Issue 2, Fall 2015

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ncfcatalyst.com | @ncfcatalyst

CATALYST

PCP BECOMES COUP pg.

WALL PREVIEWS pg.

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SEPTEMBER 16, 2015 VOLUME XXXIII ISSUE II

WHAT’S INSIDE

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A student newspaper of New College of Florida

Reserve fund request approved for CWC BY SYDNEY KRULJAC

BIG E’S CLOSING

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RS E RM ET FA ARK M

12 BEACH YOGA

Last spring, New College of Florida’s Board of Trustees (BOT) voted to increase the health services fee by $1.46 per credit hour, which would in turn amount to roughly $40,000 per year for the Counseling and Wellness Center (CWC). Shortly after, Gov. Rick Scott implied that the legislative budget requests would be at risk if the school followed through and increased the health services fee, leaving the CWC at a loss for funding. On Thursday, Sept. 3, students at the Towne Meeting voted in favor of a reserve fund request of $20,000 to go toward CWC psychiatry. Because of the funding, psychiatry is now available and free on Friday afternoons for students referred to a psychiatrist by the CWC therapists. “It’s kind of got a history,” said Dr. Anne Fisher, who has been working with the CWC for 26 years. “Quite a few years ago, we were able to have a psychiatrist here that the health fee paid for. So they came a couple hours a week, and we were able to provide the resources.” When Dr. Fisher first began, she placed money into reserves, recognizing the CWC would need it someday.

Sydney Kruljac/Catalyst

A reserve fund request of $20,000 was recently approved for the CWC.

“I would tell the students we need health increases because we’re going to get in trouble someday,” Dr. Fisher continued. “‘Oh but there’s a reserve right now, we’ll worry about that in the future.’ So what kind of happened is […] we just got into a place where the reserve got down.” Prior to the reserve fund request, psychiatry was not as easily accessible to students, and, at one point, was not available at all due to lack of funding. This meant students who needed psychiatric help had to go off campus

and use their medical insurance. Last year, Dr. Fisher tried to contract Manatee Glens, a not-for-profit organization for mental health and addictions, but they denied the request at the last minute. It was not until Dr. Laura D’Angelo agreed to provide psychiatric services with her insurance that New College had a psychiatrist on campus again. “Last year, students with

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Data science program awaiting accreditation BY BIANCA BENEDI Previously just a lofty idea, New College’s first master’s program in data science has begun its test run this semester, with the application for accreditation turned in on Sept. 15. The college will have to wait until Dec. 6 for the final accreditation decision. In the meantime, courses intended for the data science program are already underway. New College undergraduates as well as non-degree seeking graduate students are attending, or “prototyping,” the courses this semester. Among the students are those who have just earned their bachelor’s degree and some who have already established careers in the data science field. Many of them plan are interested in applying for the program once accredited. “We’ve taken only a couple of students, maybe one, who comes right out of undergraduate school without some type of work history,” said Professor Patrick McDonald, director of the data science program and one of the nine professors who will teach the master’s level courses. “It’s better if people have

some type of work history. Then they have a much more informed position regarding what it is they want out of data science.” Four new professors hired for the program are teaching courses this semester, including Professors Simant Dube, Gary Kalmanovich, Matt Lepinski and Mike Sutherland. Each of them was hired over the past year in order to accommodate the anticipated program as well as expand the computer science resources, an increasingly popular area of concentration (AOC). Professor Dube and Professor Sutherland are teaching Statistical Inference for Science, as well as Dealing with Data, an introductory data science courses created for and available to students of all AOCs. Professor Kalmanovich is teaching Introduction to Algorithms and Algorithms for Data Science, and Professor Lepinski is teaching Introduction to Programming in Python and Computer Networks this semester, the latter of which has a prerequisite of one year of programming. The cost of the program has still not been fully hammered out, but some

numbers are being thrown around amongst faculty and the state. In-state students are tentatively slated to pay roughly $460 per credit hour, while out-of-state students may be looking at a price tag of $1,170 per credit hour. For the current semester however, nondegree seeking students are not paying for the courses they attend. Should the program be granted accreditation in December, an equivalency exam may be offered to the non-degree seeking students to waive the required courses that they are currently taking without credit. Graham “Tanner” Robart, (’09), is one of the graduate students proto-typing this semester’s classes and planning on applying for the program once it reaches accreditation. Robart graduated from New College with a neuroscience and computer science AOC two years ago, and returned for the chance to participate in the program. “It’s of personal interest to me,” Robart said. “I’m excited to work with the same professors, and new professors as well, in a more advanced context.” Robart is planning on taking

the equivalency exam, but, “in the meantime, it’s like, why not take these courses?” Attending New College as a pseudo-graduate student, Robart said, is a strange experience for an alum. “I don’t spend a lot of time on campus. It’s weird to see people that I was living with in third court who are now thesising.” The chance to work one-onone with professors in close quarters is a big draw for Robart, who appreciates the current 1:2 professor to student ratio in the program. For now, the data science master’s program has to rely on patience until December. In the meantime, Professor McDonald and Professor Sutherland are working on coordinating a statistics consulting group in the coming months to offer help to other students. The group would be composed of current data science program members who would serve as a tutoring resource for other New College students. This could be a

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