Tuesday, September 12, 2017 · Noon – 1:30 PM

UMBC Campus – Engineering 102

Create writing assignments to deepen understanding

The Faculty Development Center at UMBC extends an invitation to all UMBC AGEP and PROF-it students to participate.

Join FDC and Writing Center staff to learn how to create writing assignments that scaffold students’ writing skills, deepen their understanding and connection to the subject at hand, and prepare them to adapt these skills to other situations. We’ll explore ways to help students focus on the writing process with special attention to guiding students towards effective use of the Writing Center.  Lunch is provided.

* Part of Provost’s New Faculty Lunch series – all faculty are welcome to attend
√ Counts toward ALIT Certificate
§ Counts towards INNOVATE Certificate
Ͼ CIRTL graduate students are invited to attend

Whether new or seasoned, faculty often struggle to manage grading. How can you speed up your grading, make feedback more useful, and gain insights about how to improve student learning? Join your colleagues to discuss best practices for making grading more efficient for you and more useful for students. We’ll discuss the advantages of aligning questions on tests, quizzes, and assignments to your learning goals and of using rubrics to grade student assignments. We’ll also show how using rubrics in Blackboard can integrate grading and assessment of student learning outcomes. Lunch will be provided.

* Part of Provost’s New Faculty Lunch series – all faculty are welcome to attend
√ Counts toward ALIT Certificate
§ Counts towards INNOVATE Certificate
Ͼ CIRTL graduate students are invited to attend

This event forms part of the Prof-it: Professors in Traning Seminars @ UMBC

Thursday, Sept. 14, 2017 

9 a.m. – 10 a.m. 

685 W. Baltimore Street, Medical School Teaching Facility (MSTF) Building, Room 316

The Graduate School, The Office of Postdoctoral Scholars (OPS), The Office of Research Career Development and the PROMISE Program at University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB) Campus extend an invitation to all the Postdoctoral Fellows and Associates to attend this event.

This post was written by Special Collections Student Assistant Jagruti Chinchwadkar.  

Special Collections is pleased to introduce the new Scannx Book ScanCenter to our researchers. Researchers will now be able to scan books and documents on their own and save it to their USB drive free of charge!

The Scannx Book Scanner is a drop edge (or zero edge) scanner that allows you to scan documents flat or to scan bound materials like books without damaging the spine. Please show the items you wish to scan Special Collections staff who will evaluate the condition of the material.  If it’s not too fragile, we’ll show you how to do the scanning – it’s easy!

I have had the opportunity to use the Scanner and I found it user-friendly, quick and easy to use. Its large friendly buttons guide the user through scan process from choosing file formats, to scan quality, color depth, file naming and destinations. It has ample flatbed surface and every page comes back is crisp and clear. It provides high quality scans and converts scanned images into PDF, searchable PDF, Word, TIFF, or PNG file formats automatically. We’ll show you how to scan things without damaging them and making sure they stay in their proper order, and instructions for its use can also be found next to the workstation.  Make sure to bring your own USB drive!

Don’t have time for using the scanner?  Need scans of photographs? No need to worry, we can do it for you for a fee.

Special Collections is open Monday - Wednesday 1 - 4pm, Thursday 1 - 8pm and Friday 1 - 4pm, also by appointment Monday - Friday from 9:00am - 4:30pm. Contact: speccoll@umbc.edu | 410.455.2353

Thanks Jagruti!

The Division of Information Technology (DoIT) and Facilities Management (FM) began working with the Classroom Committee in 2016 to study the possibility of converting two large classrooms, Sondheim 101 and 409, from standard classrooms of tablet arm chairs with a standard AV projector setup to “Active Learning” spaces.  A sub-committee of the Classroom Committee, made up of faculty and administrators, was formed to discuss how a classroom renovation might best support “Active Learning”.  The recommendations of this sub-committee and the Classroom Committee were used to guide the design of these rooms. 

