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Forecast, Page 2
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Issue 145, Volume 75
thedailycougar.com
Board of Regents
Future students will face new standards Rules concerning automatic acceptance and general aptitude test score requirements are changed for 2012 incoming freshmen
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By Gordon Furneaux The daily cougar The UH System Board of Regents approved new freshman admission standards last month for first-time students. Beginning fall 2012, students graduating in the top 15 percent of their class will gain automatic acceptance. By 2014, automatic acceptance will be given to incoming freshman who graduate in the top 10 percent. These students would also not be required to provide SAT or ACT scores for admittance, as most applicants would. Provost John Antel said the main reason for this is to ensure more students graduate on time. “We wanted to make sure we took students who are prepared and that have a chance to graduate,” Antel said. This is the first step in a progressive process to become a more competitive research
institution. The SAT and ACT score requirements have also changed. UH will require high school graduates in the top 26 to 50 percent to have a score of 1100 or 21 respectively, while the top 16 to 25 percent will need a score of 1000 or 21. The requirements differ from other Texas schools, but by 2014, when the top ten percent rule takes effect, UH will match other schools’ freshman requirements. For students who do not fall in the top 50 percent of their graduating class, other requirements will be taken into consideration for admittance. “The test scores are one indicator of ability to do college work but so are a lot of things, so we look at class rank and individual reviews,” Antel said. En v i ro n m e n t a l science sophomore Andrew Alleman said he likes the changes made to the admission requirements.
Graduate College of Social Work professor Brené Brown has been selected to share her research on humanity’s fear of vulnerability as part of the TEDx Houston conference this weekend. The format for the conference involves brief 18-minute discussions between the panel and audience members, who must apply to be a member of the audience. “It is a unique experience because it compels you to take one piece of your work and focus on why it’s important to you, and why you think it’s meaningful and relevant to others,” Brown said. “You can’t teach in 18 minutes. You can only hope to ignite passion and inspire people to want to know
“It would be harder to get in,” Alleman said. “But there would be less students that would be put on academic probation or risk being kicked out because they were unable to keep up with their grades.” Education senior Marnita Johnson said it is best for the students, as well as the school, that standards are raised, because one way to measure the status of a school is by the number
of students who do not gain acceptance. “Academics are way more important than anything else,” she said. “I see a lot of high school students who are not prepared and it will help them focus on academics. If they don’t get in they can go to HCC and do what I did.” Many students fall into this category, which Antel and the other regents considered when
Phishing scams target student info
UH to host city’s leaders in thinking By Ashley Evans The daily cougar
Wiki commons
Incoming freshmen will face new test score requirements since the Board of Regents approved changes to admission requirements in May.
Campus IT security warns that hackers are using false UH e-mails to gather information gg
they voted on the new standards. “Individual reviews are very important. Let’s say you have an applicant who did not test very well, but worked full time during high school or maybe the student has great talents in other areas,” Antel said. “The individual reviews allow you to look beyond the test scores to other factors. One size does not fit all.” news@thedailycougar.com
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courtesy of Brené Brown
Graduate College of Social Work research professor Brené Brown will speak on vulnerability and culture at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts’ Wortham Theatre on Saturday, June 12. more.” Brown has spent over a decade researching the concepts of shame, fear, compassion and authenticity. At the heart of her research is the concept of vulnerability so, when given an 18-minute window, she decided that would be most important to talk about. “We are a very vulnerabilityphobic culture and many of our struggles in society today relate back to our inability to sit see TED, page 6
By Gordon Furneaux The daily cougar UH has recently become a target of a form of online impersonation known as phishing. Web impersonators, or phishers, have been sending e-mails claiming to be official university officials in order to gain secure information from students. Chief Information Security Officer Mary Dickerson said these attacks have been occurring more frequently in universities across the country. “The information security vendor RSA issued a report in which they note that January 2010 saw a 21 percent increase in phishing attacks over December 2009,” Dickerson said, adding that the report noted a growing trend of phishing attacks against colleges and universities.
“From our observations, they seem to come in waves,” she said. “The past 45 days have been exceptionally heavy for phishing attacks at UH.” A common lure used by phishers is sending e-mails to students under a false UH banner in order to gain students’ e-mail passwords. “They may set up a phishing site to obtain users’ e-mail credentials, which would allow the phisher to log into the user’s e-mail and obtain information on other accounts the user might have (banking accounts, etc.) or use the victim’s e-mail account to send spam or new phishing messages,” Dickerson said. Although students are the ones being victimized, the hacking begins by first finding e-mail addresses for students from the university. see PHISHING, page 6
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Do not reply to e-mails or pop-up messages that ask for personal or financial information Do not open any attachments in suspicious e-mails Do not click on any links embedded in suspicious e-mails Research the subject line of a suspicious e-mail to determine if that subject line is a known phishing scam
Ways to spot a fake UH e-mail gg
If it asks for personal information
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Bad or fuzzy graphics
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Outdated UH logo
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Incomplete “From:” address
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Bad capitalization Bad grammar
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Lack of contact information
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No signature
Source: UH Information Technology