Thinking about a career in the Intelligence Field? Here's an event just for you!

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U.S. Intelligence Community Virtual Career Fair 
Tuesday, February 26, 2013 • 2:00 p.m.-8:00 p.m. 
Location: Online

Meet the U.S. Intelligence Community Online. The United States Intelligence Community (IC), an integrated network of agencies that work together to protect our nation’s security, is seeking a culturally diverse, technologically savvy and skilled workforce for exciting careers in a number of fields. Join us at the fourth annual IC Virtual Career Fair to explore career opportunities, chat with recruiters and subject matter experts, and learn how to apply for job openings.

*Space is limited! To guarantee your entrance into this event, pre-registration is highly encouraged. Go to ICVirtualFair.com to register and learn more. (U.S. citizenship is required.)

From the comfort of your computer or mobile device, you can:

• Visit IC agencies’ virtual booths • Chat in real-time (event day only) • Attend live presentations • Explore currently available jobs • Link to IC agency Web sites to apply to positions online • Network with other job seekers • Learn about internships and other student opportunities

The following IC agencies will be participating in the fair:

• Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) • Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) • Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) • FBI Language Services Section (FBI LSS) • National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) • National Security Agency (NSA) • National Virtual Translation Center (NVTC)

Visit the Center’s website for additional information- http://www.careers.umd.edu/events_description.cfm?event_id=3705.

Questions, contact Megan O'Rourke at morourk2@umd.edu or visit www.ICVirtualFair.com.

Summer Research Internship with SCORE Concussion Clinic!

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SCORE Concussion Clinic
Department of Neuropsychology
Children's National Medical Center

Position: Summer Research Intern 

Description:

The SCORE Program is a multidisciplinary team who specialize in precise identification, monitoring and management of children, adolescents, and college student-athletes who have sustained a concussion. The SCORE Program at Children’s National Medical Center is one of the only programs in the Baltimore/Washington region that specializes in the evaluation and management of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and sports concussions in children and teenagers. Through research investigation the SCORE program aims to increase knowledge, skills, and instrumentation in the evaluation and treatment of children, adolescents, and young adults with mild TBI/concussion.

Responsibilities:
-Work with research staff on clinic data entry
-Complete a research project which will culminate in a poster to be submitted to a premier neurological conference

Qualifications:
-Willingness to learn
-Great work ethic
-Ability to commute to clinic located in Rockville, MD

How to Apply:
Interested applicants should e-mail a cover letter, CV or resume to Lincoln Pratson at
lpratson@cnmc.org

For more information or questions contact Lincoln Pratson at
lpratson@cnmc.org or 301-765-5247 

Showcase your research at Undergraduate Research Day on May 1st!

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Have you been involved in research as an undergraduate, either as an individual or as part of a team, at Maryland or beyond? Would you like the opportunity to present your work at Maryland’s largest, most visible and diversified showcase for undergraduate research accomplishments?

Then present your research at Undergraduate Research Day on Wednesday, May 1, 2013!

This year Undergraduate Research Day will take place in the Grand Ballroom of the Stamp Student Union, so your work will reach the widest possible audience.

The Undergraduate Research Day poster session will run from 1 to 4 pm on May 1, with set-up beginning at 12 noon. You can be present part or all of the time. All majors and fields of research – including creative and performing arts – are welcome!

Submitting a proposal is free and easy – you can find the form on the MCUR homepage at www.ugresearch.umd.edu – the deadline to submit your proposal is Monday, April 15 but we strongly encourage you to submit early. We look forward to learning about your work!

If you have questions, please contact us at ugresearch@umd.edu

CASL Faculty RA position for recent or up and coming grad!

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Faculty Research Assistant position
Center for Advanced Study of Language (CASL)
University of Maryland

Description:
CASL, established in 2003, is one of 14 university-affiliated research centers in the nation. Its mission is to conduct state-of-the-science research that results in improved performance on language tasks relevant to the work of government language professionals. Our research focuses on improving knowledge of less commonly taught languages, enhancing the acquisition and maintenance of foreign language capability by government professionals, advancing the capacity to use foreign language skills in government professions, and improving the quality of human language technology. For more information, please visit www.casl.umd.edu.

