May 7, 2012
Vol. 92 Issue 50
SRC Hosts “Fun Friday” The SRC hold Fun Fridays to help students release some stress by the pool side. The last and largest event will be this Friday, May 11 at 12-2 p.m.
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CHANCELLOR: ‘YOUR DEMANDS … ARE NOT POSSIBLE’
CAMPUS | Switch to TITANium
Blackboard service to end over summer Move to user-friendly TITANium is smooth so far, official says TIM WORDEN Daily Titan
ANIBAL ORTIZ / Daily Titan CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed meets with hunger strikers in Long Beach Friday. Reed told the students they are directing their demands to the wrong people.
Reed rejects strikers’ demands Students promise to continue starving after meeting with top CSU officials in Long Beach AMBER STEPHENS Daily Titan
Students for Quality Education (SQE) hunger strikers and their supporters met Friday with Chancellor Charles B. Reed, General Counsel Christine Helwick and Systemwide Police Chief Nate Johnson in Long Beach. SQE started a hunger strike Wednesday after Chancellor Reed and the CSU Board of Trustees did not respond to their four demands relating to quality higher education. There are currently 12 students
parcitpiating in the hunger strike, including Cal State Fullerton history graduate student David Inga. The four demands were to create a five-year freeze on tuition increases, eliminate all housing and car allowances for all 23 campus presidents, rollback executive salaries to 1999 levels and an extension of freedom of speech on all campuses. Reed told the students he had 45 minutes to listen to their concerns. The students presented their demands and the reasoning behind them. Students said the board has increased tuition by 318 percent since 2002, leading to high student debt and other students not being able to afford basic expenses. SQE also told the board that executives are not immune to the budget crisis, and a message needs to be sent to the state
that money is being allocated appropriately. Inga, the only CSUF student participating in the hunger strike, called for students’ rights to free speech to be restored at all CSU campuses. The SQE group asked Chancellor Reed and the board to act on their behalf to take the burden off of students and enact change. “Your demands … are not possible. You are focusing on the wrong group of people,” Reed told the students at the meeting. “You should be focusing on the Legislature and on the government because that’s where the resources come from.” See DEMANDS, page 2
CAMPUS | SCERP projects
Seniors wrap up research projects
See TITANIUM, page 2
SPORTS | Baseball
Titans continue hot streak with a sweep No. 8 CSUF remains on top of the Big West
Ecology and other biology students take part in SCERP program
EZEKIEL HERNANDEZ Daily Titan
ERINN GROTEFEND Daily Titan
As the semester comes to an end, seniors from the Southern California Ecosystems Research Program (SCERP) are concluding their long-term research projects. SCERP focuses on preparing ecology and environmental biology students for entry into graduate school, said William Hoese, Ph.D., associate professor of biological science. “We look for students who have interests in these areas and who have strong potential to succeed as future scientists in ecology and environmental biology,” said Hoese. Students develop their research and analytical skills by working closely with a faculty mentor and conducting independent research, Hoese said.
