Applicants

Listings are accepted on a space-available basis. Deadline is 5 p.m. Thursday prior to date of publication at the latest. To submit contest items, mail to Contests, Patuxent Publishing Co. Editorial, 501 N. Calvert St., Baltimore, MD 21278; email hccalendar@patuxent.com ; fax 410-332-6336; or call 410-332-6497. Soroptimist International of Howard County Call for Applicants - Seeking women head-of-household who want financial assistance to go back to school.

A former Anne Arundel County teacher has filed an age-discrimination lawsuit against the school system, contending that she was systematically bypassed for promotion in favor of younger applicants and faced retribution when she complained. Christine Davenport, 62, claims in a multimillion-dollar federal lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court in Baltimore this week that the county school system retaliated against her when she lodged complaints two years ago alleging that her seniority prevented her from getting a job as assistant principal.

The state's biotech tax credits drew more than 180 applications within three minutes of the window opening for the $8 million available this fiscal year, the Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development said Thursday. The credits go to investors pumping money into fledgling Maryland biotechnology firms in need of capital. The credits will be handed out on a first-come, first-served basis to those that qualify — thus the rush. Initial credit certifications will be issued within 30 calendar days, DBED said.

The Bel Air Independence Day Committee is looking for floats, marching units, performers, antique cars, hot rods, commercial units, animal acts and more for the traditional Bel Air 4th of July parade, scheduled for Wed., July 4 at 6 p.m. in downtown Bel Air. "We've already gotten several terrific applications," Parade Chairman Michael Blum, who is running his 20th consecutive parade this year, said in a press release. "They include two floats and a musical marching unit, but of course it's only the beginning," Blum added.

Listings are accepted on a space-available basis. Deadline is 5 p.m. Thursday prior to date of publication at the latest. To submit contest items, mail to Contests, Patuxent Publishing Co. Editorial, 501 N. Calvert St., Baltimore, MD 21278; email hccalendar@patuxent.com ; fax 410-332-6336; or call 410-332-6497. Soroptimist International of Howard County Call for Applicants - Accepting applications for its Violet Richardson Award. Applicants should be 14-17-year-old girls who have performed noteworthy community service.

Listings are accepted on a space-available basis. Deadline is 5 p.m. Thursday prior to date of publication at the latest. To submit volunteer items, mail to Volunteers, Patuxent Publishing Co. Editorial, 501 N. Calvert St., Baltimore, MD 21278; email hccalendar@patuxent.com ; fax 410-332-6336; or call 410-332-6497. Howard County Library Board of Trustees - Seeking applicants for two board positions: one representing County Council District 5 (Western Howard County)

State prison officials say they will no longer demand that job applicants provide passwords to social media accounts. Candidates will be asked for access but have the option of refusing, according to the prison agency. The announcement Wednesday by the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services was a response to a complaint filed with the American Civil Liberties Union by a corrections job applicant, who said he was offended and troubled by a prison official's request for his Facebook password.

Howard County public schools had 19 applicants for every teaching job open in the current year, a total boosted by what personnel supervisor Albert W. Tucci calls "a surge of new applicants."The county school system had 4,008 applications for 210 teaching jobs in the 1990-1991 school year. The figure includes both new applications and those carried over from previous years.In contrast, the county school system had 20 applicants for each teaching job open in the 1988-1989 school year.Tucci did not havea breakdown of the number of new and on-file applications for this year, but said he had received figures from colleges indicating an increase in the number of graduates going into teaching.

Baltimore officials have decided not to extend the deadline for applications for the position of school superintendent, thanks to a last-minute flood of promising resumes -- including seven or eight from superintendents of larger school districts from all over the East Coast.By yesterday's application deadline, Baltimore had received 89 applications and expects more to trickle in this week, said Robert G. Wendland, the city's deputy personnel director.The batch includes resumes from about 10 deputy school superintendents from both Maryland and the rest of the Eastern seaboard.

Grand Canyon National Park will start taking applications today for self-guided rafting permits on the Colorado River, using a new lottery that replaces a 26-year-old wait-list system. The lottery will allocate permits for private trips as opposed to those run by commercial outfitters. Private, or noncommercial, trip permits, which have attracted more than 1,000 applicants a year, are among the most coveted and hardest to obtain in the national parks. Whether the lottery will make the permits easier to get is debatable.

