Winner of the Society of Professional Journalists’ Mark of Excellence award
Spring Issue 1 Jan. 13, 2015
Scott Center boasts Autism research, treatment, community for families Alex Coultrup Staff Writer At the Scott Center for Autism Treatment, ongoing research and outreach to the community continue to set it apart as a unique and important fixture in the lives of many Central Florida families. The Scott Center’s location on Florida Tech’s campus allows it to serve the community and perform more dynamically than if it were a stand-alone business, said Colleen Middlebrooks, community relations director. “This site is a practicum site for grad students,” said Middlebrooks. “It’s a training ground for future therapists as well as parents.” Training is one of the Scott Center’s top goals. The Scott Center’s mission statement stresses Service, Research and Training. “The clinic is dedicated to applying research and high quality treatment and training to improve the function and quality of life of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder and related disabilities in Central Florida,”
according to the center’s website. “We study behaviors related to the ASD and the best practices related to treating these behaviors,” Middlebrooks said. The research at the Scott Center is important for creating a more informed and well-equipped community, “By publishing them, we allow others in the community and the world to learn about ASD and replicate our treatment in other places. One of the main issues that the Scott Center works with researching and treating is the concept of Applied Behavioral Analysis in the treatment of Severe Behavior Problems. While individuals with forms of autism may suffer from Severe Behavior Problems, the term can apply to anyone, even those not on the ASD spectrum. The goal of the severe behavior clinic is “using treatments to slow down and ultimately stop the severe behavior,” said Middlebrooks. Autism is treatable with the most success when diagnosed at an early age. Most children at the Scott Center begin treatment at as
young as 2 or 3 years. However, treatment is very time-consuming per-child. “Kids who come for early intervention might even come for three hours a day, five days a week for up to three years,” Middlebrooks said. Because of the one-to-one treatment that children receive, the waiting list for the Scott Center is lengthy. With children at the Center for such a duration of time, it’s being optimistic and persevering within the program that makes all the difference, said Evelyn Sprinkle, a specialist who works directly with children in the program. “You learn to appreciate small gains,” she said. “They will add up over time, and it’s one of the most reinforcing things ever. It’s so wonderful to see progress that’s made.” Sprinkle believes that the Scott Center truly makes a difference in the local area. “The work that is done here and the contribution for the community and the individuals is just off the charts awesome,” she said. “We really benefit from the high volume of students that work
at the Scott Center,” Middlebrooks said. “There’s a limited number of graduate students on staff, but we get lots of enthusiastic new students to interact with the kids.”
Even though the children in treatment bond with the individuals who work with them, the
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Course evaluations go online, student response rates drop drastically Rebekah Duntz Editor-in-Chief Last semester, the university went completely online for midterm and end-of-course evaluations, saving time and money, but making the student response rate plummet. End of course evaluations allow students to comment anonymously on their courses, which in turn, enables professors to make changes to their course format for future semesters in necessary areas. However, they can also play an integral part in whether a professor gets a promotion in some departments on campus. For years, employees spent hours feeding Scantrons through machines, and the evaluations
would pass through many sets of hands before finally making their way to the designated professor’s desk. So, in an effort to honor the phrase “High Tech with a Human Touch,” save man hours and money on paper, faculty decided to work with IT and go online. The problem: the response rate last semester was cut in half, according to Eric Kledzik, Vice President for Information Technology. Because course evaluations are important to faculty, it’s a high priority topic of discussion at faculty meetings this month. They are thinking about adding course evaluations to the point system, as a grade for participation. “So, faculty senate is forming a task force to kind of see what they can do, if this is going
to work, or how we can adjust it to make it work,” Kledzik said. It comes down to what is going to incentivize students to go online on their own time, log into PAWS, and take the course evaluations for each of their classes. Course evaluations are open online for about a week at the end of the semester. After the period passes, IT closes the forms and compiles the data. The faculty is then sent an aggregate PDF form of all the responses. In the meantime, the professor can only see the number of students that have taken it so far, not personal information. “Some of the concerns we talked about when you did this first article was privacy issues,” Kledzik said. “I know that students are still concerned about privacy issues. I get a lot of responses say-
ing, ‘is this really anonymous?’” But it is anonymous. Though students are logging into PAWS, none of their personal information ever makes it to their professors. The evaluations are sent to IT, where programmers compile the responses and comments and match it to the course number. Then, a PDF, containing only the responses and course information, is sent to the professor. “Faculty have no access into that portion of where those evaluations go,” Kledzik said. The informations if funnelled through. According to Kledzik, many universities that went online struggled with their response rates. “We really had good intentions at heart,” said Monica Baloga, Vice President for Institutional Effectiveness and International Programs.
“We were thinking, we’re a technical university. There were a lot of human resources being taken up, a lot of fiscal resources being taken up,” Baloga said. “Now we need to address how to get our students to respond.” “There would be some value added to give students an incentive to go online and do that, and it would better their grade. And that seems most reasonable,” Baloga said. It’s still early, with only one semester of FIT’s evaluations completely online. “The [universities] that I talked to, they said that it took them a couple years to get their response rates back up.” Kledzik said. v
Students get acknowledged by university for sci/tech communication project, page 6