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THE DAILY TEXAN Hems up, heels high for spring fashion Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Serving the University of Texas at Austin community since 1900
By Shabab Siddiqui Daily Texan Staff President William Powers Jr. told faculty members that the University is working with the UT System to address the letter from Gov. Rick Perry’s office that asks state agencies to prepare a plan to cut 5 percent of their state-provided budgets. The Jan. 15 letter, signed by Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and Speaker of the Texas House Joe Straus, requires the UT System and other state agencies to submit a prioritized plan of potential cuts by Feb. 15. The state budget for the 2010-2011 biennium, which was set by the Legislature in the summer of 2009, is expected to face a deficit by the 2011 legislative session due to insufficient sales-tax revenues. All faculty members were invited to attend Monday’s general faculty meeting with Powers, which was followed by the semester’s first Faculty Council meeting. The council is the faculty’s elect-
ed, representative body. Powers said that the letter does not ask the University to cut 5 percent of its total budget, but instead, 5 percent of state general revenue. In 2009-2010, state general revenue made up about 30 percent of the University’s academic core budget. The academic core budget primarily covers faculty and staff salaries but also includes scholarships, utilities, maintenance and operation. The University received $333 million in recurring state general revenue this school year and expects to receive a 1-percent increase for each of the next two years. Powers said a 5-percent cut in general revenue from the 20102011 biennium would amount to a $29 million cut from the University’s budget. Spokespeople at the UT System said the Regents, the chancellor and presidents from UT System schools were working to figure out the letter’s intention during a meeting Monday, but refused to comment on precise meeting details after it had concluded. Powers addressed pre-submit-
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Mary Kang| Daily Texan Staff
Jon Olson, an associate engineering professor, listens during a Faculty Council meeting Monday afternoon.
Faculty Council applauds decision to keep field lab Board of Regents agrees to keep Brackenridge lab out of redevelopment By Shabab Siddiqui Daily Texan Staff The Faculty Council passed a resolution — to a rare round of applause — during its first meeting of the semester, thanking the Board of Regents for unanimously agreeing to keep the Brackenridge Field Laboratory at its current location. “The field lab is an incredible opportunity,” said Janet Staiger, radio-television-film professor and the Council’s chairwoman. “By working on the field lab, the students in bio-sciences have this incredible academic resource.” The Dec. 22 decision to keep the lab was made by a special advisory committee composed of Regents Janiece Longoria, Printice Gary and Eugene Powell. “After several discussions, it became clear that UT-Austin’s Brackenridge Field Lab is an integral part of the College of Natural Sciences and its mission to provide an outstanding academic experience for students, faculty and researchers,” Longoria said in a
statement. The approximately 500-acre Brackenridge Tract was donated by Col. George W. Brackenridge to UT in 1910. Along with the lab, the tract boasts the Lions Municipal Golf Course and graduate-student housing. The lab was created in 1967 and remains as a center for biodiversity research at the University. It houses hundreds of species of plants, insects and birds and more than a dozen types of animals. It is used frequently by UT students and faculty for research purposes, and it serves as a center for workshops and field trips. In 2006, the Regents’ Brackenridge Tract Task Force hired Cooper, Robertson & Partners, a New York-based architecture and urban design firm, to create a plan for the 350 acres of undeveloped land. The firm submitted two proposals in June that would turn the land into commercial and residential areas, bringing revenue to the University. One plan would reduce the size of the Brackenridge Field Lab, while the other would relocate it. Both plans would eliminate graduate housing and the golf
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Guard lets her guard down
Powers seeks faculty input on budget President addresses key issues of gender equity, Mack Brown’s pay raise
TOMORROW’S WEATHER
SPORTS PAGE 7
LIFE&ARTS PAGE 12
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Up in smoke
Kari Rosenfeld | Daily Texan Staff
A firefighter emerges from the smoke during the planned burn of a grassland near the intersection of MoPac Boulevard and Interstate Highway 45 on Monday. The burn is part of a plan to restore the land and improve the quality of the water that flows from the grassland to Barton Springs.
