Serving The University Of Texas At Austin Community Since 1900 @thedailytexan | thedailytexan.com
Tuesday, November 12, 2019
Volume 121, Issue 65
NEWS
OPINION
SPORTS
LIFE&ARTS
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UT revives rivalry with Texas A&M by competing in cycling challenge.
UT must remove UTC’s upholstered seating to prevent future bed bug outbreaks.
Students make and sell tamales to pay bills and cover educational costs.
Texas looks to carry its newfound momentum into Ames for a game against Iowa State.
UNIVERSITY
UT to offer new course on autism taught in Spanish By Nataleah Small @nataleahjoy
UT’s Special Education Department will offer its first course taught entirely in a foreign language next semester. Mark O’Reilly, special education department chair, said the department will teach the course, known as Autism Spectrum Disorders: Perceptions and Realities, in Spanish. During the course, O’Reilly said students will learn about diagnosing autism spectrum
If we say the goal is parent training and there’s a communication barrier, then you can’t reach all of the cultural perspectives and the goals the parents need.” VARGAS LONDOÑO graduate student
disorders, resources for individuals with ASD and best practices regarding assessment and intervention. Course instructor Fabiola Vargas Londoño said she noticed language as a barrier to intervention therapies during her clinical work. Vargas Londoño, a special education graduate student, said Spanish speaking families that wanted services in Spanish needed to wait longer because she was the only Spanish-speaking Board Certified Behavior Analyst on staff. “If we say the goal is parent training and there’s a communication barrier, then you can’t
UNIVERSITY
Science curriculum changes Faculty council to relax science core curriculum, allowing students to take 9 hours of science in any field. By Neelam Bohra @neelambohratx
aculty Council relaxed science core curriculum requirements for the 202021 catalogue at its meeting Monday. The council unanimously voted to allow students to take nine hours of science in any field to fulfill their core requirements. The change will take effect in fall 2020, according to the Office of the Registrar. Before this decision, the core curriculum required all students to take six hours of science in the same field of study and another three hours in a separate field. During the meeting, council member Lorenzo Sadun said at least six of the nine hours have to be science courses, but the remaining three could be from the list of technology courses. He said the University has required students to take six hours of science in the same field since 1955. “An associate dean in the College of Natural Sciences raised the question in a meeting, asking, ‘Why do we have this?’ And we said, ‘We don’t know,’” mathematics professor Sadun said. “We went back to (the College of) Natural Sciences and asked around, and no one could give any reason for having that rule.” Sadun said the Educational
/ the daily texan staff
steph sonik
Policy Committee decided the requirement does not work for students. He said it causes issues for advisors and scheduling because finding paired science classes for nonscience majors is hard. “Working toward depth and breadth is a good idea, but the consensus was it doesn’t work out,” Sadun said. “The rule you had to take at least two in one area wasn’t working because the pairings were a mess, and the consensus was (to) just get rid of the rule (because) it’s obsolete.” The previous rule said students couldn’t take all nine hours of science in the same
We went back to (the College of) Natural Sciences and asked around, and no one could give any reason for having that rule.” LORENZO SADUN math professor
field. Sadun said this will continue to apply. “In most of the departments, there aren’t three courses aimed at nonmajors, so you can’t overload in one subject anyway,” Sadun said. The council also approved the addition of numerous courses to the catalogue. Sadun said most of the courses applied to be added and passed through the committee easily. Brent Iverson, dean in the School of Undergraduate Studies, said all of these changes would give students more flexibility. S C I E N C E PAGE 3
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STUDENT LIFE
CITY
Students display project at Waller Creek
Steel City Pops closes Guadalupe Street location
By Sara Johnson @skjohn1999
By Laura Morales @lamor_1217
Ambient music filled the air around a luminescent dome of leaves and sticks as onlookers explored the mysterious Waller Creek Monster Habitat. The display is one of the light sculptures that make up Waterloo Greenway Conservancy’s Creek Show, which started Nov. 7 at Waller Creek between Ninth and 12th streets. A team of students at Texas Applied Arts, a program of UT’s College of Fine Arts, created Waller Creek Monster Habitat in reference to the show’s mascot. Meredith Bossin, the Waller Creek Conservancy’s director of engagement, said this is the first student group to contribute in the show’s six-year run. “Every installation has to take some point of inspiration from the creek,” Bossin said. “It could be about the
anthony mireles
/ the daily texan staff
The Creek Monster Habitat interactive installation was built by students of Texas Applied Arts and will stay on display until Nov. 17, 2019. history or something about the environment. How the artists wanted to tell the story in the pieces are all different and diverse in design, and that was what we were
looking for.” Karen Maness, scenic art supervisor with Texas Performing Arts, said the interdisciplinary team created the light display as part of her
design projects class. After the light show ends on Nov. 17, Maness said she wants to install the sculpture along W A L L E R PAGE 2
Steel City Pops closed up shop on the Drag as part of an 11-store shutdown to shift company costs to new ventures. The Alabama-based, customizable popsicle store closed nearly half of its 24 locations in Texas and Alabama on Nov. 1, according to a blog post on the company’s website. Owner Jim Watkins said the decision came from a combination of production costs and a desire to expand into vending and wholesale. “If we kept operating the way we were going, it would be harder to get ingredients local at every store, and that’s a huge part of our business model,” Watkins said. “It’s not ideal to operate a number of stores that spreads the revenue so thin … we’d have to change what we do to keep them all open.”
Watkins said revenue and access to ingredients factored the most into which stores remained open. “In Texas, Dallas is such an active customer base and has a great variety of flavors compared to some of our other locations,” Watkins said. “Focusing our attention there seemed to make the most sense.” Watkins opened the first Steel City Pops in 2012 in Homewood, Alabama to accomplish his goal of opening a restaurant. Watkins said he consulted Cameron Carr, owner of a popular diner in Homewood, to get advice before starting his business. Carr, who closed a second location of his own restaurant earlier this year, said he prepared Watkins for the possibility of closures as part of his advice. “In anything you do, you have to be prepared for things to not always go the way you P O P S PAGE 2