Wednesday, February 20, 2013
94th year • Issue 23
‘Three Sisters’ to premiere Friday / 9 Serving the University of Toledo since 1919
Inside
www.IndependentCollegian.com
‘Imagine 2017’
Budget
Process of allocating student fees begins
Toledo alum prepares for spring training with Marlins /8
By Lindsay Mahaney Assistant News Editor
Bob Taylor / IC
Approximately 80 people attended a forum hosted by Main Campus Provost Scott Scarborough Tuesday night about Imagine 2017, his strategic plan.
Art Tatum scholarship concert set for Tuesday / 9
Students question five-year plan By Amanda Eggert
Don’t quiet the student voice / 4
In brief UT rowing team puts forth strong showing in ‘virtual’ race The University of Toledo rowing team competed in its first competition of the spring semester, the Hammer Ergatta, Feb. 9 at Cleveland State. The “virtual” race is conducted over a distance of 2,000 meters on ergometer rowing machines connected to a computer system that displays the time and progress of each individual rower on a projector screen. The race, which is nearly 1.25 miles in length, is considered a sprint distance, with most athletes finishing between 6-8 minutes. The field for the Hammer Ergatta featured a field of 50 rowers from six universities, including UT, Cleveland State, Case Western, John Carroll, Dayton and Cincinnati. Fourteen Toledo athletes competed across five events and brought home two medals, in addition to six top five finishes. Receiving medals for UT were freshman Emily Wilson in the Women’s Open Novice event and sophomore Jayde Carney in the Men’s Lightweight Novice event.
Staff Reporter
The deficit, smaller class sizes and flipped classrooms were some of the topics students questioned Main Campus Provost Scott Scarborough about at Tuesday night’s student forum. Student Government hosted the forum and about 80 were in attendance to hear about Imagine 2017, the Main Campus strategic plan. Scarborough said he wanted to hold the meeting to allow students to have an impact on the plan as it begins to take shape. “The next three months are going to be a living hell,” Scarborough said during the meeting. “If you go through this type of change with all these people who are passionate and intelligent, not only in this room, but our faculty, these conversations are not going to be easy.” Many questions involved how UT planned to deal with next year’s projected $36 million deficit, which Scarborough said it will be a year and a half process to fix the deficit. “For the last two years, on top of losing the $20 million from federal stimulus money, we’ve also had enrollment decline exceed what we thought,” Scarborough said. Proposed class size changes entail a minimum of 30 students in a class, compared to the current 24. This opened up dialogue about student to faculty ratio. “Colleges with a smaller student to faculty ratio are generally ranked better
In last week’s issue, there was a factual error in the article “Student comedians to compete at ‘Last Rocket Standing.’” The event is not sponsored by Campus Activities and Programming. We apologize for the error.
How it works
Scarborough
university is headed,” Greer said. “I was a little unsure for a while and it’s always frightening to everybody. I think we are all here because we want to make sure our degree is going to matter, that it’s going to be relevant.” SG Senator Ben Lynn, a sophomore double majoring in history and political science, said the forum was interesting as well as informative. “It cleared up some misunderstandings, some cloudiness about the provost’s plan and the entire Imagine 2017,” he said. “It was nice to see so many people there that had so much concern. It’s good to know that something of this importance is definitely high on people’s radar.” Some students disagreed with the plan and what the outcome of the plan will do. “I was appreciative of the provost coming and addressing us, however, I feel not everybody’s questions got answered,” said Alcy Barakat, a senior majoring in biology. “The plan is still so vague and not put together. There are still a lot of questions students have and even the questions See Forum / 5
Kaye Patten Wallace, vice president for the student experience, said the committee is comprised of diverse students who will represent the student body as a whole. “The committee is comprised of the student government president and vice president, student senate chair, and I think student government appoints four other students to the process,” Wallace said. “Then we ask them to make the appointments; we ask them to make sure that there’s diversity in terms of size of student organization, diversity in terms of goals and purposes of student organizations.” Wallace said the committee should be focused on what is best for all students. “I remind them that they should be looking at this process and their decisions based on what’s best for the whole, the larger group as opposed from the individual student organization or personal perspective,” she said.
