City prepares for holiday celebration
Five facts for basketball fans Page 7
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Eastern News T
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BEHIND THE SCENES
Wednesday NOVEMBER 28, 2012 V O LU M E 9 7 | N o. 6 6
D A I LY E A S T E R N N E W S . C O M T WIT TER.COM/DEN_NE WS
EARNED DEGREES
Report sees trickle-down effect from enrollment By Robyn Dexter In-depth Editor
JACOB SALMICH | THE DAILY EASTERN NE WS
A belt sander sits in the Doudna Fine Arts Center scene shop waiting for it’s next use.
JACOB SALMICH | THE DAILY EASTERN NE WS
Spare wood is propped up against a wall in the Doudna Fine Arts Center scene shop until further use.
Students set scenes for productions By Samantha McDaniel Daily Editor
JACOB SALMICH | THE DAILY EASTERN NE WS
Freshman theatre arts major Tiffany Mazur demonstrates how the band saw functions in the scene shop at Doudna Fine Arts Center. Mazur started working in the scene shop for a class and then eventually it became a hobby for her. She only needs 45 hours in the shop for the class, she has completd more than a 100 hours thus far.
The scenes people see on stage during plays and other productions are built in a shop at the edge of the Doudna Fine Arts Center. The Scene Shop is a room filled with workbenches, tools and pieces of wood where the scenes of productions like the “Christmas Carol” and “Almost, Maine” are brought to life. Christopher Gadomski, the shop foreman and theatre arts professor, said the shop usually makes everything on stage outside of the costumes. “We are responsible for taking the designs from the designers for the scenery and the props and manufacturing them,” Gadomski said. “If that involves building from scratch, we do so, and if it involves taking what we got in existing stock and modifying it, we can do it as well.” He said they are responsible for making sure everything functions properly, even when it is on stage. Everyone who is involved in the production will make notes regarding the different props and if anything is not functioning correctly. “It varies from show to show, some you have very little tweaking that
A photo gallery of the Scene Shop is available at dailyeasternnews.com
you have to do to get things working properly,” Gadomski said. “Others it’ll be days and days of notes.” Gadomski said they will usually find out what the problems are after technical rehearsals and have only a few days to fix the problems. The group will run through the play and the designers will sit in the audience and take notes on the things that need to be fixed. “We have to have everything ready by the time shop closes on (opening night),” Gadomski said. He said the process of building the sets starts with a scene designer sketching what they think the set should look like, including different size scales. “We take those designs and figure out how it actually has to be built, the practicality of it and what we need to do to make that design come to life,” Gadomski said. The workers in the shop also help build special projects, some for the Costume Shop. Gadomski and another worker built the frame for the glow serpent that was featured in the play.
SCENE, page 5
FACULT Y SENATE
Senate reviews Chicago State investigation By Stephanie Markham Staff Reporter
The Faculty Senate was asked to weigh in on an investigation occurring at Chicago State University regarding its president’s hiring process. The senate had to reschedule the discussion of the Tobacco Coalition’s proposal to initiate a tobacco-free campus for its next meeting on Jan. 8 because it was one member short of a quorum. The shared governance committee of the Chicago State University’s Faculty Senate submitted an investigative report of Presi-
dent Wayne Watson’s process of hiring three new faculty members in the criminal justice department. Faculty Senate member Grant Sterling, a philosophy professor, said the report indicated that Watson hired the new faculty in a period of two weeks and without consulting the official search committee. “The selection process ordinarily takes about a year,” Sterling said. The report states that one of the new faculty members was given nearly double the intended salary, and none of them were
sufficiently qualified or recommended by the department. Faculty Senate chairman Andrew Methven, a biological studies professor, said the Faculty Senate from Chicago State University requested input in considering what actions they should take. “They asked us if this behavior and the action in and of itself constitute grounds for a motion of no confidence in the president,” Methven said. He said senate members would continue discussion about the questions submitted and draft a response during an upcoming
meeting. The senate also reviewed various committee reports. Methven said the executive committee recently discussed the mandated reporting of child abuse and neglect from the department of Child and Family Services and President Perry’s decision to require university employees to receive sexual harassment training every three years. Methven said the conversation was inspired by the recent incidents of reported sexual abuse at Penn State University.
FACULTY SENATE, page 5
Eastern has seen a decrease in earned degrees that is directly related to decreasing enrollment. Blair Lord, the vice president for Academic Affairs, said Eastern will see the effects of declining enrollment reflected in the earned degrees reports for the next few years. In Fiscal Year 2012, Eastern awarded a total of 2,782 degrees that included bachelor’s degrees, post-bachelor’s degrees, master’s degrees and specialist degrees. The numbers were less than in FY 2011, when 2,907 degrees were earned by Eastern students. “We’re starting to see how our entering classes have been somewhat smaller for a period of time,” he said. “In one way I take that as evidence that we’ve graduated some of the bigger classes that we had a number of years ago.” Although the numbers decreased, Lord said the figures did not come as a surprise to him because of the decline Eastern has seen in enrollment. According to the Earned Degrees Report, the majors with the largest number of bachelor’s degree recipients included general studies, elementary education, kinesiology and sports studies, communication studies, and family and consumer sciences. Lord said the general studies program is housed in the School of Continuing Education and serves as a degree completion program. “The program is dedicated almost completely to nontraditional students,” he said. “Students in that program are almost entirely people who have been away from higher education or never started higher education when they left high school.” General studies was the highest on the list of bachelor’s degree recipients with 236 degrees earned in FY 2012. Lord said many of these students take classes on weekends and online. “This segment of our market and for higher education in general is the one that is growing the most right now,” he said. “I expect we’ll continue to see some growth in this area because it’s an area where there’s opportunities for growth.” Lord said public policy is encouraging more people to get a higher education degree. “It’s likely to be our biggest growth area,” he said. Graduation rates must be calculated over several years, but Lord said Eastern has seen a fairly consistent six-year graduation rate of around 60 percent. “For a regional comprehensive institution, our graduation rate is very high,” Lord said. “We’re 10 to 12 percentage points higher than typical regional comprehensive institutions.” Graduation rates are not instantly assessable, but Lord said Eastern will be able to see the residual effects of enrollment decreases in the next few years. “We’ve started to see some of the decreases, but they’ll be modest changes if they follow the pattern of enrollment change,” he said. “The biggest changes (in degree recipients) happen when the really big classes graduate.” Robyn Dexter can be reached at 581-2812 or redexter@eiu.edu.