Latinx/Hispanic Faculty Career Panel

Event Description:
Join us for an inspiring and engaging panel discussion featuring distinguished Latinx/Hispanic faculty members from diverse fields. Learn about their career journeys, the challenges they've overcome, and the unique contributions they bring to academia and beyond. This event is a great opportunity to gain insights into professional pathways, ask questions, and connect with faculty who share a commitment to fostering diversity and inclusion in higher education.

Location: Commons 318

Event Highlights:

• Personal stories of success and resilience
• Tips for navigating academic and professional spaces
• Q&A session with panelists
• Networking opportunities

We are excited to invite you to join us for the State of Play Town Hall, hosted by the Asian American Scholar Forum (AASF), on Monday, April 14, 2025, from 3:00 - 4:30 PM Eastern Time.

This town hall will bring together distinguished leaders and experts to address the most pressing legislation, programs, and policies impacting our academic, scientific, and research community. We are honored to welcome Congresswoman Grace Meng, Chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and House Appropriations Committee Member, as our keynote speaker. She will be joined by her Executive Director, Judith Teruya, as well as prominent legal and policy experts.

This event will address critical issues such as:

• The potential return of the China Initiative and its impact on scholars, scientists, and researchers.
• Increasing investigations targeting scientists and academics.
• Problematic legislation, including efforts to halt Chinese student visas.
• Nationwide high-impact litigation cases such as in SB 846, where there was a legal victory for a preliminary injunction.
• Heightened scrutiny of Chinese and international students.
• Concerns with travel and reentry into the country. 
• How we can ensure a welcoming and thriving environment for scholars, scientists, and researchers.

UMBC’s Division of Information Technology announced the expanded availability of powerful AI tools to support the UMBC community in teaching, learning, research, and productivity.

All UMBC accounts now have access to the free version of Google Gemini, which has a wide range of AI-powered features that can assist with writing, brainstorming, and information-gathering tasks. The Gemini suite also includes the new notebookLM system that helps users understand and organize information from uploaded documents. It can also generate audio overviews of that information and Gemini’s Deep Research tool. Paid licenses for Gemini Advanced will be available in some cases.

All UMBC accounts now have default access to the free version of Microsoft Copilot, which provides a model for brainstorming, email generation, and more. Paid licenses for Copilot Pro that allow integration with the Microsoft 365 suite (Word, Excel, Teams, …) are available in some cases.

UMBC now has a local instance of Amplify, an innovative AI tool developed by Vanderbilt University that provides access to commercial AI models hosted within UMBC's secure cloud environment, including from OpenAI, such as GPT-4o or o1 series, Meta Llama, or Anthropic Claude models. Access to UMBC's Amplify is available to faculty and staff upon submission of an access request.