Daily Toreador The
WEDNESDAY, FEB. 6, 2013 VOLUME 87 ■ ISSUE 84
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Serving the Texas Tech University community since 1925
Endowment received in honor of Pratt
Spring enrollment determines funding By CAROLYN HECK
By BETHANY CHESHIRE
STAFF WRITER
STAFF WRITER
Comfort Pratt, associate professor and adviser of Sigma Delta Pi Honor Society, received a $10,000 endowment from Alice White, former Texas Tech public relations director and honorary member of Sigma Delta Pi, to help support the honor society. “You know how it is, when something is so way beyond you,” Pratt said. “I’m still in a daze. I’ve written so many notes thanking her. I can’t thank her enough.” The endowment will be used as scholarships for students involved with Sigma Delta Pi to allow them to study abroad to learn about Hispanic culture, she said. The endowment also will be used to help with different projects for the program. Before the endowment, most of the funding for Sigma Delta Pi came from the Student Government Association, Pratt said. “They have been providing funding for most of what we do,” she said. “Student Government Association has been phenomenal.” According to a news release, Sigma Delta Pi has served the Lubbock community in numerous ways to help influence learning about the Spanish language and the Hispanic culture. The continuing dedication of Pratt and Sigma Delta Pi has led them to earn 23 national awards. “We have pretty much got everything with the exception of the lifetime award, which you have to be really old to get, and the website award,” Pratt said. In addition to the national awards Pratt has received for working with Sigma Delta Pi, she also has been awarded the Tech President’s Excellence in Diversity and Equity Award in 2012. “I have done a lot for the community because that’s what we’re about,” she said. “We have to be in the community to make sure not only that people are
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY WILLIAM ROBIN/The Daily Toreador
COMFORT PRATT RECEIVED a $10,000 endowment for Sigma Delta Pi to be used for scholarships and program needs. Sigma Delta Pi is an honor society for all students of Spanish and Spanish-English bilingual education.
learning Spanish and learning about the culture of the Hispanic world, but that all people are coming together for the good of the community.” Spencer Key, a bilingual education doctoral student and the event coordinator for Sigma Delta Pi, said the honor society is involved with the community. The members and Pratt are working on a program to help Spanish-speaking parents in Lubbock learn English.
“(We’re doing this) So that they can help their kids with their homework and they can be more involved with their kids’ lives,” she said Key said out of the organizations with which she’s been involved, Sigma Delta Pi is her favorite because of Pratt. “She’s the best adviser I’ve ever met,” Key said. “She’s so involved in everything.” PRATT continued on Page 5 ➤➤
Agriculture student wins scholarship, opportunity to go to Canada By SHANNON O’NEIL STAFF WRITER
PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY WILLIAM ROBIN/The Daily Toreador
He was named the high individual at the National Western Stock Show in Denver within the Livestock Judging Team. Jordan Richburg, a junior animal science major with a business option from Daytona, Fla., participated in his high school’s Future Farmers of America program and went on to attend Connors State College in Warner, Okla. While attending Connors State College, Richburg said he was able to work on his skills in the animal science field before being recruited to Texas Tech by Ryan Rathmann, coach of the Livestock Judging Team at Tech. While at the National Western Stock Show, Richburg competed with the team to judge four different kinds of livestock comprised of cattle, goat, sheep and hog. The students were required to judge the livestock in two rounds with six classes in each round. The students then competed in an oral presentation round called reasons, where they judged eight more classes of the livestock. Each score is ranked from zero to 50, and Richburg said most Tech students receive at least a 30.
JORDAN RICHBURG, A junior animal science major from Deltona, Fla., received a $250 scholarship for competing with the Texas Tech Livestock Judging Team. Richburg won first place in the National Western Stock Show.