Transparency
Paul Brandt, a junior majoring in construction engineering technology, said he doesn’t think the current process is transparent enough. He said he wants to be informed about what decisions the general fees committee is making. “The big thing I’m interested in is information,” Brandt said. “I’m passionate about
See Fees / 5
Community Service
UT students help younger generations find their own ‘swag’ By Josh Egler Staff Reporter
Correction
because those students get more individualized attention in their classes,” said a student in the crowd. Scarborough said problems wouldn’t be created from increasing the size by a few students. He said in comparison, UT still has a better student to faculty ratio than larger universities. Students also questioned the idea of “flipped classrooms,” which involve students watching lectures online as homework and spending class time to discuss material that is usually worked on outside of class. Several students were angered, and some didn’t think spending time outside of class to watch lectures was a good idea. “I would have to go online and potentially watch 18 credit hours at home,” another student in the crowd said. “Now if I have a job on top of that, or even if one of my classes doesn’t assign homework in the room, where am I finding all this time?” Scarborough said the flipped classroom concept would only be applied to certain classes. He emphasized that the plan does not involve adding extra work on students, because students would be “literally flipping” their workload. SG Cabinet member Elizabeth Greer, a senior majoring in public health, said the changes at UT are scary but she is happy there is a plan in place. “I have a lot more confidence in where our
University of Toledo undergraduates pay over $500 in fees annually, and the process that helps determine where the money will go next year is underway. Student Government leaders will appoint other students to a committee to assess how general fees should be allocated for the following year’s budget. The committee listens to presentation put on by all the departments funded by student fees, discusses how to allocate the money, and send a recommendation to the administration.
UT, I love UT. And UT is doing all these changes but nobody knows anything. That’s what irritates me.” Brandt spoke at a previous SG meeting voicing his concern about the lack of attention towards student issues like the student fees. Student Government President Paulette Bongratz said the allocation process is done by a committee because there would be too many voices to consider if the entire student body gave their opinion. “I think it’s best for the people that are in the room listening to the presentations, looking at the budgets to make those decisions,” Bongratz said. “Without giving every student all of that information, they could vote on what they want, but they couldn’t give an accurate, even depiction.” Bongratz said understanding how to allocate the budget is complicated and the amount of deficit is difficult to comprehend. “I think it’s hard for every student to understand the fiscal deficit,” Bongratz said. “As a business student, I think I have the luxury of studying and understanding it a little bit better and to me it’s mind boggling.” Marcia Culling, senior business manager for the department of student affairs, helps the committee with understanding how to allocate money and a general understanding of UT’s budget. “We have an initial meeting, I pass out materials,” Culling said. “They are told they can come see me at any time if they have questions and want to go over it. Often they do take advantage of that.” Former SG president Matt Rubin said when he headed up the general fee committee in 2011 and 2012, he felt well prepared to allocate the budget after speaking with Culling. “I think we had some kind of a preparation meeting or some kind of training beforehand,” Rubin said. “I think it was an adequate amount of training on the part of student affairs.”
Sophomore Sam Naumann said that to him, the word “swagger” means, “coming into your own and being yourself.” Naumann and about 100 other UT students joined motivational speaker John Livingston, head of Lifeplan Toledo, to create a program called Leadership with Swagger. The program is designed to help teach high school students how to be future leaders and find their
own personal swagger. “What we’re doing is using the term to be able to communicate and connect different generations on what leadership is and can be and what it means to be and use the concept to develop future leaders,” Livingston said. Livingston said five groups of college students developed a marketing campaign of how to sell Leadership with Swagger to high school students, and they decided to market
the campaign through social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Naumann, a liaison between UT students and the campaign, was part of the first marketing class of Leadership with Swagger that brought the program into the public eye. He said students from area high schools are selected to become part of the group and go through a “life-plan course” and are given illustrations on
how to lead “with swag.” “The UT team, under Sam’s leadership, is going to begin to develop strategies on the concept of UT’s swagger,” Livingston said. “And they’re going to use that concept to give ‘swag-amonials’ which are testimonies of their experience at UT and will they be able to use that experience to lead into the future.” “High school students every week will be directed to Sam’s group to look at how they’re
marketing swagger to college students, and then they’ll begin to emulate those concepts at their schools,” he said. Naumann said swagger is, “a journey of destinations towards swag.” “From a college student’s perspective we’re trying to say to these students, earning swag and getting swag is a multi-step process that comes from excelling in high school, See Swag / 5