It is time to say goodbye to Blackboard. The online learning management system will expire June 15. Blackboard will not be available to both students and faculty after June 15. It is the end of a yearlong process to make TITANium the university’s learning management system. TITANium is a free, Moodle-powered Virtual Learning Environment. Amir Dabirian, vice president of Cal State Fullerton’s Information Technology (IT) division, told members of the Academic Senate to move all data from Blackboard to TITANium in an email on April 30. “Blackboard will be no longer available at the end of the spring 2012 semester. All faculty data needs to be moved off Blackboard before June 1, 2012,” the email states. A similar email was sent to all CSUF faculty who have used Blackboard in mid-February. It included a questionnaire asking faculty about their class migration status, said Chris Manriquez, associate vice president for the IT division and academic technology officer. The migration responses varied: 9 percent said, “I don’t need the courses (anymore),” 51 percent said “I need IT assistance” and 40 percent said “I did it myself.” About 32 percent of the 2,264 unique faculty responded, Manriquez said. TITANium has spread since its large-scale adoption last fall. Since spring 2012, there are 1,355 visible TITANium courses, according to data released by the IT division. In fall 2011, there were 892
visible courses and in spring 2011 there were 125. This semester, 693 unique faculty and 25,630 unique students are enrolled in visible Titanium courses. “Overall, the transition is moving smoothly … TITANium has a more user-friendly organization and requires less clicks to navigate course materials,” said Vikki Costa, Ph.D., the TITANium coordinator at CSUF’s Faculty Development Center and a secondary education professor. TITANium has a cleaner look and is “more cut and dry,” said Andre Gardere, 19, an undeclared freshman. “The two classes that I do have on Blackboard this semester, I find myself wishing that they were on TITANium,” Gardere said. The differences between Blackboard and TITANium learning management systems have provided “a significant amount of work for faculty,” Costa said. The Faculty Development Center (FDC), located in the Pollak Library basement, assists faculty in learning to use Titanium by providing training workshops. “Since last year, almost 500 (full-time) and part-time faculty and staff have attended at least one workshop,” Costa said. In addition to the FDC, faculty can receive course guidance at Online Academic Strategies and Instructional Support (OASIS) and technical support at the Academic Technology Center, Costa said. TITANium will have upgrades two times a year, and two upgrades are already scheduled for the summer, Manriquez said. “We’re ahead of other universities (in using Moodle),” said Manriquez. Although many CSUs use Moodle, most are running version 1.9. CSUF is at 2.1 and will upgrade to 2.2 in the summer, he said.
Courtesy of MCT One SCERP researcher, Carrie De Jesus, 21, is investigating the impact of human-generated noise on bird songs. She is focusing on traffic noise carrying into parks and rural sites and how it may interfere with mating calls between male and female birds.
Carrie De Jesus, 21, is investigating how humangenerated noise has impacted bird songs. She has conducted research in local parks and other rural sites to determine how human noise, such as cars, affects bird songs. Birds use their songs to help
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attract mates. The males will sing to the females to let them know they want to mate and the females will begin to build their nest, said De Jesus. Female birds might not receive the signal that a male wants to mate if the male’s signal is muffled
or interrupted by traffic noise. De Jesus studied how traffic noise affects their songs and how it affects the way the birds communicate with each other. See RESEARCH, page 3
The Cal State Fullerton baseball team completed a three-game sweep of the Pacific Tigers in Stockton on Sunday afternoon after beating the Tigers 10-0. With their 30th win Sunday, the Titans are currently ranked No. 8 nationally and have three conference series remaining in the regular season. They are currently in first place in the Big West Conference standings, narrowly ahead of Long Beach State. The Pacific Tigers have now lost 10 games in a row and have won only one conference game this season. The Titans got quality starts from all three weekend starters and produced 49 hits as an offense in the series. On Sunday afternoon, redshirt freshman Grahamm Wiest pitched a complete game shutout and allowed only three hits as the Titans finished the series, winning 10-0. This is the fourth decision Wiest has won this year. Junior first baseman Carlos Lopez
drove in nine runs during the weekend series. On Sunday he had two hits with three runs batted in. Richy Pedroza, Ivory Thomas, Carlos Lopez, Matt Orloff and Jared Deacon all scored two runs apiece. On Saturday night the Titans poured it on the Tigers by getting 21 hits for 21 runs. The final score was 21-4. Left-handed freshman Kenny Matthews took the mound for CSUF in the meeting Saturday and pitched seven innings and gave up three runs. Matthews improved to 5-0 on the season. Michael Lorenzen, Matt Chapman and Casey Watkins all got three hits apiece in this game, and Lopez hit a grand slam in the ninth inning for the final score. The grand slam was Lopez’ first home run of the season. Lorenzen stole his 12th base of the year. Pacific sent five pitchers to the mound to cool off the hitting spree, all of whom gave up at least one earned run. The first reliever in, Bryce Lombardi, gave up five runs in just over an inning-and-a-half of work. See BASEBALL, page 8