DAILY LOBO new mexico
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September 6, 2012
The Independent Student Voice of UNM since 1895
Regents mull dry Lobo Village
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by Nicole Storey and Svetlana Ozden news@dailylobo.com
Plans to make Lobo Village a safer place for students might include making the off-campus community alcohol-free. At a Sept. 5 Regents Academic/ Student Affairs Committee meeting, Vice President of Student Affairs Eliseo Torres said the administration will consider prohibiting alcohol at Lobo Village in an effort to prevent alcohol-related incidents. But a survey sent to Lobo Village residents showed 60 percent of survey takers said they were not interested in the community becoming alcohol-free, while 15 percent of survey takers said they are uninterested in the issue regardless of the outcome. Although alcohol is currently permitted at Lobo Village, Torres said the administration will continue to discuss prohibiting alcohol in the future.
Improving the freshman experience At the meeting, Associate Provost of Curriculum Greg Heileman said a new task force was created to implement the Foundations of Excellence (FoE), a “comprehensive, externally guided self-study and improvement process for the first year of college.” The program, which was created by the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education, aims to engage students and the administration in conversation about how to improve the freshman experience on campus. The task force will include UNM faculty members, administration, student affairs members, staff, research officers and students. Heileman said the University chose to use the FoE program in an effort to improve freshmen retention rates. In 2010, the University retained about 74 percent of freshmen. He said the self-study portion of the program will be completed by April 2012 and that the administration will put together a written plan that will define necessary changes to improve the freshman experience on campus. According to a study from the institute, freshmen retention rates at universities that fully implemented the FoE program increased by about 6 percent over four years. The same study showed that universities that didn’t fully implement the program continued to experience decreases in freshmen retention rates. “At the training session, they beat
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Daily Lobo volume 117
issue 14
Adria Malcolm / Daily Lobo Rudy Perea of Corrales Orchards replenishes his produce at the Lobo Growers Market Wednesday. To promote healthy eating, the market hosted a recipe swap in which students and vendors shared their favorite recipes. (See story page 10.)
Adria Malcolm / Daily Lobo The UNM administration will implement a new program to improve the freshman experience on campus. At a Sept. 5 Regents Academic/Student Affairs meeting, Associate Provost for Curriculum Greg Heileman said the Foundations of Excellence Program will allow the administration to understand what changes need to be made to improve the freshman experience. it into our head that if we’re going to do this, we have to implement it to make it work,” Heileman said.
Admission and GPA requirements In an effort to improve student success, admissions requirements at UNM will continue to change.
By fall 2013, UNM’s admissions requirements for first-time freshmen will include a 2.5 grade-point average. The GPA requirement has increased by one-tenth of a point every year since fall 2010, when the requirement for incoming freshmen was a 2.2 GPA. Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management Terry Babbitt said that along with an increase in GPA requirements, the University has added additional course requirements every year. He said that in fall 2011, admissions requirements included an additional social sciences course and that in fall 2012, requirements included an additional lab science course. Babbitt said fall 2013 admissions requirements will raise the number of math courses required by one, for a total of four. “It’s continued to move up a level,” he said. “What we did was with the gradual increase, we made it so that anyone can achieve it.” But Babbitt said the admissions requirements take into consideration whether students have access to courses that will allow them to complete admissions requirements. He said the requirements can be met by most incoming freshmen but that some students, such as students on reservations, won’t have to meet the same requirements. “If you’ve had a challenging background, you’re going to get admitted to the University regardless of what the requirements say,” he said.
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Gun down the gulls to save the whales by Michael Warren The Associated Press
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — What began as bizarre bird behavior has turned into something out of a horror film for threatened whales in Argentina, where seagulls have learned that pecking at the whales’ backs can get them a regular seafood dinner. Seagull attacks on southern right whales have become so common now that authorities are planning to shoot the gulls in hopes of reducing their population. Environmentalists say the plan is misguided and that humans are the real problem, creating so much garbage that the gull population has exploded. Both sides agree that the gull attacks in one of the whales’ prime birthing grounds is not only threatening the marine mammals, but the region’s tourism industry as well, by turning whale-watching from a magical experience into something sad and gruesome. Seagulls around the city of Puerto Madryn discovered about a decade ago that by pecking at
the whales as they come up for air, they can create open wounds. Then, each time the whales surface, it’s dinner time: Gulls swoop down and dig in, cutting away skin and blubber with their beaks and claws. The problem has only grown more severe since then as more gulls caught on and the bird population exploded due to easy access to human detritus — not only open-air garbage heaps but fish parts as well, dumped directly into the water by fishermen and a seafood packing plant. “It’s not just that the gulls are attacking the whales, but that they’re feeding from them, and this way of feeding is a habit that is growing and becoming more frequent,” said Marcelo Bertellotti, who works for the National Patagonic Center, a governmentsponsored conservation agency. “It really worries us because the damage they’re doing to the whales is multiplying, especially to infant whales that are born in these waters.” Whales also are changing their
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