 Sondheim 101 Before

Sondheim 409 Before

The final design of these rooms included two key components as guiding principles: flexible furniture and collaborative technology.  While the furniture and technology in each rooms varies, this was intentional as to provide two “models” of active learning environments for faculty and students to experience.  The feedback from the faculty and students who use these two rooms will be very valuable in guiding the final design of the active learning classrooms in the new ILSB building.

The Office of the Provost, DoIT, and Facilities Management partnered to fund this project with a total cost of $329,000. 

Sondheim 101 has rolling chairs with rectangular tablets that can be configured into groups of three, four or six, or arranged in circles or rows.  The classroom technology includes two 80” monitors and two 65” monitors, document camera, enhanced classroom audio to support a collaborative setting, and wireless collaboration which allows multiple students or student groups to simultaneously share their content from their device(s) to the classroom displays.  Finally, this room is outfitted with six 96” glass dry erase boards.

Sondheim 101 After

Sondheim 101 After

Sondheim 409 is more similar in furniture and technology to the eight active-learning classrooms of the Interdisciplinary Life Sciences Building (ILSB) that will be completed in 2019. Sondheim 409 will have rolling chairs and trapezoidal tables that can form hexagons. The classroom technology includes two 80” monitors and four 65” monitors, a touch-enabled PC, document camera, enhanced classroom audio to support a collaborative setting, and wireless collaboration which allows multiple students or student groups to simultaneously share their content from their device(s) to the classroom displays.  In addition, each display will have a local HDMI connection for small group display of content.  Finally, this room is outfitted with six 96” glass dry erase boards and a 144” glass dry erase board behind the instructor station. 

Sondheim 409 After

Sondheim 409 After 

Postdoctoral Morning Coffee with Dr. Chariz Peñalber-Johnstone

Wednesday, September 13, 2017

10 AM – 12 Noon @ UMBC Campus

Commons Building, Room 329

ALL University System of Maryland Postdocs are invited to attend. Please comment on the comments section with your name, campus affiliation and department to RSVP.

The Office of Postdoctoral Affairs is extending an invitation to attend our Postdoctoral Morning Coffee breakfast session on Wednesday, September 13, 2017, from 10 AM to noon. Please take the opportunity to assist, come and meet the extended community of scholars working at USM campuses. 

Dr. Chariz Peñalber-Johnstone will be the speaker of the session; she will be speaking about her postdoctoral work at the Center for Advanced Sensor Technology at UMBC, her participation in discipline-specific conferences, and her continued engagement in the field. She will mainly share information on applying for travel funding to disseminate research. 

Dr. Chariz Peñalber-Johnstone received a B.S. degree in Chemistry (Cum Laude) from The University of San Carlos in Cebu, Philippines in 2006, and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Houston, Houston, Texas, USA in 2012. Her graduate work was in the area of physical chemistry with a specific focus on the use of nonlinear optical spectroscopy for molecular-level structural analysis of ionic liquid surfaces. She has conducted studies at various interfaces to explain the physico-chemical properties of imidazolium and phosphonium-based ionic liquids relevant to their applications in catalysis.

With her current appointment as a post-doctoral research associate at the Center for Advanced Sensor Technology at the University of Maryland Baltimore County in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, she contributes to both system design and protein expression sub-teams. She works cross-functionally in the development of a device that will produce, purify, and quantitatively determine a ready-for-delivery therapeutic protein in a few hours. The project includes the design of innovative mammalian in vitro protein expression and purification technologies combined with advances in microfluidics and microelectronics to produce biologics on-site. 

Hot breakfast will be provided. Please RSVP to attend the session in the comment section below. 

• Materials kept in lockers and locker keys are the responsibility of the user. The library takes no responsibility for material lost, stolen or damaged while stored in lockers.
• Food and drink may not be stored in lockers.
• Please make sure you’ve checked out any Library books you’d like to store in your locker.