Responsibilities and Requirements:
-Participant recruitment, scheduling, and testing as part of an on-going validation study
-Organizing meetings, taking minutes, and coordinating schedules
-Assisting in the preparation of status reports, briefings, and technical reports
-Working with a research team to develop testing protocols
-Write IRB applications
-Pilot and validate assessments
-Manage team library
-Meet with government and military personnel
-Technical editing and copyediting
-Data collection, organization, and analysis
-Travel is required

Qualifications:
-Bachelor's degree required in a research field involving human participants such as Psychology, Sociology, Cognitive Science, Statistics, or Program Evaluation
-Master's degree preferred with a concentration in Second Language Acquisition, Language Assessment, Psychology, or Linguistics
-Expertise in Microsoft Office is required
-Experience with or willingness to learn R, SPSS, and LaTeX is a plus
-Previous research experience assessing cognitive and/or linguistic knowledge, with knowledge of statistical analysis
-Candidates must be willing to be trained to perform all requisite duties of the position and demonstrate an ability to work in a fast paced, interdisciplinary and intercultural environment
-Candidates must hold U.S. Citizenship and be willing to obtain appropriate security clearance

How to Apply:

For best consideration please apply on line by February 28, 2013 at http://jobs.umd.edu and click on FACULTY (direct link: http://jobs.umd.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=58457). You will need to create an account and submit a cover letter, resume, list of references containing the contact information for three professional referees, and up to three writing samples. The University of Maryland is an affirmative action, equal opportunity employer. Women and minorities are encouraged to apply.

For more information and questions contact:
Holly Nalley at
hnalley@casl.umd.edu

Language and Cognition Lab Manager position at Johns Hopkins!

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Lab Manager
Johns Hopkins University
Language and Cognition Lab

Description:

Outstanding candidates are invited to apply for the position of Lab Manager in the Language and Cognition Lab of the Department of Cognitive Science at the Johns Hopkins University. The primary focus of the lab is language and cognition (especially spatial representation) in normally developing children and adults, and in people with neurological impairments including Williams syndrome and memory loss due to brain damage.

Responsibilities and Requirements:
-Oversee all research functions of the lab
-Recruit & test child participants
-Design stimuli for experiments
-Analyze data
-Develop presentations of data for publications and talks

Qualifications:
-B.A. in Cognitive Science or related area
-Lab research experience

How to Apply:
Interested candidates can learn more and apply by either contacting Dr. Barbara Landau (landau@cogsci.jhu.edu), or by going to the JHU website listed below. Candidates should include a cover letter specifying their experience and the names/e-mails of 3 references. Visit http://jobs.jhu.edu/ to use the Find Your New Job feature to review the complete job description and the Career Cart feature to apply for position # 55766.

For questions ore more information contact:  
Dr. Barbara Landau
landau@cogsci.jhu.edu

Why interview candidates?

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It's little wonder that one of the most watched videos we've posted since we launched this blog two years ago relates to interviews.

Not many graduate schools interview candidates, so it's natural that our applicants would be curious about the process.

Why do we conduct interviews? And what goes on in an interview?

I spoke to Michael Plummer, a professor of economics, about this annual rite that brings candidates together with senior SAIS Bologna faculty and staff.

"It gives us a good chance to get to know the students better, and perhaps more importantly it gives the students a chance to know us better," says Prof. Plummer, who is on the SAIS Bologna Admissions Committee and will be interviewing candidates in coming weeks.

SAIS Bologna interviews non-U.S. candidates who have applied to the Bologna Center and some who are open to starting either in Washington or in Bologna. All U.S. candidates are handled by the SAIS DC Admissions Office, which has slightly different admissions procedures but the same standards.

Faculty and staff interview in some cities in Europe and the United States, but given the geographic diversity of our candidates, most interviews are conducted on the phone or via Skype.

In the video below, Prof. Plummer addresses what is generally discussed during the interview and how -- or how not -- to prepare for the interview.

That senior faculty spend as much time as they do preparing for, conducting and writing up interviews reflects the importance SAIS Bologna attaches to the opportunity to get to know candidates better, to shape the incoming class and to give applicants the chance to learn more about our program.



If you are reading this via email, you can watch the video here.

Nelson Graves

Photo contest: And the winner is ...

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Last month we posted a series of photographs taken by this year's students at SAIS Bologna.

To see the photos, click here and here.

Students were given the chance to vote for their favorite photograph. Today we have the pleasure of announcing the winning photo, which was taken by Maxwell Cohen:

by Maxwell Cohen

For his winning efforts, Max will have his photo framed and mounted in the Bologna Center. He will also receive a framed print for himself. And, should he accept the offer, he can have a free lunch with the Admissions team here.

(An impromptu quiz: What is Max's photo of? The first person to send in the correct answer, either by submitting a comment at the end of this post or with an email to admissions@jhubc.it, wins a SAIS Bologna tee shirt.)

Nelson Graves

Now's the time to think about finances

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Financial aid applications are due by February 15, 2013. 

Applicants to SAIS Bologna are asked to submit a complete financial aid form along with supporting documents. We will communicate scholarship awards at the same time as the admissions decisions -- by mid-March.

SAIS Bologna offers generous amounts of financial support. Here is a link to our financial aid page. Non-U.S. applicants to SAIS Bologna should look at this page in particular for information on some of the scholarships administered by SAIS Bologna. (Note that the list is not exhaustive. There are several other grants that are not included as well as the funds that we set aside from our yearly budget.)

If you think you meet the criteria for one or more of the grants listed, please be sure to mention it in the application form.

