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Monday Issue October 24, 2011 FRESNO STATE
COLLEGIAN.CSUFRESNO.EDU
SERVING CAMPUS SINCE 1922
Budget cuts again affect university By Samuel Cosby The Collegian Following the trend of the last few years, Fresno State is implementing yet another budget cut for the 2011-12 fiscal year, with students and teachers seeing the largest effects. According to associate vice president of financial affairs Clint Moffitt, Fresno State’s budget is being cut by just less than $6 million for the fiscal year. Moffit said the state’s general fund is $223.8 million. Last year Fresno State spent $229.1 million. “The state has allocated less money to CSUs and UCs,” Moffitt said. “All of the schools have taken their respective amount of reduction.” Alongside this, student tuition has increased as well to make up for the cuts. To make up for losses in the budget, student tuition has increased by a total of $22 million. “[About] 52 percent of our budget comes from our general fund, student tuition and fees,” Moffitt said. “The state is only providing 48 percent.” Staff salaries and staff benefits make up 80 percent of the school’s budget, Moffitt said. After that, maintenance and utility charges are the highest percentage of spending. Those most likely to see an effect from the budget cuts are students and teachers. “Academics is going to take 70 percent of the cut,” Moffitt said. Provost William A. Covino said that students will not see large changes over the next year, rather that the bud-
get has been affecting us slowly. As provost, Covino is a part of the committee that manages the academic budget. “The largest portion of the university budget is the academic budget,” Covino said. “The budget reduction affects us in academic affairs in a big way, because it impacts the library, all of the school and colleges, all of the academic departments, our research programs, our centers and institutions, etc.” An academic affair budget reduction task force has been set up to maintain the quality of education at Fresno State. Covino explained that the budget was being cut when he arrived at the university in 2009. To make up for the cuts in the budget this year, academic affairs has cut administrative positions, reduced staff positions, reduced funding to academic-funded programs and the schools and colleges are all running on reduced budgets. “The schools and colleges are trying to decrease the cost of low enrollment, low demand courses,” Covino said. “They are putting their dollars into high-enrollment, high-demand courses.” What this means for students is less variety in terms of class selection. “Students are going to need to plan more carefully and will be faced with few options for courses that they need,” Covino said. Covino said that we won’t see any shifts toward online classes or a reducSee TUITION, Page 3
Graphic by Dalton Runberg / The Collegian
Fresno State department tries to understand a neurodegenerative disease Major university study uses fruit flies to understand Lou Gehrig’s disease By Giovanni Winna Patricia The Collegian An interdisciplinary collaboration team within Fresno State’s biology and chemistry department is trying to understand neuron degeneration disease, or Lou Gehrig’s disease, by using fruit flies in a major study. Fresno State biolog y professor Ulrike Muller and Fresno State biomechanics student Danial Husain are conducting a study to better understand the possible cause of Lou Gehrig’s disease. The study might be published in The Journal of Experimental Biology. A poster presentation at a South Carolina science conference in 2012 is also being planned. The study uses drosophila, also known as fruit flies, to record the effect of the consumption of neurotoxin glutamate, also known as Betamethylamino-L-alainine, or BMAA. BMAA might have an effect on the motor ability of an organism. BMAA has been found in some foods. The goal is to understand the symptoms of Lou Gehrig’s disease or specifically amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/parkinsonism-dementia. The Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Association, also known as ALS association, describes Lou Gehrig’s disease as a “progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in
the brain and the spinal cord.” Muller said Lou Gehrig’s disease has become a common disease in humans, especially older generations. “People who [are] diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s [disease] usually have only a few years to live,” Muller said. “You cannot survive the disease.” She said that the 10 percent of Lou Gehrig’s disease patients are genetically prone to it, while the cause of the disease for the other 90 percent remains unknown and has become a challenge for many researchers around the world. To better understand the disease, Muller and Joy Goto from the Fresno State chemistry department decided three years ago to initiate the research. Muller explained that in understanding a disease in humans, she needed an animal model. Muller and her team of researchers use fruit flies because they have a relatively short life cycle. This makes it easier for the research team to observe their growth and eventually death. “It is a nice and fast organism,” Muller said. “Because an organism usually catches the Lou Gehrig’s disease quite young.” The syndrome progresses more rapidly “when you are reaching pension See RESEARCH, Page 3
Photo Courtesy of Danial Husain
Fresno State researchers use fruit flies to find the connection between BMAA and neurodegenerative syndrome. High resolution pictures, such as the one above, are used to observe the effect of BMAA by documenting the flies’ walking patterns.