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RUTGERS UNIVERSITY—NEW BRUNSWICK
FRIDAY FEBRUARY 22, 2019
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Biology is top ranked major Rutgers offers ELIZABETH KILPATRICK CONTRIBUTING WRITER
General Biology was ranked as the number one major at Rutgers University—New Brunswick, according to College Factual. Christy Beal, an assistant professor of General Biology at the University, said the major has expanded it aims to help students learn and conceptualize the lessons while also preparing them for their post-Rutgers experiences. Beal said the University’s Division of Life Sciences has a whole group of people working toward the same goal, which is to make a foundation for students that can be used in graduate school, medical school or whichever path they choose to take after their undergraduate years. “There is integrated communication between faculty and staff,” Beal said. “Everyone meets together every week and reviews what needs to be done.” Biology workshops, which are led weekly by teaching assistants, walk the students through practicing certain concepts and drive students to
work with each other. “Students are more enthusiastic about what we’re doing in workshop in recent years,” Beal said. In addition to the workshops that meet once a week, there are practice sessions approximately 4 to 6 times a week for an hour to an hour and a half. Students work together in groups and often play challenging games to better understand material. There are also optional practice groups that give students an extra credit toward their course load. Beal said she came to Rutgers as a teacher in the Fall 2015 semester, during what she described as a re-modification of the course. Members of the Division of Life Sciences are still working on it. She estimates there to be approximately 2,200 students studying General Biology per semester. Beal said she sees improvements in both the major and the students in the classrooms. “Students are asking better questions,” Beal said. “It’s one thing to memorize, but another to actually be able to apply and make connections and innovate.”
Students win free tuition in Career Services contest MADISON MCGAY CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Assistant Professor of General Biology at the University Christy Beal first came to teach at Rutgers in 2015. She said she has seen the improvements in the biology major. TWITTER
Over the past four years, University Career Services has been offering students the opportunity to earn a semester of free tuition through the #RutgersWorks Free Tuition Career Challenge. “The #RutgersWorks Free Tuition challenge is an incentive program that rewards Rutgers students for their participation in career-related activities both in person and online,” said Kaitlyn Weiss, associate director for strategic outreach at University Career Services. Students must complete at least ten challenge requirement “stamps” in order to be entered into the drawing for free tuition for the following semester. Stamps can be earned through involvement in events held by University Career Services and online at Rutgers Handshake. SEE CONTEST ON PAGE 4
Researchers creating linguistics database RYAN HALSTATER CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Ken Safir, a professor in the Department of Linguistics, said the database for the Afranaph Project was made specifically for linguistic purposes, but it has also made an impact on other fields because of its innovative research model. RUTGERS.EDU
A team at Rutgers is creating a database that helps develop descriptions of African languages in order to further linguistics research. The Afranaph Project began in 2003, where only five case files of languages were developed with each containing research and information about a particular language. The project now has 33 language case files, according to the project’s website, and is led by Ken Safir, a professor in the Department of Linguistics. “There are now over 6,000, 7,000 languages in the world. About 1,500 or perhaps 2,100 of them are in Africa, and we have very few of these languages even remotely described,” he said. The project operates by finding native speaker linguists in Africa, providing training if possible and incorporating the linguistic data they contribute into a database. Safir said in the best case, this interaction develops into the native speakers becoming collaborators. People are usually quite proud of the languages they speak and want them to be recognized. That means individuals who are trained
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in linguistics tend to want to study their indigenous language. The Afranaph Project allows for individuals to participate in the international community of linguists and helps build up collaborations and careers, Safir said. Part of the project also involves orthography, or representing the sounds of a language through written or printed symbols. “Most of the languages of Africa are understudied or not studied at all, some of them don’t have orthography,” he said. “And so the goal of many African linguists when they first learn linguistics is to create an orthography for their language.” Safir said Africa is an appealing continent to study because there are many languages and ethnic groups. Lydia Newkirk, a graduate student in the Department of Linguistics and member of the project, said she enjoyed looking at the datasets and seeing how the pronouns worked in all of the different languages. “Part of our goal with Afranaph is to collect a lot of information from a lot of different languages, especially African languages, so we can SEE DATABASE ON PAGE 5