While we are proud of being able to help many students each year, we know that the money we have available is not enough to make everyone happy. For this reason, we recommend that students look for other sources of funding and use their creativity. Make a list of potential sources and be sure to reach out to all of them. Don't disregard small scholarships: every little does help. And don't give up.

In this document, you can find a list of institutions that have provided funding for our students in the past. (Please note that it will be up to you to ask about the application procedure, requirements and deadlines of these institutions.)
As my colleague Nelson Graves said in a post last week, there is no one game plan. In fact, most students are able to make ends meet by combining different sources of funding. The key is to get started as early as possible.

Are there any questions you'd like to ask on this topic? If so, please comment on this post or write to admissions@jhubc.it. 
We will post more on financial aid in coming weeks. In the meantime, below are the links to previous posts:
- Financial Aid: The Student Mosaic
- The cost of graduate school: Investing in your future
- Spending wisely
- Financial aid

Amina Abdiuahab

Careers: a trip to the European Union's capital

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Streets, buildings and gardens covered with snow; restaurants offering seafood delicacies and local pubs serving 200 types of beer; chocolate fountains and abundant selections of cacao products; the smell of freshly baked Belgian waffles in the metro station.

A fairytale? No. That is what we discovered on a trip to Brussels during the semester break this winter.

The journey did not aim merely to unravel the culinary and cultural secrets of the European Union’s capital. We traveled north to Brussels to get a taste of the lobbying and policy-making at the heart of the EU. The Brussels career trip, organized annually by the Career Services Office at SAIS Bologna, offers a great opportunity to all EU and non-EU citizens to discover first-hand what it feels like to work in an EU institution, an NGO or a think tank.


Meera Shankar, director of Career Services, likes to arrange the trip so it falls right after first semester finals. That way students interested in doing an internship in Brussels over the summer can have an adequate amount of time to gather information and plan applications to the institutions of their choice.

We had a pretty tight agenda for our two-day trip. We visited eight organizations:

• European External Action Service
• European Policy Center
• International Crisis Group
• NATO Parliamentary Assembly
• Fipra
• Burson-Marsteller
• Bruegel
• European Union Institute for Security Studies

This gave us insight into an amalgam of organizations operating in different spheres: policy-makers, lobbyists, consultants and conflict management experts.

As a European Studies concentrator at SAIS, I was most interested in the European External Action Service. I had researched the Service and presented my findings to my SAIS peers before the trip -- just as they researched the other organizations and shared their summaries.

I very much appreciated this part of the preparation process as it gave me a good sense of how each of the different organizations operate, increasing my confidence during the meetings and allowing me to ask good questions. And as future SAISers will understand, learning how to ask the right questions is a crucial skill for a graduate student.

Katerina in front of the European Commission

In addition to the meetings with the organizations, we were able to meet SAIS alumni who organized a special dinner for us. Many alumni from the SAIS chapter in Brussels came, providing us with a good networking opportunity. It was helpful and more than a bit of a relief to hear others’ success stories and tips on how to climb the ladder once graduate school is over.

We current SAISers were happy to hear from others who were in our shoes only a few years ago and who had got off on the right foot in their professions. We left Brussels convinced we will be able to do the same.

Everyone could use a bit of reassurance once in a while, right?

Katerina Lovtchinova (BC13)

Careers: the world is a SAIS graduate's oyster

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What do SAIS students do after they graduate?

Here's a report on the types of jobs last year's SAIS graduates landed after they had finished their studies.

You might be struck by the range of sectors and the geographic spread. Consulting, banking, energy, government, diplomacy, international development, think tanks, multilateral organizations. All inhabited continents of the world.

To read the report, click here

"SAIS is renowned for its emphasis on international economics, regional and functional studies, and foreign languages, making our graduates valued commodities in the public, private and nonprofit sectors," Ronald Lambert, director of Career Services, says in the report.

Ronald Lambert

On top of the academic and language courses, SAIS offers professional skills courses in  accounting, finance, corporate valuation, financial modeling, public speaking, business writing, leadership, consulting skills, negotiations, Excel and STATA.

SAIS's more than 16,000 alumni form a valuable network for learning about careers and opportunities. Yesterday, SAIS Bologna student Katerina Lovtchinova wrote about how SAIS Bologna alumni helped make a recent trip to Brussels, organized by Career Services, a success. SAIS students visit cities such as New York, London, Geneva, Hong Kong and Beijing every year.

Most SAIS students participate in summer internships between their first and second years, and nearly half do so during their second year of study.

Every fall SAIS hosts a career fair that attracts a large number of employers. And students participate in a variety of sector-specific career clubs that range from development to defence and intelligence.

Noting that many countries and regions faced unprecedented challenges in 2012, the report concludes: "From the fiscal crisis in Europe to ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, SAIS graduates have been involved and have contributed in significant ways, whether the issues involved global economics, refugee relief efforts or exploring ways to develop renewable energy resources."

Nelson Graves