State education leaders say proposed legislation that would force local school systems to continue funding a federal tutoring program could derail their efforts to gain relief from the mandates of the No Child Left Behind Act. Lawmakers are debating two bills introduced in the House of Delegates and the Senate dealing with Supplemental Educational Services, a federally mandated program that provides thousands of the state's poorest and lowest-performing students...

NASA awarded a contract Monday to Science Systems and Applications Inc. to help observe the atmosphere and the sun. The job is worth up to $103 million for the Lanham-based company. Science Systems will design and maintain technology orbiting the Earth to monitor atmospheric and solar conditions. It will also help NASA's earth science division perform satellite missions, prepare research proposals and support software engineering. The work will be performed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt from April 1 through April 30, 2017.

The Ames United Methodist Church Scholarship Committee has applications available for the 2012 Ames United Methodist Church Scholarship for graduating high school seniors residing in Harford County. To request a copy of the scholarship packet and for more information, email Ames UMC Scholarship Committee, amesumcscholarshipcommittee@live.com . Completed applications must be postmarked by April 15. All incomplete applications and those that are incomplete will be rejected and returned to the applicant with no further action taken for consideration by the scholarship committee.

Students beware: Scholarship providers aren't just going by your application to learn about you. They're also checking you out on Google and social media sites, according to a recent survey. And what they uncover — the good or the bad — could be the tie-breaker when it comes to deciding between you and another candidate. "Students need to recognize that the colleges and scholarship providers are increasingly looking at this," says Mark Kantrowitz, the publisher of Fastweb.com, a scholarship site that conducted the survey.

Those looking to lose weight, quit smoking or keep tabs on a malady have a lot of choices in the smart-phone app stores. Choosing one that's beneficial is more of a problem. Science is still trying to catch up to the market for mobile health applications, software that runs on mobile devices such as iPhones, Androids and tablets, which has produced tens of thousands of possible ways to achieve better health for free or a fee. One of the broadest efforts to assess "mHealth" strategies is being made by dozens of faculty, staff and students in multiple departments at the Johns Hopkins University, which has 49 official studies underway in Baltimore and around the world as part of its Global mHealth Initiative.

Tennis The Glenmont Tennis League is a summer recreational tennis league for adult women. Meet new players and just have fun. Applications are due by April 1. For an application, email suefilson@verizon.net or call 410-730-6565.   Parents can register their children for the Howard County recreation department's spring and summer tennis programs Sat., March 11 from 10 a.m.-noon at the Meadowbrook facility, 5001 Meadowbrook Lane, Ellicott City. Softball The Cindy LaRue League, an informal co-rec softball league, is looking for players age 19 and older - especially couples and women - from all parts of Howard County.

The six applicants vying for a license to build a racetrack in Virginia start pleading their cases tomorrow in the final hearings conducted by the five-member Virginia Racing Commission.After years of waiting, one applicant is expected to be awarded the license by Sept. 20 to build and operate the state's first pari-mutuel racetrack.The decision directly affects Maryland since the two states now share a common horse pool and a new racing operation there will compete with the Maryland tracks, offering the threat of ruinous competition.

WASHINGTON -- The General Accounting Office (GAO) recently reviewed a program intended to test applicants for entry-level federal jobs in the U.S. government's ranks, and found it time-consuming, burdensome and inefficient.The program, the GAO found, falls far short of just about everybody's expectations -- from the applicants seeking jobs to the people who do the hiring.Known as Administrative Careers With America (ACWA), the program seeks to find qualified applicants for entry-level jobs in more than 100 government occupations.

State education leaders expect to apply Monday for a waiver from some of the most rigid requirements of a federal law widely viewed as flawed because it has labeled so many schools as failing. If theU.S. Department of Educationgrants Maryland an exemption from the No Child Left Behind law, schools and teachers would have more reasonable goals for what their students are expected to achieve. Currently the law says that every student in the country should be proficient in reading and math by 2014.

Ten people submitted applications to the Anne Arundel County Council by Friday's deadline for candidates to fill the seat vacated by former Councilman Daryl D. Jones. The applicants are: Lewis A. Bracey, a retired police officer from Hanover; Gloria J. Criss, a retired federal worker from Severn; Vicki L. Fleming, a retired federal worker from Hanover; Richard W. "Rik" Forgo, an Air Force veteran from Linthicum; David R. Hlass of Hanover, a salesman; David M. Jones, a utilities analyst; Mary M. Rosso, a former delegate from Brooklyn Park; Peter I. Smith, a federal worker from Severn; Michael J. Wagner, a former delegate and senator from Ferndale; and Steven D. Wyatt, a federal worker from Linthicum.