WOMEN advance to big east semifinal
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Caffiene crazed
Best coffee bets near campus, pages 14-15.
The
The No. 1 Weekly College Newspaper in Illinois
Volume #99 | Issue #18 | March 9, 2015 | depauliaonline.com
Enrollment drops consistent with national trends By Grant Myatt Managing Editor
big brother is watching MAX KLEINER | THE DEPAULIA
Instructors can see more than you think on D2L By Emily Brandenstein Contributing Writer
Twenty years ago, professors could not see if their students were doing their homework outside of the classroom. Now, with the technology used in higher education, professors can track their students’ coursework activity outside the classroom through websites such as Desire2Learn (D2L), DePaul’s online management system. To most DePaul students, D2L is a system used in most classes to access readings, participate in discussion boards, receive class announcements and take online exams. Navigating the site is a necessary part of being a student at DePaul, and by the end
of every student’s college career, they know it inside and out. What many students don’t know, however, is that their activity is being watched and recorded. Students were surprised to discover that professors can monitor their activity quite closely on D2L. Not all professors make this ability known to their students, nor do they have to. Many students were surprised to discover that professors can monitor their activity quite closely on D2L using a feature called View User Progress. Waleed Altufail, a computer science student ambassador for DePaul’s College of Digital Media, explained how the feature works. “(View User Progress) allows (the)
instructor to check how much time a student spent to finish the assigned quiz, how much time a student took to finish the assigned reading and how much time a student spent on the discussion page. The feature also tracks the submissions and posts of students on D2L,” Altufail said. “The instructor can use View User Progress to ensure students are active in the discussion, looking at course materials and to determine login frequency.” DePaul freshman Lexi Boykin was briefly speechless when she was told of this monitoring feature. “What? That is an invasion of privacy … (professors) shouldn’t really
See D2L, page 6
Higher education enrollment is suffering nationally and DePaul is no exception. Since 2011, the total university enrollment is down about 6 percent, while graduate and law enrollment have dropped the most by about 15 percent, according to DePaul’s 2014 Enrollment Summary. In 2011, the total university enrollment was at 25,398 and declined to 23,799 by 2014. The business school makes up for 26 percent of enrollment at the university followed by the College of Computing and Digital Media at 18 percent and the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences accounting for 15 percent of Enrollment. The two newest colleges at the university — the College of Science and Health and the College of Communication — account for 15 and 14 percent of enrollment respectively. Despite relatively steady numbers in the undergraduate programs, several graduate programs have seen major declines in enrollment, ultimately playing a factor in revenue for the university.
Graduate enrollment
In the United States, graduate students make up about 3 percent of the overall population in higher education, but at DePaul the graduate students make up about one third of the overall population, said Suzanne Depeder, the associate vice president of graduate and adult admission. However, between 2010 and 2014, the
See ENROLLEMENT, page 5
Student’s hobby makes dollars and scents By Jessica Villagomez Staff Writer
DePaul University junior John Costa barely manages to squeeze in into his twin sized bed, let alone much else in his cramped, 8-by-6-and-a-half-foot bedroom in Chicago’s Bucktown neighborhood. Costa doesn’t even have a closet, stuffing his bookshelves with clothes and his other belongings. His floors are covered with boxes filled with jars of a combination of alcohol, water, fragrance and menthol. His small apartment is home to himself and his three roommates, but is most importantly his manufacturing office. Costa makes and sells his own brand of aftershave, all out of the confines of his living room. “I make everything in the living room and my roommates hate me for it,” Costa
said. Costa first became interested in the art of shaving in order to spend less money on shaving products. “Back in the day, before razors had four blades, people used to shave with a single razor,” Costa said. “I went to the grocery story one day and saw the cartridge packs that I could buy for $20, or the single blade that I could buy for $5 for a lot more blades.” Costa quickly emerged himself in the community of “wet shaving,” a traditional method of shaving that uses a single blade and better quality products. “After I began shaving in this particular way, I started trying to find more information about good products, and there is like a Reddit Subreddit on this,” he said. Costa naturally became a hobbyist and began to try
See AFTERSHAVE, page 22
maggie gallagher | THE DEPAULIA
DePaul junior John Costa mixes the ingredients for his homemade aftershave in his apartment for his company Folsom & Company, which he started in April of 2014.