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THE DAILY TEXAN EXPOSURE PAGE 5A
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A close-up look at East Austin Wednesday, December 9, 2009
Heisman Race 2009
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Tamir Kalifa | Daily Texan Staff
EMS paramedic Chebon Tiger carries a patient out of an ambulance and into St. David’s Hospital on Saturday night. “Picking people up all the time, moving people around, it can be dangerous,” Tiger said. “It’s a lot of responsibility.”
A paramedic’s chance arrives when ‘time is of the essence’ ALONG FOR THE RIDE By Bobby Longoria When seconds determine the difference between life and death, AustinTravis County Emergency Medical Services paramedics respond with urgency in providing pre-hospital care to patients, while keeping cool, level heads. As trained medical-care professionals, EMS paramedics serve as an initial emergency response when time is of the essence and when emergencyroom care is not readily available. They tread on to ensure public health and safety, sometimes working through whole days without rest.
Amid the growing excitement and anxiety surrounding the UT football game Saturday night, EMS paramedics Chebon Tiger and Rebekah Moden stood alert downtown, waiting for a call. “We are paid for availability ... We have to do so many different things,” Tiger said. “We are there with the training. If we don’t help [the patients], nobody is going to help them. We have to separate ourselves emotionally from it long enough to do our job.” Within five minutes of beginning their first 12-hour shift together at 7 p.m., Tiger and Moden were dispatched to the Frank Erwin Center, where a man had passed out during a graduation ceremony. The center’s in-house EMS unit provided initial care for the man, and Tiger and Moden continued it upon their arrival by checking his vital signs, in-
cluding blood sugar, blood pressure and blood-cell carbon dioxide levels. While transporting the man to the hospital, Tiger drove the ambulance while Moden remained with the patient in the back, keeping track of his vitals and comforting him during the journey. After transferring the man to the hospital’s ER, Tiger and Moden walked back to the ambulance with a stretcher and paperwork in hand as the man waved goodbye. “We are going to show [our patients] that we care. We are going to go out of our way to do whatever we can to help them out,” Moden said. “We are not there just doing a job — we care about them.” Austin-Travis County EMS has approximately 400 paramedics spread more than 38 available ambulances
Éric Ou | Daily Texan Staff
Richard Flores, an associate dean in the College of Liberal Arts, is one of the members of an advising committee that must help Dean Randy Diehl decide where budget cuts will be made. tation with department chairs, trimmed $5 million off the college’s budget. Those changes will take effect Sept. 1, 2010. “For ‘10 to ‘11, [the $5 million] will definitely result in fewer lecturers and graduate students,” said Jamie Southerland, assistant dean of business affairs, of the first round of cuts.
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Budget cuts not to derail construction By Lena Price Daily Texan Staff Plans to construct the new $100 million Liberal Arts building are on track, despite a flat University budget and reallocations that could lead to lecturer cuts within the college. The college will have to reallocate a total of $3.8 million in recurring funds to partially finance the building. Individual departments will have the final say on where the money comes from, but the reallocations will likely result in the elimination of some lecturer and assistant instructor positions, as well as changes to foreign language requirements. The 200,0000-square-foot building will contain 23 classrooms, offices and a study space for the college’s 14,000 students. If the UT Board of Regents approves the project in May, construction will begin in the spring of 2011 and should be completed by the summer of 2013. Steindam Hall, located near the East Mall, will be torn down to create a space for the building. Dan Slesnick, associate dean of Research, Facilities and Information Technology, said now is the optimal time to move construction plans forward because the college has used all of its available space. “Trying to find space for offices, graduate students and class-
rooms is almost all that I do,” Slesnick said.
Budget Issues Discussion about the new building began under the college’s previous administration, and current dean Randy Diehl has identified the project as one of his top priorities. Anthropology chair Samuel Wilson, who has served on liberal arts building committees since the mid-1990s, said the college predicted it would run out of space almost 20 years ago. “It’s a hard time to do this, but we don’t have very many options,” Wilson said. “It would be impossible to start and then start again later. We don’t have any kind of budget leeway.” In addition to the money needed to fund the building, the college will have to find $7 million to fund targeted faculty merit pay increases and 49 new faculty positions, goals set by University President William Powers. “The building always gets thrown in with discussions of the budget reallocations,” Slesnick said. “The reality is that we would be having these discussions regardless of whether or not the building was an issue.”
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Liberal Arts to trim budget again By Hudson Lockett Daily Texan Staff After completing a first wave of budget reallocations this fall that included layoffs to non-tenured faculty and changes to foreign language curriculums, a committee of 10 faculty members appointed by Liberal Arts Dean Randy Diehl is taking the lead in deciding the next round of cuts. The cuts will be made over the span of three to five years, starting with the 2011-2012 academic year, said Richard Flores, associate dean for academic affairs at the college. Final approval of the Academic Planning Advisory Committee’s recommendations, which will be released late next semester, will rest with Diehl. With fewer donor contributions, a flat state budget and fewer endowment funds being given to the University, officials in the College of Liberal Arts are looking at how to cut $8 million from their budget to pay for University priorities like faculty and staff merit pay. The first round of cuts, which were decided by Diehl in consul-
TOMORROW’S WEATHER
The advisory committee will recommend to Diehl late this spring how and where to make the additional $8 million in budget cuts over the next five years. Flores, who sits on the committee but does not have a vote, declined to say which areas within the college the panel was currently looking at. The group
will not make any recommendations until it has reviewed every area of the college completely, he said. “What’s inevitable is that cuts will be made,” Flores said. “Where, we don’t know.” Rhetoric and writing professor Davida Charney, a member of the committee, said that since the start of the semester, the group has met weekly to learn about staffing and budgeting at the college and departmental levels. She said the group is reviewing information including how many credit hours students earn in each department, the faculty and staff who teach them and how each department manages its graduate programs. The committee will begin meeting with departments and other units in the college as it gets closer to making recommendations in the spring, but its main function is not to be a conduit of information for the college, Charney said. The other members of the
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Jordy Wagoner | Daily Texan Staff
Human development and family sciences freshman Maria Patino and grants and contracts specialist Meghan Thomson work in close quarters in the Population Research Center.
Tuition increase adds to available student aid By Viviana Aldous Daily Texan Staff One week after a University committee recommended a nearly 4-percent tuition increase per year over the next two years, it is still unclear how need-based financial aid would be affected if the increase were implemented. The Tuition Policy Advisory Committee, which is composed of four student leaders, five faculty members and three non-voting advisory members, recommended tuition be increased by 3.95 percent per year over the next two years. Though an increase would raise the cost of attendance, it would also increase the amount of money available for aid, said Tom Me-
lecki, director of student financial services. About 20 percent of each resident student’s tuition is set aside for funding financial aid, as the Texas Education Code mandates. More than $2 million would be added to available aid if an increase were implemented, he said. Including a $65 per-semester fee for the construction of the new Student Activity Center, the increase translates to about $240 more in tuition each semester next year for each undergraduate. He said it is difficult to know how financial aid will be affected if tuition is increased. The
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