Capturing Student Achievement and Learning Pathways at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County

In 2015, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) recognized the need to capture knowledge, skills, and abilities acquired by students in both co-curricular and curricular endeavors not being captured in any identifiable way. The Vice President of Information Technology and Chief Information Officer desired to document competencies gained by students in the variety of contexts on campus and to track student, faculty, and staff achievements in a way that would both benefit each individual while also supporting the mission of the institution. This vision led to the adoption of a digital badging initiative resulting in a scalable process for implementing new badges throughout the university community. UMBC's digital badging program became the springboard for the institution's entrance into the Comprehensive Learner Record (CLR) realm whose objective is to capture all credentials earned by students, whether they be awarded before, during, or following their tenure at the institution.

Comprehensive Learner Record as a Vehicle for Assessment and Learning Transparency in a Skills Economy

This chapter outlines assessment technology that supports the development of Comprehensive Learner Record, or CLR. Here the authors present the theoretical landscape upon which current credentialing innovation builds, explore advancements through a case study of practice between University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and the Greater Washington Partnership (GWP), and culminate with an overview of the assessment technology that ultimately facilitates recognition, validation, and portability of learning in the form of a comprehensive learner record.

An Integrative Approach to Promoting Wellness in Older Adults: An Online Undergraduate Course

As gerontology and geriatric programs look to grow their connections with health and allied health areas, examining emerging health care areas is important. Thus, this session will present key concepts and pedagogical strategies from an innovative online undergraduate course, An Integrative Approach to Promoting Wellness in Older Adults, that is taught in the Erickson School at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County. The course brings together a conventional western allopathic approach and a holistic, patient-centered, integrative approach which includes complementary therapies, to promote wellness in older adults. Specifically, the session will present a comparison of the philosophical premises of conventional western and integrative approaches to health promotion. It will present a holistic model of health, an overview of the effectiveness and safety of different complementary therapies, and examples of how an integrative approach with conventional western and complementary therapies can be used in to promote health in older adults with particular chronic conditions. Also, a discussion of the incorporation of diversity content in the course, an integrative approach to health promotion for underserved populations, and specific pedagogical strategies used to facilitate learning in synchronous and asynchronous online learning environments are included. Session presentation techniques include a PowerPoint presentation, demonstration of examples of conventional western and integrative approaches to health promotion in older adults through case studies, and audience participation.

Open Educational Resources in Business Law: Notes from the Field

Open educational resources (OERs) are an alternative textbook to publisher materials used by colleges and universities. OER materials have a cost advantage for students; many are published as free or cost-reduced textbooks for students. The authors developed and piloted an OER textbook for Business Law I in the Management program of the School of Business, Technology and Law. Over 800 Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC) students enroll in this course each academic year. The authors evaluated the cost savings for students compared to traditional publisher materials, and also examined student success rates in OER courses compared to traditional publisher courses. The authors’ assessment is that OER materials can save students substantial costs to attend college, and though there is some difference in student success between OER and traditional publisher courses, this variation is likely explained by other independent variables such as the course teaching modality. The process for receiving funding, developing OER-based materials on a publicly available and no-cost website, and distributing the materials to students is also discussed.

My First 51 Years Teaching Microbiology at The Community College of Baltimore County

I have had just one job interview in my life and it was for the position of Biology Instructor at Catonsville Community College. Having just completed my M.S. Degree at Northern Illinois University, I knew I needed employment because I was moving to Maryland prior to September 1970. After enquiring about the possibility of a teaching position at 4 Maryland community colleges, I was granted an interview at Catonsville Community College. On May 4, 1970, I found myself driving from Illinois to Maryland for a real job interview. I remember the date because I was listening on my car radio to the aftermath of the Kent State shooting earlier that day. The interview apparently went well because I was offered the position beginning in September for the amazing salary of $10,000! My professional life had begun. Armed with little more than a love of microbiology and a lot of patience and desire, I began the journey to hopefully become the best microbiology educator of which I am capable. Fifty-one years later I am still striving for that goal.

Evaluation of Stem Engagement Activities On the Attitudes and Perceptions of Mechanical Engineering S-STEM Scholars

Since 2009, the ME STEM Program at the University of Maryland Baltimore County has provided financial support and program activities to ME undergraduate students aiming at improving their retention and graduation rates. The objective of this study is to identify program activities that were most effective to help students for improvements. Current ME S-STEM scholars were asked to complete a survey that measures their scientific efficacy, engineering identity, expectations, integration, and sense of belonging, as well as how program activities impact their attitudes and perceptions. Analyses of 36 surveys showed that scholars reported high levels of engineering identity, expectations, and sense of belonging. However, further improvements were needed to help students in achieving scientific efficacy and academic integration into the program. Results demonstrated that proactive mentoring was the most effective method contributing to positive attitudes and perceptions. The implemented S-STEM research-related activities and internship were viewed favorably by the scholars in helping them establish their scientific efficacy and engineering identity, and understand their expectations and goals. Community building activities were considered helpful for them to integrate into campus life and improve their sense of belonging to the campus and program. Scholars identified mentoring, research related activities, internships, and social interaction with faculty and their peers as important factors for their retention and graduation. Although the sample size was small in the study, we believe that the cost-effective activities identified could be adopted by other institutions to further improve students' retention and graduation rates in engineering programs.