RICHBURG continued on Page 3 ➤➤
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Texas Tech broke records with the largest spring semester enrollment since the university was founded, totaling at 30,399 students, said Ethan Logan, managing director of undergraduate admissions. Those numbers, as of the fourth class day, include 24,424 undergraduate students, as well as 5,315 graduate students and 659 law students, Logan said. The record-breaking number is just one step along the way to the 40,000-student goal, all part of making Tech a more attractive campus, Interim President Lawrence Schovanec said. “It’s just part of our salient growth toward 40,000,” he said, “but it is particularly important this year because our enrollment this semester will help determine our funding from the state that we receive through the formula funding mechanism.” This semester is one of many that determine funding allocations by the state government, Schovanec said. These counting semesters were comprised of last summer, last fall and this spring. “The way it influences us is that,” he said, “in some sense, the rate of increase and our performance compared to other universities affects the amount of money we get.” Total enrolled credit hours and number of students across the university plays a big role in the appropriations Tech receives, Schovanec said. Essentially, he said more students and more credit hours equates to more money. The number of students has increased by 1 percent this semester, Schovanec said,
and the number of semester credit hours has increased by just below that, exceeding the number of hours taught last spring. “And really,” he said, “in terms of funding, it’s the semester credit hours that have a greater influence on our funding than just the headcount.” Logan said the count has given the university something to improve off of for a better count next semester, using a system of incremental growth. “It gives us the opportunity to say, ‘OK, this is what we’ve been able to do historically, this is what we did last year,’” he said. “We know what can we do to try to repeat that, but we also need to try to enhance that some more.” The strategic growth plan is related to the growth seen on campus, although funded by different resources, he said, including the residence hall being constructed on 19th Street and the J.T. and Margaret Talkington Residence Hall, as well as an increase in faculty and staff. “Each year we try to do a little bit better and a little bit more without losing the gains that we’ve made,” he said. “Institutionally, that’s good because it gives the institution an opportunity to incrementally ramp up resources to match the student population.” However, Tech has not met its goal yet, Schovanec said, and has a mark set for next fall. “To meet the enrollment targets that have been set,” he said, “we’re basically trying to achieve a growth rate of 2 to 2-and-a-half percent by next fall, and that’s at the undergraduate level.” ENROLLMENT continued on Page 3 ➤➤
83rd Legislature resumes; Governor Rick Perry discusses water, Rainy Day Fund By MATT DOTRAY STAFF WRITER
Gov. Rick Perry discussed concerns about water access and funding for universities in South Texas during his State of the State address Jan. 29. The speech was given in front of the 83rd Texas Legislature, whose session began Jan. 8. “It is my pleasure to report that the state of our State is stronger than ever,” Perry said at the beginning of the speech. During the past two years, he said, Texas has created more than half a million jobs and continues to remain a destination for job seekers. As the population of Texas expands, the need to address the state’s infrastructure needs is important, Perry said. One of those particular needs is the growing need for water, he said. To fund the needs for infrastructure programs, Perry said he supports using $3.7 billion from the Rainy Day Fund, which holds nearly $12 billion. Nelson Dometrius, a professor of political science who specializes on comparative state politics, said the Rainy Day Fund is similar to a savings account. “A number of states have, in essence, a savings account where they put special money away,” Dometrius said. “It’s usually money that is based on certain kinds of taxes, so that if there was an enormous budget crisis, it would be there to cover some emergency needs.” Texas is not in any kind of a budget crisis, Dometrius said, but using the Rainy Day Fund is a way for the legislature to handle issues without having to raise taxes. “I don’t know what the legislature will end up doing,” he said, “but everybody
has known for nearly half a century that in the southwest, water is one of the big future issues people are going to have to grapple with.” According to the Texas Water Resources Institute website, the demand for water is expected to increase from 4.9 million acre-feet in 2010 to 8.4 million acre-feet in 2060. Kimberly Lile, district director for John Frullo, Lubbock’s house representative in the Texas legislature, said legislatures might attempt to make it possible for Lubbock’s surrounding areas not to use the city’s water supplies. The legislature might decide to build additional pipelines to bring water from different sources, she said. “What is out there floating through right now is using the Rainy Day fund to set up a funding structure for water projects for cities (surrounding Lubbock) to borrow against,” Lile said. “If Lubbock chooses to do a water project, then that would affect Lubbock. But the thing is, with the Lake Alan Henry Project, we have secured our water for the next 100 years.” Other projects might include conservation and drought management, she said. Along with water transportation, Perry said he encourages the legislature to pass a bill that would give South Texas access to the Permanent University Fund. The governor said this area is very critical to the future of the state and providing money would allow students to remain closer to their homes. Dometrius said the Permanent University Fund was created by the legislature more than 100 years ago. FUND continued on Page 2 ➤➤
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