February 28, 2012
Vol. 91 Issue 15
CSUF Students Offer Tax Prep Assistance The Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program at Cal State Fullerton is offering free tax preparation for lowincome individuals and families.
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CAMPUS | WASC review
CSUF prepares for re-accreditation Review and approval of education quality is valuable to universities JUSTIN ENRIQUEZ Daily Titan
Illustration by MIKE WHITE / Daily Titan
CSUF students achieve unity with Meme page DANIEL ZAMILPA Daily Titan
The disconnect between everyday life and the Internet world has, for many years, been gaping. But with one Cal State Fullerton Facebook
page surfacing, the disconnect may be disappearing. The three-week-old “CSUF Memes” Facebook page has already swept across campus and reached over 3,000 likes. The term “meme” was coined by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his book, The Selfish Gene as a device to explain how
certain cultural and evolutionary phenomena occur. According to the book, “meme” comes from shortening of mimeme, a Greek word that translates into “something imitated.” Crafty Internet users took the concept and made it their own, creating the Internet meme, which is a group of repurposed photos,
in which each photo has a specific theme and the text is changed to highlight an aspect of human quirks. The minds behind the Titan memes, all members of the the CSUF men’s lacrosse team, have, until now, remained anonymous.
See WASC, page 2
See MEMES, page 5
INTERNET | Privacy online
Google combines terms of services
CAMPUS | Class order
Students go to the top, skip prerequisites
New user policy integrates activity from spectrum of products
Some departments enforce a strict regimen, others flexible
TIM WORDEN Daily Titan
YVETTE QUINTERO Daily Titan
Upper-division courses at Cal State Fullerton have specific prerequisites to indicate the necessary competencies required for a higher level of study. They serve as a structure that helps students have a set coursework path, and it provides the necessary knowledge for future courses. However, at the time of registration, some students, like Erin Moreno, a 20-year-old kinesiology major, are able to register in upper-division courses without meeting the prerequisites. Moreno said she enrolled in a 300-level philosophy course with no knowledge of the prerequisites. “I just signed up for the class and they let me in. I didn’t have to go through anything,” said Moreno. Prerequisites are set in place to help students and faculty thrive in the higher level classes. “Prerequisites are defined by the faculty to ensure that students have the necessary competencies and knowledge to succeed in the following class,” said Anil Puri, Ph.D., dean of Mihaylo College of Business and Economics. Requiring the prerequisite helps assure faculty members that all students in the class have the same
The Cal State Fullerton Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) Steering Committee held an open, informational meeting Thursday for faculty and staff concerning the upcoming WASC team re-accreditation visit. Several of these informational meetings have been held in the past weeks leading up to the WASC team visit in order to prepare the entire campus. WASC is an organization that is recognized as one of the six regional associations that accredit public and private schools, colleges, and universities in the United States. The Accreditation Committee for Senior Colleges and Universities for WASC is responsible for the evaluation of the quality and effectiveness of schools like CSUF. This commission is also reviewed periodically for renewal of recognition by the U.S. Department of Education. Kandy Mink Salas, associate vice president for Student Affairs and WASC steering committee member, said WASC makes sure that these schools are doing what they say they are doing in terms of providing an outstanding educational experience and awarding degrees in an appropriate manner. “Any institution that is saying it is giving out a degree, it really wants to be accredited because most students don’t want to go to a campus that doesn’t have accreditation. Because that’s like saying it’s not giving out very high quality degrees,” Mink Salas said. Accreditation is important as it opens up the opportunity for students to receive financial aid.
Many colleges and universities will not accept units from a student trying to transfer from a nonaccredited school or students applying to grad school for that very same reason. In addition, the school’s general reputation hangs on accreditation as well. CSUF has already been accredited, so this is merely a process of renewing that accreditation. The last time CSUF was re-accredited was ten years ago. However, the process of preparing by the steering committee began five years ago. CSUF has worked on various reports and newsletters to not only provide information to the visiting WASC team but to also inform the rest of the campus on the reaccreditation process. Mink Salas said this is the culmination of five years of work and that it isn’t a matter of if CSUF will be accredited, but a matter of how long. “We all believe that we will be reaccredited, as Cal State Fullerton, we’re not really worried about that. The real question is for how many years; so like an A++ grade would be ten years, an A or A- grade would be nine years, and so on. So we’re really shooting for that ten year reaccreditation,” Mink Salas said. The WASC team will visit the campus from March 7-9. The team does not work for the organization itself but is comprised of faculty and administration from work on other campuses who represent WASC. They will visit the campus and go over the documents and research the steering committee has provided to them, as well as have set meetings with various entities on campus such as student government leaders, president’s staff, academic senate, etc.
ALLAN XU / Daily Titan Though some students have bypassed prerequisite classes and taken upper-level classes they should not have qualified for, they do not seem to be encountering difficulties with the advanced coursework.
prior knowledge necessary to succeed in the course. “When all students have the same prerequisite, an instructor can cover the material in more detail and knows that students … will not find the additional details overly difficult or confusing,” said Angela Della Volpe, Ph.D., dean of College of Humanities and Social Sciences. In addition, prerequisites facilitate class management for professors. “Prerequisites allow the instructor to manage enrollment in terms of class size and ability,” said Nancy Dority, assistant vice president of Enrollment Services.
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The different academic departments on campus have the responsibility to define the prerequisites for Enrollment Services. “Prerequisites are coded on courses at the request of the academic department. How prerequisites are handled depends upon the department itself,” Dority said. “Some departments may not code the prerequisites but check on them later through some other means in the department. Others want them completely listed out.” See SKIPPING, page 2
In an attempt to streamline information, Google has updated its privacy policies and terms of service to consolidate 60 services, including YouTube and Gmail. The policy change bundles together Google users’ information and is scheduled to take effect Thursday. A user’s search history, YouTube video history, calendar and Gmail conversations are going to be integrated together. “Our new privacy policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience,” wrote Alma Whitten, Google’s director of privacy, on the company’s blog. For example, the change could mean that users will see ads in
Gmail based videos they watch on YouTube. “It’s scary … everything needs checks and balances — even the commercial world — especially the commercial world since they are profit-driven … you’ll never know what they’ll do,” said Ning Chen, Ph.D., a computer science professor at Cal State Fullerton. Even though Chen said online privacy can be a problem, he is not too concerned as long as Google respects users’ privacy rights. Google’s blog stated the service integration will allow a better user experience. “(Google will share) more of your information with … well, you. We can make search better — figuring out what you really mean when you type in Apple, Jaguar or Pink,” Whitten said in the blog. But there are skeptics, like Mike Elgan, a columnist for the computer magazine Datamation, who say Google has a thinly-veiled secret which is that advertisers — and not users — are its customers. See GOOGLE, page 3