COLLEGIATETIMES
thursday april 3, 2008 blacksburg, va.
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news NATO MAY EXTEND MEMBERSHIP TO U.S. ALLIES MOSCOW — When NATO leaders meet in Romania on Wednesday to decide whether to put U.S. allies Georgia and Ukraine on a path toward eventual membership, they will find themselves uncomfortably wedged between Washington’s firm backing of the former Soviet states’ bids and a Kremlin digging in its heels against any further eastward expansion. The Bush administration has been pushing hard for the 26nation alliance to grant Georgia and Ukraine so-called Membership Action Plan status, a critical step toward qualifying for inclusion in the organization. “I will continue to make America’s position clear: We support MAP for Ukraine and Georgia,” President Bush said in Kiev on Tuesday after meeting with Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko. — Chicago Tribune
BIT enrollment dwindles despite high job availability
Diversity thought to decline in next 20 years ASHLEY OLIVER
ct associate news editor
NORTH CAROLINA: KEY CONTEST FOR DEMOCRATS RALEIGH, N.C. — The campaigns of Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton are treating North Carolina as though the presidency depends on it. In recent days, the campaigns began assembling ground operations that instantaneously dwarfed the efforts of candidates for governor, the U.S. Senate and dozens of other North Carolina offices. Obama has opened 15 campaign offices in the state, a number expected to grow. The Clinton campaign dedicated its first headquarters, near the Glenwood South section of Raleigh, N.C., on Wednesday, with about a dozen more to come. Then there are the television advertisements and visits by candidates, their families, and a parade of surrogates. Chelsea Clinton has been a frequent visitor to North Carolina campuses. Actors Shawn and Marion Wayans are coming this weekend for Obama. — McClatchy Newspapers
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SHAOZHUO CUI/SPPS
A group of BIT students meet in Pamplin Hall to discuss the future of www.universitytease.com, a company they developed for BIT 4454.
CANDACE SIPOS
ct news reporter Only slightly more than half of Virginia Tech graduates have jobs lined up before officially leaving college. Of the 55 percent who do, the majority cannot say they will start at $52,000 immediately after graduation. However, many business information technology majors can. The average employment rate for the BIT department’s 2005 graduating class was 80 percent, the highest for all majors in the Pamplin
College of Business, according to the department’s Web site. The average starting salary for the 2005-06 graduating class was the sixth highest for all majors at Tech, only trumped by four engineering majors and computer science. The university average is $45,000. “I’m very confident in saying BIT majors go to work,” said Gary Kinder, director of undergraduate career services at Pamplin. “That is not changing.” One might think that students would be knocking the doors down on the first floor of Pamplin Hall to declare a BIT major, but only 283 students
KIRSTEN GRAVELY
ct staff writer With April 16 approaching, students are preparing ways to honor the 32 victims from April 16. The Manhattan Hokies, a group comprised of New York City alumni, as well as many other sponsors, have joined the David Wright Foundation to present Maroon Effect, an annual event to remember those lost on April 16. MaroonEffect.org is a non-profit organization founded after the events of April 16 by the Manhattan Hokies with the help of many sponsors. Their mission is to “forever honor
the 32 victims of April 16, 2007.” Michael Sinensky, owner of the Village Pourhouse in New York City, helped contribute to the event. “(Village Pourhouse) is the official Virginia Tech alumni bar in New York City. (While watching games) we became friends with a lot of the alumni, so when this horrific event happened we wanted to help in any way we could,” Sinensky said. “We then came up with MaroonEffecct.org at first to help raise money for scholarships in the names of the students and faculty who were killed.” Beginning this year, the organization will
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were enrolled in the program last year. The numbers have continually decreased since 2001, when 817 BIT majors were enrolled. While the numbers in the program are decreasing, employers are relentless in their desire for more BIT graduates. “It’s a problem in the sense that we serve the university and we serve the state, and we would like to put out more students because of this high demand from employers,” said BIT department head Bernard Taylor. “We just have a bunch of
