Brandeis is excited to be hosting our first ever three minute dissertation competition (3MT).

The Brandeis 3MT competition is a university-sponsored speaking competition designed to showcase graduate student research in three-minute talks to a general audience. This is an opportunity for graduate students engaged in original research to develop communication and presentation skills while sharing their work with faculty, staff, and students across Brandeis University.

Please register to attend the final round on April 7, 7-9 p.m. The winner goes on to the next levels of competition.

Sign up for one of our one-on-one financial literacy sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays! We hope that you will take advantage of this great opportunity to ask questions about budgeting, managing debt, understanding your paycheck, W-2’s etc. Please click here to book a 20-minute appointment today!

Kaltura has been selected as the university’s new digital media hosting platform to replace Ensemble Video, which will be retired in fall 2022. Kaltura is a full-featured digital media hosting platform that can be used to deliver videos on Brandeis websites and in LATTE. Kaltura offers tools to help make videos accessible, interactive, and collaborative. Starting in the spring, Kaltura will be available to current students, faculty, and staff. If you are an existing Ensemble user, your videos will be transferred to Kaltura for you. In order to ensure a smooth transition from Ensemble to Kaltura, Media Technology Services and the Office of Communications will be reaching out to users directly in the upcoming months. Additional updates about the initiative and timeline will be shared with the community in upcoming InBrief articles. Visit the Kaltura page on the ITS website to learn more about the transition from Ensemble to Kaltura. For questions, please contact Media Technology Services.

March holds numerous holidays celebrated by people at Brandeis. Find more information on these and other holidays in this Guide of the Center for Spiritual Life.

March 1: Shiva-ratri (Hinduism) is celebrated as the night of Lord Shiva. It is believed that Parvati, the wife of Lord Shiva, prayed, meditated and fasted on this day for his well being. On the day of the festival, devotees of Lord Shiva fast and spend the day and all night focused on Lord Shiva, meditating and chanting and singing his praises.

March 2: Ash Wednesday (Christianity) begins the 40 days of Lent for Christians, leading up to the celebration of Easter. On Ash Wednesday many Christians observe the tradition of placing ashes in a cross on the forehead, which may be accompanied by the words “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return” or “Repent and believe in the Good News.” The ashes serve as a reminder of mortality, and a start to the Lenten season of reflection, turning toward God, and letting go of things that are no longer helpful to society or ourselves.

March 17: Purim (Judaism) commemorates the survival of the Jews of Persia in the 5th century BCE following a plot that would have annihilated the population. Jews celebrate Purim by reading from the Book of Esther, giving tzedakah or charity, exchanging gifts, and attending festive meals. To learn about Hillel celebrations this year look at Hillel’s Calendar.

March 19: Holi (Hinduism) is a major festival and celebrates the onset of spring, along with good harvests and the fertility of the land. This festival is known best for the way people throw brightly colored powder and water over each other to celebrate the advent of spring. Holi is a day that celebrates love, commemorating the intimate loving relationship between the Divine Couple, Radha and Krishna. On this day people get to unite together forgetting all resentments and all types of bad feelings towards each other.

Welcome new undergraduate students to campus as a Navigating Health and Safety Instructor! Instructors teach sections of Navigating Health and Safety, a six-week module required for all new/incoming undergraduate students addressing mental health, substance use, sexual health, consent, bystander intervention and campus resources.

This position is designed for current Brandeis employees. It provides the opportunity to connect with new students and have fun doing it! Most instructors will teach in person, although there may be some opportunities to teach remotely.

The 50-minute classes are held once per week, either during business hours or in the evening depending on your availability and your supervisor’s approval. In the classroom, instructors lead discussions and facilitate engaging group activities. There is no lecturing!

The compensation is $960 per semester, or $1,072 per semester for staff who have worked at Brandeis for 6 or more years. Apply on Workday, and direct any questions to hawp@brandeis.edu.

