DAILY LOBO new mexico
friday
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September 28, 2012
The Independent Student Voice of UNM since 1895
Legacy of road work still hurts businesses by Nicole Storey
news@dailylobo.com Although construction on Lead and Coal avenues was completed spring of this year, store owners have yet to recover from business losses they experienced during the construction. The city of Albuquerque began the $26 million Lead and Coal Improvement Project in October 2010. The project reduced traffic lanes from three lanes to two on both streets and included a bicycle lane with and wider sidewalks with pedestrian amenities, such as trash bins, lights and new bus stops. The city included a business directory on the project’s website at leadandcoal.com to ensure customers were aware that the businesses were still open, and provided signage to direct customers to the stores. But some businesses, such as Stepp’n-2-Style and Saffron Café, shut down. Shafina Ladha took over the Farmers Market on Lead Avenue after the old owners left two months ago and said sales are still down. She said she depends on the success of her store to support her daughter, who is a student at UNM. “They (the former owners) were only making $200 a day; you can’t survive on that,” Ladha said. Ladha said one of the reasons her business hasn’t improved yet is that
Juan Labreche / Daily Lobo Shafina Ladha stares out the door of her empty store, the Farmers Market on Lead Avenue. Business owners have not yet recovered from losses experienced during construction that temporarily closed Lead and Coal avenues. potential customers don’t realize construction has ended. She said the businesses affected by the construction weren’t promoted enough after construction ended and that she uses purchase promotions in order to attract customers who may have
Professors question evaluation methods Teachers not required to hand out IDEA forms by Antonio Sanchez news@dailylobo.com
Although at least two professor evaluation systems are available to students, both students and professors agree that neither is very effective. The student-generated website RateMyProfessor.com offers students personal reviews of university professors and provides students the option to rate their professors on a scale of 0 to 5 in the categories of easiness, helpfulness, clarity and rater interest. UNM has an average professor rating of 3.76, a .42 increase from last year’s score of 3.34. UNM’s Individual Development and Educational Assessment (IDEA) form is a survey distributed to students at the end of every semester to evaluate professors through a series of questions. The questions address professors’ clarity, ability to incorporate “hands-on” projects and methods of inspiring students to set and achieve goals. UNM has distributed the IDEA form since fall of 2008 and spent $60,000 on IDEA forms in FY 2012. The University publishes the
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outcomes of the survey for professors to use as constructive criticism for curriculum and teaching practices. Greek mythology professor Monica Cyrino said Rate My Professor doesn’t always reveal an accurate portrayal of a class or a teacher’s work. “I have so many students that, probability-wise, I’d probably end up with a very flattering rating, though I don’t think it’s necessarily a comprehensive view of my class or anyone else’s class,” Cyrino said. Cyrino has consistently received high ratings on the website, with 118 student ratings awarding her a general score of 4.7. Cyrino said she was flattered to have received such a high rating, but she doesn’t personally invest much time in the website. After looking through the site one day, she said she noticed a poor review that complained about the class’s difficult final exam. Cyrino said her class doesn’t have a final exam. Cyrino said this shows why students shouldn’t trust the website as a valid source. While Cyrino doesn’t take the website too seriously, she said that because the website is still used by UNM students, it indicates that students want something more than the administration’s current IDEA evaluation form. She said that the student
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taken their business elsewhere. “We offer a free 2-liter Pepsi if you spend over $30 and we are planning on putting an advertisement in the Alibi to attract customers,” Ladha said. “It’s not picking up like it should be, one day will be good and
three days will be bad. People don’t come in here. They go to Smith’s or Walmart instead.” Owner of Free Radicals clothing store Nan Morningstar said she and her husband John decided to hold on to their business through the
construction and hoped business would improve. She said they’ve owned the store for 10 years and that sales are slowly returning to normal as more people realize the area has reopened. “They’re better now, I wouldn’t say they’re back up to where they were 100 percent before the construction, but they’re working their way back up,” she said. “I think it’s just time. I think it’s just people realizing that the construction is actually finished, we’ll have a lot of customers come in and they’re surprised that the road is open, they didn’t know it was over.” Casa de Piñatas owner Francisco Rodriguez said he’s been making piñatas at the store for the past 16 years. He said that although his sales are slowly improving, during the construction he relied almost entirely on existing customers for business. “Business is better,” he said. “Last year it was terrible. There were no people, no traffic … you just walked in off the sidewalk, before there was no sidewalk,” he said. Rodriguez, who had a stroke last year, said he has to work especially hard to not get too worried about the state of his business. He said he isn’t sure if his business will ever return to normal. “I tell people we’ll have to see how the year finishes because we spent so many months in the hole,” he said.
Scribendi gets award nod by Laura Meurer
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A UNM student publication has been nominated for an award that is often considered the Pulitzer prize of student journalism. The UNM honors program student magazine Scribendi was nominated for the National Pacemaker Award, a college-media award for excellence in collegiate magazines, for its 2012 edition. Magazines were judged based on content, quality of writing and education, photography, arts and graphics and judging was based on the layout, design and overall concept or theme. Scribendi was nominated for various works, such as the digital photograph Nature’s Hourglass, which received awards from the Western Regional Honors Council (WRHC), a professional organization of faculty, administration and students dedicated to promoting undergraduate honors education. The magazine previously won the award for its 2006 edition. Scribendi was selected by Graywolf Press, a publishing company, as one of seven finalists in the four-year college literary magazine category. Scribendi, whose name means “those which must be written,” began in 1987 as a small magazine called the UNM Honors Review, but now accepts submissions from more than 220 undergraduate students from schools in the WRHC. Current Scribendi editor-in-chief Austin Evans said staff members create a new magazine every year and that the publication provides students with learning and work opportunities and a place to make friends. Although students apply for a position on the magazine staff and work as much as 10 hours per week, they also receive three credit hours per semester and learn graphic design, management and communications skills. Evans said each submission is paired with precise
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Scribendi book cover design to maintain the integrity of the submission. He said that the nomination reflects the dedication and effort put into making the magazine, and that the award will be announced at the beginning of November at the National College Media Convention in Chicago. “We are honored and humbled to have received recognition from such a prestigious institution,” he said. “Scribendi never leaves you. We are like a family.” Faculty adviser Amaris Ketcham said the magazine is well-rounded and that winning the award would show the versatility in what the University can
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