The Office for Academic & Pre-Professional Advising has openings available for summer Orientation Advisors! As an advisor, you would attend Orientation sessions where you would meet with students one-on-one to plan out and register for classes. No previous experience is required, and we will provide all training necessary!

Besides compensation, this is a rare chance for part-time faculty to gain advising experience – highly sought-after in faculty openings – as well as to interact with students outside of the classroom. As a faculty member myself, I can absolutely say that my teaching effectiveness has been augmented by my advising experience. For full-time faculty, meanwhile, this is the absolute earliest point at which you can begin to engage with your department’s incoming students: to give them the best possible head start in their studies (and to make your own future advising appointments easier!).

• Both full-time and part-time faculty are eligible to be compensated at the rate of $100 per all-day session and $50 per evening session; full-time faculty are compensated through a budget transfer to their departments.
• Staff are not eligible for monetary compensation; this is, nonetheless, an excellent opportunity for professional development.

More details are provided in the application attached, which is due HERE by May 1, 2020. We will also be hosting a number of informational sessions for those who may be interested:

• Wednesday, March 11, 12-1 PM at Sherman Hall 220 (B-Wing, 2nd Floor)
• Thursday, March 26, 12-1 PM at Sherman Hall 220 (B-Wing, 2nd Floor)
• Monday, April 6, 12-1 PM at Sherman Hall 220 (B-Wing, 2nd Floor)
• Thursday, April 16, 4:30-5:30 PM at Sherman Hall 220 (B-Wing, 2nd Floor)

Please let me know if I can provide any additional assistance!

With best regards,

Laszlo Korossy, Ph.D.

korossy1@umbc.edu

Applications are now open!

Mohammed is an Information Systems major who will graduate in 2021. He is a member of the Honors College, a McNair Scholar, i3 Scholar, and Mellon Fellow.

Title of your research project: An Unholy Alliance: Christian Identity Extremists and ICTs 

Describe your project: This project examines how the Christian Identity Movement (CIM) has infiltrated the larger white extremist digital community, aiming to understand the relationship between white extremists, Christian Identity, technology, and social media.

Who is your mentor(s) for your project? For this summer project, my mentor was Dr. Kathleen Moore from James Madison University. However, building upon the summer project, I am currently partaking in Islamist extremist research on Twitterspace under the mentorship and guidance of Dr. Anupam Joshi from CSEE. I approached Dr. Joshi after developing an interest in online extremism research especially because Dr. Joshi has historically supported students partaking in research and social media analysis.

How did you become interested in this project? Countering extremism remains a charged topic in modern society, but because society's most vulnerable populations (such as youth) are at-risk when it comes to online extremism, it becomes an obligation to devise strategies and develop tools to fight online terrorism at all costs. My research aims to utilize my personal interest and combine it with public advocacy issues in order to create a more equitable and pluralistic society.

What has been the hardest part about your research/what was the most unexpected thing about being a researcher? Beginning is always the hardest part about research. But research in itself, especially when combined with dedicated mentorship, can be very fulfilling when accompanied with a meaningful process. 

What has been the most rewarding part? My research is not just theoretical; it is applied as well. I thoroughly enjoy utilizing both my personal experience and skills as a counterterrorism advocate with Quilliam International to have an impactful applied research experience.

How will you disseminate your research My research will be presented at URCAD on April 22. Recently, my research was also selected for poster presentation at iConference in Borås, Sweden and with UMBC and Johns Hopkins' support, I am looking forward to presenting my findings with my i3 research group at the conference!

What is your advice to other students about getting involved in research? Turn to your peers and mentors and apply for any meaningful opportunity. If you have a personal interest in the research project, it will only allow you to be more fully vested in what you want to do. If you are just beginning, there will be many lessons to learn. Don't ever consider yourself as just a researcher, but also a learner for life.

What are your career goals? I hope to continue my studies all the way to obtaining my PhD and serve as a cybersecurity analyst developing social media moderating tools to counter extremists of all stripes, whether it is far-left, far-right, or religious extremism. 

This semester, the Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery, will be suspending its access to new titles in Kanopy. This change comes as a result of the unsustainable cost of providing unlimited access through an automatic licensing model. By the end of the fall semester, we had fully expended the amount that was allocated to Kanopy for the entire year.

Kanopy's pricing model for libraries was based on views per title. Once a title was viewed three times for longer than 30 seconds on the fourth viewing we were charged a licensing fee of $150 for one year of access.

We understand and respect how popular streaming media is and that it can be an invaluable instructional resource. We regret having to make this change. But we could not sustain our access to Kanopy. Until the licenses expire, users will still be able to watch and stream all of our currently licensed films in Kanopy (approximately 307 titles).

UMBC is not alone in having made this difficult choice. Many libraries have either dropped their Kanopy collections or are working with Kanopy to provide access to a very limited collection. We will be working with Kanopy to see if a limited access collection might be feasible.

Other options for streaming and viewing video

We have a number of other streaming video platforms available to the UBMC community. For a complete list, please see our Resources for Streaming Media guide

We also have an extensive DVD and Blu-Ray collection. The titles are listed in our Library Catalog and are also browsable in the 2^nd floor of the Albin O. Kuhn Library & Gallery.