• Excel with Excel: Overview, Tips and Tricks. Part I, noon - 1 p.m., Friday, Mar. 4, and Part 2, noon - 1 p.m., Friday, Mar. 11
• Bivariate Analysis with Stata- Online, noon - 1 p.m., Monday, Feb. 28
• Qualitative Research Analysis: Intro to Atlas.ti 9 (Mac users), noon - 1 p.m., Tuesday, Mar. 1
• Survey Research: Intro to Qualtrics, noon - 1 p.m., Wednesday, Mar. 2
• The Beginnings of Brandeis: A History in Pictures, 3 - 3:30 p.m., Thursday, Mar. 3
• R : Intro to Tidyverse, noon - 1 p.m., Monday, Mar. 7
• Researching in Archives, 3 - 3:30 p.m., Thursday, Mar. 10
• Cleaning Messy Data with OpenRefine, noon - 1 p.m., Wednesday, Mar. 16
• Teaching with Archives, 1 - 1:30 p.m., Wednesday, Mar. 9
• Introduction to Arduino Electronics Workshop, weekly Mondays at 10 a.m.
• How to build and deploy your personal website, weekly Tuesdays at 5 p.m.
• Digital Scholarship Lab Access Orientation, weekly Tuesdays at 11 a.m.
• Intro to 3D Printing with Flashforge, weekly Tuesdays at 10 a.m.
• Brandeis MakerLab, Automation Lab and Digital Scholarship Lab Tour!, weekly Thursdays at 9 a.m.
• Intro to 3D Scanning, weekly Fridays at 9 a.m.
• Intro to CAD with TinkerCAD, weekly Fridays at 10 a.m.

Faculty Workshops-Open to all members of the teaching community!

• LATTE Office Hours, weekly 10 a.m. Fridays
• Using the Jamboard software for Teaching, weekly at 10 a.m. on Thursdays
• Teaching with Archives, 1 - 1:30 p.m., Wednesday, Mar. 9

Do you care about Dining on campus? If so, here is your opportunity to learn more about the five food service operators participating in the current RFP process.

• Harvest Table, February 28, 10 - 11:30 a.m.
• Nexdine, February 28, 2 - 3:30 p.m.
• Sodexo, March 1, 10 - 11:30 a.m.
• AVI, March 1, 2 - 3:30 p.m.
• Bon Appetit, March 2, 10 - 11:30 a.m.

All presentations will be held in the Sherman Function Hall located in the Hassenfeld Conference Center and broadcast on the WebZoom platform. Opportunities for Q&A will be provided both in person and remotely. Please visit the dining RFP web page for additional information.

This year’s Brandeis University Staff Advisory Committee (BUSAC) nominations and elections are coming up. We will soon send all staff who are eligible to be nominated and vote in elections an email confirming their eligibility and a nomination form. To be eligible you must be a benefits eligible staff member or post-doc, who started before Sept. 8, 2021. If you have not received this email by the end of the day on Feb. 23 and think that you are eligible, please email BUSAC@brandeis.edu so that we can investigate and include you in as part of the elections process. Nominations of members of underrepresented groups are strongly encouraged.

The purpose of the BUSAC committee is to improve the work environment for Brandeis University staff through discussions and actions that influence policy; develop and enrich staff; and promote ongoing, meaningful and deliberate improvements to the staff experience. All interested staff members are welcome to attend an open BUSAC meeting on March 3 from 2-3 p.m via Zoom.

The Dean of Students Office is seeking nominations from faculty and staff of undergraduate or graduate students who have made outstanding contributions to the Brandeis community, including contributions of leadership, social consciousness and activism, community building, and service. While special attention will be paid to graduating seniors, several prizes will go to students in other class years.

Please complete the nomination form by Tuesday, March 1.

The selected students will be honored at a ceremony on May 5 and will be listed in the Commencement program. Please direct all questions to the Dean of Students Office at deanofstudentsoffice@brandeis.edu.

Calling Brandeis Faculty and Researchers: Sign up for an ORCID iD! An ORCID iD is a unique digital identifier that definitively ties your scholarly work to you, and can help increase recognition of your research. Your ORCID iD moves with you throughout your career, improving attribution and visibility of your grants, research, scholarship and creative and entrepreneurial activities. The use of ORCID iDs is fast becoming standard in academia, and many publishers and funders now require them.

Currently, fewer than 20% of faculty members have associated an ORCID iD with Brandeis. We are asking faculty and researchers who haven’t already done so to register for an ORCID iD then connect it to your ScholarWorks profile by Feb. 28. Registration is free and takes less than a minute. For directions and complete information, please visit the Brandeis Libraries Getting Started with ORCID Guide.

The financial aid renewal application deadline for the 2022-2023 academic year will be March 1, 2022. Students receiving need-based scholarship funds must submit the 2022-2023 CSS/Financial Aid PROFILE, the 2022-2023 Free Application for Federal Student Aid, and copies of 2020 student and parent Federal Income Tax Returns. Students who wish to apply only for federal sources of financial aid need only complete the FAFSA (taxes will be requested upon receipt of this application only if necessary). An e-mail detailing the renewal process was sent to students and parents during the winter intersession.