March

So, what is radical love & belonging?

Radical Love in Practice

• Interrogate... Pay close attention to your behaviors and your actions, in what ways are you causing harm?  
• Righteous anger... Feel the feelings, while striving  to hate the action, not the person.
• Call-in... Be brave and courageous, as you call-in family and friends around harmful behaviors that should be called-out.
• Speak truth to power... Name your truth and amplify the needs of others
• Act... consider your spheres of influence and use your privilege and power to act: vote, protest, lobby for policies, or engage in financial activism.
• Accountability and responsibility... Consequences, accountability and responsibility are all necessary aspects of radical love.

Radical Love in Practice:

Competition Now Open! Deadline to Apply: April 5, 2021

The Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad (DDRA) Fellowship Program provides opportunities for doctoral candidates to engage in full-time dissertation research abroad in modern foreign languages and area studies. The program is designed to deepen research knowledge and increase the study of modern foreign languages, cultural engagement, and area studies not generally included in U.S. curricula. 

Program Features

Students may request funding to support overseas research for a period of no less than six months and no more than 12 months. Funds support travel expenses to and from the residence of the fellow and the country or countries of research; maintenance and dependent allowances based on the location of research for the fellow and his or her dependent(s); an allowance for research-related expenses overseas; and health and accident insurance premiums. Projects may focus on one or more of the following geographic areas: Africa, East Asia, Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands, South Asia, the Near East, Central and Eastern Europe and Eurasia, and the Western Hemisphere (excluding the United States and its territories).

Eligible Applicants
Institutions of higher education (IHEs) in the United States are eligible to apply for grants under this program. As part of the application process, eligible students submit their individual research narratives and application forms to their home IHE. The IHE compiles all eligible individual student applications for inclusion in the institutional application that is submitted to the U.S. Department of Education. A student is eligible to receive a DDRA fellowship from their IHE if he or she

• is a citizen, national, or permanent resident of the United States;
• is a graduate student in good standing at an IHE;
• is admitted to candidacy in a doctoral degree program in modern foreign languages and area studies at that institution when the fellowship period begins;
• is planning a teaching career in the United States upon completion of his or her doctoral program; or
• possesses sufficient foreign language skills to carry out the dissertation research project.

Application

The U.S. Department of Education's International and Foreign Language Education office (IFLE) expects to make 100 new awards totaling approximately $4.7 million under the fiscal year (FY) 2021 DDRA program competition. The FY 2021 application is available online through the U.S. Department of Education’s G5 system between Feb. 4 and April 5, 2021.

Please refer to the official Federal Register notice for detailed information about the FY 2021 competition. 

Application Technical Assistance

IFLE will post a prerecorded technical assistance webinar on its YouTube channel soon to help students and institutions learn more about the 2021 DDRA program and how to apply. Please check IFLE's YouTube channel for updates.

In addition to the webinar presentation, IFLE will host a live web chat to answer specific applicant questions. The chat will take place via Microsoft Teams at 2 p.m. ET on March 2, 2021. A link to join the web chat on the designated date and time will be posted soon under the “Tips and Assistance” section of the DDRA program “Applicant Information” webpage. Please check there for updates.

If you have questions about the program or application process, please send them by email to DDRA@ed.gov.

* DDRA fellows featured in image above, from left to right: 

• Colin Cahill, University of California (FY 2013, Indonesia)
• Alison Heller, Washington University in Saint Louis (FY 2013, Niger)
• Scott Hussey, University of Florida (FY 2012, Morocco)
• Caleb Carter, University of California Los Angeles (FY 2012, Japan)
• Morgan Hoke, Northwestern University (FY 2014, Peru)

Where in the World do DDRA Fellows Conduct Research?

Explore our Google map of FY 2020 IFLE grantees to learn more about the doctoral students who are currently funded under the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship Program.

Watch Our Fulbright-Hays Video!

ENGAGE WITH US

Follow Us on Twitter @GoGlobalED

Subscribe to Our YouTube Channel!

Join Our FLAS and Fulbright-Hays Alumni Groups on LinkedIn

Intern With IFLE!

Send Us Your Feedback and Comments

If you know someone who would like to receive the IFLE newsletter, encourage them to sign up HERE!

