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Wednesday, April 20, 2016
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SYSTEM
seekUT struggles to build user base By Caleb Wong @caleber96
The UT System announced it is making a major update to its salary and interactive debt database, seekUT, with new features at a higher education conference Tuesday. seekUT is a online tool that helps students compare salaries, debt levels and median earnings by major among UT System graduates. The system is planning to put medical and
dental schools in separate categories to make it easier for prospective medical students to make informed decisions about going into the health care field, said Jessica Shedd, who helped create seekUT. “For prospective medical students, it can really give you a sense of what to expect,” Shedd said. “What we really feel is important and helps students at any level, whether they’re medical students or undergraduates, is to
be able to put their debt levels in perspective.” However, even as seekUT plans to add new features to a stable core product they are pleased with, the System is struggling to reach its target audience: high school and college students. David Troutman, director of strategic initiatives for the UT System, said the website has been visited about 70,000 times over the course of a year. That means not very many of the System’s
250,000 students are using the tool, he said. “Students don’t know about it,” Troutman said. “We’ve tried Instagram. We’ve tried Facebook. We’ve tried any kind of Twitter.” Implementing feedback collected from students who have used seekUT, the system is trying to attract more users by making it easier to filter searches for salary data by individual schools they attend, said Paula Bales,
communications director of strategic initiatives for the UT System. The System doesn’t want students to be confused by national databases that compare institutions, such as private and public schools, which are fundamentally different from each other, she said. “We wanted to make sure that the students who were coming to UT institutions and that were graduating from
DATABASE page 3
CAMPUS
Student’s blog showcases black voices By Elizabeth Hlavinka @hlavinka_e
On a campus of more than 53,334 students, it can be easy for the voices of the 2,000 black students to be silenced by the majority. Advertising sophomore Langston Dillard is working to change that. This month, Dillard created The Four Point Five blog, a site that tells the stories of black students within the campus’s 4.5 percent minority. Dillard initially started the blog for a public relations course, but plans to continue updating the website with new portraits and profiles regularly. Dillard said the blog’s mission is to showcase diverse experiences within UT’s black community. As a minority, black students are often underrepresented on campus and can be reduced to a number. Dillard said his blog aims to deconstruct the universal black narrative in order to give others a better understanding of the black student perspective. “There’s not one way to think about being black — there’s not a single story to be told,” Dillard said. “That’s why I’m doing it. I think often there are voices that are louder than others.”
Briana Vargas | Daily Texan Staff
Advertising sophomore Langston Dillard is working to change the dynamics of black student expression. His project, The Four Point Five Blog, showcases diverse experiences within UT’s black community.
Public relations lecturer David Junker said Dillard’s blog stood out from other submissions. While other students featured the best brunch, queso or taco places in Austin, Dillard chose to write about an issue affecting thousands of
college students. “This is what’s beneath that abstract number — the life beneath it,” Junker said. “These stories, if not told here, are left untold.” Dillard said he was inspired to create the blog from his own experiences at
UT. After transferring from UTSA in the fall, he noticed a lack of diversity on campus. Walking into a class or standing in front of the tower, he often realized he was the only black person in sight. Dillard said he hopes the blog can give others a
frame of reference for understanding his experience. Thus far, Dillard has featured three black students on campus, giving each their own webpage, photo and interview shared on the blog.
BLOG page 5
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CAMPUS
Students show work at Research Week 2016 By Rachel Lew @rachelannlew
Undergraduate students from diverse fields of study are showcasing their work and exploring ways to participate in research during the University’s ninth annual Research Week. Research Week began Monday and will go through this Friday, and features a variety of events including exhibitions, performances and workshops all focused on undergraduate research, according to the Undergraduate Studies website. Groups from various disciplines across campus will table at Longhorn Research Bazaar from 12–2 p.m. on Wednesday, April 20 at the Union Ballroom. Psychology professor Zenzi Griffin, director of the Cognition and Communication Lab, said she thinks Research Week provides an opportunity to share the lab’s work with others. “We will have three posters from the lab at the Research Bazaar,” Griffin said. “Research Week serves as an important reminder of how much students contribute to the world-class research that we associate with faculty.” The Cognition and Communication Lab focuses on speech and is comprised of students from the departments of psychology, communications sciences and disorders, and linguistics. Griffin said the lab studies how experiences affect the words and sentences people choose to use. Griffin said she thinks some of the most significant learning occurs when students get involved in projects outside the classroom. “Students who simply attend classes are missing out
RESEARCH page 2
UNIVERSITY
CITY
Grant funds expansion of online journalism courses
Biology professor to give Earth Day talk
By Elizabeth Huang @lizzthewiz
The Knight Center for Journalism, a UT program that trains journalists in Latin America and the Caribbean, recently received $600,000 to expand its global online courses. The grant came from the Knight Foundation, which seeks to promote quality journalism and advance media innovation. This money provides the Center with the stability and funding to create more free Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCS), said Rosental Alves, director of the Knight Center. “The importance of the MOOCS is the democratization of knowledge,”
Alves said. “The magic the MOOCS have is that someone from Africa or Latin America or Asia can take a course with an expert in the topic. We can connect people from all over the world.” The courses, taught by professional journalists and experienced journalism professors, consist of videos, readings and interactive forums. While the classes are all online, it is not impersonal because the core of the class is in the interaction between peers on the forums, Alves said. “What’s magical about this is they create a global community,” Alves said. “We have people from 150 countries on the
KNIGHT page 2
By Zia Lyle @Zia_Lyle
Think globally and act locally. According to integrative biology professor David Hillis, Austinites should use this mindset when approaching Earth’s conservation and protection. This Friday at 7 p.m., Hillis will give a talk about the Barton Springs salamander, an endangered species that only resides within the Barton Springs system in Austin. This Earth Day talk, part of the “Hot Science - Cool Talks” series, will discuss the history of the salamander and how the city of Austin acted to protect it. “The point of my talk really is that the things that are good for the salamander are also good for humans,” Hillis
said. “In order for Austin to develop as a city, you have to have adequate water supply and quality of life, and the Barton Springs salamander has basically been a tool that Austin has used to protect those things.” Hillis said the Barton Springs salamander is endangered primarily because it lives in a large urban spring, which is affected by development in Austin. Hillis plans to discuss what has happened since the discovery of the salamander in the early 1990s, focusing on the politics of conservation here in Austin. Bill Bunch, executive director of Save Our Springs, a local Austin nonprofit aimed at protecting Barton Springs, said the work necessary to preserve the Barton Springs salamander
Illustration by Victoria Smith | Daily Texan Staff
isn’t over. “To me, the salamander is a stark, powerful example of the fact that you don’t have to go to the rainforest of the Amazon or to Antarctica to see the clash
between preserving and sustaining Earth’s ecosystems,” Bunch said. Bunch also said if citizens of Austin can’t preserve
SALAMANDER page 2
NEWS
OPINION
SPORTS
LIFE&ARTS
ONLINE
REASON TO PARTY
Foreign policy expert lectures on counter terrorism. PAGE 3
Kissinger protests threaten academic inclusivity. PAGE 4
Texas comes from behind to defeat Rio Grande. PAGE 6
Enjoy these four stoner comedies on 4/20. PAGE 8
Design Institute for Healthdiscusses medical school. PAGE 3
Chariot ride-hailing is only a temporary solution. PAGE 4
Texas Tech continues to dominate Big 12. PAGE 6
Navigate running into your ex with these tips. PAGE 8
Sunday’s rainstorms displaced 55 dogs from the Town Lake Animal Center. Read about the efforts to get the dogs fostered at dailytexanonline.com
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