The Homecoming Decorating Contests are back this year, and offices are encouraged to deck their spaces out in black and gold to share in the spirit of Homecoming! Departments registered by Friday, September 16, will have spirit packs delivered to their offices by students from our Spirit Street Team on Monday, September 19. All offices and halls must register by Monday, October 3.

If you are a department or residence hall, wanting to participate in the contest, visit http://alumni.umbc.edu/homecoming_spirit for more information and to register.

What does it cost when you are tense or have trouble concentrating at work, are unsure about your ability to perform a task, feel overwhelmed about having too much to do or avoid having an honest conversation about a challenging situation?

This year’s Professional Development Day is dedicated to helping you develop calm, confident power at work. New findings about the brain show that staying calm in challenging times can help our minds think more clearly, prioritize our workload and accomplish tasks more easily.

When we can talk honestly, our stress decreases and productivity improves. In this program participants will learn and practice specific tools to use on the job including how to calm the naturally negative mind, push the “reset button” to refocus your mind in a few minutes, notice and neutralize stressful stories that make a challenging situation even more difficult and use a four-step formula for giving and receiving feedback and making requests of co-workers or your boss.

This workshop for faculty and staff will be held Thursday, September 22, 8:15 a.m.-12:30 p.m., in the University Center Ballroom.

Continental breakfast will be provided. Supervisors are asked to encourage employees to attend.

Register by Tuesday, September 13, at www.umbc.edu/training.

Get a flyer with details at www.umbc.edu/hr/T&OD/schedule.htm.

From ClickZ:

“Sean has been recently appointed to develop the Center for Digital Communication, Commerce, and Culture at the University of Baltimore and is chief creative officer at idfive in Baltimore. He has colorfully chronicled digital advertising trends for ClickZ in a fortnightly column first published Nov. 11, 1998. Ever since, Sean has served ClickZ’s readers well thanks to his prescient observations and candor. He’s examined hassles of doing business on the early web, such as “Bandwidth Blues,” back in the day. Other columns are still relevant today, such as “Applications Not Ads,” that he wrote in 2003.”

See the original announcement.

Visit Retriever Net for all the latest alumni news, events, perks and services.

Kay Kostopoulos ’72 was featured in O, the Oprah Magazine for a class on body languages that she co-teaches at Stanford University. From the article:

“Kostopoulos starts by leading us through a series of warm-up exercises. At first, the scene is yoga-esque. We step out of our shoes and stand tall, close our eyes, and take deep, slow breaths. But before long, the tempo changes, and Kostopoulos has us jumping up and down, shaking our arms, swinging our hips, blowing raspberries, and making kooky faces, alternately sticking our tongues out and then scrunching up our noses. All the while, we’re huffing out husky ha-ha-ha sounds from deep in our bellies. Kostopoulos encourages us to experiment with a deep voice. ‘You don’t want Mary Tyler Moore,’ she squeaks, then drops her tone an octave: ‘You want Diane Sawyer.'”

Read the full story.

Visit Retriever Net for all the latest alumni news, events, perks and services.

The Geography and Environmental Systems Seminar presents Michael Studinger, project scientist for Operation IceBridge, Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology (JCET), UMBC and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. The seminar, “NASA’s Operation IceBridge: Using Instrumented Aircraft to Bridge the Observational Gap Between ICESat and ICESate-2 Laser Altimeter Measurements,” will be held Wednesday, September 7, at noon in Sondheim Hall Room 001.

For more information, contact Dawn Biehler at dbiehler@umbc.edu or ext. 5-2095.

Katie Dix was featured in Cintia Cabib’s A Community of Gardeners (2011, 60 min), which  digs into the fascinating history of community gardening across the US, and on the growing scene flourishing down the road in DC. The Creative Alliance will host a screening followed by a discussion with a rich panel of Baltimore’s community gardeners, including Dix.

Learn about the event.

Visit Retriever Net for all the latest alumni news, events, perks and services.

The University of Pennsylvania Law School reports that Christopher DiPompeo ’04, economics, attained a highly-coveted clerkship in the U.S. Supreme Court for Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. He started his clerkship in July.

DiPompeo earned his law degree from UPenn in 2009, having served nearly half of his law school career as editor-in-chief of the Law Review.

Read the full article here:  http://www.law.upenn.edu/blogs/news/archives/2011/05/christopher_dipompeo_supreme_court_clerk.html

To our recent staff new hires and re-hires:

We are delighted you have chosen UMBC as your place of employment, and we welcome you to the campus community.

Each new employee comes to UMBC with a unique set of skills, abilities and talents. You have the opportunity to contribute directly to UMBC’s success and our primary objectives: (1) to be one of the best public research universities in the nation; (2) to be a major resource for Maryland and greater Baltimore; and (3) to create a campus community that finds enrichment in cultural and ethnic diversity.

Again, welcome to UMBC, and we hope that your experiences here are rewarding.

• Patricia Love, Food Services
• Andrew Tracz, Intercoll Sports Admin
• Frederic Minsk, MIPAR
• Henry Mink, Mechanical Engineering
• Meaghan Murphy, Intercoll Sports Admin
• Christine Hiles, Columbus Center Operations
• Pamela Arroyo, Counseling
• Terrelle Burney, FM Landscape & Grounds
• Ebony Nicole Alderman, MIPAR
• Judith Fine, MIPAR
• Justin Perry, Shriver Center
• Sarah Jewett, Office of Provost
• Luis Pinet Peralta, Sociology Dept
• Jason Parr, Intercoll Sports Admin
• Elyse Nicole Ashburn, Office of Mktg & Creative Srv
• Anthony Cho Dwyer, Shriver Center
• Teressa Yvonne Freeman, Dept of Marine Biotechnology
• Manpreet Aujla, Shriver Center

Kate Brown, associate professor of history, will give two distinguished off-campus lectures this fall.

The first will be a keynote lecture at the symposium “Diverse Landscapes of Ukraine: Celebrating Twenty Years of Ukrainian Independence.” The symposium will take place on the campus of the Pennsylvania State University on September 30 and October 1. Brown’s lecture, “When History and Biology Collide: Chornobyl and the Making of a Disaster,” will be the keynote lecture of the first day of the event.

Then, on October 13, Brown will give a lecture entitled “Irrevocable: The Life-Changing, Society-Altering Significance of Plutonium in the US and USSR” at the College of William and Mary. Her lecture is part of the Tyler Distinguished Lecture Series and sponsored by the Lyon G. Tyler Department of History.

For a second year in a row, ancient studies instructor Michael Lane has received a grant from the Institute for Aegean Prehistory. He will continue his research on Mycenaean land use through an intensive geo-physical survey in Boeotia, Greece.

His project, known as “Archaeological Reconnaissance of Uninvestigated Remains of Agriculture,” consists of extensive geophysical survey of the Mycenaean polder (dry land claimed from marshes) immediately around the stronghold, accompanied by collection of small finds from the ground surface in selected areas. In total, excavations are expected to last 5-10 years and inform presentations and articles in major archaeology conferences and journals.

Alumnus Wes Bittner ’08, ancient studies, will assist with geographic information system analysis.

Photo: Bittner assists Lane with a surveying project.