THE TUFTS DAILY
Chance of Rain 65/54
Tufts e-mail accounts begin transition BY
TUFTSDAILY.COM
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2010
VOLUME LX, NUMBER 6
KATHRYN OLSON
Daily Editorial Board
Freshmen transitioned to Microsoft Exchange — an e-mail system new to Tufts that will replace Tufts Webmail — during Undergraduate Orientation this month as part of University Information Technology’s (UIT) larger initiative to migrate the entire university to the new e-mail platform. UIT began switching freshman students in the School of Engineering to Microsoft Exchange on Sept. 2 and first-years in the School of Arts and Sciences on Sept. 3, the evenings prior to their respective registration times for the fall semester, according to Dawn Irish, director of communications and organizational effectiveness for UIT. UIT chose to install a new e-mail system after a general consensus emerged among faculty and students that Tufts Webmail was outdated, Irish said. “Webmail didn’t have the modern functionality people are used to in commercial products such as Gmail, Hotmail, or Yahoo!,” Irish said. “We were looking for something that had more features, was easier to use and was more compatible with mobile devices. The old e-mail functioned well but lacked new technology available.” Irish said that the new system would promote greater collaboration between students and faculty, as students would be able to view a faculty member’s calendar through the program and book office hours online. UIT decided to migrate freshmen to Exchange because they had a relatively small amount of information stored in their accounts and had only been using Tufts Webmail for a few months over the summer, Irish said. “For a student that just moved here, they and most of their family had probably been using an e-mail system other than Tufts, such as Gmail or Yahoo!,” Tufts Online Supervisor Judi Vellucci said. Tufts Online is a student-run group that provides computer support. The migration of faculty and staff e-mail accounts to Exchange began in July but is not expected to be completed until June, due to the large volume of e-mail messages and calendars their accounts typically hold, according to Irish. The transition for the e-mail accounts of all undergraduates who are not members of the Class of 2014 will begin in the spring, but Irish offered no estimates on when the entire process would be concluded. In order to transition to Exchange, UIT see EXCHANGE, page 2
Where You Read It First Est. 1980
Students get more say in roommate selection BY
AMELIE HECHT
Daily Editorial Board
The Office of Residential Life and Learning (ResLife) implemented this year a new online roommate-pairing system designed to give incoming freshmen greater input and to reduce administrative hassle in the process. Likened by participants to online dating database Match.com, the new system allows students to view classmates’ online profiles and questionnaire responses and extend roommate invitations based on that information. “This system gives students a chance to make a better connection, which should limit the number of moves that happen in the first few weeks of housing,” Associate Bursar of Systems and Programs James Moodie said. “Students have made the connection themselves and are therefore more married to staying together.” All of this year’s newly matriculated students were asked to create an online profile by answering a series of questions formulated by the Tufts Community Union Senate, according to ResLife Director Yolanda King. After filling out the questionnaire, students had four options: They could allow the system to match them randomly based on their responses, they could ask the system to show possible matches of students who were most compatible given their answers to the questionnaire, they could specifically request someone with whom they had a prior relationship or connection, or they could power search the database, asking the system to find a roommate who met certain specific criteria. The system’s implementation is an attempt to involve students more in the selection
VIRGINIA BLEDSOE/TUFTS DAILY
Twenty-one percent of the class of 2014 selected their own roommates using Reslife’s new roommate-pairing system. of their roommates, as well as to update an antiquated process. “In the past, we had students fill out a very simple questionnaire with only a couple of questions, and it was all done on paper,” King said. “It was a fairly painful process.” Students who wished to be involved in the process wrote short personal introductions. Those who found an appropriate match through the program could extend a roommate invitation; if both parties agreed to the pairing, the system would provide the students with each other’s e-mail addresses to continue their conversations. Tufts students’ use of the Internet to choose their roommates had been taking place long before the university made the transition this year, according to Moodie. “A lot of people were already involved in this sort of pairing through social media sites,” Moodie said. “This system just offers
them a safer, more controlled space in which to do it.” In spite of the program’s attempt to involve students more in the selection process, only 21 percent of the incoming class self-selected their roommate through the invitation process, according to Moodie. The remaining 79 percent accepted the matches generated by the housing software system. A total of 142 roommate invitations were declined, he said. Freshman Claire Dunivan decided to let the system match her with a roommate rather than selecting one herself. “I decided to fill out the questionnaire and then pretty much left the rest of it up to fate and let whatever was going to happen, happen,” Dunivan said. “I looked through the profiles of a couple of the people it suggested see ROOMMATES, page 2
PROFILE
Ecologist explores rainforest canopies, the final biotic frontier BY
ROMY OLTUSKI
Daily Editorial Board
2003 was a busy year for ecologist Nalini Nadkarni; she spent three months attending religious services at twelve churches, launched a line of Barbie clothing, designed a set of baseball cards and grew moss with inmates at a Washington state prison. Nalini is not exactly a typical forest canopy researcher. But that is all a part of her professional methodology, which is to involve people in the study and appreciation of trees using a medium that appeals to them. Today, she’ll be bringing her ideas to Tufts at 4 p.m. in Barnum 104.
