Dear UMBC Community,

We continue to witness a dramatic increase in discrimination, xenophobia, hate speech, and hate crimes affecting Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities. This is happening across the nation but also in Maryland and our local communities. 

We stand with our AAPI community members, including students, faculty, and staff. The climate in the United States has grown far more hostile, frightening, and alienating for the AAPI community, and we must all speak out against violence, discrimination, and injustice. We know that these events can cause undue mental hardship to our community members who are already struggling during the pandemic, and our thoughts are with them and their families. 

We believe it is important to both affirm our commitment to our shared values of equity and diversity and to build a safe and inclusive community. It is our practice to offer resources to those affected or any community member who is struggling. If you feel you have been affected by racism or discrimination, please know that the Office of Equity and Inclusion is available to support all of our students, faculty, and staff. Students in need of emotional support can contact the Counseling Center at their after hours support line at 410-455-3230.  Employees can access support through the Employee Assistance Program. We are grateful to the Asian and Asian American Faculty and Staff Council for developing this list of resources and for supporting community members. We are also sharing this statement of support from Initiatives for Identity, Inclusion, and Belonging (i3b). 

We know that we must continue to address social injustice, and in particular racial equity work. The disproportionate impact of the pandemic on communities of color means this work is more critical than ever. We remain committed to supporting our AAPI community members through these difficult times.

President Freeman Hrabowski and Provost Philip Rous

The Career Center works very hard to ensure that job postings in UMBCworks are legitimate positions, however, scammers are becoming more and more creative, especially in these difficult economic times. A recent scam that has been brought to our attention may be reviewed below. 

You have been offered a Spring 2021 Internship opportunity at the convenience of your home or, Which serve as a gateway to pay all expenses incurred during this pandemic. This opportunity should be done at leisure taking at most 1hr/day, 2-3 times a week.  

Please send your resume to;

Email: bartonm078@gmail.com  for the job description.

Career Services

UMBC.

Here are some things we would like to point in regards to the fraudulent job offer above:

1. Look at the email domain of the person requesting your resume: (bartonm78@gmail.com). Be CAUTIOUS if the domain does not match the domain of a reputable company. 

2. BE CAUTIOUS of an employer whose posting includes grammatical errors or does not seem to be written professionally. Valid employers will not do this.

3. The scammer asks the candidate to “email their resume in order to receive a full job description” to proceed. BE CAUTIOUS of an employer who asks for anything out of the ordinary or who is not operating by normal hiring procedures, such as sending personal information or hiring you without interviewing you.

If you have received a scam or fraudulent email:

DoIT Security Team investigates any email scam that we send to them, however, the original emailmust be sent from the recipient of the email scam.  In order to assist the DoIT Security Team's investigation, recipients of the email should send security@umbc.edu a notification including the full header set of the message. These headers are not normally displayed but can be easily accessed. For more instruction on how to send the full header set of the message, please refer to: https://wiki.umbc.edu/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=1867970 

More information on scams and attacks on the website may be found here: https://itsecurity.umbc.edu

 The Career Center is here to support you. If you encounter a position that you fear may be fraudulent, don’t hesitate to reach out to us careers@umbc.edu

 Please see the attachment for more information on fraudulent jobs and phishing scams. 

Dear UMBC Community,

For many reasons, spring is a time of hope. On our campus, this is especially true as we plan for commencement and prepare to celebrate our graduating class. We know that the experience of the Class of 2021 has been unlike that of any other class in the history of our institution. We are excited to celebrate the perseverance and commitment of our graduating students.

As we prepare for UMBC’s May commencement, we are aware that the current health situation continues to make a large community gathering impossible. We will host our commencement ceremonies online on May 20 and 21 for graduate and undergraduate students, respectively. Both ceremonies will stream at 10 a.m. EST. We hope that all of our graduating students, their families, and the larger UMBC community will join us online for the ceremonies. Recordings will also be available after the ceremony.

We hope to introduce a limited in-person photography opportunity for local students who wish to have photos taken on campus, as well as other participation opportunities for all students. We will share more information directly with graduates in the coming weeks. As has been the case all year, the health and safety of our students, faculty, staff, and community members will guide all of our decisions. 

We share in the disappointment of many of our graduates and their families that we cannot celebrate in person and look forward to the day when it is safe to do so. We are inspired by the words of Amanda Gorman, the National Youth Poet Laureate: 

The new dawn blooms as we free it

For there is always light,

If only we're brave enough to see it

If only we're brave enough to be it

Thank you for helping us celebrate the Class of 2021. Questions can be sent to commencement@umbc.edu

President Freeman Hrabowski and Provost Philip Rous