Dear Graduate Students at UMBC,

The Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) is working with universities across the country to learn more about the financial needs of graduate students. We're asking all graduate students, including those who are working full-time, to participate in this conversation by completing a survey. 

We launched the survey in April, but CGS is allowing us to offer a BONUS ROUND for the "Survey of Financial Standing" for those graduate students who did not complete the survey last month. We have winners for the initial round: $500 in prizes! For this BONUS ROUND, There will be three additional prizes of $50 gift cards! *ALL* graduate students from all disciplines are eligible, including both part-time and full-time students.  

The following information was sent to all graduate students on May 7th: 

The Graduate School is administering the CGS Survey of Financial Standing, so that UMBC and graduate schools around the country can understand, and better serve, graduate students' financial needs.  If you did not take the survey in April 2014, please click:

 https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PS8BHG9

UMBC has been selected for the Enhancing Student Financial Education project, a best practice project aimed at enhancing financial education, with special emphasis on addressing the needs and understanding the financial circumstances of graduate students.

The study is funded by TIAA-CREF and is being conducted by the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS), a non-profit organization based in Washington, DC dedicated solely to the advancement of graduate education and research (www.cgsnet.org). All graduate students received an official link via their UMBC email accounts for the survey.

The goal of the project is to provide best practices to universities to help them improve financial education based on the unique needs of graduate and undergraduate students. We would like to hear about your perspectives on topics such as financing your education and your exposure to financial education resources.

If you have any questions about your rights as a participant in this research study, contact the Office for Research Protections and Compliance at (410) 455-2737 or compliance@umbc.edu.

To begin the survey, please use the link that was sent to your email, with the subject: "UMBC Graduate Student Financial Perspectives Survey,"then follow the online instructions. We estimate that this survey should take about 10 minutes to complete. The link from your email is uniquely tied to the survey and your email address. Please do not forward the email message.

Participants who complete the survey will be eligible for a series of drawings that lead to prizes in the form of UMBC bookstore gift cards. Participants who do not win a prize in the first drawing will be entered into subsequent drawings. Therefore, when you participate early, you have more chances to win.

• Participants who take the survey by October 4th will be entered into the drawing for a chance to win a gift card worth $250.

• Participants who take the survey between October 5th and 18th will be entered into a drawing for a chance to win a gift card worth $100.

Participants who take the survey between October 19th and 31st will be entered into the drawing for a chance to win one of three gift cards worth $50.

Thank you for your participation. Please reference the link that was sent to your email on Thursday, October 3, 2013 with the subject:

UMBC Graduate Student Financial Perspectives Survey; $250, $100, $50 prizes

This graduate assistantship requires knowledge of computer concepts and programming languages.   The position requires design, trouble-shooting, and support for websites and databases.  Duties include database management.   The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) PROMISE: Maryland’s Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) uses the Xcalibur Scribe Tracking System and Registry (TSR) as part of the national evaluation program, Survey Monkey, and software for webinars.  The position also requires extensive use of social media and includes website programming.  The GA in this position will have knowledge of webpage design using Hypertext Markup Languages (HTML), Cascade Style Sheets (CSS), Extensible Markup Language (XML), and Java; all are necessary for designing and maintaining the program’s website and blogs.  

The GA will also have a sense of project management to assist with events and long-term projects.  The following media are used for PROMISE:  Wordpress, Google sites, Facebook, Twitter, and Blogspot.    The GA in this position should have background in the following topics: online communities, database implementation (SQL-based interface), project management, decision technology, information management, emerging technologies, system design, system performance, usability, and system architecture. 

This position will support several projects; the primary project will be the new Council of Graduate Schools Financial Literacy program: http://www.cgsnet.org/enhancing-student-financial-education, and will be responsible for implementing the "Go Live" project: http://www.cgsnet.org/project-summary-university-maryland-baltimore-county.  The applicant should have basic knowledge about  credit rankings and scores, budgeting, and debt reduction. 

Roles: The GA will work with the PROMISE team for the multi-campus AGEP http://promiseagep.wordpress.com/, the Graduate Student Development unit in The Graduate School at UMBC, and UMBC's campus-wide committee on financial literacy that includes a collaborative team of staff and students from Enrollment Management, the Graduate School, Financial Services, and The Office of Undergraduate Education. 

This is a 20 hour/week assistantship. It includes tuition remission, and student health insurance for the GA. Assistantship stipend rates: http://www.umbc.edu/gradschool/funding/minimum_stipend_levels.html

To Apply:

Send a cover letter and CV to Dr. Renetta Tull at rtull@umbc.edu, with the subject "CGS GA Position." 

Additional criteria: The initial email must include links from websites that you have designed, and links to public social media sites that you manage, e.g., Linked In groups, Twitter, blogs. The links must be accompanied by a few sentences that describe your role, e.g., administrator, content provider, editor. 

------------------------------------------------

NEW! UPDATE as of 11:50 PM, August 22, 2013

DEADLINE: 3:00 PM, Friday, August 23, 2013.

Due to the overwhelming response to this announcement, we will stop taking applications at 3:00 PM, tomorrow, Friday, August 23, 2013 so that we can take time to evaluate each applicant.  Applicants can begin to check their emails on Friday afternoon for notifications.  Interviews (for finalists only) will begin next week. Thank you for your interest!

-----------------------------------------------------

NEW: UPDATE as of 11:22 AM, August 23, 2013

Semi-finalists will have an additional assignment:

http://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2013/08/23/the-umbc-promisecgsgrad-student-development-ga-position-information-for-semi-finalists/

---------------------------------------------------------------------

NEW Update, September 3, 2013.

We thank everyone for their interest. We have chosen our GA. Congratulations to Piyush Waradpande, UMBC, Computer Science Department.