SouthernAccent The student voice since 1926 Collegedale, Tennessee Thursday, April 28, 2016 Vol. 71, Issue 23
WHAT HAPPENED TO COMMUNITY?
NURSING MAKES CHANGES TO REGAIN FULL BOARD APPROVAL
eloise Ravell MANAGING EDITOR
The launch of Community, the online communication forum software, to replace the Joker at Southern Adventist University has been delayed all year. Community attempted to launch at the talent show on March 19, but Southern’s server crashed with the sudden flow of traffic. Due to technical difficulties, Community is now looking to be implemented in the 2016-2017 school year. Right now, the Community software is available for students as an electronic Joker. “The wrong decision we made was not to include an overlap year, during which we printed the Joker and implemented Community,” said Dennis Negron, vice president of student services. “We made the decision for an immediate change because we were told by the company, Symplicity, the transition could happen within a summer.” Negron said there were many things on Southern’s end that needed to be done in order to implement the software, which couldn’t have reasonably been finished in the span of a few months. “Community is in our hands now,” said Jacob Metzner, Student Association (SA) president. “It has been implemented into our system, but there are still a lot of bugs that need to be worked out. The biggest problem is that Student Association and Student Services have not united with everyone to make a move toward this. Everyone is too busy to focus their attention on Community to produce the most effective implementation process.” According to the cabinet minutes from April 17, 2015, Community’s total cost was $18,350, most of which came out of SA’s budget. “In the software world, $19,000 is not that expensive for a project like this,” said Continued on page 4
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President Gordon Bietz, center, poses with Accent staff.
STRAWBERRY FESTIVAL FEATURES AMERICAN IDOL FINALIST
Photo by Danielle Schafer
SOUTHERN CELEBRATES 19 YEARS OF BIETZ
Rosana hughes EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
Southern Adventist University will celebrate the Bietz legacy today in the Iles P.E. Center for convocation at 11 a.m., by honoring President Gordon Bietz and his wife, Cynthia Bietz. Speakers for the event include Dan Jackson, president of the North American Division; Ron Smith, president of the Southern Union Conference; Jay Dedeker, president
of alumni relations; Chris McKee, executive vice president of McKee Foods Corporation and Lisa McClusky, vice president of marketing and communications at CHI Memorial Health. Current and former presidents of area colleges and universities are also expected at the event as well as area city officials and representatives. A week before the convocation, President Bietz sat down with the Southern Accent to share some of his memories
and experiences as president of the university. Bietz said one of the first memories he has as president is students grabbing him and throwing him down a water slide during a welcome party for freshmen. “That was memorable,” Bietz said. “I’ve always enjoyed interacting with the students.” Another aspect that Bietz said he enjoyed about being president was working with students on special projects, Continued on page 4
GENERAL EDUCATION REQUIREMENTS CHANGE Cassie MatChiM NEWS EDITOR
General education requirements have changed and will be effective next school year, 2016-2017. These requirements will only affect incoming freshmen and current students who decide to change to the 2016-2017 undergraduate catalog. Previous catalogs required bachelor’s degree students to obtain 56-59 general education hours from specific areas. The new catalog will only require 45-46 hours, which means overall requirements have been reduced by about 11 to 14 hours.
“We did two things: One, simplify the requirements,” said Scot Anderson, computing professor and chair of the general education committee. “The big change is one section for intellectual and social.” Under the previous catalog, general education hours were divided into the categories of spiritual development, intellectual development, individual and social development and physical development. Under the new catalog, individual and social development has been combined and added under intellectual. There are now 10 subcategories for intellectual development. Subcategories have been
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cleaned up, and some have been limited to specific classes for students to take. For example, under the new human development category, students are required to take either PSYC-128 (Developmental Psychology) or SOCI-125 (Intro to Sociology). Physical development hours have been reduced from 6-7 to 4, and so have natural science requirements. Aesthetic analysis has been reduced from 6 to 3 hours. A new requirement is that all students under the 2016-2017 catalog must take MATH-215 (Statistics). Bethany Thornton, junior Continued on page 4
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RELIGION: WORD OR A LIFESTLYE?
SEE RELIGION PAGE 6
WHAT’S THE POINT OF SERVICE? SEE OPINION PAGE 7
#EXPOSETHEELEPHANT: EATING DISORDERS
SEE LIFESTYLE PAGE 8
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