Predictors of non-receipt of first-line CDK 4/6 inhibitors (CDK4/6i) among patients with metastatic breast cancer (MBC).

1016 Background: CDK4/6i improve survival outcomes for first-line treatment of patients with hormone receptor positive (HR+), human epidermal growth factor-2 negative (HER2-) MBC. Yet, not all eligible patients (pts) receive a first-line CDK4/6i. We sought to describe factors associated with not receiving a first-line CDK 4/6i among MBC pts treated at our institution. Methods: Retrospective cohort of pts with HR+, HER2- MBC diagnosed between May 1, 2015 and June 30, 2019 treated at Johns Hopkins clinic sites in Baltimore City (BCi), Baltimore County (BCo), and Washington DC (DC). Primary outcome was receipt of a first-line CDK 4/6i. Clinical and demographic factors were abstracted from the electronic medical record. Patient zip-code was used to define a low-income neighborhood (LIN) as an area where >10% of households have median income below the federal poverty level. Univariate and multivariable logistic regression models (determined using a stepwise model selection approach) were performed to identify factors associated with not receiving a first-line CDK 4/6i. Results: Of the 211 pts in the cohort, 203 (96.2%) were female, 133 (63%) were White, and 53 (25%) were Black. Median age was 58 yrs (range 25-90 yrs). 26% of pts had de novo MBC and 44% had visceral disease at diagnosis. About half, 104 (49%), were privately insured, 83 (49%) had Medicare, and 15 (7.1%) had managed care plans including Medicaid. 118 (56%), 43 (20%), and 50 (24%) pts were treated in BCi, BCo, and DC respectively. 60% (n=126) of pts received a first-line CDK 4/6i and there was a trend of increased utilization over time with 39% of pts receiving first-line CDK4/6i in 2015 and 67% in 2019. On univariate analysis, LIN, clinic site, and year of MBC diagnosis (2015-2017 vs 2018-2019) were associated with first-line CDK4/6i use. The multivariable model included age, race, clinic site, LIN, and year of MBC diagnosis. In this model, pts treated in BCi were 58% less likely to receive first-line CDK 4/6i compared to those treated in BCo (OR 0.42, 95% CI 0.18-0.95). Those diagnosed with MBC in 2017 or later were 2.6 times more likely to receive first-line CDK4/6i than those diagnosed prior (OR 2.63, 95% CI 1.45-4.83). Those who lived in a LIN were 39% less likely to receive first-line CDK4/6i vs those in a non-LIN, though this was no longer statistically significant (OR 0.61, 95% CI 0.32-1.13). Conclusions: We identified disparities in the use of CDK4/6i for first-line treatment of MBC. Lower use was observed among pts who received care at our urban Baltimore city site with a trend towards lower use among pts from lower-income neighborhoods. These findings highlight potential barriers with accessing oral cancer therapies - cost, patient distrust, and/or systemic bias. Further work is needed to delineate the multi-level factors contributing to these disparities and to develop resources to overcome these barriers and achieve equitable utilization of these drugs.

Multi-objective Optimization of Catchment Reforestation Robust to Uncertainty in Bayesian-Calibrated Watershed Model Parameters

<p>Urban land expansion is expected for our changing world, which unmitigated will result in increased flooding and nutrient exports that already wreak havoc on the wellbeing of coupled human-natural systems worldwide. Reforestation of urbanized catchments is one green infrastructure strategy to reduce stormwater volumes and nutrient exports. Reforestation designs must balance the benefits of flood flow reduction against the costs of implementation and the chance to exacerbate droughts via reduction in recharge that supplies low flows. Optimal locations and numbers of trees depend on the spatial distribution of runoff and streamflow in a catchment; however, calibration data are often only available at the catchment outlet. Equifinal model parameterizations for the outlet can result in uncertainty in the locations and magnitudes of streamflows across the catchment, which can lead to different optimal reforestation designs for different parameterizations.</p><p>Multi-objective robust optimization (MORO) has been proposed to discover reforestation designs that are robust to such parametric model uncertainty. However, it has not been shown that this actually results in better decisions than optimizing to a single, most likely parameter set, which would be less computationally expensive. In this work, the utility of MORO is assessed by comparing reforestation designs optimized using these two approaches with reforestation designs optimized to a synthetic true set of hydrologic model parameters. The spatially-distributed RHESSys ecohydrological model is employed for this study of a suburban-forested catchment in Baltimore County, Maryland, USA. Calibration of the model’s critical parameters is completed using a Bayesian framework to estimate the joint posterior distribution of the parameters. The Bayesian framework estimates the probability that different parameterizations generated the synthetic streamflow data, allowing the MORO process to evaluate reforestation portfolios across a probability-weighted sample of parameter sets in search of solutions that are robust to this uncertainty.</p><p>Reforestation portfolios are designed to minimize flooding, low flow intensity, and construction costs (number of trees). Comparing the Pareto front obtained from using MORO with the Pareto fronts obtained from optimizing to the estimated maximum a posteriori (MAP) parameter set and the synthetic true parameter set, we find that MORO solutions are closer to the synthetic solutions than are MAP solutions. This illustrates the value of considering parametric uncertainty in designing robust water systems despite the additional computational cost.</p>