A recent analysis of population data revealed that the composition of collegiate students could drastically change in the next 15 years. The data, provided by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education, stated that by 2022, almost half of all public high school graduates would be members of minority groups. “More than likely, given that this is the key pipeline for future college enrollments, universities overall will most likely run more diverse, just as the high school classes run more diverse,” said Brian Prescott, senior research analyst for WICHE. The study, titled “Knocking at the College Door,” was based off of birth rates, immigration patterns, and public school enrollment, and was conducted with intentions to aid colleges in planning for the increase in diversity during a time spanning from 1992 to 2022. “Because the composition of public universities’ enrollment is going to most likely change and grow more diverse,” Prescott said, “it presents challenges that require institutions and policy makers to craft solutions to respond to that.” Ray Plaza, director of Diversity Initiatives in the Office of Multicultural Affairs, said one way to do this is to increase the number of minority faculty and staff members on campus. He said that this would provide a sense of comfort for minority students to “see a face like theirs.” The projections by WICHE show that the white or non-Hispanic high school graduation rate, which is at about 68 percent, will drop to under 58 percent as the Hispanic graduation rate increases within 15 years. The graduation rate of Asians and Pacific Islanders is also expected to experience a continued growth. Many of those involved with diversity initiatives throughout the country seek a college student population that is directly proportional to that institution’s regional surroundings. “That’s a goal that we should strive for,” Prescott said. “But we do want to ensure that students are qualified to do the work once they get to college.” Many of the minorities easing into the public universities over the coming years will also be first-generation college students. “This means they don’t have as much guidance in their home to get through college,” Prescott said. Mildred Johnson, acting director for the office of undergraduate admissions said that Tech has already seen a significant rise in Hispanic applicants since her arrival to the university in 1995 and feels this aspect of diversity is a positive shift for the student body. “I feel like diversity brings different life experiences to the campus, and those voices provide a richer dialogue both inside and outside the classroom.” The admissions office uses a “holistic review” when evaluating applicants, Johnson said, and the underrepresented ethnicity of an applicant will contribute to this review. “If you ask me what our goal would be for the next five years, it would be to continue to recruit a freshman class that is both strong academically and strong in diversity,” Johnson said.
Molly Pearl, a sophomore in French and international studies, teaches French to students at Harding Avenue Elementary. Students began “Teaching for Madame,” last semester in honor of of French professor, Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, who was killed on April 16.
LAURA ASPEN
ct staff writer Jesus M. de la Garza, Vecellio Professor of construction engineering and management, was recently appointed as a member of the Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment within the National Research Council. According to the National Academies Web site, the National Research Council is devoted to improving government decision-making and public policy regarding areas of science, engineering, health, and technology that affect the people of the United States on a daily basis. The Board on Infrastructure and the Constructed Environment is a branch within the NRC that advises the government on how to fix problems dealing with the interrelationships between infrastructural parts of society, such as highways, water works, telecommunications, and energy and power grids. The Board holds workshops, writes reports, and makes recommendations on how to make the areas of infrastructure more efficient so they can better serve the members of any given community. Potential members of the Board are nominated, assessed by the NRC board, and if selected, serve a two-year term in which they meet to discuss infrastructure issues, plan workshops, and write reports called “white papers” to hand over to Congress, the White House, and other upper-level government organizations for review. Currently, de la Garza and his fellow board members are looking over issues of interdependencies of different infrastructure systems and assessing how they correlate and what the effects of one system failing would have on the others. They are studying past catastrophes, such as the black out that affected nearly all of the upper East coast in 2003, to see how the infrastructure systems reacted to one another
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With his new appointment, Jesus M. de la Garza will be active in public policy decisions related to health and technology. in those events and to determine what could be changed in order to prevent similar catastrophes in the future. In addition to his position on the Board on Infrastructure, de la Garza has also held the position of program director of the Information Technology and Infrastructure Systems in the Civil and Mechanical Systems Division of the National Science Foundation, and leads his own student-based research team, CHAMPS. As the program director at NSF, de la Garza had the opportunity to evaluate research proposals from scientists around the country, determining which were worthy of receiving funding from the NSF. “When I took the position of the program director, everyone said I went to the ‘dark
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