INSIDE: Read more about the grassland fire on page 9
Online texts lower costs for French, German students By Priscilla Pelli Daily Texan Staff With the help of a grant recently awarded by the U.S. Department of Education, students enrolled in the University’s introductory German and French foreign language classes will pay less than $20 for their textbooks. The Texas Language Technology Center of the College of Liberal Arts received a $263,000 grant in October to create online instructional materials, which will provide alternatives for students who are required to have textbooks for French and German
classes each semester. The instructional materials are published online and allow open access to students for a fraction of the price of commercially published textbooks. Carl Blyth, director of the Texas Language Technology Center, said the materials are more dynamic than regular textbooks because professors can add information to keep the instructional materials up to date. The online textbooks can encourage more students to enter higher education by reducing the amount students have to spend
each year on textbooks, Blyth said. The popularity of online textbooks has affected the conventional textbook industry. Since the 2010 fall semester, there has been a 10-percent drop in textbook purchases due to the availability of textbooks online, said University Co-op President George Mitchell. “A lot of data shows that students spend about $900 to $1000 a year on books alone,” Blyth said. “It keeps people out of the market when entering higher education.” Karen Kelton, senior lecturer in the Department of French and
Italian at the University, said she uses the online instructional material to show her class videos of students’ experiences in France to help them learn French visually. “Basically, for motivation, it can’t be beat because we’re using our students [and native speakers] as models of teaching a language,” Kelton said. Other higher-education institutions across the state, including Rice University, Texas Christian University and the Lone Star College System, will collaborate to keep the instructional materials current.
Business school applicants decrease nationwide McCombs sees reduction in applications but stays constant in enrollment Julie Bissinger Daily Texan Staff A recent, nationwide trend that shows a decrease in applicants to business schools across the U.S. can also be seen at UT. The percentage of freshmen applying to business schools nationwide fell from about 17 percent in 2008 to more than 14 percent in 2009, according to a survey released Sunday by the Higher Education Research Institute. According to the survey, the economic recession of the past few years played a hand in the numbers, since the study found a correlation between the current applicant pool and applicants to business schools in 1974. This was the last time the numbers were so low and a year that also experienced an economic recession. McCombs saw a 6-percent decline in the number of freshmen applicants from 2008 to 2009. More than 6,700 students applied to McCombs during the summer and fall of 2008, while about 6,400 students applied during the summer and fall of 2009, said Augus-
Students converse in front of the stock ticker inside the McCombs Business School on Monday afternoon. McCombs has experienced a declining rate of freshman applicants which echoes the nationwide decrease of business majors.
Mourin NIzam Daily Texan Staff
tine Garza, deputy director of admissions. Despite the drop in business applicants, the number of students enrolled in McCombs has remained relatively constant, about 800 students, since 2006. Eleven percent of those admitted to the University during the summer and fall of 2009 declared business as their major, according to statistics from the Office of Information Management and
Analysis. This number had hovered at 12 percent during previous semesters. Information management professor Prabhudev Konana said he hasn’t noticed much change in the number of students enrolled in his classes. “There hasn’t been a decrease in the number of students, just more sections with smaller classes,” Konana said. “There is a continued demand for
[classes].” Business freshman Jackie Kreda said that the economy did not have an influence on her choice of major. Interested in commercial real estate, she said she applied to McCombs because of the finance department’s real estate concentration option. “People talk about how the economy is bad, but nobody really says that it’s affecting their major,” Kreda said.
TPAC Open Forum Who: The Tuition Policy Advisory Committee What: open forum Where: The Avaya Auditorium, Room 2.302, of the Applied Computational Engineering and Sciences Building When: Today at 1 p.m.
Why: The committee proposed in December a 3.95-percent tuition increase per year over the next two years. The Regents, responsible for setting tuition, will vote on the proposal in March. TPAC is gathering student, faculty, staff and community feedback about the proposed tuition increase, and President William Powers Jr. will attend the forum to hear attendees’ opinions. Source: Viviana Aldous