Accessibility and Disability Service and Student Disability Services highlight Black History Month.

Rediscover how some members of the Black Civil Rights Movement also played essential roles as activists in the US Disability Rights Movement, and paved the way for disability rights activists to influence social change and legislation. Many people with disabilities were part of both movements and continue to be today. Crip Camp shows how intersectional being black and disabled can be - beyond the Black Panthers. Further back in history, learn new things about the famous Black figures who also had disabilities. For instance, Harriet Tubman lived with epilepsy and narcolepsy.

In the links described below, we hope you may find information you will be happy to rediscover or learn for the first time. Black history is being made this moment, and there is an endless amount to learn from the past. A little time spent exploring Black history this month may lead you in enlightening directions. While researching this post, I started at (link)Brad Lomax, and ended up at the (link)Wild Zappers, a DC-based all black all deaf dance company.

Test your knowledge by taking this quiz with the National Black Disability Coalition (NBDC): (link)http://www.blackdisability.org/content/black-disabled-trivia

Important figures in Black History:

• National Disability Rights Network (NDRN) has a Black History Bio for each day of February: (link)https://www.ndrn.org/resource/disability-rights-in-black/
• On the website for Respect Ability, an advocacy organization, you can find an article featuring the experiences and voices of current African-American celebrities who have disabilities. (link)https://www.respectability.org/2018/02/highlighting-african-americans-disabilities-honor-black-history-month/
• Learn about Black History heroes who are or were deaf or blind: (link)https://dcmp.org/learn/203-black-history-month

·       Google “Black History” plus any disability (i.e. "autism," "dyslexia," etc.) and find something to share. Add it to the comments at the end of this post.

Explore Black History and Disability Rights:

The National Center for Learning Disabilities (NCLD) has a great article about the integral role Black disability rights activists played in securing rights for all US citizens with disabilities.  (link)https://www.ncld.org/news/honoring-black-history-month-unsung-heroes-of-the-disability-rights-movement/ For more on Brad Lomax, a leader in the 1977 protests that led to the implementation of section 504 of the rehabilitation act, see this NYT obituary (link)https:/www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/obituaries/brad-lomax-overlooked.html

Black Disabled and Proud: College Students with Disabilities is a website by the HBCU Disability Consortium. Their page titled “Black Lives Matter and Disability” speaks to the recent and daily making of Black history as it intersects with disability. (link)https://www.blackdisabledandproud.org/black-lives-matter.html The page includes links to thoughtful articles as well as self-care info.

The Disability Visibility Project’s Black Lives Matter page has podcasts (with transcripts) that explore the individual experiences of people who are actively contributing individually and/or organizing to raise awareness about being Black and having a  disability.  (link)https://disabilityvisibilityproject.com/tag/black-lives-matter/  Click through on the posts and find things like Jen White Johnson’s Black Disability Lives Matter mural (link)https://jenwhitejohnson.com/Black-Disabled-Lives-Matter-Mural-Project

More UMBC posts and events are going up over the course of the month. Please keep looking. Here are a few to check out at UMBC:

LSAMP at UMBC has a great post that spans Black History, education history and today. (link)https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/lsamp/posts/99034

The UMBC Women’s Center posted on “Black Women in History from A to Z.” Their first on the list is Audre Lorde, a black poet, activist and scholar who lived with the effects of breast cancer from 1978 until her death in 1992. Her writings about identity have influenced most social justice movements in the US and beyond, including the disability rights movement and scholarly critical disability studies. (link)https:/my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/womenscenter/posts/98941

UMBC’s own Dr. George Derek Musgrove launched a website on February 1, 2021 that documents the history of Black Power in Washington DC. The department will host a discussion event with Dr. Musgrove on February 25th, at noon. (link)https:/my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/history/posts/98905

A photo of two black young women with their hair in white headbands at a 1960's era protest  with one larger sign behind them reading "Martyr Medgar Evers" and a poem that begins "The Black Man Fell and helpless lay,/ A Gaping Wound upon his back,/ A Witness to the Savage Way,/ A Beast Had Made His Foul Attack...." accompanies this post. Photo credit: Unseen Histories downloaded from Unsplash.com