When she’s not working in prisons and elementary schools or teaching at Evergreen State College, Nadkarni spends her time in the tree canopies of Costa Rica and Washington, some 200 feet above the forest floor, where she eats, sleeps and lives alongside the wildlife she researches. Sometimes referred to as “the last biotic frontier,” canopy treetops have only become a viable subject of research over the past few decades as a handful of pioneers — Nadkarni among them — began to develop the technologies necessary to safely elevate humans to the canopy. “People have been living and working in forest ecosystems forever. But it’s been only recently, within the last 30 years, that
they’ve figured out how to get up into the canopies and study them close up,” Nadkarni told the Daily. “Once people began applying mountain-climbing techniques to get up into the forest canopies in a safe way, this whole field opened up.” The slow-to-emerge field became an immediate gold mine, though, uncovering previously unknown mini-ecosystems. “They have a very different microclimate and a huge, diverse group of animals that you just never find on the forest floor. We were finding new species that no one had ever discovered before, seeing pollination systems going on that we had no idea see TREES, page 2
Faculty considers moving course-evaluation system online BY
BRENT YARNELL
Daily Editorial Board
Faculty members this semester will consider moving the university’s course-evaluation system online and are debating the possibility of making the results available to the student body. The Education Policy Committee (EPC) passed a resolution on March 9 that calls the current paper system “antiquated” and “obsolete” and says an online system would improve processing speed, reduce the potential for errors and better preserve student anonymity.
Under the current system, the university requests that all students complete a written evaluation at the end of each of their courses. The evaluation consists of a generic bubble section that quantifies students’ opinions on various aspects of the course, as well as a freeresponse section that allows for more detailed comments. The resolution proposes that the quantitative data from the bubbled section — but not the free-form comments — become accessible to students on the Internet, with individual
departments and faculty members able to opt out of making these results available. The EPC is planning a faculty forum this fall to discuss the resolution, which was presented at an April 14 Arts, Sciences and Engineering faculty meeting, according to EPC Chair Jack Ridge, a professor of geology. The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate last year supported opening up evaluations to students online, passing a resolution in December that opposes granting the choice to opt out. This fall, the EPC intends to
Inside this issue
adjust its resolution based on faculty input before a final version is submitted for a full faculty vote, according to Ridge. Thus, he said, the document’s opt-out proposal may change. “This has all yet to be decided,” Ridge said in an e-mail. “Some faculty would like to wait and see what a new evaluation instrument looks like before going public with the results.” The Senate worked with the EPC last year to brainstorm changes for the existing course evaluation system, which, in turn, led to the EPC resolution.
TCU President Sam Wallis said he had planned to work on bringing course evaluations online for student viewing — a move overwhelmingly approved by senators he polled at a Senate meeting last year — at the same time Dean of Academic Affairs for Arts and Sciences James Glaser initiated discussions within the EPC about digitizing course evaluations. “They were looking at changing the system because of some technical things and because they wanted to make the tool see EVALUATIONS, page 2
Today’s Sections
‘Easy A’ stands out from other romantic comedies, with stellar cast and clever plot.
Women’s cross country looks to recover from last year’s injuryplagued season.
see ARTS, page 3
see SPORTS, back page
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