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Wednesday, December 3, 2014
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SYSTEM
UT to seek millions for buildings By Julia Brouillette @juliakbrou
For the 2015 legislative session, the UT System is seeking funding from the Texas Legislature for large infrastructure projects at each of its educational institutions through tuition revenue bonds. In a July meeting, the Board of Regents approved
the System’s plan to request $1.9 billion in tuition revenue bonds, also known as TRBs, from state lawmakers. UT-Austin’s share in the proposal includes two building renovation projects: $100 million for Welch Hall and $105 million for the McCombs School of Business. If authorized, the proposed TRBs will pledge a revenue stream serviced by
income from tuition charges levied against students with the expectation that the state will later reimburse the expenditures. Barry McBee, System vice chancellor and chief governmental relations officer, said the lack of TRBs has contributed to overcrowding in classrooms and more limited access to laboratories at many of Texas’
public universities. While the System has used funding alternatives, such as the state’s Permanent University Fund and philanthropic contributions, to keep some projects afloat, they are not enough to meet all the needs of higher education institutions, according to McBee. “A good example in Austin would be the engineering building; that was a TRB
request last time,” McBee said. “It was the highest priority for UT-Austin, and it was obviously not funded, but we were able to put together funding for the project to proceed. That probably means that some other priority project on the campus had to be delayed.” The legislature historically
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SG page 2
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Xintong Guo | Daily Texan Staff
The Cockrell School of Engineering aims to achieve gender balance in classrooms and began an initiative in January to increase the number of women entering the program.
course she took her freshman year. She said her civil engineering courses tend to be more gender balanced, but there are still more male students. According to WEP, 38.3
By Eleanor Dearman
ENGINEERING page 2
By Alex Wilts
it wasn’t as well-distributed as the BME classes,” Collins said. Civil engineering senior Kirstin Rose said she was one of two girls in a mechanical engineering design
SG approves new code for rules, operations
percent of the undergraduate civil engineering students are women. To combat the gender imbalances in mechanical
TRB page 3
Despite efforts, Cockrell gender gap persists
undergraduate enrollees are female — courses she has taken in electrical engineering have been maledominated. “There were definitely some girls in there, but
STUDENT GOVERNMENT
Student Government voted unanimously to approve its new Code and Rules of Procedures at Tuesday’s SG meeting. The code’s content, which the SG Rules and Regulations Committee has been reviewing since September, is a compiled version of SG’s formerly separate bylaws and procedures and serves as a detailed explanation of SG operations and rules. The code is used alongside a more general constitution that was updated last spring. The formatting of the code has been under review since summer, after controversy over the handling of interview notes for external and internal positions last spring. The controversy led to a decision by the Office of the Vice President for Legal Affairs that releasing interview notes violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. The release of interview notes was not discussed at Tuesday’s meeting. At an SG meeting Nov. 12, SG agency leaders spoke out against an agency review process that was added to the document, saying they were not aware of the addition and asked that the code not be passed until they voiced their concerns and suggestions. “It’s good to reevaluate what agencies do and make sure they are still relevant in serving students, but I personally had an issue with the makeup of that committee,” said Amber Magee, Diversity and Inclusion agency director. Rules and Regulation committee members said
CAMPUS
As the Cockrell School of Engineering aims to achieve gender balance in its classrooms, some engineering women still feel outnumbered. According to statistics from the Women in Engineering Program, or WEP, the gap is largest in the electrical, aerospace and mechanical engineering departments, where, this fall, 15.0, 15.4 and 18.8 percent of undergraduate students are women, respectively. “Those departments are really focused on trying to improve that gap because, if I look at biomedical engineering, it’s over 40 percent women, but mechanical and electrical are under 20 percent,” Cockrell School dean Sharon Wood said. “So, if your two biggest departments are the ones with the smallest ratios, that’s where the efforts are being concentrated.” While there is a large number of women in biomedical engineering senior Samantha Collins’ biomedical engineering courses — where 44.9 percent of
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CAMPUS
RESEARCH
Taiye Selasi is the author of “Ghana Must Go: A Novel” and several other novels and short stories. She spoke about her inspirations and techniques used in her stories at the Symposium for African Writers in the Student Union on Tuesday afternoon.
Consortium receives millions to continue oil-spill research By Ariana Guerra @arie_war08
Mike McGraw Daily Texan Staff
African writer speaks at symposium By Josh Willis @joshwillis35
African author Taiye Selasi spoke at the Symposium for African Writers at the Student Union on Tuesday. Four other authors sat in the front row to see Selasi, as
she spoke about her inspirations, writing techniques and recent exploration of African literature. Selasi, author of “Ghana Must Go: A Novel” and several other novels, said her writing reflects that she never quite understood her own
life and her family’s position in the world. “Our class position was always in question, growing up the way that I did,” Selasi said. “My racial identity, my cultural identity, everything
WRITERS page 2
A research consortium led by the University of Texas Marine Science Institute received a $9.2 million award to further investigate the effects of dispersants and oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico and their impact on public health. The seven-institute consortium, led by Edward Buskey, UT-Austin marine science professor, received the award from the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative. Buskey said the award will help the consortium continue its research. “It’s based on the $500 million BP pledge for independent research over 10 years,”
Buskey said. “[The program launched] after the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill [and is] headed by Rita Colwell.” According to Buskey, this is the second grant the consortium, Dispersion Research on Oil: Physics and Plankton Studies, has received. Its first set of research was funded by the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative in 2012. “[In 2012,] they put out a number of proposals and decided to have a consortium of universities,” Buskey said. “You’d have people from different disciplines working on the project. We got our first grant of about $6 million and then another request for proposals of consortiums
came out. We applied and got funded again. Now, there are 12 consortiums studying some aspect of oil spills.” Buskey said dispersants are essentially detergents that break up oil, and the Deepwater Horizon spill was the first time dispersants were used. “They directly applied detergent to the oil as it was coming out of the well. That breaks it up into really small droplets so the small droplets rise really slowly,” Buskey said. “The droplets are so small that they interact with marines in the sea base of the food web, like plankton in the sea actually eat them. We’re ending up
MARINE page 2
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